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(Damn, I always write way more than I mean to. Sorries >< I've also noticed that I'm not naming names or places here...I don't know, it's like I want to set it all out as an abstract rather than tying it down. Do tell me if it's incomprehensible like this - I'll just change it if it is).

And I warn you, this entry is incredibly boring. Read the last one instead, or do something interesting like biting your toenails.)


Oddly enough, writing here is making my usual blog work a lot better. Funny, really. I'm pretty gloomy right now - not in a big dramatic emotional way, just listless and dull and finding it hard to, say, get the ******** off the internet and go to the birthday party I'm meant to be going to (it's an all-night nightclub do, I doubt that the birthday boys - two of them - have turned up yet either).

Hmm, I want to count all the pieces. Just want to work out what I've got to work with...

The shape of it is thus; I was born in a large city, but my family moved to the countryside when I was young. My father still often worked in the city and would live there for about half the week, and I often visited it, and so I grew up always being either a city girl in the country or a country girl in the city, sorta thing. My sister later moved to my father's old flat in the city and he doesn't often go there now. I moved in with my sister when I finished school, and then went to university in a different, smaller city, and went back to my sister's between terms. That was life til the end of last summer.

Now, pieces.

Matthew. I'm not doubting our connection, I'm just hoping I can make it all add up to a decent life together... I do wonder sometimes if we're on the right road, if that makes sense. Whether being lovers is what we should be doing, or whether the connection means something else. I think that's just because we're not at all flowers-and-chocolate sort of little sweethearts, really - we're railtrip-across-four-countries, ********, boinking-in-high-mountain-gorges (really... xp TMI, I know) sweethearts. Weird of me to question it, really, as it's exactly the sort of relationship I've always wanted, but it's something I think about sometimes.

My university friends. I sometimes wonder how well these people know me, but that just makes me wonder how well I know me and then it all gets confusing. These are the people I do stuff with from day to day, people I spill my little random thoughts to, people I stress and b***h with and who stress and b***h with me, and some of them are the people I share a six-bedroom house with. And there's, what, five or so of them who I seriously intend to stay in touch with once I'm done here (which will be mid-2006). Not many.
My closest friend here, the one I seek out almost daily even though she lives on the other side of town, I met because we seemed to do all the same things - similar courses (though she's a year older than me), the same tabletop RP, loitering in the same cafes, spending a fairbit of time on the 'net (she met one of her exes on the 'net, though they didn't live too far apart and were able to meet up after only a few days), and in general we seemed to fit in together better than with most of the other geeky people we hung out with - we both rarely drink and don't take drugs, which is rare in the rather rough place we live, we're both major cuddlesluts, and we like talking about big things about the world, politics and philosophy and stuff. (She happens to be a transsexual vegan Quaker. This is, seriously, the kind of world I live in.) So she sees more of me than anyone and we share a lot of our lives, but I wonder sometimes whether she knows 'the real me' (or if I know the real her, or if either thing exists...). She's also the only person I know here who knows that I met my boyfriend on the internet.
The girl who shares the top floor of this house with me. She's an international student and may have to go back to her homeland this autumn, but she doesn't want to. She doesn't want to stay in this city, though. A lot of people don't like her - she has a bitchy ex and cruel, busybody gossip is an unpleasant feature of local life - but she rises above that. She's really sweet, but she has mental health problems and that can sometimes lead to Drama, and I think some people hold that against her.
A girl I met halfway through my first year here who happens to live in the city I was born in. She actually lives really close to me there, but, it being one of the largest cities in the world, I'd never met her til we were at university together. I met her on the goth scene (which is something I'm vaguelly involved with). I had a crush on her for a while, and now I'm not quite sure how to act towards her, all the more because she's such an intense person. It's really awkward and I get unsure about where I am with her. I do think she knows me better than most people, though. (And she happens to be a sexually submissive actress. My life is on crack).
Another of my housemates, a thoughtful, introspective loner who happened to let me in a bit. We trust each other and sharing a home with him is a comfortable and comforting thing. (He happens to be a bipolar didgeridoo player who's now-recovered from serious drug problems).
His ex, an undergrad student who happens to be a few years older than us. She has a lot of health problems and is quite clingy, but I think she gets me.

So if I'm moving on from here as soon as I can, where do they all fit? I know that those middle three are going to move on themselves, and I know that the first and the last will probably not... I think that this is a good part of my life, though.

Older friends and old 'netfriends - now, when I moved I had no intention of going back, ever, because of the whole messy past thing mostly, so not many people have been kept.
My 'best friend' left when I did (and now shares a flat with my sister). Inverted commas because right now I don't quite trust him, not as a person but in that I don't trust that he knows where I am or respects it or even wants to know...
There's him, and my brother and sister. I've fallen out with my sister right now. My brother and I are still solid, but he still lives in my old home and I don't see him often and he often doesn't call for a while, but we're really great friends when we do get together.
My sister is...a really big problem right now. It's a complete train wreck and I wouldn't know where to start with describing it. Urgh.
My ex-girlfriend (I'm bi). I don't like being around any of my ex-bfs for some reason, but I'm still fond of her. But, well, we broke up for a reason, and right now I've not seen her in a while. She's studying in a town not too far from here, and it's her birthday soonish, so I was thinking of inviting her over or asking if I could come see her (we've done that sort of thing before). But I don't know if she still wants to be my friend, really. She's a pretty insincere person, and she's been talking to my 'best friend' about me behind my back. That she's a lot closer to him than to me these days, and that he's maybe closer to her than to me, kinda bothers me. She may even be trying to 'steal' him off me - she uses people a lot (one always knows the worst things about exes, but I really am fond of this girl).
There's my old penfriend - writing to her fell off for a while (she was living somewhere where the post didn't get through for a while but then moved late last year) and I'm trying to get back into it, but I don't know if she's got either the time or the inclination. My current major penfriend I know I can always count on, but she's - pretty widely offset from other human beings. She's kind-of an otherkin - no need to go into it. She's also a mere sixteen years old (my old penfriend is 25 now, hmm).
There was a friend I met between the old life and the new, but he now hates me. He's gone, I suppose. I honestly think it's because he's just deeply irrational, rather than it being in any way my fault, but I'll never really know the truth.
There's old netfriends. The bitching and squabbling turned against me at one point a few months ago and now I don't quite trust the girl who I always used to share secrets and stuff with, but that trust is rapidly coming back right now. There's some left I have no trouble with at all, but only one of those is at all close to me, and she's...also offset from people. I trust her more than almost anyone, come to think, but again, I don't know if she really knows me. She's so weird and wonderful.
There's my aunt who lives in the city I was born in - she seems to really accept me as an adult now, and I love talking to her.

So it's up there that most of the anxiety is, maybe most of the real problems too. This is the bridge to the past and it's crumbling.

Academic stuff, career stuff, lifeplans, that sort of thing. The stuff I'm not so good at.

Anti-lifeplans - you know, all the travelling and being young I want to do before settling down. There's a lot of this and it's very random and impulsive, but I'm getting a surprising amount of it done this year 0_o

The past. It's not something I think of often but when I'm trying to make things add up it's worthy of consideration. Basically, my father never wanted a family, ignored and resented the one he managed to accrue, and tried his best to spend his life working in the city and not be around us.
Then my mother died when I was eleven and suddenly he had to take care of us. He was something of a drunk and was occassionally violent and not at all an outwardly caring parent (though I actually think he does have some affection for us). I brought up my younger brother myself (my sister left home about a year after my mother died, and before then she was often reclusive. She's also depressive and in spite of her being five years older than me it's often emotionally been as if I'm the elder).
Plus it was all way out in the country and my father never gave me any money - I went to school some distance away, and at that time I wasn't at all good at making friends, maybe due to all the problems of that time (I got a lot better when I left) - I didn't have many people and none of them were within reach. It was just me out on my own, doing my best to endure for both myself and another (my brother/'son'). It wasn't til I met Matthew that I remembered what it was to have someone to rely on the way most people instinctively rely on their mothers - that was part of the feeling that led to me becoming so thoroughly head-over-heels for him.
It was a very dark time for me, and I literally packed up and left the first day I possibly could. Like I said, I rarely think about any of it any more, but through Matthew I've let myself become aware of the damage it all did to me, and I would like to think that a lot of that damage is healing or healed. Some things will always be weird (like I don't know how normal families work or why other people my age have such problems with their parents and so on), but I think a lot of it's better than it was back when I wasn't remembering or admitting that it was an issue.

Religion, etc. This goes at the foundation, I think, and it's something I want to be more in touch with than I am. My mother was a Christian scholar and lay-preacher but I stopped accepting Christianity sometime after she died (this is random, but if you know it, the APC song Judith reminds me of how that went - it wasn't quite like that for me, certainly it was a lot less direct, but there's elements of it). I remained interested in religion now and - partly due to Gaia's M&R subforum! - I've given a lot of thought to all manner of faiths and reasons for faith and such.
Taoism is the one I'm most drawn to, but oddly enough, thinking of Christianity still very much gives me a comfort tug (you know, I've never told anyone this before? Weird the things I won't admit to. Maybe I'm more prideful than I thought). I'm quite sure that it's entirely a matter of reaching for childhood comfort, though - I find Christianity doesn't add up in my mind and doesn't do much for my soul, but to my *emotions* it does feel more attractive than any other faith I've ever heard of.
Since Matthew happened, I've been, as you see, letting myself be a lot more emotionally open and vulnerable, so this aspect of religion - an aspect my mind, which got used to such ways of thinking before I loosened up lately, considers irrelevant and even irrational - suddenly matters. I'd love to have a strong faith aspect in my life, but when I can't get anything to fit both mentally/spiritually and also emotionally, I can't have that. This makes me feel adrift, at sea - in the past I've often felt structured and rooted because of my religious explorations, so now it's rather like having mislaid a compass I used to have in life.
The obvious solution is the one I'm doing - keep looking, keep digging, keep reading Chinese classics, get emotionally attatched to that way of thinking (because that's way more likely to happen than my brain ever accepting Christ, I can say, even if that childhood comfort will maybe never be equalled), maybe even try to live in Asia within the next few years, and look out by the by for anything else that's as appealing.


That's all I can think of for now. I'm sorry it's all so long - and again, I'd kinda like to know if anyone is reading here, just because.