Reader, I wept!

So - today is my birthday. I had arranged to go out with friends (for the first time ever) to celebrate. The Libertarian had been getting v.excited about my present for a long time and only gone as far as telling me that it was a book. Feeling somewhat tired and pre-menstrual, I was not sure that I would be able to handle a group of people today.

Still, he was coming over before everyone else to give me my present and I figured that all the healing hugs would help me to scrape through.

Then - after he arrived and I read the card - he suddenly began talking to me about The Golden Notebook and how he remembered that I had felt a bit let down by its main character, Anna Wulf. I stared at him in total bafflement. He was saying ' I thought you should have a PROPER feminist notebook.'

He handed me the parcel, I unwrapped it. He explained that there were feminist quotes in there... and more. Intrigued, I opened it - and was greeted by a message written in an unfamiliar hand - followed by a familiar name. I stared at him in amazement.

He was grinning and told me there was more. I carried on looking through. Do you know what that boy had done? He had contacted people via email, and sneaked out to meet others, collecting a thought on feminism from each one. These had then been either carefully printed, cut out and stuck into the notebook, or written directly in, along with birthday wishes. He had approached friends and people I admire, and would like to be friendlier with. Like Ariane Sherine and Cath Elliott. I was absolutely dumbfounded. He had gone to so much trouble to make this, got others in on it and carefully concealed it from me for about two months.

'See,' he said, as I flicked through, reading it and feeling the nausea-that-heralds-major-emotion, 'people care about you.'

He'd made it to remind me that I am not alone, and as I read two-thirds of it, I started crying. Where people hadn't responded, he had carefully left a few pages and then written in famous feminist quotes before writing a little epilogue. I couldn't stop hugging him and crying; a more wonderful present I have never received. I'm not a particularly material person; sometimes I wish I was. It'd make it easier for people to buy for me! However, I really just want things like honesty, loyalty and respect - even as I realise how horribly platitudinous that sounds. People who accept me for who I am, with my many failings and flaws and baggage, are the best gift in the world.

So, to everyone who was with me today - I love you! To everyone who helped make my 'feminist notebook,' thank you so much, I am still in shock. To my wonderful, wonderful Libertarian, all I can say is: I marry you.

Meanwhile, on a more topical note, I must highlight the absolute fucking DISGRACE of a black Harvard professor being arrested for breaking into his own home. Proof that we do not live in a post-racist society in any sense of the word, despite there being a half-black American president, a highly esteemed and intelligent American man was 'black' before he was 'innocent' in the eyes of Massachussetts police. Looks like little has changed since NWA's 21-year-old protest classic: fuck tha police.