Giving Up, Giving In

Oh dear sweet blog, what an utter, utter relief it is to be tappin' away on you again! I have had a seriously bad week (things really kicked up on Sunday morning, but I will only talk about that once I have the strength/anyone asks).

I read this article which got my mental cogs whirring rustily. Maybe I'll even write on it like I used to, who knows??! Lack of sleep, serious emotional stress and general need-to-cry have left me clogged and murky upstairs. What I really need is some sort of anonymous guardian angel figure who will kidnap me, appease the various people who are baying for my blood asking me to do the bare minimum expected of me when I signed on to take a chunk of Governmental money to be educated. I get told that I am a good person, who makes people happy (chiefly by The Libertarian, bless him) but I do feel like a tremendous failure when things pile up on me. The knotted narrative of my life so far, in which all the events connect and nothing can be left out to fully understand the enormity of current problems, makes it that much harder.

After handing in an essay two days late by accident, after having spent all day writing another which WAS due today, I almost fell to pieces. Never had my skin felt thinner in recent memory, as I stood in front of the office of the somewhat perplexed Administrative Director of the School of English and Drama! I could feel heat creeping upon me; I knew how it might look to them, and I was ashamed. 'I'm not your common or garden layabout!' I wanted to shout with some sort of perverse pride. 'No; I'm in this situation because I'm pathetic enough to be deeply affected by the suffering of others! GO ON! PUNISH ME!'

Defeatist, much? I managed to recover 'Fight Mode' once they, very kindly, gave it an on-time stamp after all, but I was afraid. I knew that my memory, taxed with misery and fatigue, would probably fail me. Sure enough, it did - the essay was of course due in two days ago. Everyone else isn't always wrong, my mother used to say to me. It's YOU. I went to see my course organiser, quivering on the brink. She was very considerate and my skin thinned further, dangerously. She had misunderstood things slightly. I clarified. She went to recover my essay, and my skin collapsed altogether. Sat right there in her office, I cried. Oh, how much I wanted to cry my eyes out! How I wanted to slide to the floor, pull my coat over my face and cry pathetically in great, big, bursting sobs! Embarrassingly enough, my eyes are filling with tears in my university library as I type this.

Instead, I hyperventilated my way back to some semblance of composure. I could not embroil this poor woman - who had once asked me if I was alright after the seminar, because I hadn't contributed - in my personal failure to handle emotion. So, head dipped and shoulders shaking, I 'sucked it up'. A vague numbness settled over me and when she returned, I could occasionally flick glances towards her. There was an awful, genuine kindness in her eyes when she (repeatedly) apologised. She could probably tell from my shrivelled eyes that I had problems. Hence my inability to meet her eye. She advised me to speak to my advisor and submit an Extenuating Circumstances form. I comically imagined entering his office to meet with him and descending into a disastrous, weeping wreck.

A fear and pride held me back, just like it does. I want to resolve my feelings somehow. The urge to live, to be something is strong in me - but so too is the urge for destruction. Why? Why do I want to lie across a stranger's table and cry out my whole life? Why do I want to invite them to stamp over my feelings? Deep down, I know they probably won't. They'll just be appalled. They will probably, as many already have, give me credit for coping with the amount of familal bullying that I took.

I am a hypocrite though. I usually like grey areas, I like things to be complicated. Yet when it comes to the whole 'I need to get away from my family, but they have made more vocal expressions of love towards me recently than ever before and I feel horribly guilty. Plus, I'm the only real adult in the house emotionally' - I wish I could pass. I really do.

The source of much of this angst is that, when I returned innocently home last weekend to work on the essay I handed in today, I was served up the information that my elder sister (who was there, as I complained in my last post) is there for good because she has left her husband. He has always been abusive (not physically, thankfully for him). Much to my amazement, it was my parents who had told her to come back. A giant psychological shift has taken place - both my parents and my sister are being forced to reassess the way they see the world. My sister, at the age of 31, is being forced to consider life without a partner and children. I know that sounds dramatic; but that's how it is in her head. Remember that as a card-carrying member of the community we live in (unlike me), she subscribed fully to all the bullshit dictated to us by my parents, and especially my mother.

My mother, in a manner which really shouldn't surprise me, obviously feels both relief and guilt in great measure. I don't think she's quite emotionally developed enough to realise that, but as somebody who has borne the brunt of her tactlessness my whole life, I can see it. She keeps talking about how glad she is my sister is back, bringing up family skeletons and saying in an accusatory way 'I don't know how you stayed with him!'

GREAT, Mother. Just great. She's already feeling guilty of betraying him, as the abusee often feels upon escaping their abuser, and trying to make sense of why he married her in the first place when he obviously didn't love her. Make it worse, why don't you? Truly, we can do no right. We actually pointed this out to my mum ('If she had come back sooner, you would have accused her of not working at it') but my mum seemed rather oblivious. I don't hate my mum like I came close to in the past - I despair of her. She had the sheer presence of mind to bring up my sister's ex-fiance the other day (who broke off the engagement unexpectedly and without contact, and then tried to hide from her afterwards, fucking asshole) and say of her soon-to-be ex: 'It must have been something you did that really irritated him.'

Fucking hell! Though I know it really doesn't sound like it, she meant well in her completely cack-handed way. As my sister sobbed into her fleece, I turned and refashioned my mum's bald statement into what it was probably intended to be. 'You see? You see?' my mum leapt in eagerly, as she often does when I comment on the sorry affair. She flags up the evident sense in what I'm saying, I think with some relief, because Mater REALLY doesn't know how to do emotion.

So yes - at a time when I was already under hideous levels of pressure (two essays, Master's applications, a French presentation which should have been done LAST YEAR, behind on general French work and barely keeping up with my reading), this landed slap on me like a big, fat, fucking turd. This kind of shit makes me angry enough as it is, but the fact of it happening to my sister, my mum bringing up similar family history and meeting an old friend who had put her daughter's in-laws behind bars after a long fight increased my sense of despondent rage. At the very least, I wanted to be at home to look after my sister for the short period of time she has off, but nuuuuuu, I have to keep going and do fucking shit. Well, I am only human. I fail. I failed today. By a miracle (i.e. making it probably quite obvious that I would not refrain, if pushed, from crying in the English office), I was saved - but this is bullshit, yo.

I shouldn't have to be in this position. Maybe I sound like an ingrate for saying that, but that's how I feel, I'm afraid. I have no bitterness about all the time I lost looking after my sister (why the fuck should I?) but it just seems so very fucking unfair that this kind of bollocks happens to me. Furthermore, when I grovel before my advisor and the evaluatory board that may or may not condemn me for my failure of memory, I must reduce this all to one paragraph. How shittily pathetic is it going to sound, do you think? 'Sorry, I think I'm developing a stomach ulcer because my sister's getting divorced.' I know it's not right - but good God, part of me almost feels like I deserve it. Maybe I do. Maybe I should have been professional to the end, as my mother no doubt would have been.

Ah well, fucking bullshit essays handed in, still not had a shower and the French presentation looms over me like an executioner. Time I went back to the flat, had dinner and leapt out of the window forced myself to read until I fall asleep with exhaustion and then stay up later than necessary for no good reason because I can't relax and the fridge is too loud.

Well, I'm a regular bundle of joy - but so run the joys of blogging. It's like offloading on people without actually doing so. No need to make small talk, no need to force myself to be suitably smiley. I am free of social convention's oppression and I can wallow in my mounting unhappiness. Not a joke, not a hint of a smile. Sometimes even krazy jelly beans lose all their colour.

Time Of The Month

Me needs a rant. I have come back home, been received back into the warm, Internet-fuelled glow of home... and what do I find? Only that my sister is fucking sleeping in my bed. Why can't we just have ONE beautiful, unforgettable night together, the double-bed and I? The Libertarian was visiting me as usual yesterday, and I sleep marvellously in his arms (and generally better when he is present), but otherwise, my thoughts scrabble about like overexcitable rats in a maze to the potentially chart-busting sounds of my fridge whirring and making sudden loud popping noises, unexpected semi-explosive clanks of the radiator and idiots being themselves in all their glory outside my window. Let's not forget the joys of living in a student house - one person uses the water in any way whatsoever, and the plumbing broadcasts it to you like a delightfully primitive version of Twitter: 'L--- is washing her hands', 'J----- has just taken a piss,' 'L--- is preparing the veg for her usual 12 a.m. supper. Please insert fork violently and repeatedly into delicate brain matter as required'.

Music shall not be made (the music of I, yes, that is ME, SLEEPING FOR ONCE and also occasionally breaking wind) between the sheets, because MY FUCKING SISTER IS THERE.

One of my best friends, quizzically: 'Isn't your sister married?!'

Well, exactly. So here is a poem from 2004 to keep me going. Thank you to all ye who commented on the passing (now official) of my laptop. I ONLY BOUGHT THE FUCKER IN 2007, IT HAS EMERGED! FUCK YOU, Fujitsu Siemens. Fuck you *shakes head*. I just keep hearing 'Buy a Mac, they never get viruses.'

Yes, and live on water and whatever has fallen onto the carpet until I graduate. Instead, here I am, back at home just so I can apply for a Master's and write an essay. :-(


Time Of The Month
I hate it here. Everyone’s cheese to my grater
I want to shred them and rip them up like
Balls of scrunched scrap paper. Get AWAY from me!
I’m offering no leniency. If you plan to get
What you want, then leave, annoying me, like
Spilled water drops on an oil-coated surface,
Dream on. The burn marks will stay with me
Scars of trying to keep my anger on a steady simmer
When it longs to boil over; the lid rattles
The pot that is my face strains; copper glows
Becoming brick-red. How much more should I take?

Don’t piss me off. The temptation to pluck you
Between finger and thumb, then toss you away
Like so many unwashed clothes comes. But you’re
A waste of space; hell with it, I’d rather flick you
Or kick you. You sit smugly in my place with
A look of challenge. Do you want me to rip
It off, and use it to clean my shoe? I’ll wring
Tears aplenty from you, like blood between my thighs.

Put you through a mangle; I’ll bend you to my will
Like Yuri and his spoon, only smoother, pernicious.
Tell me; how do you like your humiliation?
Ritual, indelible, or just well done? You answer
The question, I question your answer, since like
A used-car salesman, I’m master of my craft.
I deliver. Retribution. I know how to pull a spin,
Constant is my aim to kill. Manipulative and
Mendacious incubus. I am as a little fire-cracker,
Tailed as a tadpole, smashing brightly on the pavement.

I’ll dabble in wordplay, teasing out my tongue
Supple and thin; all the better to lash you with.
My gut seems to contract and squeeze, burping
Out more crunching aches. This discordant rhythm
Is echoed in the auto-ignition of my fury at
The slightest frisson of friction. Frustrated and
Irritated, because I always feel unclean!
Take care that you never dare cross a girl
Of sixteen when she’s menstruating.

P.S.: The best agony uncle ever is back! Bow down, bow down! REEEEESPECT!

And FOR ALL YE COMIC FANS (the Watchmen movie is out this year! Hyperventilate, hyperventilate).

'Higher Education'

Uh... I just wrote this.

He was a fish out of water. Or so it seemed. Walking slightly haggardly along, clutching his green M&S plastic bag – the single, firm burst of colour against his greying hair, his grey-brown fake-leather coat and his grey-black trousers. Even his eyebrows lingered between black and white. He lifted the bag slightly, as if he would shoulder it, the sudden burst of movement threatening his balance and making him undulate – ever so slightly – like Jessica Rabbit. This thought made him laugh out loud suddenly as he sloped along, heading to his room in a hall of residence.

Hall of residence! Nobody called them that now, he had to check himself constantly and remember that in fact, he lived ‘on campus.’ Perhaps the specificity of ‘hall of residence’ was passé and no longer needed; perhaps it was almost like a waste of time, a slight against the intelligence of others to spell it out for them: h-a-l-l o-f r-e-s-i-d-e-n-c-e.

After all, time was what always mattered most, wasn’t it? Going against time. Saving time. ‘Giving’ yourself more time to do more things by doing more things in less time. His head reeled, and he hunched briefly against a bench. All these students, swarming upon this site, living whole lives here in the tiny microcosm of the course-assigned buildings and the Student Village – what did they want from time? Arriving late to lessons dressed as if they would then head to London Fashion Week... the slew of panicking final-years, complaining how the world of work encroached upon them suddenly, of the few months in which to decide the trajectory of their future lives... Then there were the many that seemed to have come for apparently social reasons, for the ‘fresher experience’ and perhaps also to learn some independence...

Were they saving time? Was this channelled progression towards a ‘higher pay scale’, towards the ‘job market’? In spending three – or four, or perhaps even more than that – years of their lives, were they ‘buying back time’? He had worked ever since he was 16 and had saved steadily, only deciding to ‘complete his education’ now, at the age of 39. Even a lot of the lecturers looked younger than him, and at times when he hovered awkwardly outside the doors of seminar rooms, watching fellow students who were 22, but could easily pass for 15 in some cases, he felt singularly wrong. Out of place. This isn’t the joint for you, Grandpa.

Yet he had made enough money to take this break. He was able to be here simply for the reason that he wanted to be and that he could afford to finance himself. What, then, of the others on his Comparative Literature course? Were they ‘saving time’? Nobody was particularly unfriendly, but the huge age difference was obviously something they were not completely able to surmount. Both he, and they, felt it. It also begged a question which seemed to dance repeatedly and infuriatingly in the back of his mind. Whose way is the right way?

They were younger, less ‘formed’ by life, perhaps of a greater mental acuity. Yet, it seemed to him that underlying it all was the knowledge that they were relevant no more. In itself, they could not (or could only rarely) apply the fruits of their labour to the world without translation. No, they would have to be translated into the language of the modern ‘job market’, of ‘transferable skills’ and of ‘selling oneself.’

What of himself, who had traversed all that and taken the inverse route? Perhaps he would be less able to immediately grasp the abstract notions and subtle inter-cultural references. Yet he had had time. It seemed to him that they were as berries, crushed fast and solid against the bottom of a bowl to make one of those smoothies that everybody drank nowadays. Innocent smoothies, weren’t they called? The name made him smile. There was nothing innocent about a lot of these young ‘uns. Even in their dress, they were always looking to make statements, to sell or express themselves... ‘Palestinian’ scarves bought from giant global companies and worn with tight T-shirts that were ‘sweatshop free’.

Yet the question bothered him insistently: were they really saving time? Or had he beaten them at that game? Who was right? He checked his watch and sighed: half an hour lost in simple, mind-twisting reflection. Should he be feeling bad for having let himself go so? He shrugged and peered through the hole in his plastic bag. He would go on with his degree and then maybe find a woman who he could ‘talk books’ with. This made him laugh for a full three minutes. His printing business was there, would always be there. And yet the more insidious question persisted in pecking angrily as if at the very softness of his cerebral membrane. Why was he here? Why were any of them here? What was the point of this ‘higher education’, really?

The wind suddenly mussed his hair, cold cool fingers provoking him to stiffen and yank up his jacket collar. He turned, defiant, looking towards the canal and the road. Something in him felt that he was victorious. Bouncing his shoulders against the sudden frigidity, he set off brisk, up the path to Basle House.