Don't push me, I am not okay

Today has not been good. In fact, it can be classified as bad, very bad. I was told, today, I have one week to prepare for a funding deadline I had previously been told and misled to believe was two months away. It was only because i asked the right person very direct questions that I was told at all.

I don't know what to say to my supervisor, who just forgot to tell me but remembered to tell the person one year further on in Phd about it and is actively helping him attain this highly competitive University Grant. I am at a loss.

This is a problem that really, in the greater scheme of things, is a bit, well, insignificant - at the highest point of further education I have been slightly slighted - oh poor me. But I just wish my supervisor wasn't so buddy-buddy that it makes it a bit more personal than it ought to be.

I'm not sure I really want to deal with somebody who signs jokey emails with kisses and begins them with a jovial "Hey you!" but doesn't seem to have my best interests in mind. I don't want another friend, I want a tutor and I certainly don't want somebody who's neither.

I feel really screwed over in this. I don't need it at the moment and now I have to ask her for a reference for this fucking money that I really fucking need. Oh fucking hell.



I won't be blogging for a while as I will be in stress fuelled tears...

It's cool, we can still be friends...

Flatmate was my drinking companion last night. It was nice and relaxed, as we eased ourselves through the fancy Ales on offer. We didn't talk about us, or the potential of us - there is no point at the moment. At the end of the night, he handed me a home burnt CD, and mumbled, "Err... this is for you."

I played it today, expecting a compilation - we've made compilations for each other before, as friends... It wasn't; it was a song by him for me...

You sit outside, it's a sunny day,
But you're tired inside 'cause there's bills to pay,
You'd like to change your point of view
And I'm just sitting around and waiting for you.

So if you still walk by his side,
then why're you burning photo's in your mind?
Yeah if you still walk by his side,
then why're you burning photo's in your mind?

You need a calm forgiving friend,
You need some one until the end
So lift your eyes and look at me
But I'm too close for you to see

You'll throw it right back at me,
You know you can.
So throw it right back at me
'Cause I know you can...

It continues. Okay, it's not Dylan, but it has a really lovely tune and his voice is very pure (whilst remaining manly), with a yearning edge... The simplicity of the lyrics add to the feeling it's a very earnest and naive song, which is, well, lovely...

It might be quite difficult not to go out with him.

I turned on my replacement phone (insurance is an amazing thing, but customer service help! help! desks not so much) to find the unread message from the Doctor.

"It's cool, we can still be friends..."

This refers to a Bright Eyes song, rather than being a genuine statement of acceptance. The song is an increasingly drunken sounding, bitter rant, by a recently dumped guy, as he lists the occasions when it won't be cool, that they are still friends...

It starts...

So you still kiss me, but just on the cheek...

It ends...

I guess your kind of truth, darling , is just the ghost of your lies
I see through them all the time
So i'm pouring some whisky, I'm gonna get so really fucking drunk... so fucked up... That I pass out and forget your face by the time I wake up...

Well, erm, thanks...

The Size of a Cow

For the first time in a week the Doctor contacted me. It was via text and it said...

Well, I don't know what it said, as when I was over zealously trying to read it in the pub' toilets I dropped my phone in the loo (not for the first time in my life). In the vague hope there was not too much damage or there was an extension of the four second rule (that food dropped on indoor floor - but not in toilet - at trusted location was still edible/servable/alright within this time limitation), and with the consideration it was pale number one, I rescued phone from its watery death. Unfortunately the phone could not be resuscitated and message was lost to the sea forever. As were all my phone numbers...

This has me thinking - not too much about the content of the message, which will have been a bit sad, a bit nasty, a bit pleading, and, well, generally a bit raw - but about whether I will re-contact everybody in my phone?

There are somebody who were flushed out of my life forever; generally these are people with whom I've been drunk a thousand times but have never socialised with as anything other comrades at bars. Y'know swapping war stories and were the lasting hangover from my very social under graduate days. They will either serendipitously come back into my life, or both parties will find other people to occasionally have a beer and a chinwag with, occasionally referencing the other as "Oh yeah, I knew somebody who once went... (fill in the gap)... Said it was great."
Everyone's a winner.

Then there are people who will contact me who, well, I am just a bit too emotionally bound to them: if this requires explanation, then I envy you. These are people who have very suddenly, and very soon after meeting them, unburdened their life onto me - it ranges from divorce to abuse, and it means that once they have revealed themselves I/you/we can't escape. But similarly the relationship can't progress, as it's too much too soon to know that much about them, and also you want to protect your long established friends from them so can only socialise in the isolation of a cosy couple, which heightens the false sense of intimacy: making it a time consuming emotional drain, in which they psycho analyse themselves, you and their therapist over two bottles of wine, whilst I/you/we get quietly, morosely pished.

There are people who I have become friends within a short fling of knowing them, who I can't live without. I called these people 'soul friends' when I was younger, and although a bit cringey I stand by the sentiment. These are people who you meet and have an easy rapore. You know when you meet them you should be friends, but let it develop over time and experience things together that you would have only had with that person.

Ryan is the perfect example of this: we met when we both worked at Nando's Chickenland - he was a traveller, and I was in my fresh faced, post travelling first year of Under Graduate - after a month he left the world of Chicken and at his leaving party we spoke to each other for the entire night. It wasn't a romantic brief encounter, but a realisation that we viewed the world with the same idealism and perspective. After that we emailed twice a week, eventually decided to travel for a few months around Eastern Europe, the States and, later this year, Russia together. I was also a witness at his wedding to his lovely Wee Man Liam, in Ryan's native Canada. In the three main forms of love - agape, eros and platonic - this relationship is the most deep and beautiful platonic love you can imagine.

There are obviously more friends, who will always unquestioningly remain a fixture in my mobile phone ( the German's call it a handy - much better) contact list, but there is another list of people who have never been, may never be a contact in my handy. These are people who I've never had the balls to say we should be friends or go for a drink, and that's kind of sad. The people, who, when you talk to them, you think: this person is super nice, and laughs, whole-heartedly, at my feeble attempts at humour; we'd make great friends...

So maybe I will let certain entries slide by the wayside, but this means I will have to make the effort and return to the youthful exuberance that helped me make new friends, without hang-ups, feelings of unworthiness or fear of looking needy or foolish, and befriend the people who I like but have never had chance to socialise with...

A Room of One's Own.

My Uni work is staring at me from my desk.

I know what it's thinking: that I've forgotten it. It's not the case; I always know it's there. It has just become my bete noir at the moment, and this is when it has reached the critical point where my entire theory will either, with a little gentle manipulation, be revealed as a work of career making genius, or of, well, utter crap. Should the latter be the case then I will just give up and drop out of society - move to Gokarna, India and send psycho-tropic halucinogens over the Internet (for a small fee) to a mailling list of dead beat pot heads looking for the next high. Well that, or become a bit sad and skulk off to my Supervisor's office to look for further encouragement, to make inappropriate jokes or have a mental foot rub.

There are two choices:

a). To throw myself dispassionately into the research, and with tremendous fortitude isolate the problems; in doing so forget my own personal problems and further my career?

or

b). Put the work in a drawer and spend the last of my wages on a night of lamenting in the pub, wake up sweating and anxious, then make outlandish promises to my self, regarding future working practice?

I'll let you know...

I will stand in the stork position until you return...

If there was ever a grand blogging high mistress sensai to teach all newbie, blogging grass hoppers the acerbic wit and cynical observation that makes a great blog, it is this person. The first blog I read and the reason I feel the blogging bar will always be set too high to attain.

Come back soon.

Free Falling

I'm not a terrible person, I am just misguided. When I met the Doctor, I needed reasurrance and security. Somebody to pick me up and hold me, to tell me how great they thought I was, despite anything I might have been told to the contrary. A good guy to undo the work of a bad boy: he did it well and I can never say a bad word against him. I still love and respect him, but know we are not destined for each other.

It is over since two weeks. After a two week period of arguing and general horribleness, I told him my doubts about us (independent of over whelming lust for Flatmate).

I've also moved flats last week. Why? I want to be single for a while - get to know myself, concentrate on my studies, improve myself and, well, lick my wounds. There is no blank space between love and not love: I love the Doctor, and have mourned/am still mourning the end of our two year life together, but know it just wasn't enough or in the right way to make it last forever.

A friend once said there is no such thing as a failed relationship, but just some relationships are meant to last longer than others. We lasted years, and they were some of the happiest, safest and assured times I've ever had - it was not a failed relationship.

Things what I learnt from the Doctor

Self discipline
To *heart* Bruce Springsteen - oh yeah, Bruce it up!
Self belief
Global justice
The Arsenal Squad - Arsene knows.
Table Fussball
Politics
Woody Allen Films
Radio Four
London
To drive

Things what he learnt from me

Self deprecation
To read a book for pleasure
To *heart* Belle & Sebastian
Post Modernity in relation to the Holocaust (I can only apologise - he went cross-eyed)
That it is not acceptable to call Man Utd, Manchester U Shited.
To look at things for aesthetic reasons

Not much really, but enough to have changed our lives.

Happy St Valentine's Day.

Je regret rien

Sarah looks like a french mime artist, but has a loud estuary English accent and works in a perpetual stressed out frenzy in something broadcasting related. Men fall at her feet in a pathetic jelly and she picks the most worthless of these spineless wretches to become her new found love. At the moment her "fella" is a jobless, homeless waster, who has Liam Gallagher hair but none of the frontman's debonair wit and charm. The few times I have met him, he has failed to string anything more than a few monosyllables together, punctuated with expletives, in lieu of conversation whilst succeeding to systematically insult everybody at the party.

She's coming this evening from her exciting London life, for some important filming thing, to revisit University haunts and stay with me until after the weekend. This is the best news ever, as she does not know the meaning of regret or being wrong. She also thinks I'm great and I think she's great, which is the perfect person to hang out with when you have the nagging suspicion that you might be a bit crap...

Hooray!