Silent Sigh

Another night fades to day in between the greys of the unconcerned mind.

A town that's always lying but only in the city, never in the suburbs.

The cold touch of a could-have been life whistles past in the dark.

As they stagger through the true streets of the plastic city built by robots.

And as she tugs down the sleeves to cover endless dreams they lie together in the emptiness of humanity.

But the stars are long gone and the hearts are not strong enough for the lives they had.

GET OVER YOURSELF

Quiet days as I watch night outs pass me by in a blur of cheap vodka and card games. I am too tired for this.

Watching as butts from angry cigarettes smoked in self hatred pile up below my window, littering the grass and ruining it.

Drinking with care and watching every sip, because too much alcohol fills me up and spills over with my secrets to everyone I know.

Listening to everyone else's problems- an agony aunt filled with desperate pleas from others so they block my own.

And the grip is dragging me down and everything is tightening because this lady isn't working with her soft voice and patronising stare. But it's just me who's not making it work. I'm not trying hard enough. She thinks it's all because I went to an all girls school. Asking the wrong questions.

Vanishing acts into my own mind don't work and this constant internal battling of voices is tiring me but she wants me to carry on. And even this is a fight, just words on a screen but it's too much and it's too self involved. Don't bother with this.

People back home who say they care but it's not true. All lies because I know who I am and I know what I am like.

Nothing like you

I love you so much.

You know who you are.

I wish I was as strong as you, and more than anything I wish I could have been there for you like you're there for me now, if only I knew you as well then. You have given me more then I could ever deserve. And you help me so much and I miss you so much. Tonight, you were exactly what I needed. Right now i'm sending a million telepathic hugs your way.

And i'm glad things have a name now. You made me see this.

Rebellion (Lies)

Fuck. I fucking fucked it up again. When it was going so well. And it's unjustifiable. It's not like it's anything new... just the same old crap but i just watch myself fuck up over and over like everyone else because we're only human but it's wrong for me.

I want to get off my head. I want to sit on the floor in a heap. I want to hide and run and scream. I want to forget all the shit that's happened and I want to to forget the present as I'm ruining it.

Maybe alcohol will help. It usually does.

A waste of paint

You know, we've seen it all before. It's nothing new.

The words 'typical adolescent behaviour' are used.

This is not helping.

You're an intelligent girl, surely you can see this isn't a good way to think?

I am not intelligent. I cannot think.

Is that why you do drama?

No.

What do you want?

I want things to change.

(They exchange a smile)

You think things will suddenly be better? (More smiles)

No.

They call me intelligent but they patronise me.

More questions.

Do you watch Eastenders?

No.

Oh.

Silence.

Then- Do you have any friends?

I cannot do this.

Tell us about them.

I am sitting here and I am thinking do they really believe I have friends or do they think I make them up? I am sitting here and I am thinking they are judging me. I am sitting here and I am thinking I shouldn't be here. I am a waste of their time.

Do you see them as good people?

Yes.

Do you see yourself as a good person?

More silence.

Let me rephrase that. Do you see yourself as a bad person?

How do you define good and bad? Surely that's subjective?

(They smile at each other again)

Leaving the philosophy aside for a minute.

Yes.

Yes what?

Yes I do.

(They nod)

But other people aren't? Friends, family?

Yes. I have already told them this. I am repeating the same things.

They try and compliment me again.

I pretend to accept it.

Are you responsible for other peoples' happiness or feelings?

By now they know what my answer will be. It's obvious. But I justify, and they agree, but still tell me I am wrong. I know I am wrong.

What you have to understand is that it's not rational to think in this way. Look at it objectively. When things are hard remove yourself from the situation and examine it.

Objective thinking. That's the solution to everything then.

Let's talk about your childhood.

Freud 101.

It's okay to cry you know. We have tissues.

I don't want to cry. I don't cry. They still watch me.

They have tissues.

This was a mistake.

We can't really do anything.

I knew this would happen.

Because you're going away so soon.

I am reverting back already, and my head is no longer clear.

And we need continued contact.

I see what they are really saying. My problems are not good enough. I am not good enough.

I leave.

My last option. My mistake. My fault.

Lacuna Inc.

I would quite like to erase the past two days from my memory if possible. Here's hoping I somehow get transported into the film 'Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind' quite soon.

I have wasted time and energy on you. Effort, and love, and hope, and desperation. And now I am done. Because you will never understand, or be aware enough to realise that I am sick of you hurting me and making me feel like shit. This should have ended years ago. It's ending now.

Let the sky grow dark, with a heavy heart.

I hate the pity filled eyes of the strangers the most, who will glance over to me and my brothers regularly to see how 'we are holding up'.

But I really don't care.

And all our most brilliant friends are doubting themselves.

So. School has ended forever and we're on study leave from now until the end of eternity, which basically means that in the last week or so I have rewatched my entire DVD collection and made about 17 pointless trips to Tescos. And it also explains why i'm up right now, although it's not that insane as all the hours have sort of merged-revision limbo.

On the plus side I have been listening to a lot of really great music lately that I've been meaning to check out- The Radio Department, Kyte, The Volcano Choir... All great chilled out stuff which is good for soothing the poor confuzzled brain of an A2 Biology student (MASSIVE spotify love). AND I finally got round to deciding which uni to go to next year, so now I actually have somewhere to go in September. (Although, they're a bit optimistic with their entry requirements....)

I'm focusing on the fact that between me and uni, summer and festivals lay 6 exams. 6*. (No more, no less, no magic number and no unlucky for some).

But the real world is carrying on, and it's a bit of a bitch really because it keeps hitting everyone when they're down. And the nicest people, the strongest people, who have had it so crap for so long are getting it all again, and history is repeating itself. I'm just a spectator.

I'm more average than I'd like to think I am, but I'm finally appreciating this.

* A fact which my mother enjoys continually reminding me of. Today's fresh paranoia was over exam timings- a character in The Archers missed their exam because they thought it was in the afternoon not the morning, which obviously means I will make the exact same mistake.

This is not him- it must be the wrong room. I was not expecting to see this. A childish scared voice, a confused and muttered sentence, a scrawny face. But this is what I wanted ... 'One last time'. And I saw where he would go, and I saw who went before him. But this is not the man I knew, who gave me pink milk and pingu videos, and piggybacks. And I stand there, in the unfamiliar kitchen and I search through twenty mugs to find the lightest, so that it is easier for him to lift. Still his hand shakes and he looks at me blankly.

He has regressed, back to handled cups and liquid foods, and wide eyed fear at the world. Half formed words and missing teeth, it ends like it began, in a hospital bed surrounded by strangers.

He looks at me with a cold dead stare and shuts the door in my face, and I wish that this was a story, but it's not, and there's no ending or climax just the continuous cycle of up and down. So familiar I can predict when and what will happen. Is he drunk? Yes, but is he drunk enough? No. Not enough. He is angry drunk and so hide upstairs and turn up the music loud because all the intervening years have disappeared and this is the new kitchen table to huddle under, but this time there is no one else to sit with you. And I breath shallow and don't speak, and listen to his footsteps as he moves about the house. And when he finally sleeps, creep downstairs to survey the damage, and wait until the new day to see what he will be like.

Tonight, I am nothing, nothing to him.

A day when limitless possibilities close in and suddenly i'm left with an empty box of memories and a half filled house.

Tired and splurging, my brain shouts down to my mouth to say whatever I think, walking backwards but stuck to the floor. Running faster into nothingness and losing everything, no more pictures, no more drawings, no more speaking. Ragged breaths and stabbing pain. A thief, a bastard, a cheat. Hide and seek. It was always there, in the corner of my mind. Hide behind the boxes, crouch and shrink smaller and smaller and maybe we'll disappear.

Too late to change anything, too late to stop so keep running and don't look back because it will all have changed and we'll sink and see too far, past the end and further. Sleep screaming, sleep failing and unprotected. Open and wide and exposed and seen, falling deeper, away from this closer to that. Hitting mud and struggling through, slowing down too much and it's catching up and never running fast enough. What happened to those childhood bikes? They could evade this. Broken bottle and broken brick. This is what I am. When did it come to this? Songs lost along the way and strewn across the roadside, melodies darker. Loud in my ears, blood that beats fast and tears through me.

I've done it. I've shot myself in the foot again.

I am verbal and I am loaded.

Visiting hour

Humour to break the ice of the frosty frosty hospital ward. But to be honest, it was pretty funny. I mean, surely there's a better name for the OAP ward than 'Harold Ward'. They might as well call it Last Chance Saloon, or better still something 'down with the kids'.... maybe 'Hollyoaks'?

And then you get up to the ward and there's this massive list of names, each of the patients in there. And they're all names you haven't seen since you last read a Dickens novel- 'Theodora', 'Gladys', 'Quentin'. So you giggle at that too. And at how they have OCD handwash every 10 metres, and at how there's two orderlies having a conversation about Ant and Dec's latest T.V show, and at how your shoes make a really embarrassing squeaky noise as you walk down the pristine corridors.

But it's not really funny. It's just something. Anything. An emotion, a noise in amongst the deathly silence and the faint but constant beep of machines that breath for the people who are too tired to do it themselves. Laughing and not crying at the desperation, the absurdity of it all.

Laughing to cover up anger, anger at how he slipped through the net, and now there is fuss and attention and help and care when it's too late, when there's nothing left to do except wait for yet another set of results saying where it's gone next. 'Where?' 'Everywhere.'

Down at the end of the corridor, a room suddenly appears around me. No doors, no curtains, nothing. 6 beds. One empty. ('Someone was there last week' my mother whispers to me.) 5 stick thin, tired men whose paper white skin stretches about gaunt and hollow cheekbones, pale lips flowing into an open mouth, each expression identical as they lay still, snoring slightly.

We stand by his bed, hovering awkwardly and unsure what to do with ourselves. Even asleep he looks deeply unhappy, his face set in a permanent frown after years of pessimism and pain. 'Francis?'. Eyes flutter open. Confusion. Then recognition. I have to move into his eyeline to be seen- he cannot turn his head. Today is a bad day. Half a minute of conversation. The briefest of goodbyes, a quick touch of hands. 'You're warm' he tells me. And then we leave. Back past the scores of handwash dispensers, back past the orderlies and the board of names. Back past the sign for 'Harold ward' and out into the fresh air that blows the smell of disinfectant out from under my nose.

My shoes squeak on the way out.

You’re the catalyst that makes things faster...

Biology practical exam today. I don't mind practicals- they're not so bad. The only problem is that whilst waffling crap might work in English or Drama apparently making it up as you go along in Biology isn't the best idea (especially for practical assessments...). My usual technique of pretending I listened at the start and then picking up every available chemical, shoving it in a test tube and heating it up for a bit clearly wasn't going to work here.

Despite my best (I say best, if I'm honest they were more mediocre) efforts I still managed to muck it up. In true CCHS fashion I give you my personal metacognative plenary. Or...

...Reasons why I fail epically at biology practicals:

1) Bunsen burners. Having to light them with a match is bad enough, but add to that the fact that I have control over a methane tap and you can expect to see a small explosion. Plus burning of hair/clothes/fingers.

2) Putting me (or anyone as equally clumsy) in the proximity of hazardous and potentially lethal chemicals is like locking a 5 year old child in a room with Gary Glitter. No. Just no.

3) My lackadaisical (yes, I DID just use that word) attitude generally bodes well for Drama but when it comes measuring EXACTLY 1.25ml of -INSERT ENZYME NAME HERE- clearly causes problems. The end result tends to be a curiously odd smelling brown sludge at the bottom of a blackened test tube and a graph that looks like a stencil outline of sonic the hedgehog.

4) I am the only non medicine applicant in my class. This basically means that when I peer around the classroom during such practicals I am met with a host of calm and professional looking faces who are ALL doing something entirely different from me. They have also managed to bring a pencil, ruler, pen, rubber, calculator, thermometer and pH probe. Well MAYBE I'm exaggerating slightly, but I still always manage to forget something and end up having to use the edge of my calculator as a ruler....

5) Tables confuse me. Especially ones that require you to know the units of anything other than time. (I'm preeeeetty sure it's measured in seconds....)

6) My brain tends to think in weird ways. E.g when I'm MEANT to be thinking: 'the overall change in pH clearly shows that the effect of temperature is...' all that will be running through my mind is: 'nanananananananananananananana BATMAN! BATMAN!'

7) I have a concentration span of approximately 6 seconds. After this time I will start doodling on my test paper/ playing with the pipettes/ trying to stop the stopwatch on exact seconds whilst my Biology teacher looks on in horror at what can only be described as the devolution of the species. As a result of this, I tend to skim read the questions/instructions and only discover AFTERWARDS what we were meant to be doing...

8) For me, the best possible outcome of an experiment is one that leaves you with a load of test tubes in a variety of attractive colours, not one that shows a positive correlation between the effects of temperature and the rate of enzyme activity. However, 'they were all different colours' (for some absurd reason) apparently doesn't count as a valid conclusion.

9) Science goggles+ me= FAIL.

10) Generally speaking, when you heat stuff up in a beaker of boiling water, it tends to get HOT. In addition, if you attempt to extract said 'stuff' from said beaker with your bare hands it is extremely likely that you will burn your fingers. Therefore it makes sense to use the tongs provided. My failure both to notice these tongs and to consider the possibility that hot stuff is HOT is an example of not only my ineptitude but also of how unobservant I am. Wins all round.

In conclusion, by examining the data given in blog post A, we can clearly see that Kathryn is a bit of an idiot when it comes to Biology, and that she should on no account be given an opportunity to repeat the investigation lest she burns down the school.

Promise you won't tell anyone but....

Secrets are pain and hurt. They are desires and wants and needs and heartbreak and tears and excitement. They are a flutter of words. A rushed whisper. A slow and drawn out confession. They are trust, sometimes naive and sometimes desperate.

Secrets are smiles and giggles and private jokes, glittering eyes and barely contained excitement.

Secrets are poison and secrets are contagious. They spread from person to person in a breath or a touch quicker than a Californian forest fire. They mutate like a virus- changing into ‘gossip’, and then openly discussed.
Secrets are a hot commodity. Everyone wants to have each others, to snatch them from reluctant lips and become the proud owners, to flaunt them in front of other friends.They belong to others- someone else’s words, someone else’s life, someone else’s desires. And yet you have to keep them as if they were your own- cultivate and nurture them and whisper platitudes and thanks to their giver. They are a hallowed promise, a show of a relationship, an unwritten sign.

They are yours. Your words. But this time not whispered to another, instead whispered over and over in your head, never to escape, batting from wall to wall inside your mind, hurting you and torturing you.
Secrets are a part of a person. They grow, and they feed on your internal tears and anguish, becoming stronger and stronger, until they eat their way out, tearing you up in the process. You have to be strong and brave and mysterious to keep all the secrets you are given, and even stronger to keep your own.

Secrets are childish. Playground games and making or breaking friendships.
Secrets are dangerous. Adult lives and making or breaking relationships.

Secrets are pushed to the back of the mind in the day, hidden by conscious thought. But they pour out in the night, when the subconscious sneaks in through the darkness, when you are left alone in the black. Sleep doesn’t stop them- they slip into your dreams and force you to confront them where there is nowhere to hide. Secrets take away your freedom and trap you in their meaning.

Secrets are arguments and lies and problems, awkward silences and lengthy pauses, confrontations and reparations.

Secrets become burdens. Light as a feather- a breath of air, a gentle whisper, yet weighing more than the earth. You pass them on if only to lighten the load.

In the end they fade and fizzle away, dissapate into nothingness after their fifteen minutes of fame. Like a Big Brother contestant or the next Saw sequel. Forgotten, unimportant to everyone except you. Because they were yours for that short time. They still are. And they still affect you. You wish you could walk away, forget them, but you can't.

Secrets are problems.

Everybody was Kung Fu fighting....

Sleepy, tired, dreamy. Not there. Just drifting.

Then *crack* and *bang*... I'm awake, and alive , and laughing.

Life is so full of 'Drama'.

Drama lessons are so full of life.
It's a rush of 'letstrythisandwhataboutthatandintime 1-2-3-4 turnitsorrythatwasmeohcharis...charis...CHARIS..STOP POKING ME!AND EM TOO!'
Nothing is WRONG. You can't mess up. There's no rejection, no failure, no 'Do you REALLY think that's suitable?'. Only new ideas, better ideas, thoughts coming all at once and words tripping over themselves as they rush to get out of your mouth. A blank stage. A world of characters. A whole new, different life to lead. A facade. An act. A part of you that wants to shout and leap and run about and it CAN. The freedom. The laughing. So much laughing. These are your friends all around you, and suddenly you're having a ninja fight with bamboo canes in slow motion and you think 'I'm MEANT to be doing this! It's ALLOWED!' And there are squeals and grunts and Mushu impressions and suddenly you have a scene. Out of nowhere.

And it all fits. It's working. It's 'clicking'. The worrying and uncertainty have disappeared and instead there's eagerness, excitement, rollercoasters and ferris wheels.

If only 'Drama' in real life could be as much fun....

You don't see it. It amazes me that you are both self obsessed and yet entirely lack self awareness at the same time. You stumble on through and don't notice that it's changing you. It happened every time- you fell and fell and fell, until you couldn't see anything but THEM. They trapped you and entraced you and bewitched you, and you didn't care because you were so loving and loyal and innocent, a wide eyed puppy with hope and love and need in your heart. You gave them everything. But they, they played games with you, and toyed with you, and turned their attentions away, and eventually they broke your heart. Each of them, in turn, they broke your heart. Again and again. Sometimes tiny tears, other times whacking great holes that were jagged around the edges and left you unable to communicate for so long. But you had to mend....

and you mended it wrong.

Little by little your heart changed. They left and they broke you and you fixed yourself with what they left behind- bandaged up with scraps of deceit and lies and game playing and picking and choosing and two timing. And now you are like them. You pick and choose, you lead and play. You are mysterious and deliberately elusive. Two wrongs don't make a right, but you can't see that. You only see your problems, and your life, and your needs. You see nothing else any more. Not even the effect on those around you... Do you know how I am? When they hurt you, they hurt me too. Every time, to see your loyal and loving and devoted heart get twisted. And now it hurts even more to see how they've changed you.

I miss you. The old you. The you who cared.

come back. please.

...

The mood hit me with what I imagined as a cloying thump. You could almost smell the lethargy in the still air, the sense of hopelessness and depression laying thick on the tongue, the mood heavier than that at a funeral. At least there one can get closure. But this desperation, this monotony seemed endless. The only change in the dead house came when, once a week, a bustling cleaner flitted between the rooms to stir the cold air and open the windows. They were closed the minute she left.

He moved about the house in practised steps that echoed in the hushed silence of the dead rooms. These were punctuated every so often by a deep and mournful sigh. It was the same each and every night; the shuffling walk, the laboured breathing, the reading of the newspaper on the stool in the kitchen. Like nothing will ever change, or grow, or develop. Like it would be like that forever- an odd man in an odd house, with his odd ways.

It took me precisely 3 minutes and 48 seconds of being in that house to remember why I couldn't stand to be there.

This is why I am rubbish at parties...

Graph to show: My inability to cope with social situations involving a variety of acquaintances.

Click to enlarge

V.

You know those times when you get really angry and frustrated and you're not even sure why half the time and you try and chill and clear your head but you CANT...?

Last night I was lying on my bed and getting all frustrated, overthinking things, until my head started going round in circles. So I went out with my dog into the fields by my house at midnight.

I stepped out into the clearest and brightest night I'd seen in a long time. I think we all forget about the moon cos we're so obsessed with the sun- when will it be sunny again, where's the warmth gone, I can't wait for summer.....- but the sun is sneakily deceptive. When I see the sun is out, I throw on skirts, tights, and pumps... and then get about halfway down the road before remembering that just because the sun is out, it doesn't make it WARM, and that I will now have to spend the rest of the day freezing my arse off...(it's happened to ALL of us). But the moon is frank and open- it knows it comes out in the cold night and its silvery glow reflects this.

And so I walked out into the freezing cold and just breathed in breath after breath of cold and refreshing air that was so cool I could feel it move into my lungs and swirl around my face and it didn't annoy me, because it made everything so CLEAR. And I could think and see properly. And the sky above me was a limitless dark that stretched from horizon to horizon without an interruption save from the odd tree that popped up inbetween the endless fields. You know those domed snowglobe things you get? It was like I was standing in one of them, seeing everything above me for miles. But instead of snow inside there were stars, and instead of a monument as the focal point there was the moon. Not just any moon but the brightest and hugest moon you can imagine that shone out into the night and gave everything a sharply defined shadow that was somehow emphasised by the soft silvery glow of the ground around it.

I love moments like that. Where you just look at everything and instead of being pessimistic and thinking 'oh my gosh i am so insignificant and what is the point of my life' instead I was thinking 'Oh my gosh, I get to be a part of THIS! And there's a plan for me!'.

It was awesome. The perfect remedy to my self obsessed thoughts and insignificent anger- they melted away with my breath into the air, a twist of white cloud that dispersed into nothingness in a matter of seconds. So unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

I need to take moments like that more often, to concentrate on the world around me instead of just myself, to let God speak to me and just accept my path.

You know what? To you this probably sounds inexplicably ordinary, and by now you're thinking i'm a tad off my rocker... but this is what inspired me to write, and that's the way life goes sometimes.

sorry.

x

Casserole, anyone?

Oh gosh. These days it seems like my entire life seems to be ohmygoshthisisdueinforthursdaybuti'mouteverynightandhavenofreesbeforethensoi'lljustgiveupandacceptthati'lldorubbish....

Actually, that's not ENTIRELY true. It's just that teachers have this amazing nack of timing things so we have a load of stuff due in for the same week.

But hey, it could be so much worse. I swear, recently all i've been doing is repeating the same old pathetic sob story that no one wants to hear over and over and over again like a broken record that keeps skipping until eventually all you'll want to do is snap the stupid thing in half and chuck it out the window. And it'll lay there in the grass and be forgotten. Maybe it was played so much that even it became sick of its own sound. Because we ALL know LPs are sentient beings....

Mleh.

February will be a month of good things. I have decided this. Half term soon :)

I think everyone needs a break right now. Sometimes at our school its like at the beginning of term you're shoved into this giant pressure cooker and you can't breath or think straight and you just get holed up into this tiny routine of 'work work work', and then you're given time off and you can BREATHE again and all you want to do is run around like a loon in the park or roll down a muddy hill like you're 5 again because you feel so free. Who says we have to act our age? Anyone up for a trip to the science museum?!

This christmas my 5 year old self squealed when she saw her stocking, had extra helpings of yule log and made a gingerbread house. Yay for holidays!