I can't think of a title...

I think my last post was one of my lowest points. Actually, no, the low points continued all night, until about 2 am. I might as well be truthful here. Damn the low points. I know that without them I wouldn’t feel the high points, but I just can’t take feeling that bad, and I don’t have the internal mechanisms necessary to deal with my emotions. I pretend to be wise- I even (and this is the worst, most hypocritical thing of all) give advice to other people. I try to deal with my life by ridiculing it. Having a blog is a fantastic was of doing that. Not only can I take the piss of my very existence, but also I can allow the entire bloody world to read all about it, and fill their shoes with pity.

Sometimes I really am a sorry excuse for a person, let alone the adult I masquerade as.
Having started this entry in possibly one of the most depressing manners I’ve ever done- forgive me, my internal monologue is taking on Vesuvius proportions- I’d like to state that I’m not actually in such a tumultuous mental state as one could be forgiven for thinking I am in. This weekend I have done a lot of thinking, and have made some realisations about myself that I think are potentially very important. I suppose now is the point in the blog where I list the events of the last weekend, in a similar vein to a parrot…

Immediately after writing my last post, I went to the pub. Actually, first I went to the loos and brushed my teeth. But then I walked to the pub with another girl from work, who was wearing a very pretty dress, as she was off to a gentlemen’s club in Mayfair later on in the evening. It was T’s leaving drinks, so most people came along, though not all for very long. I chatted to one of the lawyers, for the first half hour or so. Then I talked to a guy in my department for a while. He really made me laugh, as he’s so sarcastic. When he starts laughing, I can’t help myself and I just HAVE to laugh. His laugh sort of gurgles up from inside him, and it’s very addictive. It all kind of went downhill from there. I was rude to a girl I work with, calling her patronising. I started ranting at one of T’s friends about my ideas for European development. At one point he was almost shouting at me: “Will you just listen to me? Will you let me speak?” Eventually he just left.

Amazingly, things went even further downhill after that. That this was possible doesn’t cease to astonish me. I decided it would be a good idea to give S a call. I don’t really remember what I said. I think I just wanted to be loved, hence me pretty much begging for affection. I’m sure I sounded like a complete fool. I sent her a text message after that, which I think said sorry, though it could have said anything really. My eyes (at the time) and memory (now) are obviously in a big conspiracy against me. Why else would I remember only that I’d made an arse of myself, without the details? After last weekend, I just wanted her to like me. Not even because I want affection from her specifically, but because I just needed affection. In truth, I just want her as a friend. But when I’m drunk, the thought of anyone holding me seems so appealing. I think we’re still friends though. She’s not ignoring me, anyway.

Everyone decided to leave, and T and I got a taxi to east London. He kept trying to kiss me in the cab, which I found quite wearing and also incredibly annoying. I may be emotionally starved but I can’t stand for men to be, particularly if they’re apparently my friends. There’s nothing worse than having a ‘friend’ who you then find out is only your friend because they’re trying to shag you (I will ignore the fact that S probably thinks that about me, as I’m not just trying to shag her, I’m just a bit stupid, especially after I’ve been drinking). T and I had a curry, which was quite funny as the waiter dropped a plate of rice all over the table/floor/me. The food itself wasn’t all that great, and the waiter was a bit rude to me as he thought that I couldn’t understand the menu. Yes, this gora can understand what aloo saag is, thanks. I ordered the rest of the food in Punjabi, just to prove a point. Lame, I know, but it seemed like the pinnacle of wit at the time.

Going into T’s apartment block, he managed to fall up the stairs to his flat and smash a bottle of wine into the palm of his hand. I had to get glass out of it and bandage it up. Then go downstairs and try and clean up the blood that was literally everywhere (on the stairs, the wall, the door, the floor, the sofa...). That was quite amusing. As that was the bottle of wine we were going to drink, we needed to get more wine. I was sent out to get some, and ended up getting a lift from a stranger, who drove me to Dalston and back. He was clearly trying to hit on me, so I had a go at him for picking up strange girls with no regard for their safety. I pulled the old trick, “Do you have a sister? Would you be happy with her getting into cars with people she didn’t know?” He pointed out that I was the one walking down Commercial Road at silly o’clock looking for an off licence, but I ended up doing quite a good job of making him feel bad and he actually apologised. Ha! He apologised for driving to the Kingsland Road just so I could get some wine. Looking back, it wasn’t a very safe thing for me to do, and so the less said about it, the better. You know I’m an idiot. I know I’m an idiot. The point doesn’t really need reiterating.

In my last post, I asked, rhetorically, for someone to save me. I found that someone. She is T’s housemate. T went to bed fairly soon after I got back with the wine, as he was too drunk to even speak. A and I stayed up most of the night, talking about everything under the sun and listening to Leonard Cohen, snuggled up under a duvet. A told me so many things I was so happy to hear. We’re from the same town but she’s eleven years older so we don’t have any mutual friends. She didn’t talk any bullshit and said things that weren’t necessarily the nicest to hear… but I was so happy to listen. I still need to think so much about all the things we talked about, and when I have made some sense of it in my head, I will write it here. Most importantly, she told me never to apologise for who I am, and to view intimacy as a transient thing, rather than something that is fixed. And thankfully, I didn't make an idiot of myself and try and kiss her, which is quite a relief.

I eventually went to sleep on the sofa, fully clothed. I woke up when the others got up, but didn’t open my eyes, as I wasn’t sure if they were going to stay awake (and therefore wake me up!). I woke up again a few hours later with a completely numb leg (that’s sleeping in jeans for you!), a stonking headache and a feeling like I’d been kicked viciously in the kidneys. Not pleasant. I managed to make my way back home, and spent quite a pleasant journey reading the newspaper and eating a Cadbury’s Caramel Egg (my new favourite chocolate, in case anyone is feeling generous).

Back home, I made some calls and then metamorphosed into some sort of Martha Stewart hybrid. Though without the prison. I baked some scones, made potato pancakes and a huge pot of dhal. I wish I’d had a pinny to complete the domestic goddess look, though I did have the requisite flour on my face. After cooking up a storm- quite literally- my housemate and I sat down to eat. She’d drunk a bottle of wine, and we made the executive decision that she should call her ex to tell him that she had a new boyfriend. Not in a callous way, of course, but because her ex is coming to stay in a couple of weeks and she wanted him to know before he got here. Turns out that he’s been doing some Olympic style shagging, and wasn’t going to tell her until he got here- and that was only because he didn’t think that they should have sex, as he hadn’t always used a condom. We decided to crack open the vodka. We spent the night bitching about men, describing our various medical problems, trying to explain just how mental we really were, and getting stupidly drunk. In the end, she crashed out on top of her duvet. I tucked her up and tried to clear up the ash she’d spilt on her bed, and then got her a pint of water and some paracetamol. She drank some of the water and asked me to sleep in her room, as she thought she might be sick. Now sober, I can’t believe I agreed to sleep in a bed with someone who had just told me they might puke, but that’s what I did. Her first thought the next morning was, apparently, “I feel rough…. Who the hell is that in my bed?”

Yesterday I passed the day being quite idle. The first episode of the new series of ‘The OC’ was on, so I watched that while eating some of my scones and drinking a whole pot of tea. I love trashy shows like ‘The OC’. It’s the TV equivalent of a marshmallow- delicious but lacking substance.

I started looking for my employment contract. In the end, I ended up completely sorting out all of my papers- bank statements, phone bills, hospital letters, etc.- but I didn’t find the contract. Still, everything is very organised and I managed to make some space, so I was able to finally unpack the books I was given last weekend. I was so chuffed with myself. Next on the list of things to do is buy a new scrapbook (the old one is full) and some more glue, and get started on that.

We could smell gas in the hallway YET AGAIN, so we called out Transco (YET AGAIN). The man came pretty quickly and we all pestered him, bossing him around and telling him that we could smell the gas and so there must be a leak, and if he couldn’t detect it then he should look harder. After noting that we looked like the witches of Eastwick, we went back to watching TV. He said that we had yet another leak but that he’d fixed it. I was ready to turn the gas off completely. I get so paranoid about gas.

I couldn’t sleep last night as I was actually sick with worry. You know the phrase? Well, I was actually physically sick thinking about how poor I was and what the hell I was going to do about it. I wrote up a budget and figured that if I only spent 5p a week on non-essentials, I would have enough money to pay my rent, bills, loan repayment and maybe be able to save a tenner so I can go travelling. I hate being this poor. I had more money as a student, as I didn’t have to pay council tax and had a loan and a scholarship (as well as two jobs). I didn’t really go out all that much back then though. Not only did I have no money, I was convinced I had no friends. Now I don’t care if I don’t have any friends, and I have even less money. Life is pretty shitty sometimes. The only way I could get to sleep was to put ‘Amelie’ on in the background. There’s nothing like that film to soothe you, though it does always make me cry.

Today I don’t feel so bad. I may be poor, but I’m okay. I’m a pretty good person. I can get another job where I earn a little more. I have great prospects. I guess I’m quite pretty. I know that things are only looking down at the moment for a limited number of reasons (which I can’t be bothered to go into right now). Things are okay. I am okay.If I say this enough times then I will start to believe it.