emily

I know it's been ages...

Sat, 09 Jun 2007 20:52:09 GMT

I've been so busy with exams and stuff that I haven't had a chance to write anything. Nothing really happened anyway, things just carried on as normal. I don't really revise that much because I can't reallllllyyy be arsed but so far I've been really lucky inasmuch that all the questions in all the exams I've had I've known. For my Roman Civilisation topics we got asked about the Roman baths and why people liked them. Which was fairly obvious. And English was easy because...well, I'm good at it. So I made it all up but no doubt I will do well. I know that sounds arrogant but I really detest every other aspect of myself in life so I can at least take pride in the fact I can write well. Well, I think I can. I may be deluded. Maybe people are just lying to me because they don't want to hurt my feelings! Maybe.

Today I was clearing through all my stuff. It's weird how people actually change. I'm a stranger to the person I was last year. It's odd. All thats left of a relationship and the day I lost my virginity is a ticket from the Tube that I saved because I thought it would always mean something to me. It doesn't anymore. That's sad, kind of. In a way I find it heartbreaking that all that's left of a relationship is a bit of tattered cardboard with a 'London Underground' stamp on it. And I was listening to songs which once meant loads to me and could reduce me to tears within the first bar. And now they leave me so empty. They're just...notes. And words. That have no meaning to anything anymore. They don't evoke...memories. Nothing. It's bizarre how things can just evaporate like that. And scary. I want to cling on to some things. Other things I'd be better off forgetting but some things i want TO KEEP.

I saw the Manic Street Preachers a few days ago. They were brilliant. However, they were not the best part of my day. You know....when you meet someone? And you feel like...you've known them longer than the short amount of time you have. Well, I had that. I don't know. I knew him before, we knew...everything? almost, about each other, but...I can't really explain, it could have so easily failed to be the same in a real life situation. But it was perfect. I don't think there are many moments in my life where you can actually describe them as being perfect. But...that afternoon was actually PERFECT. I can't really explain myself because I feel I will taint something by using the wrong words. I was made to feel like I was worth something. I never feel like that. In fact I never even FEEL anymore. It was weird. I felt really happy for the first time in...actually years. People I've felt for in the past, recentely...there's been no depth or connection. The last boy who there was mutual interest with is now going out with a girl FAR too young for him. He had huge DISGUSTING hair. And his head was about 5 times too big for his body. He was also really sleazy. I hate it when people....push it. Just because I fancy someone doesn't mean I want to sleep with them at the first available moment. I don't. Really. It was nice to have someone listen to what I had to say, rather than wanting to fuck me at the first possible opportunity. I don't like it when I feel used. And I didn't. It was nice. I can't really say anything else. Because...It was wonderful.

The end.

fucking emo pricks

Tue, 15 May 2007 20:51:03 GMT

Somewhere along the line I've just become...fashionable? Self harm and misery is romanticised to the point of nausea by fucking emo dickheads who complain about their TERRIBLE lives which can obviously be expressed through pricks with stupid eyeliner screaming through microphones.That really pisses me off- since when was cutting cool? I feel such intense self loathing and to see that is 'cool' makes me want to shoot myself. It angers me that people think self harm is for attention, or because 'other people do it'- My mum blames MY problems on Richey Edwards! She seemingly forgot that i have A MIND OF MY OWN. I can be strong and independent if I want. If I was so weak and impressionable I'd be just another face in the crowd like the rest of my idiotic and inane class. It surprises me that such people are actually ALLOWED to exist as they should all be put in a room far, far away from me. I can't wait to get out of this shitty place and go somewhere where there are people who actually know stuff like...you know, who Alan Bennett is, or actually.....know how to say a sentence without using "umm....like, its like....uuuumm...." ANYWAY, I digress.

What people fail to understand is that most people who self harm are not doing it for attention. Maybe the Gerard Way-alikes wallowing in faux agony are, but most people AREN'T. The closest most people get to an existential crisis is when they were 15 and their girlfriend dumped them. Oh woe is me, etc. People don't seem to understand that it has become part of me just like my ability to write is part of me. People imitating how I feel completely belittles me- and I do that enough to myself already. A message to anybody reading this who thinks they're being edgy or cool by cutting: cunts like you make ME look bad. Take out your imaginary inner torment on other people, through music or whatever but don't take it out on ME. I couldn't get things right- maybe you can.

"I know my place
I hate my face
I know how I began
and how I'll end.

I don't know where I'm going
Don't even wanna know...."
Elliott Smith

Summer

Mon, 07 May 2007 20:55:58 GMT

The day I met him had been a warm day in July which tasted of bubblegum, and I had red marks on the palms of my hands from carrying plastic shopping bags down the road. We had walked past a shop that had just opened and confetti littered the pavement. When we finally emerged a few hours later, the confetti had floated away, or stuck to the floor from the brief, intense shower of rain we had missed as we lay together in his tiny room. I can imagine some romantic, some beautiful soul, could make something of this, of the sodden paper which should have been covering a tender, tentative bride, of our inability to see this significance. But we, wrapped up in the intensity of our silent, nameless encounter, walked on by, oblivious of this symbol of almost literary proportions. But it wasn’t literature and never could be- all it was to us was wet paper which stuck to the bottom of our shoes.

In the winter I had prayed for something like this, romanticising the sizzling pavements of summer, the lingering embraces I anticipated having. In reality, however, most of my summer had been wasted painting my nails different colours, listening to PJ Harvey and sharing cheap bottles of wine with my best friend. I’d been lonely; maybe this desolate, boozy lifestyle seemed glamorous to other people but to me all it seemed like was a short cut to the destruction of myself.

When he arrived, everything seemed so different. As if everything else was nothing but an extension of my happiness, nothing but a prop designed to complicate everything in an otherwise simple world. There was me, and him, but nothing more or less. In his absence I would listen to ‘Girl From Mars’ by Ash on repeat for hours, just because it was the only thing in the world which captured how I felt that summer; the way I could lie content in my garden, watching the smoke I blew out of my mouth mingle with the dappled dusk lights that seemed to penetrate my bones, my soul, and make me, finally, BELIEVE.

When summer turned into dust and we returned to school I had imagined him to be gloating about his beautiful summer; of the days we’d spent walking hand in hand in parks and zoos, of dancing together, our bones fired by desire. As I walked towards him, smiling, I saw his friend turn towards him, puzzled.

“Do you know her?”

He looked towards me, his satellite eyes full of emptiness, before turning back to his friend.

“No.”

This one's for the freaks

Sat, 05 May 2007 08:37:43 GMT

I haven't written for a few days which is surprising because I have been at an all time low. Although perhaps that is why, I just couldn't find the energy to do anything. At one point I couldn't actually be bothered to lift my hand to brush hair out of my eyes. I just felt like everything had really, REALLY, got too much and honestly every moment seemed like some sort of hellish torture. I know this all sounds SO, so cliched teenage crap but I could barely move I was so depressed. I also cut quite a large chunk out of my leg and have, for the rest of the week, been attempting to hide it from everybody else.

The day I almost died was probably, actually, the moment in my life when I felt the most....I don't know how to phrase it, but it was this moment full of such clarity and beauty despite the fact that it should have been horrifying. Obviously I found it slightly sickening but I got some sort of twisted masochistic pleasure out of it. I looked at my arm and it was completely covered in blood, there was no part of my arm where there wasn't blood. And it was dripping down onto my hand and I just looked at it, and then at myself in the mirror and it was strangely...i felt peaceful. Rather than panicked. Part of me was going "OH MY FUCKING GOD WHAT THE FUCK DO I DO" but after that moment passed it was so peaceful, all that existed at that point in time was me, the pain and the blood and the scars. And nobody or nothing else existed anymore. It was just me, and what was going on in my brain. I've tried so many times to work out what the fuck is going on in my head (and failed, miserably). But I could SEE what was wrong with me, what I was doing. However it clearly can't have been accurate because I couldn't see what was wrong with what was going on. Most 'normal' people, whatever that means, would have probably been vomiting with disgust and panic and fear. But I LOVED IT. I don't even know what that means. I've never talked about this before, but it came up in a conversation with somebody and I felt I had to write it down.

In other news, I am currently addicted to listening to 'Underdogs' by the Manics. Firstly because it is fucking brilliant but secondly because I'M GOING TO SEE THEM IN EXACTLY ONE MONTH!!!!!!!!!!! Braaaaaaaaap.

"this one's for the freaks,
for you're so beautiful,
for all the devotion written in your souls
this one's for the freaks
for the lost and weak"

I am panicking slightly

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 20:01:30 GMT

1) I have 9398439 exams which I MUST START REVISING FOR. Yet I have no motivation, which is depressing. I don't even know if I want to do well. I don't care anymore. Failure is always an option for me because I feel like a failure about 80% of the time anyway. Sometimes I actually love being miserable and wallowing in my own misery so I suppose failing exams could add to that! Although I just talked to a girl that I was close friends with in primary school and she's dropped out of school and has no GCSE's or anything. That really saddened me, more than it even shocked me, because we were so full of our little ill-formed dreams and deformed ideas and naivity, and now we're nothing like that at all, possibly as far removed from that as you can be.

2) I have no idea who I am, what I think, what I want, where I'm going, how I'm going to get there or what I have to do along the way. This panics me more than slightly as I thought the whole point of me being me, EMILY, REY, or whatever you want to call me, was that I was certain of what I felt and what I wanted. I'm the person who wants to NOT be validated by other people. I don't want other people's compliments and ideas to reflect on me whatsoever. But maybe they do, I think that perhaps I care a little too much about what people say and think. However by portraying myself as somebody who can take critisism in their stride, people are likely to want to be more honest with me, which actually can hurt me. But I DO want people to be honest with me because...well, I am probably the most paranoid person in the world. So the fact that people MIGHT be talking about be would torment me more than "X thinks your a bitch for doing Y.". Yeah, maybe that will hurt me to an extent however at least I know and can be tormented by the known rather than the unknown. I don't actually know, though. In a way pretending that I'm strong makes me stronger, as it means that I can build up resistance or whatever. And, you know, learn to deal with it. But another part of me believes that pretending to be strong just makes me weaker. I am unable to articulate these feelings with my actual mouth. This frustrates me endlessly. The only way I can actually articulate my feelings and thoughts is through writing, which I suppose is better than most people can muster. But...I don't know. Maybe thats why I love writing so much, maybe that's why everybody feels I'm so talented at it, because it is a huge cathartic orgasmic release of....HATRED. And anger! And pain and the fact that I fucking HATE MYSELF because I CAN'T EXPRESS MYSELF without WRITING IT DOWN. I know that NOBODY READS THIS (why would they?) but at least I get to express myself. I know I am going round in complete circles here but thats the only way I can do it, by writing it out and forming the circles that I run around in every time I think about anything.

On a good note, the fact that somebody said "Hello" to me today made me happier than I have been in about 6 months.

love song

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 20:40:32 GMT

I walk the same way home every night. I like the routine, the familiarity of the dull concrete pavements, the romance that I can manufacture from peering in people’s front windows. Sometimes I scoop up handfuls of pink petals that have drifted off the branches of trees and have formed mounds like puddles on the ground beneath them. Other days, I pick daises and pull the delicate petals off in my fingers, staining them yellow with the brightly coloured head of the flowers.

Do you remember that time we lay in the long grass, staring at the night sky? I told you that we were looking into the past but you didn’t say anything back. Maybe you misunderstood; maybe you thought I was talking about me and you, not the stars. You had never looked forward in anything you had done, despite your efforts to make everybody believe that all you did was trust in the future, not the past. But from the moment I saw you, the second we began to talk, I knew that you could never go forward. And who could blame you? After your life, after everything that you’d had to do, who could ever point the finger and tell you to get on with your life? Only, they never had the chance to because of your hazel eyes and your trusting looks and the way you managed to make everybody laugh with your flippant comments and easy quips.

I knew though. I could feel it in the brushing touch of your fingers on mine, the way you glanced at your shoes as if searching for an answer, the burning look in your eyes as you leant towards me, that you could never really love me in the future, or even in the present, only in the past when you did not know me. Maybe, to you, I wasn’t even a person in my own right. Perhaps you viewed me objectively, without passion; somebody who would hold you through the starless nights, and who would kiss the end of your nose on tipsy summer afternoons. And of course I could tell that you never loved me. I could have been anybody. But in the sunless afternoons where I could not find myself, I tried to make myself believe that it was me with the problem, me without trust and conviction, not you.

So when we kiss, in the long grass or a wall near somebody we’ll never know’s house, will you remember touching my hand as we lay together, watching the past unravel before us, stars sparkling like the light of the moon reflected in your flying saucer eyes? Will you remember the warmth of my gaze on your cheek as you pretended to not notice my adoring glances? The first time I saw you sitting on your own with a book in your hand and odd socks, will you remember the way you looked up and saw the intensity of my gaze? The way in which I could seethe with jealousy at looks that girls gave you as you sat alone, immersed in yourself so deeply even I could not reach you.

Maybe you did love me. But I doubt it. The saddest thing is how little we both got from this long, warped love affair. All I have taken away is the memory of your coffee coloured eyes and the electric shocks which passed between our fingers, but above all, the horrifying realisation that maybe I really did love you. But maybe not.

Hmm

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 20:57:37 GMT

I had something in mind to write today but I don't remember what it was. Currently I am listening to Mogwai. It's nice. The other day I saw 'Lost in Translation' for the second time, and it reminded me why I love it so much. In both the characters but in Scarlett Johansson's in particular, I see myself. I think it's a bit like in Catcher in the Rye when you have that horrifying moment when you think "Oh GOD, I AM HOLDEN CAULFIELD." Only in Lost in Translation there isn't so much anger. I see so much alienation in that film. Like lost souls adrift in unfamiliar places. I know the fact that they're abroad accentuates that fact but I think when you have a soul which feels lost and has no direction then everywhere seems unfamiliar.

At the moment I feel like...I'm not sure how I feel actually. I have no direction anymore and that scares the fuck out of me. Everything around me is SO FAMILIAR and it makes me feel so suffocated and stifled and EMPTY. Yet at the same time everything is totally unfamiliar to me because I have no idea what I'm doing anymore. Every day is just a blur of razorblades and cigarettes and it's just not healthy. I think the weight thing has to be cut short now because I don't need something else to add to my list of problems.

When I was younger I used to admire older girls, girls my age, because I thought they were so mature and grown up and sophisticated. And had freedom. Well, technically I do but self harm and self destruction prevents me from being really free. I spend half an hour or more making myself look nice everyday with big black eyeliner around my eyes and making myself feel NICER about myself. But clearly I am contradicting myself AGAIN because I spend all this time making myself feel beautiful but inside I DON'T. And by scarring myself again and again and again all over my arms and legs I'm preventing myself from feeling beautiful. No, in actual fact, I am preventing myself from BEING beautiful. I wish I could stop but it's something I need, something inside me needs some control in my life. It's gone beyond my control though, it's not in my hands anymore. Well....I say that but by saying that I am stopping myself from having control over it. Maybe it's just willpower! Maybe I could stop if I really wanted to. However, I don't see anything wrong with me doing it. I'm only hurting myself, nobody else, and I barely ever hurt myself really badly, and the times I have it's been an accident and it hasn't been purposeful. I don't think I want to die, so what's the problem?!

I feel I'm going round in circles, which is depressing. Maybe I'm helping myself by writing this down and sorting it out clearly instead of it being a huge mess inside my head. Who knows? I don't.

People

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 19:47:35 GMT

are complete shit. How can people be so fucking hypocritical?! I have to go back to school tomorrow which obviously I'm REALLY looking forward to. People come in and go "Eurgh, Emily, YOU SMELL OF SMOKE, WHY DO YOU SMOKE?". Normally it's in an accusing way but sometimes people do it in a way that they pretend they care. That REALLY pisses me off because these are the people that, for an hour every week, see me in short sleeve tshirts and a skirt in P.E. Isn't it funny when, confronted by arms and legs full of scars, people seem to care that bit less? It just makes me really pissed off that they jump to critisise me, pretending they care, but when it comes down to it, they don't. Not that I really care, to be honest. Because they're just people who I don't care about. People only see what they want to see.

I'm getting into my weight loss mindset again. I should probably stop because last time I lost loads of weight but it's SO TEMPTING. I keep listening to 4st 7lbs. I should stop. REALLY.

Hiding and Escaping

Sun, 25 Feb 2007 17:09:57 GMT

Everybody in the bar seemed stationary, static. As if they were made of watercolours, not bones and skin and hair. Like an Edward Hopper painting you can walk into, sit in, really believe in. Outside rain was casting a morose light on everything; the only colour in the street was in the umbrellas businessmen held to escape the rain. Inside, people watched the raindrops slide down the windowpanes and fingered half empty glasses of vodka and whiskey.

There was a young girl, about seventeen, sat on her own in a green dress, a cigarette smouldering between her fingers. She didn’t move though, didn’t take a drag; just sat there, her eyes occasionally swivelling towards the door when somebody came in. She looked disinterested about everything but inside she was probably dying, waiting for some boyfriend or other to come through the door, his hair wet from the rain, motorbike leathers releasing a familiar smell that she loved. Finally, she stubbed out the cigarette and sauntered over to the bar. It was obvious that she was trying to feign indifference but as she turned to see her lover walking towards her, her eyes suddenly illuminated, glittered. She turned back to the bar again, and looked the other way as he kissed her neck. It was see through, the way she was behaving, but her boyfriend seemed used to it, and just rolled his eyes at the barman and whispered in his lover’s ear, watching her melt in his arms.

There was another woman in the corner, who was watching this spectacle with a wry smile. Presumably she had been there before, either watching her friends in the same situation or having been the girl herself, desperate to conceal her frantic, urgent love. She turned away though and looked down at her drink, the smile gone. Her hair was the colour of autumn and was cut in a severe bob, like a 1920’s flapper girl. Her eyes looked like the sea on a cloudy day; they were swimming with intrigue and secrets, but retained a melancholy look in them which suggested that she was yearning for something. People had tried to reach out to her but it never worked. She let men buy her drinks but that was as far as it went. She just sat, alone, immersed in her own silence.

The bar had some cheap tacky name in neon above the doorway but it would have better suited the name ‘Loneliness’. You could tell that everybody in the bar was lonely; even the girl in the green dress and her boyfriend. They had left after about ten minutes, him whispering in her ear, her seemingly doing what she thought was the right thing to do. Most of the people in the bar were either too intensely wrapped up in themselves to notice anything, or so aware of everybody that their every move became almost farcical. It was as if half of the people in there were only alive for the benefit of others, of showing other people how to live their lives so detachedly yet in comfort and relative happiness.

I was with a friend who went to university nearby. We’d been to see a band and, keen to make our evening last longer, had stumbled into the nearest bar. We had both stopped in the doorway, amazed at the fact that it was such a fossilised place, that the people in it seemed so stereotypical. We’d sat down though, in a corner, and had stayed mostly in silence except for a few sentences about cutting down on cigarettes and on what books we were reading. We had talked about James Joyce, smoked more cigarettes than people cutting down should have, and had ordered gin and tonics. It was awkward; we were never great friends and the night had been made more uncomfortable by the fact that I was quickly getting drunk while he was completely sober.

It struck me as we sat there in silence, how differently people react to suffering. My mind, buzzing with the alcohol from my drinks, was craving the pain that was so often afflicted upon it. But from the blood on my wrists to the sadness in the eyes of the woman with the autumn coloured hair, pain and misery reach everybody. I could finally understand why people constantly consumed; food, alcohol, clothes or even just the rich mans lifestyle. Consumption lets people escape and hide. I had been drinking to hide from embarrassment (only causing more, I finally saw) and I smoked to hide from everybody else, to be able to go outside and be alone and also to make myself ill. But maybe pain is different, maybe inflicting pain upon myself and testing my body is different from the consumption of drugs or alcohol or even cigarettes. Suicide and hurting oneself is a form of hiding and escaping, but also a form of finding oneself too.