Oftentimes it surprises me how few people you can rely on. I'm never disappointed in that reality. People love to tell you how they are 'there for you' but that only applies when it matches their own wants. Doesn't it feel good to see a friend struggling and be able to say "I'm here if you need me"? Doesn't it make you feel like a noble and magnanimous person? How often do you ask them if they need you though? How often do you take the time to contact them and say that you've not heard from them in a while, and that you are interested in how they are. Good, bad or otherwise. Not often I'm betting.

I get it, there are important things in life and there are things central to your being which you need to dedicate time to. I understand, I have the same thing. People spread themselves too thin nowadays. Friends doesn't mean anything, it's a worthless title. And the last time you went through something awful, it took for you to show this to another before you got support.

People love to be there for you and they love to portray themselves as a shoulder to cry on but that's only one part of it. How can you have a relationship with someone if they will never contact you? I don't run after people anymore, I stopped that a long time ago now. It's apparent that there are few people in life who you can actually rely on noticing if you need help or not without you having to ask for it; the last thing you'll want to do is ask for it. I can count on one hand the number of people outside my family who I would rely on.

To those I can rely on, thank you. Thanks for actually taking the time to ask, you are a tiny minority of those that I know and I truly am grateful to know you. You'll know if you are one of these people because you'll have initiated talking to me, and me to you.

image

Have you ever considered the extent to which you are based purely on the image you wish to protray? That you do things based on what you think other people will view you as? Do you do things because you want to - things that you like - or because these things will characterise you in a way which you want others to see you?

I've been thinking about this quite a lot lately. I've been trying very hard to be myself, the core essence of my personality as shaped by my physiological nature and the imprint life has made on me thus far. When I was younger I would make all decisions based upon how these things would make me seem to my counterparts and it pretty much made my life troublesome and myself a conflicted shell of who I should have been. I've been working towards dropping this continual need to be viewed well as I have continued my life and though I will never be able to say I am truly unaltered by the perspectives of other people - as, let's face it, that would be unworkable and less than admirable - I believe I am currently far more honest with my character than most.

Last year was a turning point where I met a girl who I thought was individual, unique and interesting. She seemed to have very clear ideas about who she was, what she wanted to look and act like and what she did and did not like. At first this was refreshing and encouraging but it became quite quickly obvious that her own insecurities were shaping how she acted, and that she was a very restricted person. It's obvious with hindsight but in many instances people have a great knack for turning a lack of character into a very convincing façade. Needless to say it doesn't take much time to get beneath the outer layer and see the conflict within. It turns out that I am no longer friends with this girl as I didn't embody an image close enough to her own in order for her to be seen with me. That's a shame.

It's tough being yourself, it's not mean to be, but it is. Recently I've been trying to align my mind and my actions as closely as possible without being hurtful. I think that is a good barometer for sensible day to day life. For example, the other day at work I told everyone that I wasn't a people person, that I don't tend to get along well with others. I told my friend that I think that most people in the world are stupid. I criticised mainstream television programmes I find futile and moronic in front of people who I knew possibly watched them. You might think this pointlessly antagonistic and sometimes I would agree with you. But that in itself is a trend of society brought about directly by the inability of people to act like themselves in public. It is polite to go to your hairdresser and respond to the question, "Do you watch the X Factor" by saying "No, I've never caught it". It is not polite to say "No I find this programmes to be irritating and the content at very best mediocre", but you know what, it is truthful. I suppose the happy medium is to say, "No, I don't like pop music, nor do I like reality/competition television programmes". Either way, you run the risk of being thought either rude or elitist. Why can't you just be thought of as having one of a plurality of views on the subject? Why can't we just accept that not everyone likes the same thing.

It's so tempting to be so brutally and honestly myself that I say everything I think. Being truthful is so enjoyable and refreshing that it is hard not to get carried away. On the whole so far I have found positive results, more people describe me as original, or odd "in a good way". Most people find it endearing, and why not? How often do you really get to see right inside a person, to witness the functioning of their true character on a day-to-day basis. Let me tell you this, normality, fence-sitting and inoffensive middle-of-the-roadness are not appealing qualities in the slightest, they are boring. Hey, if you don't get a positive response at least you will get one.

The point is that this has caused me to constantly be thinking of why people are doing things or why people like things. More and more I see people doing things that everyone else does. Why? Surely with all the different types of people in the world, the multitudes of different traits and talents, then people should like different things? Surely some people are going to stand out and dislike things? Is it just that I am abnormal, or unique? I'd love to flatter myself but I doubt I am all that original. It seems more likely that people do the same things because they are too timid to not follow the trend if they think it pointless. I suppose for many it is easier to not put a skirt over those leggings than to explain why you think seeing the outline of someone else's crotch as specified by everyone else is ridiculous. I've been turning this analysis to myself now considering if I tend to do things in the opposite vein, turning my attentions to things off the beaten path because I detest to be associated with the masses. Honestly, I am sure that I do, and I am sure that I hate that this is the case. I know I find more ease liking things other people don't like than things they do. Despite this though I'll still like all these things that appeal to me, it's just how I feel about liking it in the first place that changes. I'm trying really hard to be myself right now and I'm going to keep doing that. So, in this spirit of honesty I've decided that I am going to start a Truthful Tuesday section of my tumblog where each week I outline one truth I would be less than inclined to reveal normally. To start this off I will go with a simple and honest one which is this: I don't think that Kurt Cobain was the incredible genius people beleive him to be. I think he was good at what he did and certainly relevent, but his work just doesn't strike me as on a par with other music legends which could be be named. This is personal - much like my Mum disliking Bob Dylan - it just doesn't get me in the way other music does.

Moving On

I've been working as an administrative assistant in an office at University for the past few months. It's a temporary position and finishes a week today. The girl who is going to be filling the vacancy permanently started today and shadowed me. It's really odd how much I'm going to miss it and more unusual still how I will miss them when I don't even really know why. I suppose it reveals a lot about me when I note that it's probably the camaraderie of being part of the team. And it is a team not just one forced upon people by situation. I've never worked anywhere where politics has featured less than there. Granted I've not worked in many offices before but I am led to believe it is a common scenario. I'm never part of a team. I'm the lone wolf. If you want something done right you smother yourself in all consuming loneliness and get it done better than you could even have imagined. It's incredibly hard to be included in much if you are willing to uphold honesty and good morals, especially if it involves a lot of social interaction. That's why I find it hard to be part of a group of friends. It always boils down to misunderstandings, lies and people getting hurt. It always results in winners and losers and the winners write the history. Staying away from that means I can write my own history, but it is altogether less action packed. The thing is, being part of a team in a professional capacity allows one to form friendships which are never taken too far, and in-jokes that never cut close to the bone, relationships you know won't falter, and trust which impinges on regulation. It's a sad state of affairs but for me friendship is 1% compatibility and 99% reliability, and that's why it never works out. So I'm going to miss seeing people at the times specified in an outlook calendar and I'm going to miss people noticing when I do something helpful or nice for them. Despite the clinical nature of my analysis I will miss these people because when it comes down to it they are decent and I enjoy their company. They are the kind of people who home bake a cake for your birthday and all of a sudden I don't really know why I would choose to give that up. In light of recent events I can't help but feel like moving on is stepping onto a ledge and it's a long way down if I fall after climbing this far.

I went to a meeting today and it was not good. It was obvious that he had been caught out and he knew it. He saw my face when he told me to come back later and he saw what he'd done and he went on the defensive and I was cold. I came back an hour and a half later and he was harsh. I sat and I knew what the outcome would be so I didn't even bother to take of my jacket and my head became so hot and I felt my face burning as my body temperature bounced off the limiter and I was too set in stone to care. I stopped giving him the time of day. What he said hurt. The intent was to ridicule and deride and it worked. There is no way you can win when it feels as though you are living at home with your parents again so I became monosyllabic and shot darts of poison wherever I looked. Someone put their head around the door and I smiled a vicious smile as he suggested they meet for a pint. As I left I knew it was time for the post game review and I went off without a care for dignity or winning or social interaction itself. The cool air outside helped my warm head and I felt stuffed in a bubble of air. On the street they were painting lines on the road and the noise made my hearing numb and my inner ear crackle; a weakness I blame on spending nights in clubs for a month in my first year of university. I bought a drink I didn't want and avoided the man asking for adoptions of guide dog puppies even though he didn't want to ask me. I must not have been his target market. As I walked the rain was like mist and the cold bit me and I was glad for the heat I had endured in the name of obstinacy. I was in a blur of hatred for all and myself. I imagined what I could say what I should say and how I should relay such dictations. I spoke viciously in length and I spoke without care as I left the room. I wrote emails in short hand and letters in long. Doctor's notes and complaints flurried in my mind as tiny particles of water soaked into my clothing. I didn't notice the strange men hanging about under the bridge and they didn't notice me and I swore to be better and to be worse and to resist and then I succumbed and the words formulated in my mind. I think I that I may have made a mistake in choosing to do this. I do not have the intellect, or the common sense, or the general knowledge, or the endurance. Into my vision came a two pound coin on the ground which I picked up quickly and kept walking. I held it in my hand until I reached the garage and as I walked up the hill I let the anger and the hurt seep out of me and the sweat and my heart rate burned and bitter tiny tears singed the rims of my eyes. I gave the coin significance and I told myself of the obvious problems other people had and convinced myself of my strength. I told myself that bridges have been burned but that this is for me. Later Stuart confirmed it. I re-enacted the entire meeting and I raged, but quietly, and I seethed, but softly. I placed the coin on my bedside table and I thought of the draft in my bag and I shuddered and I knew that the next few weeks would be sickening but manageable. Then we prepared dinner and talked of the important things and smiled, calm in the satisfaction of our own entirety being enough for each of us always.

patience my dear

I'm an impatient person. I don't like to wait. It's the way I was brought up. Really, it's about knowledge. I will not wait in the dark to find out about something. Part of this is about personal insecurities and part of it is about the high-functioning character of my brain. If you keep something from me it either won't be for long or it will be forever. Right now my mother is keeping what my husband's 30th brithday present is from me and I hate it. I know fine well the reason for this is that it will be something exciting for me too, but I hate to be kept out of the loop. Tell me the day and time something is happening and I'll be patient and plan it but tell me there is something you can't tell me and all hell will break loose. I can't wait, it's as simple as that. Of course this characteristic didn't seem out of place when I was growing up, surrounded by people who imprinted their personalities onto me. It did become apparent though when I met Stuart and started to interact with him and his family's way of doing things. For Findlays, everything good should be a surprise, a way of making something exciting even more special. A nice notion I think you'll agree? I think most people would. Except me. Don't get me wrong, I like the sentiment and I would even like to be able to savour surprises like my lovely family-in-law. But I can't. Stuart tells me, he and those like him are natural queue-ers. Waiting is their game, and they do it so well. If Stuart is anticipating the fun of the rides at the back of the two hour queue at Disneyland, I'm definitely the girl making a point of not lining up at the departure gate in the airport. I'm making the effort for Stuart's birthday, I'm planning some things and I'm not telling him, but I've already gone to great lengths to tell him not to make surprises for me on mine. Maybe it's weird but I can't seem to help it. I have tried to be more spontaneous, and I've tried to enjoy anticipation but I can't shift the feeling of being irritable at my lack of knowledge, and, ultimately, my lack of control.

Sometimes though, things are completely out of your control. Sometimes things just happen or don't happen and you find yourself grasping onto straws in the vague hope that you've elicited some actual meaning and sense. You find yourself torn between searching for logic and reason and proof, and painting meaning in where prior there was just a void. Waiting is an incredibly hard task and I fail at it every time. I'm considering the notion of things being 'worth the wait' and I find that invariably they are. Invariably they will always be.

The Other Side

Something that always surprises me about myself as I am now is the stark contrast to my younger self. The main difference that strikes me currently is that when I was younger and I was feeling in anyway down, lacklustre or anxious I would write. I look back over journals kept then and I am surprised that there is actually minimal amounts of teenage angst therein, and reality lying for all to see. Words epitomise the true feelings as they then existed and the proof of that lies in the flush of heat in my chest when these memories are awoken with such vivacity that it overwhelms me. Contrast this to the me of now and you will notice gaping holes in my writing and you are now to be informed that these chasms represent emotional difficulties and times of unease. Times when the immensity of incomprehension and discomfort render one unable to articulate things that seem at that moment to be the most profoundly unwanted conditions imaginable. This makes it incredibly hard to write about the times when things are most hard, and consequently the times at which writing would be most welcome for. The most vivid and truthful writing emerges as a result of negative experiences, they enlighten and teach, and I am useful at relaying them. My writing in these times is stuttering, and simple and straight to the point. The words seem childlike. They are the words in bold in the thesaurus lonely, stark and obvious and I can't bring myself to write them. Writing of painful truth is hard enough to do poetically, but I am too complex as an adult to let such things emerge in the way they ought to. I suppose I am worried that the reality of how you feel in dark moments will shock those who read them, or that admitting their existence to yourself will cause circles of revelation that are dangerous to one's sanity. There is a process we go through in times of trouble, and for me this involves a difficult mixture of denial and panic. Creating discourse is not in the order of play.

Thus, my writing this passage currently will signify that the worst may yet be passed and the actuality of better times to come acknowledged. I am very rarely completely open about how I am coping with life on a day to day basis, even with people who are close to me. Brave faces come easily and I don't even publish this blog on other interfaces where people I know will see it any more. But I will be truthful. This summer has been hard. And as is always the case with the most troubling emotional intricacies, there is little reason for it. At best I could classify it as change, inconsistency and continual fluctuation's effect on a person over a prolonged period. At worst, I would say that I am never at ease in summer. Now it is full autumn as far as I am concerned and I'm easing back into normality. It is selfish to say as I know there is a lot worse - indeed, I have known it myself - but I feel happy again. Today I visited Summerlee Industrial Museum with Stuart and we took photographs and wandered around the canal in silence and fresh air that bit like winter. At the tram lines in the utopian created street I crouched over the cobbles to take a picture. The sun was hitting the roofs of the houses and tram and I felt a swell of happiness that seemed quite remote, quite unknown, like a far removed acquaintance. I felt myself going 'Oh' in recognition and I smiled. I told Stuart. Suddenly things that felt like the end of the earth a few days ago felt manageable, even mistaken. Coping is dripping back in slowly. It's been a long slog through times when things were not great, but equally not bad. I honestly don't know if short, sharp periods of dire circumstances are favourable to long dragging days of banality that wear you down with time, or not. All I know is that now I am on the other side and I can write again because I feel once more like there is a point to it, and that I will look back and be glad to have these words. I'm going to make big decisions, now that I finally feel able to surmount the daunting once more.

On Feminism

Picture this scene: I am at a go-karting track in Tenerife. I am with my husband. We are shown to the go-karts which sit in a line in the middle of the pit lane. There are two girls, myself, my husband, and five other men. I sit in the kart I come to first, it is the last one in the row. The two girls are in their late teens and thus go into the smaller karts which sit at the side of the pits. They go off first. We await the start.

This is the point at which a face appears in front of me. He asks, “have you done this before?”. I reply “no”, indeed, I have never raced a go-kart here before. He looks at me very directly and points to the pedal underneath my right foot. “This…is to go”. I look up at him, frowning and smiling. “This…” He continues, pointing to the pedal under my left foot, “is to stop”. I nod very slowly, smiling in irritation. “Not at the same time” He mouths each word obviously and waves his hands across each other to fully convey the message. “Ohh-kayyy” I reply, rolling my eyes. At this point I expect him to move to the kart in front of me, containing Stuart, to repeat the ridiculous exhibit of just how dense people can be. I imagine us laughing about it together on the relay bus back to our hotel. Laughing and smiling. Suffice to say, he does not move on and tell Stuart.

When I realise this I am angered. My first thought is, “why me?”. My Second thought is “well, duh”. As I fester with tingling waves of irritation they start the kart at the top of the row and off he drives. The second kart is now started, and the third, until they are starting Stuart’s in front of me. As the man who starts the karts comes to mine he looks at me and asks, “have you done this before?”. I give him a quizzical look, “Yes, I have driven a go-kart at home.” He points to my right foot and I stare at him in the same way I stare at approaching charity muggers back home, but unlike them this one does not take the hint. “This foot… is go” He nods emphatically, I feel like a child. “This foot” my left “is stop”. I feel like I have the intelligence of a marble. “Not at the same time” he stresses, speaking to me the way idiots speak to foreigners on situation comedies. I look at him incredulously, “I know how to drive a car” I implore. “Go slow your first lap” He says. “Yes, I KNOW” I say through clenched teeth. Whilst saying this my kart has been started and the first one to explain to me about how to flex muscles in my feet is behind me saying “go… go…gooooo…” in the same tone that children use to taunt each other. I put my right foot down and fly out of the pits in a haze of fury and humiliation. I don’t know if it is just that I am good at driving or if the red mist came down but somehow I managed it. It doesn’t matter but for what it’s worth I was fourth fastest, beating four of those unassailable entities who can do no wrong, also known as men.



I am no feminist. I care not for stereotypes of bra burning and rejected chivalry. A girl at university once told me she was an “anti-feminist” and I was impressed by her… balls. I think of it now and then I remember the rigours of go-karting and I feel as though that god-damned piece of wire and fabric is choking the life out of me. Despite this, I still can’t get around the fact that I like men. What’s more, I admire men. All my idols are men. All items in my life that do not have a very obviously pre-assigned sex (i.e. if they are pink or have long eyelashes) are men. I would not do very well with languages where nouns are gendered. Blame me, blame my upbringing, I am the antithesis of a pink princess. I want to do everything men do and unlike many who would call themselves feminists, I don’t want to flaunt my femininity whilst in the middle of a rugby scrum. I don’t know that you can really want gender equality when all you want is for gender to not be noticed at all. I find it very hard to place myself when I know that I am unable to be a woman in the perceived way that I would be able to convey this. For me, being a woman is having inconvenient periods and a lower level of physical ability than men and that is it. All the rest is society and that is it. I’m fed up of feeling inferior because everyone wants to champion the woman who uses her feminine charms to work her way to the top. To me, that, and all the rest of it, is sexist.

For some there are key criteria for discerning when being discriminated against based on sex is over. For example, when women and men are paid equally. For me, the issue won’t be over until nobody thinks of it again. If a woman is paid equally to a man it won’t matter that she has the same amount of money, she’ll still be treated based on sex, not on competency. Until people stop thinking in terms of sex, only then will it not be an issue. This is so complicated I can only imagine the sheer number of problems that there are for people of mixed gender.

Here’s the thing for me. You may think to tell me that those go-kart people were obtuse sexist morons who should be reprimanded. You may tell me that even if they were there are a whole host of them out there and that I personally can’t fight them all. You may tell me that I should use my sexuality to the best of my ability and embrace exactly who I am. I am woman, hear me roar.

This is who I am. I am a person. I am not someone who deserves to be judged based on their sex. I like to wear clothing that doesn’t sexualise me. I can’t do the whole girls at their sleepover talking solidarity sister bit. I like “male” activities but there is no way in earth I will participate in them if I feel like people notice me because of my sex. For them to notice me because of me; that is all I want.

I suppose to cut to the chase I am a feminist inasmuch as I find discrimination against women, and sexism unacceptable. I hate being patronised because of how I look. Imagine in that go-kart a black individual is singled out and patronised due to their being different to the other people participating, I cannot begin to imagine the amount of shit that would hit the fan if that went down. Yet, oh dear me, here I am, a stupid woman who can’t drive a go-kart, let alone a car, let’s make her feel like she has the worth of a peanut and send her on her way. I hate that this happens and I don’t know what you can call it but there is no way it can be sexism if I am just swapping being singled out in a negative way to being singled out in a positive way. I’m fed up of playing the game. I’m out. I’m no feminist, I am nothing; and I hope you’ll treat me that way.