I wonder how I’ll feel when I eventually get there. It may take some adjusting to.
Sixty-one
I’ve never really been in control of my emotions. It doesn’t take a lot to swing me from one mood to another. I can be happy yet still get very depressed. I can have friends yet still get very lonely. I’m not sure why I’ve evolved this way. I know deep down I’m a fairly insecure person. I’ve always known this. I’ve always felt the need to apologize for myself.
Circles are no better than squares. Only different.
51
My back aches. I feel like lying down and letting people walk all over me. People often do. It doesn’t take away the pain.
I wish I could make my own clothes. At least then I’d be in with a good chance of something actually fitting me. What I hate most in shops is when you try on a top which falls with ease over your head but then refuses to come off so you end up with it stuck over your head. You nearly strangle yourself in a bid not to rip the fucking thing.
Or dresses that fit perfectly at the top but are either eight sizes too big or small at the bottom. Why am I a size ten in some shops and a size eighteen in others (no exaggeration). What idiot came up with that? I don’t go into a shoe shop and say ‘Well, I think I’m a size seven but could you also bring me a three just in case?’
I shouldn’t have to take five items of the same damn thing into the changing room with me. Even then, nothing usually fits. I often feel guilty for having boobs as some clothes designers think you just simply shouldn’t have them. Next year they’ll be fashionable again. What sort of a crazy world do we live in? I don’t like the fashion at the moment. Only because I don’t want to look like a used up prostitute. I don’t begrudge those that do although they might as well walk the streets covered in sperm.
I did have a funny experience in a changing room once. It was in a charity shop. I was trying on a truly hideous outfit for a bad taste night when my friend’s little girl threw open the flimsy changing room curtain leaving me flashing the worst bra I own at the few old codgers in the shop. I did feel embarrassed I must admit but couldn’t stop myself falling into hysterics looking at the state of myself, half dressed in a 52
revolting purple number. My friend was nearly on the floor, creased over whilst holding a sickly brown plaid skirt and cardigan. The moment was only topped when a few minutes later an old bloke entered the shop and asked the woman behind the counter if she’d had any men’s underpants lately.
I kid you not.
Why do some people argue for the pure sake of it?
Even when they don’t have a single point to make.
Just to argue. Just to upset someone. There are more people like this walking upon the earth than I realized.
Warped people who can’t stand the fact you may in fact actually have a point you’d like to offer. It kills them. It truly does. That’s why they drown you out.
To stop themselves drowning in their own obscurity.
Sixty-two
My stomach’s in knots. It’s my ovaries in a desperate bid to work properly. If I bleed twice as painfully than is absolutely necessary might it kick start my reproductive system? Of course not, that would be silly. It does hurt a lot but sometimes it’s comforting to know I’m alive. Bull.
I remember being sat at my desk, in a truly bland office, wondering if this was all there was. I’m sure most people at some point ask themselves that same question. Probably not as many ask it everyday. Sat here now, I’m still asking. Maybe someday I’ll know.
More than likely I won’t. It’s not a meaning of life I’m seeking, nor is it faith in one religion or another, to me that clouds the issue. What I seek is more to do 53
with something not being wasted or regretted. How I achieve this I’m not sure. I’ve not made such a success of it so far yet I’ve lived for nearly thirty years. I’m not talking about relationships with others, for these I am very grateful. I guess it’s about my relationship with myself. Io sono. The question is too hard for me to answer. I worry it may always be so.
As a society we hide things. If we don’t understand it or it’s too painful, hide it, pretend it doesn’t exist.
Only it does exist and what’s more, it lurks. We know it’s lurking. We can feel it yet still we force ourselves to say it does not exist. Deny. Deny. Deny. Crap. It’s no wonder we’re all so fucked up.
Sixty-three
Another job. In this one I’m lucky enough to be sent to hot places. My first day consisted of being sent to Mauritius. I remember being quite nervous traveling down to Heathrow on my own, wondering how the other people on the trip would interpret my odd head.
I guess I was lucky. I was found amusing which is a nice alternative to being thought an egotistical buffoon. We spent the first night sat up til god knows what time, drinking copious amounts of local gin and telling each other our deepest secrets, which is always more fun when you’re bladdered. We had so much fun that later in the week we accosted the waiter and tried to get him to take his most fetching vest off, much to his horror and then insisted on requesting his presence each time we rang room service. I think he’s in therapy now.
54
I guess the nice thing was that I felt accepted by a group of people who knew nothing about me. I wish my life was more like that.
Sixty-four
My tone is morose today. Everything has a kind of shittiness about it. Mind you, this is partly caused by the fact that I was up until 5am this morning throwing up. Such a nice feeling.
Whilst I was hung with my head over the toilet looking as feminine as usual I wondered how a man could ever love me. Then I figured that’s why I don’t date shallow fuckers…or men that piss on the toilet seat.
I’ve not been outside at all today. I’ve been sat in this cocoon looking like death itself. Cocoon, now there was a good film. If only we could all be beamed into a space ship and live forever, the world would be a better place.
I drink too much. Only the other week I got up in the middle of the pub and did a Tina Turner impression.
Everyone fell about pissing their sides, especially seeing as they couldn’t tell who the fuck I was supposed to be. I should stay in more.
Not so long ago we lay in bed singing songs to each other.
55
Sixty-five
I’m staring at the competition page in the newspaper as I have been for the last ten minutes or so. I have a pen in my hand and three clues in the crossword have been filled in. I just want to pass the time.
‘Excuse me?’ I turn my head. The man next to me is smiling. ‘Do you want some help?’
Not really is what I want to say. Instead I smile back and pass the paper over.
‘You off on holiday?’ he asks politely.
I don’t really feel in the mood for conversation. ‘Not exactly’, I reply, noticing the bags under his eyes.
‘Me either’, he says and I hope that’s as far as this conversation’s going. ‘I did have a week booked off but then this thing came up and I’m the only one who can deal with it. I work with computers…I’ll not bore you with the details.’
He’s not a physically attractive man but he seems pleasant enough. Pleasant enough for me not to be rude by telling him to shut up.
I smile again and look back at the paper I’ve just given him. ‘See how you go with that’, I say kindly,
‘My brain’s a bit tired’.
‘Know the feeling’, he laughs and looks at the paper with interest. The chat was over.
Sixty-six
I’ve just read a book about fast food restaurants.
Fucking incredible. Did you know that most fast food burgers had faeces in them because the production line went so fast, they didn’t have time to clean the shit off the food as the other carcasses swung over 56
them. How fucking disgusting is that. I wish I’d have known at the time I unwittingly used the eat them.
What would you like Madam? Well, let me see, fillet of shit please…and would you like your fries with piss or without? No, I’m lying about the piss but the fries did used to contain beef, good news for all the vegetarians out there. It’s incredible how little we know about stuff like that but it’s the way corporations want it to be. We are controlled to such a degree but few of us even notice it. We no longer have choices but we believe we have all the choice in the world. I really believed when I was thirteen that writing a letter to the Norwegian government would make them stop the mass use of tuna nets in the ocean that kept killing dolphins as they got trapped in them.
It’s naive. Sure, if everyone did it, it may have a slight effect but my two hours, sat with pen and dictionary did fuck all. I still do it, now and again if I feel strongly about something but it does little more than ease my conscience. It’s a sad fact. If we all stood up and refused to eat the over processed garbage that fast food restaurants serve us, that we wouldn’t go near if we knew both how it was made and what exactly goes into it, the whole industry would have to change. I wouldn’t have a problem with food made on the premises, with chefs that had actually been trained, with a company that didn’t insist on tracking housing developments from space just to see how much profit they would make from a certain social class of people.
I wouldn’t have a problem at all. I just wish more people would give a fuck.
57
Sixty-seven
Tortoises are lovely.
Routine. I despise it. Can there be anything worse than living your live exactly the same week in week out? Same way to work, same conversations, same drink from the bar, same sandwich filling, same television programmes, same walk every Sunday, same clothes, same hairstyle, same breakfast cereal, same Christmas list, same order from the chip shop, same sexual position, same holidays, same shopping centre, same sanitary towels, same cigarette brand, same washing powder, same telephone chatter, same bunch of flowers, same music, same opinions, same questions, same replies.
Same nonsense.
It’s secure. It’s ‘coping’. It’s really quite frightening.
Sixty-eight
Why do some girls feel the need to walk around with their tits out? I guess they think it makes them look sexy. Well I suppose to some guys it does look incredibly sexy but are they the men you want to trust with your secrets? Girls who complain that they can never find a man who loves them for what they are, that the only men they find sleep with their friends. It doesn’t take much to figure out really. Put your tits 58
away, it would solve many of your problems. Men will love your mind if you strip away your insecurities. It just takes a bit of courage.
People sometimes tell me I should go to the gym. I want to tell a lot of them to go to a good bookshop and do something useful with their time.
I’m proud of my body despite what everyone else thinks. It’s alive. It’s imperfect. I’ve got scars. I’ve got bumps. I’ve got a history. I’ll never look like a model and I don’t think I’d want to. I used to hate myself beyond belief. When I was thin I hated myself more than ever before because no matter how I looked, it was never good enough. It took me a long time to distance myself from that way of thinking.
Okay, I wouldn’t want to be obese because that would mean putting myself at serious risk but it doesn’t bother me I’ll never be a small size again. I could be if I tried but the fact is I don’t want to try. I’ll put on a bikini and stand next to whoever is there and if people don’t like the way I look I couldn’t give a flying fuck because they’re not the people that matter.
Sixty-nine
I accidentally locked myself out of my hotel room whilst on a work trip. I’d gone out onto the terrace to watch the ceremonial lantern lighting in the hotel grounds. Nothing too embarrassing about that apart from the fact that I’d just stepped out of the bath and had nothing on but a hotel toweling bath robe. I was dripping wet from head to foot and had to dodge through the hotel gardens to reception. All the guests 59
were pouring out of their rooms to various bars in their best evening gear. This was a classy five-star hotel and I think I made the reception staff’s night stood there dripping all over the floor, with my wet hair hanging over my eyes.
No matter what I do, I just can’t seem to do anything responsibly.
Coupons. They’re a fucking disgrace as well.