express my feelings freely

how things can come to an end, without any bangs or crashes or fireworks, just die away. If no-one else is fighting for it, you know letting it go was the right thing.

K
lots and lots and lots
:(

We have a new neighbour in the flat next door, a couple with a 3-year-old boy who is training as an olympic sprinter for Poland. Given that this is a top-floor, converted studio flat it’s complete nonsense to have a kid up there, I thought I had it bad until I heard it from the flat below…

Having said that, the guys downstairs are being very patient and it’s meant that I’ve been talking to them a lot more (I kept their post while they were on holiday and the bought me back a stick of rock!) so I guess that’s the good flipside. And at least children wear out and go to sleep in the end, whereas stereos don’t. Could be another reason to move though…

Sometimes I have moments when I think too much about us and where we’re going. He is dealing with so much crap and I don’t know what to do to help him, I don’t know when I’m going to see him again let alone live with him permanently, or how it’s going to happen, and I feel so helpless.

But he is who he is, and he’s wonderful, and the rest is just circumstances – and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Yesterday I deliberately worked late because I didn’t want to come back to an empty house with no internet – on the train home I swear I felt the most lonely I’ve felt for a loooooong time.

Then I got back and my connection had (of course!) mysteriously mended itself!! It’s hard to describe my relief/joy/amusement. First thing I did was mail K, of course.

So I am officially pathetic, in the sense that I am utterly dependent on my internet connection for happiness and well-being. But on the other hand it does go to show that I am not really living my life on my own, thanks to K and all the friends I keep in touch with online (and of course everyone here) my life at home feels full of characters even though I live alone. Which is kind of reassuring in a way because it means I don’t actually want to spend the rest of my life on my own, I want to have people around me, people to come home with. It’s a good thing to realise!

but a funny thing happened this morning. I was walking up from the station and a guy came up to me and said “Excuse me, sorry to disturb you…” ...and then went on to say something that made me a little bit like Wah??!, whatever mate!

This being London, I did the necessary defensive procedure (keep walking, feign incomprehension) – after all, he was probably just distracting me while his friend knifed my bag, or wanting money. Or he’s looking for someone to marry for a visa and this is his chat up line. Or maybe he’s just saying it to all the fat girls today because it’s Friday and he wants to spread the love. But anyway. After questioning why I was so quick to dismiss it, it made me smile, and I figure I will nestle it up in my brain along with all the other reverberating voices, all the negative things that have ever been said to me by strangers on the street. Just the way it was said. I just think you’re really beautiful.

(aside from having a really fun if knackering day at the college reunion) I ran into a very-nearly-almost old flame with whom virtually nothing happened five years ago, just before I went away to Japan. Of course I spent the first 18 months there obsessively over-analysing all the things that hadn’t happened, the things we both might have felt, the things that might have happened if I hadn’t have left, etc… but we had no way to keep in touch and I just assumed that we would never see each other again.

And suddenly five years later I’m standing in a room with him and not only has he not forgotten who I am, but we later had the chance to sit down over coffee and even talk about what had happened (and what we felt and what might have happened) five years earlier. And I got to say all the things I hadn’t said and got to know all the answers to the things I’d spent that year and a half wondering about and it was all surprisingly unexcruciating and I finally have closure.

After five years.

It seems to mean everything and nothing all at once and I feel quite bowled sideways about it.

I reckon, with the distance, is not the loving someone or missing them or being on your own, but believing that you are still (and always) wanted. On the days when there is silence, the times without the confirmation and assurance that is automatic in face-to-face relationships, finding the self-confidence to believe that there’s no reason why his feelings might have changed – it’s difficult.

But not impossible. I never wanted a relationship where reassuring me was solely the responsibility of someone else. This is my job, and I’m up to it.

not uncared for exactly but, left to take care of myself.

K’s been ill and it’s all he can do to stay on his feet – he’s been managing to mail me through a short paragraph every day or two on the status of his cold, bless him. I’d gotten used to the daily contact and being able to talk to him several times a week so I guess it’s only natural to feel a bit out on my own while he’s out of action.

I just feel a bit… depleted.

working here on the theory that I try to suppress or ignore negative feelings too much, I am starting a grouchbook. This is only to be for things that I can’t grouch about to friends or K or on here, and not to be kept – I will be disposing regularly of the offending grouches.

I did a trial run the other day with some worries (rather than grouches) – I wrote them down in a book and haven’t opened them since, and for some reason this makes me feel better. I’m not sure I can even remember what they were! I may go back and find them in a month’s time – only to find that they’ve all been happily resolved :)

So this is to remind me that when I am wound up, I have at least four avenues by which to release those feelings, the last of which is the grouchbook.