I've been wanting to write a blog for a few weeks, but I physically couldn't put what I was feeling into words. Hence... empty...
I was doing so, SO well.
Something weird happened in me around the time I found out for sure which college course I was accepted into... I can't remember if it happened after that (as a result of it), or just at around the same time... I think it was just at around the same time, but I'm sure it was hardly entirely coincidental deep down in my subconsciousness.
I had spent so much of my final year in school, especially the end of it, and much of the summer months after it, fighting the fear I had about the future... The fear of the unknown, of being in a course on my own with a group of new people I didn't know, of being "grown up" and throw out into the big, bad world, when I still felt like a child...
And then I woke up one morning and I wasn't afraid any more. It wasn't a gradual thing, but neither did I suddenly wonder what I had been scared of. I just suddenly realised that I was no longer afraid of going to college, of meeting new people on my own, of being a "grown up". It was as if the fear had simply never existed, and that was not something I would ever have predicted in myself in my wildest dreams. I had been offered a place in the course I wanted, and I was suddenly, really, looking forward to it, knowing, in some way that I still can't fathom, that everything would be perfectly ok.
And it was.
Mostly, I guess, or realistically, it still is.
I love my course, it's exactly what I wanted. It's a small class of less than thirty, all girls, and I get on with them all so well. It's so much better than I could ever have hoped before my "change" a couple weeks before I started. They're wonderful people. And a lot of them have come straight from same-sex education, so they don't find it disconcerting at all that it's a full-on oestrogen fest all day every day...
And I do love my girlies.
But the only male contact we have is a tiny handful of middle-aged male lecturers who talk at us once a week.
And for me, it's.......... weird... [among many other things...]
I came from a co-ed school. I'm used to being around guys pretty much 24/7, except when I specifically decide otherwise. And I don't even just mean I miss being around good-looking guys; I miss male interaction full stop. A handful of my friends from school were male, and while I still chat to them over Facebook occasionally, it's not the same.
It doesn't feel right, not talking to boys. I always found boys quite easy to talk to (unless I was attracted to them... obviously)... I think. But maybe my mind is playing tricks on me.
And I'm not the kind of person who can just go up to a random stranger for no reason and make them my friend, girl or boy. Other than a small few of my school friends who happen to be in the same college as me (but doing different courses), the only friends I have on campus are those in my class. And that means all girls...
Sure, I tried joining clubs and societies, but our schedule is so messy and it's so awkward for me to get in to college, and we have so much work to do outside of our lectures, that when push came to shove, I only actually ended up actively participating in one society... And naturally, it somehow ended up being all girls...
And thus begins the tiny grain of the start of my freak-out.
All through my life, there has always been... prospects. There's always been something for me to look towards and somehow fool myself into hoping something will happen, whatever and with whoever it might be, and I won't still be waiting for my first boyfriend.
At school, I was constantly around boys, there were bountiful chances for a 'crush' to develop on virtually anyone, no matter how long I had known them, and plenty of 'school discos' to look forward to with crossed fingers and baited breath in the hope that whichever boy I was currently infatuated with would finally make a move...
Don't get me wrong; I knew there was a very high chance that there would be only girls in my class (it's a very female-biased profession)... I guess I was always pinning my hopes on meeting someone in one of the 'clubs and societies' that everyone you know tells you you need to join or forever be a loner...
But it's hit me in a whoosh that there are no "prospects" anymore.
There will be no more 'school discos', no constant gathering of boys for me to focus my attention on and have someone to focus on...
I'm not, and never was, and as far as I can tell never will be, the kind of person to be okay with properly hooking up with someone I just met at a club or a bar... I need to know the person inside out before I can think of spending time with them in a more intimate way than just friends... And that said, I don't even go to clubs or bars. I get uncomfortable when my new friends talk about going out and getting drunk.
I'm not anti-alcohol, but I don't like when people go out to get completely drunk, which is what everybody seems to do... And it's not something I want to do, so I don't go out. I would be miserable, uncomfortable, and embarrassed being sober with every single person around me unable to walk straight. And hating myself.
So I get uncomfortable when the subject comes up. I don't want these new friends to thing... whatever... of me because I don't go out and get drunk.... But I'm running out of excuses each time they organise a class party. I basically don't drink at all. I don't think I'd mind having one, maybe two at a stretch, but that's never all it is. I get kind of freaked out about things that can affect me or my body like that - I don't take painkillers unless it's unbearable, and often take half the dosage unless it's really bad, and hell, I get worried if I drink more than one cup of coffee in one day... And since I've never even been "out", I don't even know what to do.........
It makes me uncomfortable...
So no boys for me there.
And God, does it hurt. In my head, I will become friends with no new boys while I am still in college, which I won't be leaving until I'm 23 at the earliest. There will be no opportunities for me to meet new boys, and no opportunities for anything to happen. Then I'll be out into the working world (assuming I can get a job - if not; even worse), in my female dominated profession, and hey, no boys there either.
I can't deal with that kind of a thought.
Right now, I'm telling myself, forcing myself to believe that my cousin's wedding early next summer counts as a "prospect". I'm a bridesmaid. Hell if that makes a difference. She's ten years older than me. It's a family event. I know it's only going to lead to disappointment, but I have to at least pretend to myself, to get me through the next six months. After that........ I don't want to think about it.
And of course, none of this is helped by the fact that He isn't even in freaking London.....
Back to my old school in October for an event, and to my surprise, he's there. And God, I can't even think about it, because I can't even go there anymore.
For whatever fucking reason that I can't think about anymore, he finally popped over for a chat. Typically, I happened to be with one of my guy friends at the time, specifically, the one He knew I had had a crush on a few years previously (who knows if he even remembered, or if... whatever.). That doesn't help matters. Then the friend got talking to someone else, so it was just me and Him chatting. Very briefly. His lift arrived after maybe less that a minute. AGH. Not helping. And he was gone. Turns out he's actually in college in the west - still in the country. Banging my head off the wall. And he was wearing a floppy beanie hat, which I had never seen him do before. NOT HELPING. I CAN'T DO THIS AGAIN.
But I can't talk about that anymore. Just no.
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There was another occasion, some time in the middle or beginning of November I think, perhaps something I could almost say was an additional factor in the onset of my freak-out. But I'm sure the freak-out would have happened anyway. But it's understandable that this could certainly affected it...
I never have, and never will, have an issue with homosexuality. One of my good friends is gay, and I've never had a problem with it, and always support him. As far as I'm concerned, you can't choose who you fall in love with, and gender preference is no different to hair colour preference, height preference, nationality preference, etc.
But I personally never experienced any attraction of that sort to my own sex. No lesbian, bisexual, even bi-curious; I myself have and will always consider myself completely straight.
But hanging around with almost exclusively girls for 3 months straight, when I am definitely not used to that, well, I guess it's going to have some kind of effect on me... right...?
One girl in my class... She's not tomboyish, or to go polar opposite, she's not "overly affectionate" either by any means, and if she were male, she would not be the kind who would attract my attention.
But one night, about a month and a half ago, I was.......
She... Her face suddenly popped into my mind unbidden and unexpected..... at..... the.... culmination.... of a certain..... time.... when my.... mind.... was not.... able.... to make conscious decisions....
To say I was surprised would be putting it rather mildly. I had no idea where that image had come from, why it popped up... But I felt confident enough in my sexuality - somehow, God only knows how, or why, that is the one aspect of myself I didn't even think to question my confidence in - that it didn't worry me. It had happened, I wasn't entirely sure why, but it didn't mean anything, and I was okay with it. It could be considered "normal". It wasn't.... "wrong" for a straight woman to.... unexpectedly.... picture the face of another woman.
But of course, my mind is not the kind of mind to leave something like that alone, no matter what I consciously and self-assuredly and confidently decide, with no consideration or incentive to question. And so suddenly...
There were all these questions inside my head...
And questions lead to speculation... and some kind of weird, warped version of hypochondria, if you could call it that.
I am not sexually attracted to her. I know that. I don't know what I feel for her, it's not normal or familiar, but my mind labelled it "attraction". It confuses me. I never encountered that feeling before and never called it attraction. It's Not more than any attraction I felt before, it's certainly less, if I'm going to call it "attraction". But it makes me feel slightly ill, besides the confused, no matter how much I'm okay with homosexuality in other people. But not for me.
Ok ok. I know this doesn't make me a lesbian. Far from it. But it still leaves me feeling really confused...
I know all the young teenage magazines have their annual articles on these kind of things, and I remember reading enough of them to know that they say that it's "normal" for a girl to be attracted to another female but not be lesbian or bisexual. Something to do with changing friendships, or the unattainable.... or just subconscious curiosity, I don't know.
The rational part of my tries to theorise that ok, it's quite possible I feel drawn to her because she is humorous and always making people laugh.
Who the hell knows.
Whatever.
But this certainly isn't helping the helpless, boyless issue...
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And it's not just my depression over the lack of male romantic love in my life that's upsetting my head at the moment.
My brother is dealing with his Christmas exams in school at this stage.
He started off the school term well, and I though things were going to be ok...
But slowly, things are getting angry again.....
It's nowhere near as bad as it was this time... but these are just poxy little Christmas tests....
And this culmination of everything together.......
It's not making me do very well...
A week or two ago, I scared myself, while lying in bed trying to get to sleep. I had been a little upset that day, but I was trying to move past it, like I always do. My mind was wandering, and suddenly I found myself, somewhere in my mind, knotting a loop in a rope hanging from my bedroom ceiling and........
And the part that scared me the very most... was the adrenaline rush I felt when I thought about it. That terrified me. The voice inside my head screamed blue murder, and ever fibre in my being fought to change my mind's track to something completely different and positive; I believe that was when I started shoving false but desperately needed hopes about my cousin's wedding into ever corner of my mind. That adrenaline rush was not a good thing to think I felt.
Oh God.
And even thinking back about it... I can't. I'll be sick.
Right now, I can't let myself read any of my past blog entries. I'm too scared about the thoughts that might go into my head if I do, and of what might happen then.
God.
It's sickening.
I Am Thinking Positive. I have to think positive. Or I'll get sick.
xxx
