[Gerritsón]

So you have lived in Norway too?

[ursulabear]

Yep. Norway, Netherlands, Sweden. Sweden was my fave. Middelburg is such a pretty city though.

[Ann]

[rainbowdash]

It's hell in the sun here (at least in this bizarre weather) but in the shade/at night it's a verifiable heaven.
I love the summer weather, but the humidity kills me. Especially my hair.

[ursulabear]

be glad you don\'t have curly hair, regnbogen.

[rainbowdash]

My hair gets curly in the humidity... then I brush it and it gets just wavy, then if I brush it enough I can flatten it enough.

[Jordan~]

Me and my ex had an argument. This is just... ridiculous, the whole situation, like a cruel, cosmic joke. It was a dumb squabble about the Warcraft universe, of all things, superficially at least; but the argument itself was more the staging ground for underlying tensions that have been there for months. He says we've never had a good conversation; I don't retort because it strikes straight to my heart, but keep going with the charade of the subject, trying to mask what we both know behind the preposterous, trivial bickering.
I don't want to be talking about Warcraft. I lost interest in it a long time ago. But he's a closed book; he doesn't have conversations. The only way I can talk to him at all is by having this kind of facile argument about nothing. He blocks me when the facade deteriorates; I go for a smoke and, the illusion shattered, pour myself a rum and coke - how can I enjoy myself now, how can I stand to be awake for the next ten hours knowing I've hurt him, except by getting drunk so it doesn't last? He unblocks me some time later, I say to him that I don't know why he takes it personally. I always contradict him, he says: I'm just a contradictory person, I like finding things to disagree about, that's why we've never had a good conversation. Because I'm a bad person.
I want to say more, to defend myself, but he blocks me again. I want to tell him that I hate contradicting him, but it's the only time I ever have real contact with him, the only time he lets his guard down. I want to tell him that I'd never want to hurt his feelings, that I still care for him more than I would for any old acquaintance, that I want to be a friend to him, a shoulder to cry on, a troop to rally, someone to sympathise with him and hear him out and offer advice (but I can't, as he's blocked me).
And I want to tell him that I have no idea how he feels about me, how he views me, what our relationship is, because to so much as mention these things is anathema to him. Is it just me, or is he like this with everyone? Is he that isolated, that much of an island, or is it just that he hates me? I feel like he sees me as a dependant nuisance he feels morally obliged to tolerate because of his role in my life, at best; like I'm a leech, draining his spirit for the emotional comfort of his presence. That's the impression he gives, and he'd never say one way or the other. And it makes me feel like shit to think that that's what our relationship is. I'd rather we never knew eachother if that's the case, so that he could get on with his life and I could continue not getting on with mine. If the only way I can really know him is by provoking him, I wish he'd just say that he wants nothing to do with me so I can take the blow and stop bothering him.
What a load of self-pitying garbage. But he's the most important thing that's ever happened to me after my birth, the origin of most of what I am today. Part of me still loves him, I think, but not all of me anymore - I remember when I thought he loved me too with a kind of nostalgia, rather than a longing. But the instinct to protect him is still there, something of the feeling that I exist to make him happy remains in that I feel dismal when I make him anything but happy. And I'd gladly leave him alone if I knew that's what he wanted. And I'd tell him so, but he's still got me blocked; and by the time he's unblocked me I'll have been drunk and sober again and the moment will have passed and we'll go on like nothing's happened; he'll send me pictures of dogs and I'll say that they're cute, like he's a living StumbleUpon and I'm pressing 'I like it!'.
It's not as if I have anyone else to speak to, 99% of the time. Everyone has their own life and no time to listen to me in my absence of one. I don't blame them - I'm sure they'd be there for me if they knew how I felt, they were when it was a lot worse and I couldn't help but let them know, but now I want to be strong enough not to drag them into it, which is why I'm on the third rum and coke now, I guess.
At least I'm happy, having unburdened myself and left the baggage in this melodramatic heap of letters and drowned the difficult feelings; and tomorrow I'll probably be happy too, and not depressed. It's a shame I'll probably never send the message to him I've typed out, letting him know how I feel, asking him to tell me if I'm right or wrong.

[Weirdelves]

I know how you feel Jordy. People with whom you have romantic complications have the limitless ability to wrongfoot you, and make you doubt yourself. I had a similar experience recently when this guy I'd been sleeping with told me he thought I was 'very unstable' and instead of rejecting it with the knowledge that he approached life from a cold logical perspective whilst my approach was more based on emotion and human interaction so would obviously seem erratic to him, I got really freaked out and started doubting myself massively. I talked it through with my best friend and he set me straight, and now I feel as if I have much more clarity on the matter. Just don't forget yourself and your strengths, they're not always right.

[Jordan~]

I know, I know. I overthink and overfeel things terribly. I think things and then I feel about them, and I feel things and then I think about them. I know my strengths - I have boundless love and affection and support to give, the problem is that I want to give them all to someone who doesn't want them.
At Cambridge at least I could be sleeping around, but that's only a distraction at best. I get so much more from the idea that I'm satisfying someone I love than I do from the sensation itself. Maybe when my mum goes away I'll drink some more and listen to Have One On Me and sing along tearfully through, "Meanwhile, I will raise my own glass to how you made me fast and expendable, and I will drink to your excellent health and your cruelty. Will you have one on me? Helpless as a child when you held me in your arms, and I knew that no other could ever love me..."

[Weirdelves]

[Jordan~]

Yeah, that's pretty much how I feel. And more problematically, I have these two conflicting goals - I feel a real emotional need for a deep, loving relationship wth someone, yet I know from experience that that would spell disaster for my ambition of getting through Cambridge. When I was in love at school, nothing at all mattered to me except the relationship, I existed for him. So I just went to school to sleep. Since he lived in Canada, I'd stay up chatting to him till the early hours of the morning, lie in bed till my dad came to get me, go to school, find a warm utility closet and sleep there. I always had a friend in every class to say they hadn't seen me when I didn't show up. The same attitude would cost me big time at Cambridge, I'm afraid - I got by at school because my highers were a cakewalk for me, but presented with actual difficulty and real constant demands on my time, I couldn't get by with that kind of disregard for everything but the object of my love. Which worries me, because I feel like it means I'll have to wait until I'm about 25 before I get what I want emotionally.

[Weirdelves]

You don't have to be like that. There's every chance you'd meet someone who wasn't on the other side of the world and, to be honest, cared more about your wellbeing and you doing well in your course etc. Furthermore, if you honestly think that your absolute devotion to a loved one will always override everything else and cause you to never be able to function whatsoever, then you're more than likely to end up with someone who can show you these things and how to marry different aspects of your life, if you're willing to learn it. I don't think anyone could feasibly be stuck in the position you're in.

[Jordan~]

That's what I really want - someone like you describe. One of the primary things I want from a lover is an anchor, a source of the sense I lack. A balancing force against the wild flights of my psyche. To steal an image from Monkey and Bear, while I don't want to be a kite jerking tight at its tether, I'd rather be a kite being flown than a kite blowing off in a gale. I'm sure there is someone out there like that, too. It's just a matter of finding him. I guess I'm kind of on hiatus at the moment - I don't really want a relationship here, because if I get what I want out of it and I need to go to Cambridge a few months or a year into it, the pain of the separation would make what would already be difficult even moreso. Maybe when I get there I'll find the right man. Or one of the right men.
That's one of the things that most attracted me to my ex - he's so grounded, so realistic, so sensible, and he can normally talk me down. I could write at exhaustive and uninteresting length about the things that were wrong with that relationship, though. It really is like I'd been writing a novel about myself and I'd written in the most horrible relationship for me that I could imagine - the ideal so clearly visible, but for a few tiny, almost imperceptible flaws that would have gone unnoticed to almost anyone else, but that struck hard at psychological vulnerabilities I wasn't even aware I had.
At least I learnt a lot from it - about myself, and it led me to learn more about R. D. Laing, whose writing has influenced me tremendously.

[ursulabear]

I so understand you. Everybody I have ever loved has been the opposite of what I need.

[Weirdelves]

In every relationship it's like there's a saver and someone who needs to be saved. Massive generalization but at this age it tends to be true. Explains why I'm fairly grounded and always go out with people who generally have more than one diagnosed mental disorder

[ursulabear]

I only go out with people who can;t afford to get their mental disorders diagnosed.

[Jordan~]

Auuuugh my neighbours. The house opposite's had parties two nights in a row - I think they must have teenagers and the parents are away. They've just had an extension with patio doors built, and they all seem to be in there, and they've got the doors open and freakin' speakers outside, blasting out the Black Eyed Peas and other lukewarm musical diarrhoea. It's half two in the morning, for shit's sake, you inconsiderate seawards! I only went to bed at half eight, but god knows how I'm meant to sleep with them shrieking and ululating along about how they put their hands up in the air sometimes. They're on their trampoline, I hope one of them falls and breaks their neck. That'd shut 'em up.

[ursulabear]

Oh Jordie, You are too much!

[milkisobel]

[beverley]

I don't usually go to work until 2pm, but I'm working on the day shift right now and have to be at work at 6am every morning. I know plenty of people get up this early on a regular basis, but I don't think it should be legal This is an appropriate time to go to bed, not to start my day.