and that's why I puked on the vicar.

I can't believe how beautiful the weather's been lately! I was worried that it would be another washout, but instead I've been staggering about getting sunstroke and falling over. Not literally.

I spent the weekend at my vicar friend, TyTe's, house; which was absolutely lovely! He barbequed some shark for me and Gav out in the garden, and it was delicious. Absolutely amazing. I drank a few glasses of rosé, and then... well, I got rather drunk.

I've never been drunk before. It was very peculiar. There's a moment, when you're on a swing, when your stomach swoops and tingles. On a swing, it's amazing. Sitting on a chair, screwing your eyes closed and hoping it'll stop, it's not so fun. Seriously, why do people do this?!

Still, I'm glad that the first (and hopefully last) time I got drunk, I was in a safe environment with people I trust. I'm less glad that I threw up on the patio.

... in the downstairs toilet, Gav holding back my hair...

... in a plastic bucket in the morning...

... in the bathroom sink...

... in the upstairs toilet...

I didn't have the traditional hangover symptoms, just horrible, constant queasiness and throwing up. From 9pm on Saturday to about 3pm on the Sunday, I didn't feel safe. Thank GOD I got better just before I had to get on the train...

Aside from that though, great weekend!

I'm home now, with my lovely lovely family, and causing my beloved undue stress because I'm not in perfect health (in a different way).

--- CAUTION: GIRL STUFF FOLLOWING ---

Every time I move or have a lot of stress, my periods go haywire. When I moved to Plymouth I was on more or less constantly, and now I'm a couple of weeks late. Trauma. I mean, I'm not hugely worried, but I will feel better when I'm all sorted out, so I went to the doctor's today.

--- GIRL STUFF OVER ---

Sorry I've been updating so rarely; life moves so fast... hopefully I'll be a little more regular now!

Black and Gold

If the fish swam out of the ocean
and grew legs and they started walking
and the apes climbed down from the trees
and grew tall and they started talking

and the stars fell out of the sky
and my tears rolled into the ocean
now I'm looking for a reason why
you even set my world into motion

'cause if you're not really here
then the stars don't even matter
now I'm filled to the top with fear
but it's all just a bunch of matter
'cause if you're not really here
then I don't want to be either
I wanna be next to you
black and gold
black and gold
black and gold

I looked up into the night sky
and see a thousand eyes staring back
and all around these golden beacons
I see nothing but black

I feel a way of something beyond them
I don't see what I can feel
if vision is the only validation
then most of my life isn't real

'cause if you're not really here
then the stars don't even matter
now I'm filled to the top with fear
but it's all just a bunch of matter
'cause if you're not really here
then I don't want to be either
I wanna be next to you
black and gold
black and gold
black and gold

Listen to the song here

This song must have washed over me a thousand times. This kind usually does, to be honest, but today the lyrics finally managed to get through my expectations and smack me between the eyes. This is a much more eloquent version of what I've been saying for the past couple of weeks.

Thanks, Gav, for putting up with all my crying and miscellaneous assholery. You're an angel.

Morning sounds

I wrote this at the beginning of June. It was while my blog was deleted, or I would have posted it sooner...

It's late at night. The seagulls are playing outside my window, screaming at each other. My housemate's fucking some girl. Doesn't matter who, it's not about her. If that man could fuck a mirror he'd do it. There's a cat wailing at the pre-dawn chorus, and the gentle hum of my laptop. There are sounds.

The wind picks up, or maybe it's a car far off; either way it gets me thinking about leaving. I'm counting down the days until that fresh sea breeze blows me out of this ruin, this dead city. Dead to me anyway.

Nobody emails you at a quarter past four in the morning.

I look past my curtain to an inky-purple sky. Strange, that. The moment I turn my light off, I know it will change to a muddy streetlight orange. How can the same sky be orange and purple at the same time? Somewhere else it's blue, somewhere else it's grey. At this moment, somebody somewhere is watching the sun set. Or rise. Or just lying on their back listening to the stars sing.

My shelves are empty. The floor is still a mess, I still have clothes everywhere, but my books are gone from sight until I unpack properly. That might not be for months. The birds are going crazy now, singing with all the breath in their fragile feathered chests. Can they really sing with such joy and passion every single morning? Do they ever sleep in?

I sleep in when I can. Long past noon. Even when I wake up I don't move from my bed for hours, not if I can help it. I can't help feeling that if I had a dawn chorus to be part of, there'd be a reason to get up early.

But here, in the pre-dawn gloom, I hear the hurried pad of feet; somebody wants to get home quickly. And why not run? Waddle, flap, skip as much as you want. Run slowly and awkwardly if that's how you run. Who's going to see you?

How can I go to sleep when there's so much happening! I'll regret it tomorrow when I face the disappointed voice of the one man I never want to disappoint, but for now as the sky pales I like to be aware and awake again. It doesn't happen often. That's why I'm not succumbing to sleep; not yet.

While you're here, I'd like to recommend Girl Genius, an utterly fantastic gaslight fantasy comic that I've been absorbed in for the past few days. Or if you just want a highly addictive flash game, try this one out for size. They'll both be going up on my "interesting thing of the day" link list to the left, so don't forget to check that out if you've got time to kill.

Falling apart

Yes, hello, sorry. I need help. Um. Badly.

As many of you know I've been a Christian my whole life, and it's a huge huge part of who I am. But for the past year or so I've been feeling hugely distant from God. I lived in Plymouth for a year and I didn't really know anyone; I spent a lot of time alone, didn't go to church regularly. I'm so much happier in Cardiff but the root problem hasn't gone away like I hoped it would...

The reason I'm asking for help now is that it's affecting me more and more. I cry every day (literally EVERY DAY), I just can't seem to get things together. I've been rubbish at just getting stuff DONE. There's loads of phone calls to make and emails to send and an essay to write and a flat that needs tidying and people to get back in touch with... and I don't feel able to do any of it. I feel like my support's been cut out from under me. God kept me going through all the hardest times in my life, so to have that gone leaves me with no coping mechanism. I could go all hard and cold and keep the pain out by building a wall around my heart but I don't want to, I really don't want to!

Even today I was on a bike ride and I got off and walked because I felt like I didn't deserve to have it easy. I decided I was pretty much the crappest person alive and that God could never love me, that nobody could ever love me. Then when we reached a main road I considered just not hitting the brakes and seeing if getting hit by a car would help.

Yeah, I told you I was in a pretty bad way...

Don't worry, I'm not suicidal. Never have been. I just wondered if getting bashed up and waking up in hospital would make things better.

I've tried to tell people about how I'm feeling. My boyfriend has been an absolute pillar of strength, but it can't just be on him. I'm planning to go see TyTe as well; and I've emailed a Christian counselling service in the area, and I'll be going home soon...

Thanks for reading this far, if you did, and if you didn't you won't know that I'm calling you a smelly bumhole.

Entropy and rain

Today, it rained. I walked. Computer. Laminater. Velcro. Posters. Guillotine. Database, database, database...

Still it rained. I walked, waited, watched My Fair Lady. I read.

I read this. Read it. You'll like it. Ben probably already knows it backwards.

I don't know enough to stop my boyfriend having panic attacks. Hell, I can't stop MYSELF having panic attacks: the string, fluff, and optimism that I'm made of seems to fall further apart every day. Entropy. Hah.

He can reverse it of course. In theory, He does. By His wounds we are healed. But still, my life is a bit of a shambles.

I need to retake a module to get into UWIC like I hoped. I need to submit an essay. A really long, big, difficult essay - you know I have trouble with them at the best of times. While holding down a 9 to 5 job.

I'm halfway through my overdraft... getting paid tomorrow though, hooray! And I'm seeing a very special friend soon! And I'm going home soon after that.

And it rains.

Anna-versary.

Can you believe it's been three years and five days TO THE VERY DAY since I started writing this blog? Neither can I. It started as a continuation of the diary I kept and showed to my friends at school. The diary was a rough parody of Cassie Claire's Very Secret Lord of the Rings diaries, (well worth a read if you want my opinion) and was intended to amuse.

Well, I kept the diary for about 150 days before it became private, and I needed something to fill the void. I needed a way to get my thoughts and feelings out there into the Big Wide World, maybe making somebody smile along the way, and this blog was it. The title (the result of my complete inability to think of anything good) has come to mean a lot to me, as have the years of thoughts and feelings contained within.

So to honour this occasion, an anniversary that means very little to anyone but me, here are three of my favourite posts.

(Wow. Looking through my old posts has given me the shock realisation that I used to be funny. What happened to that?)

Freaky-ass fishmonsters

Multiverse

Bikini-related humiliation