You ever have one of those moments where you feel like a heartless bitch monster of death and full of righteous indignation at the same time? Oh (digs fingers into scalp and ignores the pious look of the cat whom I've disturbed with my groan) what the fuck am I going to do? My friend, the male nun (lives in a nunnery, with nuns and does nun things therefore he IS a nun) is doing charity work in Eastern Europe in the summer and so his mum is doing fund raising for him. I've already donated £50 (which is a lot considering I'm a student with no job and the SASS bastards won't even give me my bloody travel expenses back), but his mum called looking for me tonight, to ask me to help out with a sponsored bag-packing day in the local supermarket, and I have to have an answer for her in under 12 hours (anymore and I'm being rude says my mum). Now, I know the morally right thing to do would be to selflessly offer my time to help my friend in his charity work, but I have a few reasons for being pissed off at this proposal.

1. His mum put strong emphasis on me being one of his dearest friends, and like a daughter to her. However, I've not seen the boy for nearly a year, and when we did briefly meet up it was horribly uncomfortable, and I've been told his mother feels I am being a stuck up cow for 'ignoring' him. I honestly can't help it if he only visits during exam time! Not only is she saying one thing to me and other to everyone else, she has asked no one else in his circle of friends for help. I can't help but feeling this is some kind of punishment for having a life that doesn't revolve round her son.

2. The boy has been bragging for years about how he had over £2000 in his bank account because he's much better at saving than scatter-brained people like moi. He needs £500 for this trip, can't help but feeling he can do it under his own steam, instead of making me dip into my overdraft, much less spend a full day packing bags for people who don't want me touching their food.

3. Much as I hate to say it, there are better charities I'd rather donate to. NSPCC, WWF, Amnesty International, Womansaid - they are the ones I most like to help out, and I want to do volunteer work for Childline, as I was helped by them and know the work they do really makes a difference. The boy and the Christian lot are going to spend the summer making ONE football pitch, without tarmac or goal posts. Basically they are weeding a field.

4. I really get angry when people try to emotionally blackmail me. All this "like a sister/daughter" crap pisses me off and makes me feel guilty at the same time. Since I'm the only friend (who also happens to be the only one without a grant) who is being pressured for money and time, I can't help feeling I'm being taken for a ride.

5. I'm not Christian, fair enough if you want to follow a religion, but I'm uncomfortable giving money to any religious organization, I don't want to be seen publicly to work for a cause I simply don't believe in. I grew up Catholic and I rejected it. I know and respect that fact that religion can be a great force for good, but I would appreciate people accepting my belief system as I do for theirs.

Last but not least - IT'S ON MY FUCKING BIRTHDAY! This woman who I'm like a daughter to, she's known me since I was 3 and she conveniently forgets my birthday is on the 30th of June? For the first time in years my birthday promises to be something exciting. My uni friends have something planned for me, all I know is I need to bring money for a train ticket, a change of clothes, a camera and I shouldn't expect to be home till sometime in July. I'm really looking forward to it, and selfish as is may be, I don't want to give that up to spend 12 hours packing up shopping.


Oh.... ooooohhhhh. What the hell do I do? Do I say "No, birthday, sorry."? Or do I be a good friend and help him raise the money for the trip? Bollocks bollocks bollocks BOLLOCKS! I hate feeling like a guilt-ridden yet heartless bitch-monster of death. Advice will be greatly appreciated.

So, exams are awful, as we all know. Normally, you'd think my inability to study would make things worse, but I can say now to all you uni people, don't stress out, don't bury yourself under books so pretentious you need a dictionary to understand every word. Stay up to about midnight, do a bit and sprawl infront of the TV with the discovery channel on. Worked for me, Terry Jones saved me in Journalism Theory yesterday thanks to his program on the history of sex, I managed to write a whole essay on how print fueled the French Revolution, and mention the pornography that undermined the upper classes. Now, I remember FUCK ALL from the year of lectures from the big B, as soon as a Python says something educational it stays in the student mind forever. I can't remember a thing from Politics last year, but I remember Michael Palin's face when he got hit with that stick during meditation, mathematics has gone from my mind forever, but I Know everything the Romans did for us thanks to 'The Life of Brian'. Universities should ask the Pythons to read for audio books of academic work, I swear we'd be the most intelligent nation on the planet, but of course no one takes the idea seriously. The lecturers are too proud to admit they're dull, and the students I know are too busy with... stuff. Ah well, I appreciate the help of the Pythons, especially Terry Jones in this instance, and say THANK YOU!

Now I'm furious! I have told my so called friends that there are four things to avoid with me. 1. Don't meddle with my affairs, work or possessions. 2. Don't bring me into a house with a ouija board. 3. Never try or let anyone attempt to hypnotize me and 4. NEVER try and set me up with someone. Today, they came over without an invitation and interrupted my studying, brought a ouija board and tried to set me up with a guy who was utterly repulsive (not physically, but his personality was disgusting - smug, self-satisfied, utterly condescending to me and my writing/art and sure that women would drop at his feet because of his good looks) and kept trying to convince me to let him hypnotize me as he was an 'expert' on the subject (as well the paranormal, history, and any number of other subjects which I could disprove within ten seconds of talking to him). It's bad enough that they go against my express wishes, but they bring something that terrifies me in to MY house, and they bring over a complete stranger and tell him we'd be perfect together. They don't know me at all. Some women can fall for complete bastards, but I flatter myself I have more sense than that. I need someone strong, intelligent, passionate and independent, not a smarmy, desperate charlatan who wants to be adored and fawned over by everyone he meets. Sigh, I know I upset my friends tonight when I couldn't take it anymore, but I've gone passed caring. I've got my exams in 3 days time and I really don't need this crap.

Now I'm pissed off. I hate it when people come round uninvited. I hate it when people touch my stuff without my permission and I HATE it when people make changes to my things without so much as a by your leave. Now I've lost half my songs, most of my movies and ALL of my audiobooks on my ipod. I am not impressed, I just left the room for a minute and then it's all screwed up. Grr, I know it's not a major catastrophe or anything, but these people never stop meddling, with my possessions, with my art, with my love like, as well as making fun of me for being afraid of ouiji boards and my absolute refusal to let anyone try and hypnotise me. Grrr, I wish they would just leave me alone.

So it turns out I won a free photo-shoot. Well.... Um........ Weird. I've never been chosen for anything like that before. Writing competitions and the occasional art contest, but this is... very odd. To think I entered on the spur of the moment when I was sick of being pissed off at academic drivel. This is a great advert for the success of procrastination (see Ann, it's all good). Hmm, I had to check I still wasn't vaguely hungover. Better check again.

Well, it's easter break, two weeks before plunging headlong into revision for exams in may. Then after exams, 4 months to get my final draft of the novel ready for publication. It's odd, I'm broke, I handed in an essay late for the first time in my life, my love-life is non-existent and my room is a tip, but I can't stop smiling. There's been nothing out of the ordinary happening, but I have such an air of contentment. I spent four hours sitting at my window blowing bubbles over the back garden and I just couldn't stop smiling. I even started laughing for no reason at all. It's not love, I have no-one to be in love with (except perhaps one of my novel characters, but I've always been a bit in love with her - ever since I dreamed her up when I was 6), so what is this feeling? Perhaps it's because I'm living out my natural semi-nocturnal state, perhaps it's because I'm free of the tension of the past. There's just a lingering sense of freedom, soft and gentle that holds sway over my whole being. I've begun to look, I mean really look, at everything from the window of my everyday bus route. There was the man in the tuxedo chomping down on one of those giant rainbow lollipops you only seem to get a fun-fairs. an old lady has spent the last week getting her window-boxes ready for summer, but her cat keeps going to sleep in them or eating the leaves off the flowers. It's old lady 3 cat 7 by my scoring. There's a street near Ibrox where the light always turns the shop fronts gold, and everything looks like it could come off one of those old fashioned biscuit tins you get at Christmas times (for nostalgic value). There was a little boy with a new puppy running up and down the park, that dog amazing paws, it's gonna be huge. There was a guy on the other bus reading poetry to his girlfriend, I heard a few snatches at the traffic lights as both buses had open windows,it sounded pretty good. And there was an old man reading Roald Dalh to his grandchildren, and he did the funny voices, it doesn't work without the funny voices. Someone has a new bike, at least, the old black one always tied up by the library has a new one (red) in its place. I liked the old one better, (black with stars painted round the mudguards) but I guess it was past its time. Hmm, well I won't see that route for two weeks, so I wonder how much it will have changed by the time I get back to the routine? I'm going to work flat out on my writing for the first week then give revision my all for the second. I want to do well in these exams so I get my first choices next year. Ah well, I guess that's it for now.

Ugh, there's a reason I only write poetry when I'm drunk. Help me out people, I don't know which one to enter.

Funeral Shoes

A shoe has lain in the cemetery for years
It’s partner abandoned it,
save a broken heel lodged in a drain
just before the exit.
The owner had obviously never been to a funeral before.
If she had,
She would know stiletto heels,
no matter how fashionable
how expensive
how damn fabulous
are not suitable for a rainy day by a grave.
Not in a city where cemeteries are squashed in,
the city sprawls out and the past shoved aside
She had to stand while the preacher said his bit
Those heels,
shiny and new
pierced the soil,
sliding into a strangers rest.
She must have run,
leaving one of those precious, shining shoes,
stuck in the mud,
Had she tripped in the drain?
Or had she run straight on running
when the fabulous silver heel
(the one she and the designer swooned over)
had snapped off,
fixed itself in the gutter?
The shoes are almost a decade behind fashion now.
Too bad.
A lot of money.
And they would have come back in style,
if she had waited long enough.



Fairy Godmother’s Revolt

Today we march,
Put down your wands.
Chuck the frog princes back in the ponds.

We’re sick of microsoft
Of the unisex uniform
Of the deputy-sub-assistant-manager’s scorn.

We’ve had enough
Permission slip here safety reg there,
No time for Cinderella’s hair.

If isn’t fair
Health and Safety took our mice
Bosses slash the budget on the roll of a dice.

Who let’s Disney do these crappie sequels?
Tinkering with our classic fables!
No more bloody princess league tables!

So come on girls,
We’ve had enough
Let’s see how these bastards like it tough!



The Unicorn

Alone.
You wander the forests of the world,
Shining in the dark
So loved.
You wander through dead people,
Dead cities
and even deader deities.
You came from Africa a powerful grey beast
Travelled through India a gargantuan
turned east and took scales
west and tried the wolf’s skin
before you met the deer and the horses.
Glimmering in the darkness.
Star-like,
with a single spiral of silver
or blood red
Reaching for heaven.
Always loved.
You wander on
Past us
Past our cities
And our Gods
Always
Alone.



The Half Dead Piano

3am I stand at your side
Listening to the strains
Of your half dead piano.
All the notes are lower
deeper
richer.
And I’m sure
Concert pianists don’t swear every two minutes.
Still I like it better.
Too see you smile
and laugh
and blush at applause.
Better than musicians who sneer at their fans,
or a soulless CD.
A unique imperfect moment,
That brings you,
my friend,
to me.



Monsters

Kept in little glass jars
On neat labelled shelves.
A host of pickled monsters
Held and displayed for the public.
Once wise men coveted these creatures.
They were a treasure,
giving up their secrets to the chosen few.
Before they were unknown,
hated
and feared.
And now there is something else for them.
For the mermaid
and the cyclops
and the the one with four legs
two heads
the one with no heart.
They’re just little babies
dead in glass wombs.
While we paying tourists
wander their tomb.



Untitled

I miss you.
I don’t know who you are,
no idea where.
I don’t even know when I started missing you.
It’s an odd feeling.
A gnawing kind of hollowness
right in the centre.
Not the head or the heart or the gut
but touching
tugging at all three.
It gets behind my eyes
and smoulders cold behind my sight.
I wonder if you’re somewhere
near or far?
Would I know you
if you passed me by?
Would you know me?
Whoever,
where-ever,
whatever you are,
be happy.
Live to the fullest
so when we do meet
I’ll know
you were something worth missing.



Bloodless

Cold
cold
shivering.
An iron glove has my heart,
squeezing it till I’m sure
it will snap.
Iron nails buried deep in my lungs,
rusting as they pin me shut.
An ocean of blood trails my shadow
Blood, blood everywhere
but not a drop to breathe.
Fingers to the wound.
Pale digits tremble
slicked with blood.
Cold.
Eyes flooded,
the ocean pooling round my tiny feet.
Can’t stop.
Can’t drown.
Don’t stop.
Can’t breathe!
The claws grasp again
choking the last drops.
Can’t see,
Can’t move.
Don’t drown!
Don’t drown!
Don’t fall...
Caught
warm arms.
Saved.
“Don’t drown...”
Years flow.
So pale, they say
So pale.
Bloodless.
But I never did drown.



Snowfall

Dancing softly down,
when we’re at our worse
brilliant on the blackened sky.
Softly, gently
Sparkling over grey earth.
I reach up,
tiptoes
smiling as it lands feather kisses on my skin.
Don’t worry - it whispers
See, the world can change.

Notebook found by a very nice old Irish man called Stephan (who coincidently I met on a bus), who said he bits of my handwriting he could make out were good, and a young lady like me shouldn't swear so much. Also gave me his special singing potion, and advised if that didn't work to just try whiskey, as it makes everybody sing. Murderous rampage is now averted, return to your normal lives. PS purse still not found, but have my precious notebook so couldn't care less.

I though the loss of my purse was annoying. But that was easily coped with, my notebook being gone on the other hand (the most recent one, the ONLY one that isn't backed up because of the fiasco of getting new computers in the house) can only be dealt with with a special mixture of a complete nervous breakdown and murderous fury. My phone number is inside the front cover, so someone should get in touch. At least, that's what I'm telling myself while frantically turning my entire house upside down looking for the damn thing. If however they don't, and I find anything anywhere that resembles my work it will mean all out fucking WAR! I was prepared to take legal action when someone stole a short story of mine, but this is my novel. One of my three 'heart' novels. I will go to the ends of the earth for revenge if someone tries to pass it off as their own. So, if anyone has it, this counts as a warning. Do not steal my work (or the work of any artist)! Because if I WILL find you, oh yes, and I will personally rip you to shreds, tear your heart out and keep your head on a spike to warn off other would-be thieves. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

Next week is the week! After all this time saving up, I'll finally get my shiny new 13inch Macbook. Then I'l be able to type long into the night (great considering I'm nocturnal) without disturbing anyone else in the house. I won't have to put up with the PC's in Uni, I won't have to stop halfway through a peice of writing because someone else needs the computer for thier work. And I'll have money again, for things like food and books. Oh god how I've missed that bookshop smell of paper, oak and coffee. I'll be able to pay back Debs for all the food she's bought me to keep me from starvation, I should take her to Ichibana or the Frankenstein bar or Cafe Mao. And I should be able to push the boat out for Dad's 50th. Though my plan to get him a fifty year old whisky died pretty quick. I couldn't even afford a shot. Hmm, when I get the macbook I will use it's superior mac-technology to find him a present.

I'm under the strong impression my brain doesn't actually like me. Aside from technique block, which as I discussed earlier, is a bitch, it sometimes cuts out altogether, usually at the most embarrassing times possible. Today for example, I was so looking forward to the authors reading at 5pm. A fantasy writer, right up my street. Then, when he was reading from a particulary grusome extract (which incidently was excellently written) my right hand goes numb. Oh God. Then I feel the right side of my face go numb. Ooooohh God...... For those not familiar with how my brain malfunctions, before I get a migrane, my right hand, right side of my face, and the entire right side of my body goes numb. I reached into my bag for migraleve. None there. I'd goven it to Owen (my brother) and he hadn't given it back. Ooooooooooooohhhhhhhh God.... Then, from out of nowhere, it was like a lightning bolt had struck the inside of my skull. The pain was unbearable. This little jolt sometimes happens as some sort of internal early warning system, then there is calm for a few hours and then the migrane fully kicks in. But it is so intense it physically knocks me back, and I pass out. As I did today, at the most embaressing moment, infront of my peers, and my tutors, and the author. Ooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh God! I haven't been this embarressed since the same thing happened in High School. It's official, my brain hates me and wants me to suffer. But I have a plan for revenge, involving a large bottle of some insanely alcholic booze to kill off the offending brain cells. Take that you bastard brain!

I think I know what my old drama teacher was talking about when she told us about true friendship. Not the same as being in love, but damn close. Like love and friendship are two sides of the same coin (or 'the same magic') This weekend I stayed with Debs and I haven't been so carefree in a long time. She's introduced me to sushi and the music of Ludovico Einaudi, though I like it better on her half-dead piano. We went to her local pub and had red wine at a friend's house, we stayed up all night watching movies and she played the piano for me. I love hearing people play music, those moments are precious and unique. There aren't enough of them She even made me CDs to help me writing. She told me what it was like to be musically minded, apparently music is always in patterns. I'm teaching her to draw, and now trust her with my stories (a big deal for me, I'm overly protective of my writing). She's going to create theme music for my characters. I can't remember when I've laughed so much, I suppose when I was little, but you'll laugh at anything as a child. It made me realise how unhappy I was with my old friends. They ignore me and make me feel guilty for not getting drunk and slavering over men twice my age. I've finally cut all ties from them, and it feels like dropping an iron weight from my heart. I'm passed caring about how angry they are to lose thier glorified baby-sitter. I want real friends. I want real love. I want to stand next to a piano at 3am an hear amzing people make it sing. I want to talk about my violet skies and starry snow without being made to feel like an outcast.... I want my life as my own. Free and happy.

Writer's block, as anyone will tell you, is a bitch. But what is worse, much worse, is technique block. Writer's block is when you have no ideas, nothing, nada, zip , zilch. This personally only happens to me when I have to do academic work. Technique block is far more frustrating. I only ever get it with creative writing, the writing I want to do and would, if I could, spend all my time doing. It happens thusly - a brilliant idea pops up in the brain, in my case it's usually scenes that play out in my minds eye. In the mind, it's all perfect, everything is in place, the characters say the right things, thier movements boldster everything, the setting is beautiful and the eyes of characters glimmer with strength, burn with rage, smolder with passion. Then my hand cannnot keep up with my brain, and what appears on the paper is utter shit. Everything that was so perfect falls to bits and looks pathetic when read back. Ugh, it is a nightmare, a complete and total nightmare, worse than the one about machinegun-beaked penguins I had when I was little. Any ideas for curing this problem would be greatly appreciated.

Just so everyone knows, migraines suck. It's like having someone force red hot spears through your eyes and inject mercury into ever crevice of the brain. They strike without warning and ruin your whole day, sometimes even three days in my case. And of course, the pain isn't enough, there just has to be nausea too, because it clearly isn't horrible enough. For some reason my right hand and right side of my face (lips in particular) go completely numb, so it feels like having a damn stroke. Worse, I'm right handed, so I can't even write or draw because of it. And the pounding, it feels like some demon is trying to break my skull open from the inside. God, it's hell. Right, just needed a rant about that.

Something that never ceases to amaze me about my oldest friends is there insistance that I must be a pining, miserable creature because I am single.

I overheard them talking about me the other night (after descending on my house unannouced and interuptting the most productive writing session in 4 months), saying I must be so jealous of them as they have boyfriends and I don't. It was to this fact they attributed my recent detatchment to them, and my annoyence whenever they dropped in. Other aspects of the conversation involved how I pathetic I am for spending my money on books and art supplies rather than on alcohol, how stupid I was to prefer 'Pan's Labyrinth' to 'Borat' just to try and prove my intelligence and other such nonsence.

Firstly, I am not the downcast little bookworm they presume I am. My preference in music, films, books, theatre etc, is not because I'm trying to prove anything to anyone. I genuinely enjoy them, if I didn't I wouldn't waste my time on them. The reason I do not spend all my money on alcohol because I have good quality stuff in the house already. If I'm stressed out a shot of fine wiskey or a slosh of vodka with irn-bru helps settle my nerves, but I do not, like my peers drink to get drunk. Not that I could, every time I am ever dragged off to a club with them I drink twice as much and stay sober, ending up as a baby sitter trying to get them home without them killing themselves. Why bother spending money on a night out I don't want if I'm just going to feel like an 800 year old nanny and never be thanked for my efforts to keep them safe?

But more important than their judgements on my leisure time, it their constant scheming to get me paired up. "Why should I get a man?" I asked them. I already have precious little time to myself as it is, work is a pain, university growing more taxing as we wander into subjects in which I have little interest, with my mother ill she needs someone to look after her, and on top of that I have old friends dropping in whenever they feel like it because they assume I have no life. A boyfriend on top of that would mean I would never get to write at all... unless I suppose I found someone like Adrian, who never seemed to mind me scribbling away at all hours. But now I'm wavering. They told me I had to have a man 'just, cause, you do.' It's not as if women need men to provide for them, in this day and age we are independant, not 'goods and chattles.' I told them that as I am happy with my lonely little life, I saw no need to give up any of it to a partner unless I was in love. I don't think they believe in love, and they were quick to remind me of how disasterous love had been for me. But the old adage is true, tis better to have loved and lost. While they skip from one person to the next, they never seem to have the passion, the sheer bliss that I had with Adrian. True, I suffered for it in the end, and immediately after I wished none of it had happened, but with time I can compare it with what I see of thier lives, and I would not like to swap. I spent time in the arms of someone I truely loved, not jumping from bed to bed in a whirl of hormones and desperation not to be alone. Breezing along, they never feel heartache, but they will never feel love, and I'll gladly risk the former to attain the latter.

Well, I should draw this rant to a close, I suppose I just thank god or whoever may be up there for Debs and her friends, who believe me when I tell them the truth, and have the good grace to call before dropping in to judge my lifestyle as a failure.

I got rid of my stalkers! Yay! All thanks to the glory of metal, and Bob Dylan. Discovered quite by accident when I had 'Hallowed by thy name in my head' and was singing it without realsing it again. It drove two of them away before I had to even look at the latest poem about how everyone in the world hates their hair. Thank god, now I'm much more cheerful and creatively productive. I'm even (shock horror) procrastinating less (slightly).

Time for an angry rant! Uni gives me such long word limits for subjects so boring I'd rather gouge my own eyes out than do the work yet give limits in the hundreds for creative writing! I have to find another 700 words for my damn journalism theory essay, but I had to cut more than double that from my last short story. I can't think of anything else damn it! I've done my task in a tight, concise way (which is surely the point of journalism), anything else I add will be rambling and stupid to read. And the fucking library has absolutely nothing realting to my question, so I had to fork out another £40 for books I don't want and bore me to tears. Sigh, I'm really more of a practical writer than an academic. Well, off to bang my head against the wall till my brian starts working again. Or at least until I find something else to distract me.

Do all artists have this dilema? I'm happily working on my writing and theatrical work, and making great headway. But, in the process, I've had to put my friend to one side. I fear she is heading for heartbreak, but as she rufuses to listen to me, I can't help her. Still, is it right to abandon someone just because they're being so bloody pigheaded? At the same time, I don't have time for my charity work anymore because I write everynight till about 2am. I can't be in the Childline call centre or working for Amnesty internation right now. I've increased my financial donation (small as it is coming from a student), but I still feel guilty. Am I selfish to go after the arts? But then, if I didn't I'd be so miserable I'd be no help to anyone. And when (when, not if, I'm thinking positively) I make it, I'll be in a better position to do good work. Oh, damn it. Whether to help save others or save myself? What's better? What's right? I suppose it doesn't really matter, it's not as if I could ever stop, I need it to survive. If I continue moaning I'll just turn into a whiny little emo kid. Jesus, that's awful. Stopping now.

My friend Debs, more pissed off at my ex than me, has decided to turn me into a 'flirting machine'. Apparently the first lesson will be 'how to jump on a guy you like'. It's hard to diswade her when she gets and idea in her head, I hope something will distract her soon. True, I trust her more than my other friends, but I'm still so damn picky I don't think she'll succeed in her mission.

Besides, I need time alone after Adrian. I was an idiot, and as I'm not often moronic it'll take a while to adjust. I thought I was in love, that's hard to bounce back from. Anyway, I've never been the type to jump on an attractive stranger. I like to know if I could love them before I even consider going to bed with them.

Oh well, she said she's discuss her masterplan over lunch, her treat. So at least (in my present dire financial state), I don't have to worry about food.

It's so odd. In my life normally I meet people, have thier friendship for a while and move on. I've lost touch with so many friends and never given it a second thought. Now, I'm trying to detatch myself from two friends, and I feel like I've lost part of my soul.

I'm sick of being the one they come to as a last resort, the one they expect to carry them home when their drunk or comfort them when they break up with thier boyfriend yet again. They forget me when they either get a drink in thier hand or a man in their bed. To be honest, if they can't appreicate how much I care about them I don't think they deserve me. So why can't I just break it and carry on like I did with all the others? Hell, I haven't felt like this since I had to leave Adrian behind.

They have whole new lives, lives that I do NOT want! I don't want to crawl home at three in the morning, drunk and losing all my dignity. I don't want to settle for the first guy to come along, even when I know he doesn't love. I don't want to settle for anything, and the sad truth is, they're holding me down.

They take and take and never show any warmth to me anymore. I wish I could forget how it used to be. I wish they...well, I don't know. Do I wish they hadn't changed? Or where they always like this and I just didn't notice? Is it the new vastness of the world that is open to me that had changed my view of them? I can't understand anyone who doesn't strive for the things they want. Where has their passion gone? What happened to all their dreams? Or did they never have any, did I give them dreams to make it easier on myself?

They didn't even know when I was broken hearted over Adrian. They always interrupt my writing, telling me to join in with them, trying to set me up with guys or getting me absolutely legless. Can't they understand how much my writing means to me? They used to, I'm sure of it. Now, I think they have labled me their sensible friend, who can never have any other role than to care for them.

When I'm with them, I feel so lonely. All I want to do is run away. I want to scream at them. I want to tell them how moronic they look when their drunk, how cruel they are to me (they never remember in the morning). I want to tell one how she has settled in a passionless relationship just because it's easier, and the other how her boyfriend told me he didn't love her, and would leave her when something better came along. I want to scream at them! I want to wipe those smug smiles off their faces as they tell me I'm so sulky and dull these days! I want them to know what they're doing to me. I want to ask them why they won't believe me when I tell them their new friend felt it was right to throw me against a wall and try to beat me to a pulp? Why take this newcomers side when I would have gladly given my life for them if they were ever in a fraction of the danger I was in?

I'm angry at myself more than anything else. I'm angry at my silence, then I'm ashamed at my desire to get back at them. I hate that I can't just move on, and then I hate them for always calling or turning up, all smiles, when I only feel the deepest sadness when they're around me. I never used to hate like this. I forgave everything, this rage is new and unwelcome. I want them to leave me alone. They're only using me as an anchor, because they're scared of their new lives, just like everyone at this stage of thier lives. They need at least one person to stay still. I won't be that person for them, but why am I the one who feels set adrift?

I wonder if one day, they'll turn around and realise I've gone? Will something click? Will they see I've been avoiding them at every opportunity? Could they ever think that perhaps they way they treated me could have been wrong? Or will they turn up crying on my door again, expecting me to welcome them and confort them when the truth about their choices catches up with them? And what will I do? Before, i would have taken them in any time. Now, I have no choice. For my writing, for my dreams, for the life I want, I will have to shut the door to them. I only hope they will forgive me.

I´m glad I didn´t give in. All the time I was in France I was so worried about meeting Adrian again. And as I grew more annoyed at my traveling compainions I came so close to calling him up. At least (I thought to myself) he would appreciate the art, the beautiful unicorn tapestries, and the Palace of Versailles (on a side note,I finally got in to the Palace Opera, it was absolutely breathtaking. I´ve dreamt of being on it´s stage every night since I saw it). My friends spent most of their time complaining that nobody would speak to them in english and continually being annoyed at me for eating proper food instead of going to the nearest fast food chain. It was a little sad having to go to all the wonderful places alone (Versaille Adrian and I had talked of visiting together many times) but at least I got the time and the peace to appreciate them.

Now I´m in Spain, I feel released. I´ve learned that all I can do is go forward. My friends and I have simply grown to different, so it´s for the best we will go our seperate ways on our return to Scotland.

As for Adrian, I wrote him a letter, explaining that I forgave him, but that we can never had what we did in the past, and wished him a happy future. I posted it early this morning, and he should get it before I arrive home. I hope he will understand and move on after that.

I´m taking a bus into Figueres tommorow to go and see the Dali museam. I can´t wait. Dali has always been one of my favourite artists. My parents were there yesterday, and thoughfully booked me a seat at a showing of Rocky Horror before they started their journey south. I think they felt for me when I told them about seeing Adrian again. On a positive note, since breaking up with Adrian, my parents have given me a lot more freedom. I don´t feel like I have to do everything they planned for me when I was a child.

I suppose this is the start of something better.