More thoughts on Relationships

EDIT: While I've been writing this I notice there's a lot of anger, tears and resentment coming out. I guess it had to come out at some point. This is kind of ... intimate "Natalie needing to document these thoughts somewhere" writing, right here. It's not really for anybody else and while you could argue "well this is on the public space of the www" I really don't see why I have to justify myself to you, dear reader, because this blog? This blog is my private blog. If you're nosy, feel free to read it. But don't you dare get offended by what I've said here. These are things which still hurt and are very raw.

Obviously, I'm single - but I still think about 'the next relationship' that I'll fall into and ultimately, I always come up against the same set of bricks that build themselves up into a wall.

Firstly, even in the short space of eleven months, I've grown far too attached to doing my own thing, in my own space, spending my time alone. I can extend myself for the people who I feel deserve my time and attention and more importantly, I can choose when to do this. When I was in a relationship, I felt pressured to 'look after' him. He was pathetic; he was incapable of getting breakfast for himself or catching a train, or even holding a real conversation with me. I can't stomach people who aren't able to stand on their own two feet and I don't understand why the majority of men are capable of doing this ... until they have a woman to do it for them.

Here, the thought of being in a relationship where it's both necessary and compulsory to spend time together turns my stomach. I can't seem to find enough time to spend with my family, my sister, my (decent) housemate, friends both old, and new. I relish the precious two hours in which I speak to Willow before she goes to school. Spending time with a partner? No. No way.

Secondly, sex. I hate how men always have this expectation for sex. I don't particularly enjoy 'it' - I can't describe the sickening pit-of-the-stomach fear I get, even if it's been safe, even if it was fooling around and nothing much ever happened; the fear of pregnancy. A lot of people say that they suffer from paranoia. My paranoia is crippling ordinarily, but I have, on a number of occasions, worried myself so sick that my period came a whole week late. Worried myself into an insomnia that lasted three days. Worried worse when my period *did* come, because it was light and I thought I was only spotting. I wasn't, it came full force the next morning. I dislike sex, no, dare I say - I hate sex. I'm disinclined to partake in it. The lack of it ruins relationships so in effect you have to be having it if you want your relationship to last. I new the lack of sex was killing our bond, but I struggled to kiss him towards the end. I can't love somebody that way after not having seen him for months, if he never loved me back during the times in between.

Thirdly, I hate how dependant being in a relationship made me. I think I'm slowly learning that above all else, I'm my own person - but when I was in a relationship I expected him to look after me as much as I did him, so when he didn't, I felt very cheated. I hated how he would spend so much time with his female friends, but not me. I hate even now - that he comes up to Manchester so often, but when he was with me, it was such a 'chore'.

They say that it is always the woman who ruins the relationship. To some extent I agree with this statement, but it is also the man who lays the foundations for this ruin. He is the one who ignores her, makes excuses for himself - in turn this makes her paranoid, nag at him, eat away at the relationship until there's nothing left between them at all.

When I broke up with him, it was a huge weight off my shoulders. When people asked me if I was ok, I really was - the only emotion I felt was relief. Naive little me thought that heart-break was supposed to feel like that tightening of the chest I used to get when I thought 'oh, what if our relationship ends one day?' - it was unthinkable, and the thought of it really hurt and I called that feeling 'heart-break'. But that's not it. I have learned heartbreak is the inability to love somebody as fully as you did the first time. Love opens you up completely and lays you vulnerable, and when that trusting bond is severed you quickly cobble together walls around the wound with whatever you have to hand. Paper, straw, bits of fabric. Eventually they'll harden and form a husk around it. Your heart isn't broken in a painful way, it's broken in an inefficient, inability-to-function properly, way. "If I never love anybody ever again" I'll say to myself "That's fine, because I don't need anybody else but me to be happy."

( I find a certain irony that this is a sentiment echoed by another one of my characters, Kiesl. I hope I find some catharsis in helping him resolve his own misery )

I know that has to be a lie, so minutes later I'll add "I don't care who I end up loving, just as long as they love me back just as much"

This statement makes me both content, but also incredibly sad. Right now I don't feel there is ever going to be anybody suited to me for that, because I am most happy when I'm in a close intimate friendship than I am a relationship. I used to think there ought to be no difference between the two, but ... clearly my ex thought differently and now I just feel like I was stupid and naive and wrong.

Finally, I've been thinking about all of this a lot ever since I read something, and I'm not going to say what it was because if this blog hasn't already made people think less of me, then the source of my 'epiphany' will damn me even further. But I recall a conversation I held with a close friend of mine while reading it and the statement rings truer now than it did then;

W: "are you enjoying your book?"
N: "yes, this is ... exactly what I needed to read."

And perhaps I'm being presumptuous, but I found common ground between my situation and what I read there and while it didn't provide me with an answer, it was a comfort. At the same time I'm aware that this kind of thing happens to everybody at some point in their lives (apart from perhaps the very, very fortunate) and it's probably why heartbreak is such a big focus in people's lives. I hate how this diminishes the importance of what's happened to me in everybody else's eyes

"Oh, she broke up with her boyfriend. I've divorced my husband/broken up five times before now/my lover died"

This is why I have kept this entirely to myself. It doesn't matter to you, my reader, but I've realised that this really has affected me more than I thought it had. I don't bitch or whine or do spiteful things to get back at my ex, but while I'm a much stronger person for having ended this relationships, in some ways I am very, very broken. And that's what hurts the most. The fact I'm damaged property now. Above all else,

I hate how he damaged me.

So basically the TL;DR version of this is that, while I've gotten over *him*, I don't miss him, or want him back in my life, and I haven't since day 1 post breakup, I haven't gotten over the damage that relationship has done to me emotionally and I don't think I ever will. In the real world people expect prospective partners to be 'just right' and not have any emotional baggage, and if they do, you keep it to yourself, thanks. Everyone has gone through it, or gone through worse, and if you can't handle what's happened to you, tough shit, you're in the reject pile sweetheart 'cos the real world doesn't care. Excuse me, I'm fragile and I got broken and there isn't any glue that can fix that. Normal people pick themselves up and get on with it. Drama-seeking attention whores go on about it indefinitely. I'll bury this piece of me and I won't say a word on it, hell, I'll forget it's even there most of the time, but just remember that beneath every smile, every gesture I give to another person, every laugh, there's a great deal of damage that's been set aside.

Friends, family, curiosity at the world and self-betterment are what make my life rich and I can bury this broken part of myself away and pretend it isn't there. This entry was just to highlight and work through what it feels like to bring it to the surface and I hate how much it hurts, I really do. I hate how much my frustration at my inability to fix myself makes me cry so hard.

They say the average grieving period of a relationship is half the time the relationship lasted, and if that's the case I'd say I've technically got another seven months before I'm ready to try again. Right now I honestly don't think I'm cut out for another relationship for as long as I live. I hope I live a long time and this may be a foolish and youthful thing to say, but I don't think I've got it in me for another one.

Sorry.

PMT rant

I'd like to say I've gone raging feminist, but I'm even raging against the feminists right now. In the space of the last 24hours I think I've gotten annoyed at;

- The toss pots kicking the football about outside. All day.
- James Nobles wants to add me as a 'friend' on facebook. Douche.
- That film "the human centipede" sorry, but it's depraved and disgusting.
- Vegans.
- The flies that come into my room through cracks in the walls.
- The pelage that's formed a near beard on my jaw.
- the spots on the right hand side of my face that won't clear up
- the breadstick that fell on the floor and broke
- Feminists
- Lesbians
- Homophobic people
- The stray bit of skin on my burn that I pulled and made my finger bleed
- The people who drive by blasting their crap music into the street
- Relationships.
- How my room wouldn't stop smelling like Earl Grey after that one cup

Like, the last thing, it's a really nice smell, but it got on my nerves? I hate PMT, I really do. I hate how it comes on mid-cycle, too. It's like I got a week of feeling like crap emotionally, then a week of feeling like crap physically. I also promised myself this blog would be used for happy things. But idk, I guess that's what my tumblr is for.

And Relationships; I got to thinking about those again today. About how you have to compromise yourself for another person and then there's always that possibility they're not going to reciprocate which makes you feel like crap, but you never want to not compromise for them because it makes you a bitch? How men are always like "lul sexytimes now plz?" and how if the woman doesn't give him that, he'll go a'wandering. WTF. I think I pretty much hate sex. Not the thought of it, but the physical act of it - all it does is gives the man something he can get by jacking off anyway, while you get that small fear in the pit of your stomach, even when you've been safe of "oh, what if my period doesn't come. What if I get pregnant?" And then it's like "oh I'm so happy my uterus is forcing it's way out through my cervix! 8D"

I once worried myself so hard my period came a whole week later than it should have done. And you know what? There was absolutely no possible way I could have been. I was just paranoid.

Sometimes I wish I was a man.

I hate how much of a man-hating feminist I can be sometimes. It makes me feel like a dyke.

Auditory Discovery

For me, there's always been a thrill in discovering more music that I like. It's almost universally never cutting edge brand spanking new, but I think if I made a conscious effort to keep up with all of that, I'd end up frustrating myself with the amount of rubbish that I had to wade through. Anyway, point in hand, the last time I went on a proper independent music 'hunt' I came up with three bands that I still adore even to this day; Fields (the new Fields.), Tin Hat Trio (renamed themselves Tin Hat now, I believe) and Crippled Black Phoenix. They're all vastly different from one another and I'll admit, especially in the case of the last two bands, not to everyone's tastes.

I've been listening to a lot of the latter, lately. CBP, as you might expect from the name, to me, can be summed up in one word. Miserable. Certainly not miserable in the eyeliner-black, wrist-slitting 'my life is awful kill me now' dramatic emo teenager way. As soon as it fills my ears it puts me in mind of drizzly northern cities; a lonely, grimy iron vessel ploughing through a bleak sea; pollution choked industrial alleyways. It's that misery of the mundane, I guess. What I also like about each album, is that I feel they each tell a story. It's not all doom and gloom, either - there's brief moments of hope like a small bit of sunshine breaking through the cloud cover. You know that advert for ITV they had with the kids along the overcast beach and the tatty umbrella? I think that perfectly sums up this band, for me.

I still wish that advert hadn't been for ITV, of all things. What a waste of a good idea.

Sadly, the latter two have done very little in the way of new material. Fields promised a new album this year but as of yet nothing has been heard. Tin Hat haven't put anything out since 2007. CBP recently put out a chock-load of new stuff in '200 Tonnes of Bad Luck' and 'The Ressurectionists', but I've listened to both of those albums to death now. So anyway, I got on Amazon, and I started nosing around.

And I found Silvery and Band Of Horses

I think anybody listening to this, who knows me, will identify one of the reasons why I immediately liked the former. The latter sounds a bit (dare I say this) coldplay-y/keane-y (when I still liked Coldplay). Even so, both have the potential to ultimately annoy me with repeated listening. There was some other stuff I found too - this just happened to be the two most recent artists out of the selection of about five I've pinned for purchase. When I have the money.

Put on your red shoes and dance the blues

Well, fully recovered from Saturday night I can happily say that overall, even though there were one or two things that ultimately made me a little sad, I had a good time.

I received and email two days prior to our big night reminding us that the start of the ball had changed from seven thirty to seven o'clock sharp. This didn't so much matter; it was just meant we had to phone for the taxi earlier than normal. On Saturday I had arranged to meet up with mum in Greenfield for coffee and to pick up some jewellery I needed (it's a girl thing, I hadn't got any that matched my dress), but I was back in plenty of time to start getting ready. Now, I'm the kind of person that even when they're going on a night out can get ready in fifteen minutes or less and perhaps that's a bad thing, but since I had two hours to fill, I spent those two hours doing pointlessly girly things.

We all met up at our house before catching the taxi to the Lowre. I haven't been in many 'posh' hotels so I couldn't say whether it was stunningly posh, but it looked very nice from the inside. I also didn't miss how the doorman made a point of herding me towards the lift as I tried to have a look around the reception. Probably didn't want us students mingling with the celebrities that stayed there.

Upstairs for the Buck's fizz reception, we were some of the first to arrive - finding ourselves a corner to stand and admire other people's costumes. One particular girl was wearing a turquoise dress that kind of came up at the front like curtains and was so short it neither covered top nor bottom, to put it nicely. She was orange, too. On the whole though, people had made the effort to dress up and this was nice; I think out of everyone there I only saw three people who looked more as though they were going clubbing and considering this ball is open to all years that's pretty good going.

The dining hall was bedecked in white and lilac and every table had an arrangement of flowers and tea lights. It was all very posh; in true Beresford fashion I have to admit the highlight of the evening was almost definitely the food. I had opted, naturally, for the vegetarian meal and to start this meant I got cream of tomato soup. You can put aside visions of the tinned stuff for just a second (I know it's hard to do, I love that stuff too); this was coarsely blended a little like purée but runnier, deep post-box red and very tomatoey with a small swirl of cream in the middle and a bit of fresh basil sprinkled on the top. Gorgeous. For mains I had chargrilled sweet potato with chickory, drizzled with a sweet chilli, pineapple and walnut sauce which again, was very tasty. The sweet potato was shaped into a square which later I found out was formed of little layers with a kind of cheese sauce in between.

I have to take a break here before dessert, to tell you a small anecdote. Now, there were ten or twelve to a table and we only had seven, so we were joined by a handful of others (they were all second years). Amongst them was ... yes, turquoise dress girl. She also had the vegetarian menu and upon tucking into her main she exclaimed, 'oh yum! lasagne!'

I'm glad nobody noticed me fight to keep a straight face.

Anyway, after a brief pause we were brought dessert. I had the crème brûlée which came in a round, shallow dish garnished with a lump of cream, a strawberry and two biscuits. Well, the cream was rejected to one side because that wasn't happening, but the rest of it was perfect. After dessert came the obligatory coffee or tea and petite fours, I just took the coffee and sat back to watch the jazz band until their set ended (we were all pretty stuffed by this point). After this point we all got up for a dance and to take more photos.

It was at this point it all started getting a bit 'university club' and the masqueradish theme kind of dissipated; we'd stood and had our photo taken by a 'professional' photographer (who was a bit rubbishy) and had a few photos taken with one of those white statue people, but by this time people were getting quite inebriated and masks had come off. Turquoise dress girl was passed out on a chair across the table and everyone was getting couply. I mean, this was all minor compared to the venue, the price of the tickets and the whole excitement of it all; that aside I had a great time.