I know I said I'd blog about my friend who is sleeping with a boy who wears skirts, which I will get around to, but first I want to tell you the story of my first ever date.
It was with Metal Guy. I'd completely forgotten this whole experience until my new friend Mike started talking about balaclavas and woods. This may be the reason why I wanted to block it out.
Saturday 28 January 2012
Thursday 26 January 2012
What Bob Marley told me
Tuesday 24 January 2012
A serious blog post about boobs
This one is for the girls though, because I have lately noticed an alarmingly large number of women leaping around the gym/countryside with breasts swinging wildly asunder and I feel I must tell you all something Very Important.
Monday 23 January 2012
Sunday 22 January 2012
Why I am a runner
When god made me, it was not running he had primarily in mind. Belly dancing, making love, having children, ridings horses, maybe even power gymnastics, yes. Athletics - not so much. I found sport at school indescribably tortuous, where leggy pre-adolescent peers (I hit puberty unreasonably early) sailed past me in both the literal and figurative sense. I was a bookworm, and sport, the domain of the male or the thin, was a world from which I was definitely excluded, and those who were in it let me know that. My failings in these areas I knew let others down too, on the hockey pitch or the circuit. So I welcomed with open arms the day I left school and turned my back on the sports field and the athletics track forever.
When I was in my third year of university, the crippling depression that had been hanging over me for most of my life finally gripped me in its icy fingers and pulled me under. I read things about depression all the time, but they never tell you what it actually feels like. Let me tell you. To me, it feels like slow, unending drowning. It is waking up in the morning and clinging to the first few seconds when you've forgotten anything is wrong, and the wave of despair when you remember everything is so wrong it can never be right again. It is rocking in the corner sobbing because the world looks so distorted by your own misery and hopelessness you don't recognise it. It is feeling utterly isolated from humanity and like eating anything or putting one foot in front of the other is physically impossible. Some days it is the cold absence of any feeling other than nausea. It is staring helplessly unable to communicate all this to the person telling you to pull yourself together.
I had episodes throughout the year, much of which I don't remember. I got a degree. I got a temp job which turned into a longer job which turned into a highly pressured, exciting full time job. Somehow from somewhere I pulled the ability to perform well at work. The depression subsided, then my job ended when we lost the campaign we were working to win, and I was pushed into an admin job. The depression found room to come back. I was angry and hopeless by turn, I would have regular crying breaks at work where I would sit in a bathroom cubicle and cry silently pools of tears onto the floor which threatened to drown me, like Alice. I had a tumultuous and destructive relationship. It ended, I found myself almost friendless and almost homeless, I had a miscarriage, I hit rock bottom.
I saw a doctor and she made me come back to see her twice a week, just to talk and talk. She prescribed me some medication. I was still frequently considering knocking at deaths door, begging for relief. One day for no particular reason I got onto the dreaded treadmill at the gym and ran for four minutes. It didn't feel nice. Later that week I ran six. Then ten. Fifteen. Twenty. Every extra minute became a milestone, a victory. I would get to the gym, put my headphones in, climb onto the treadmill and run away from my head. It was painful, it was hard. Like I said, I am not built for running. More than that, I would notice every day that my mood was better, that I felt almost happy sometimes for hours after running.
Gradually I persevered and week after week, month after month, the number went up until I was running for an hour at a time. Its totally addictive - once you start beating yourself, you have to do it again, and again, and again. You dream about the treadmill. You start looking at long, flat roads wistfully. It's weird. An hour probably doesn't seem that impressive to some of you. But to me it sounds like a hundred miles. Because I couldn't run five minutes when I started. Because it gave me some space from the screaming agony of my mind. Because on that treadmill I am another person - I am an athlete.
It gave me a reason to live, to get back on that treadmill and chase the miles, to feel the comforting beat of my feet on the rubber, the glorious ache in my thighs, the sweat that would run down my neck and the steady pump of my heart telling me I was still alive. I feel a great affection for my imperfect body at this point, for its strength and its endurance. I feel the rush of endorphins, of adrenaline, I feel my hear soar and take flight.
That's why I'm a runner. I'm not very fast or particularly good at it. But I never give up, I never compare myself and I never fail to win. Because every day I am still here, I'm still fighting for my life.
When I was in my third year of university, the crippling depression that had been hanging over me for most of my life finally gripped me in its icy fingers and pulled me under. I read things about depression all the time, but they never tell you what it actually feels like. Let me tell you. To me, it feels like slow, unending drowning. It is waking up in the morning and clinging to the first few seconds when you've forgotten anything is wrong, and the wave of despair when you remember everything is so wrong it can never be right again. It is rocking in the corner sobbing because the world looks so distorted by your own misery and hopelessness you don't recognise it. It is feeling utterly isolated from humanity and like eating anything or putting one foot in front of the other is physically impossible. Some days it is the cold absence of any feeling other than nausea. It is staring helplessly unable to communicate all this to the person telling you to pull yourself together.
I had episodes throughout the year, much of which I don't remember. I got a degree. I got a temp job which turned into a longer job which turned into a highly pressured, exciting full time job. Somehow from somewhere I pulled the ability to perform well at work. The depression subsided, then my job ended when we lost the campaign we were working to win, and I was pushed into an admin job. The depression found room to come back. I was angry and hopeless by turn, I would have regular crying breaks at work where I would sit in a bathroom cubicle and cry silently pools of tears onto the floor which threatened to drown me, like Alice. I had a tumultuous and destructive relationship. It ended, I found myself almost friendless and almost homeless, I had a miscarriage, I hit rock bottom.
I saw a doctor and she made me come back to see her twice a week, just to talk and talk. She prescribed me some medication. I was still frequently considering knocking at deaths door, begging for relief. One day for no particular reason I got onto the dreaded treadmill at the gym and ran for four minutes. It didn't feel nice. Later that week I ran six. Then ten. Fifteen. Twenty. Every extra minute became a milestone, a victory. I would get to the gym, put my headphones in, climb onto the treadmill and run away from my head. It was painful, it was hard. Like I said, I am not built for running. More than that, I would notice every day that my mood was better, that I felt almost happy sometimes for hours after running.
Gradually I persevered and week after week, month after month, the number went up until I was running for an hour at a time. Its totally addictive - once you start beating yourself, you have to do it again, and again, and again. You dream about the treadmill. You start looking at long, flat roads wistfully. It's weird. An hour probably doesn't seem that impressive to some of you. But to me it sounds like a hundred miles. Because I couldn't run five minutes when I started. Because it gave me some space from the screaming agony of my mind. Because on that treadmill I am another person - I am an athlete.
It gave me a reason to live, to get back on that treadmill and chase the miles, to feel the comforting beat of my feet on the rubber, the glorious ache in my thighs, the sweat that would run down my neck and the steady pump of my heart telling me I was still alive. I feel a great affection for my imperfect body at this point, for its strength and its endurance. I feel the rush of endorphins, of adrenaline, I feel my hear soar and take flight.
That's why I'm a runner. I'm not very fast or particularly good at it. But I never give up, I never compare myself and I never fail to win. Because every day I am still here, I'm still fighting for my life.
Thursday 19 January 2012
How to cure your insomnia
I spent years suffering from really bad insomnia, particularly as a student.
It was horrible. You have not known loneliness if you haven't lain awake, night after night, sweating, dreaming of sleep, getting up again and again and again to try and convince your body it wants to go to bed. Watching the sun rise can be beautiful, but not under the circumstances of a) having been at work for two hours already or b) having seen it set recently without any sleep in-between. It is utterly isolating, and you find yourself spending night after night alternately masturbating then watching air disaster footage on YouTube.
It was horrible. You have not known loneliness if you haven't lain awake, night after night, sweating, dreaming of sleep, getting up again and again and again to try and convince your body it wants to go to bed. Watching the sun rise can be beautiful, but not under the circumstances of a) having been at work for two hours already or b) having seen it set recently without any sleep in-between. It is utterly isolating, and you find yourself spending night after night alternately masturbating then watching air disaster footage on YouTube.
Tuesday 17 January 2012
How not to have bad sex
I've been fortunate not to have had much bad sex in my life. I have avoided one night stands and my bedpost notches are surprisingly few. (I'm picky, what can I say.) However I recently had some spectacularly bad sex, so bad that I feel I need to warn you all how not to have sex that bad. Ever.
Thursday 12 January 2012
Dates I Have Known: vol 2
Soldier guy
I met Soldier Guy on a free dating website, the clientele of which tend to be less...washed.
Tuesday 10 January 2012
Dates I have known: vol 1
I met my last boyfriend online dating. Until he went a bit nuts and broke my heart, it was a wonderful relationship. But I don't want to tell you about that - I'd much rather tell you about all the dates I had before I met him.
Monday 2 January 2012
A short story about dating
A good friend of mine, let us call her Sarah, has lately recovered from a broken heart (in fact, everyone I know seems to be recovering from a broken heart these days) and she is now venturing back into the world of dating.
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