new year resolutions.

i want new everything. new clothes. new places. new lines. new lies. new regrets. new boys. new drama. new dreams. new ideas. new aspirations. new jokes. new lessons. new heartbreak. new stories. new moments. new disappointments. new hopes. i want new everything. new challenges. new adventures. new accessories. new friends. new conquests. new memories. new fears. new photos. new loves. new losses. new hates. new haunts. new surprises. new successes. new standards. new memories.

i want new everything.

you and me could write a bad romance.

I'm not sure what it is but for some reason I only ever attract boys who aren't good for me.  By the same token I'm only ever attracted to boys I can never have; boys with girlfriends, boys with emotional baggage, boys with criminal records.

If I believed in all that "The Secret" hocus pocus, I could conclude that I'm getting back the result of what I give out.  I'm going to hope like hell that's not the case.  Not that my signal-reading skills are anything to go by, but I'm pretty sure I don't give out "I'm an emotional retard - please let me cheat on you or take your everything then change my mind".

I don't get what it is though.  I never like the good guys.  The good dependable guys that I'm supposed to want to build my forever with.

I think I just get bored too easily.  I need it to be dramatic or risky or exciting or I don't feel like it's real.  Something in my subconscious has decided it's just not worth my time if I'm not going home to cry myself to sleep.


It's like I only know how to flit between two extremes - silent agonising boredom complete with hay bales on one end and over-the-top crazy jerry springer drama at the other. Anything indecipherably between the two and I'm completely at a loss with what to do with myself.


I think my heart operates on a bit of a reverse-psychology basis.  I can't love him if he's good because that makes me a conformist.  It's too neat, too clean, too perfect.  Tell me he wants me back and I'm suddenly creeped out that he's too keen, too needy; worried that he'll smother me to death with affection.


But tell me I can't have him - that it won't work - that he doesn't even know I'm alive and suddenly I want him bad.


One of these days I will learn my lesson.  Promise. Til then it's a work in progress.


Lesson Sixteen: Know your worth. 

she's so dangeroussssss.

Sometimes when I look at certain people in my life, I wonder: why the hell am I friends with you?  I don't mean to be judgy (even though, clearly, I am) it's just that sometimes, when I see the things they do/ hear the things they say, I'm not sure who I want to stab more - myself or them.  I genuinely can't figure out which of us has changed - whether they've turned into completely socially-retarded selfish morons overnight or whether they were always that way and at some point along the road I just became numb to it?  If it's the latter, someone just plunged me into an ice bath (not unlike an Inception "kick") because I am officially awake and I don't like what I see.

I get that it's kind of a self-preservation/ survival tactic type thing to be a strong, independent, no-nonsense woman but it's a fine line between that and just being a downright b*tch.  I'm okay with strong.  Sassy I can even admire.  But I will never understand why people go out of their way to hurt each other.  While I am often impressed by the lengths some girls (or people in general) will go to simply to feel better about themselves at someone else's expense, mainly it's uncalled for and juvenile.  More than that it's just not classy.  

Reckon it's time for some friendship re-thinks. Social purges. Life deletion.


Lesson Fifteen : Treat others as you wish to be treated. Failing that, just stop being a dick. 

wasted days & wasted nights.

I wrote this a couple of weeks ago after a particularly drunken venture.  I didn't post it at the time because I was (of course) curled in a ball on my floor waiting for the room to stop spinning and hating my life.  
I read it the other night as I was getting ready and as a result got back into my pyjamas and went to sleep early.  
Let's hope it has a long-lasting effect...
 
My head is pounding.  I have random bruises everywhere, my throat feels like I swallowed razor blades and I'm almost convinced I was beaten in the lower back by tiny ninja fists in my sleep. 

Any kid between 18 (16 if you're one of those eager types) and 23 knows that means I went out last night but for anyone outside of that range who has forgotten what this feels like, is in denial about their own alcoholic heyday or is of the opinion that generation Y is a lot worse than they were, these are classic symptoms of a hangover.

It always starts the same.

It's someone's birthday - "I don't usually go out but tonight I have to" - Just one drink okay? I'll be home early.

Lies, lies, lies.

The night always starts with "we'll just go out for a little bit" and typically ends in "I think I'm going to be sick".

Even my recovery session is predictable; I take the legal limit of pain killers that I'm allowed for the day, drink several litres of water, pretend to look like I'm doing something useful so Mum won't look at me with her "I told you so" eyes while feeling sorry for myself and then I make myself a promise that this is the last time.

Which is what I said last time.

And also the time before that.
So what is it that keeps us coming back?  Because the night's analysis always concludes that the club was gross, the music lame, the boys unimpressive and my new outfit wasted on yet another forgettable night.
But surely, it must be something.  Or are we just gluttons for punishment?  Personally, I think we're addicted to the lie of it all.  The hope that tonight will erase the week's pain, heartbreak, disappointment.  That tonight will make us forget everything that happened before it. 

Wrong again.

From experience I've learned not only does the night out do nothing of the sort, it also tends to make things worse. In my drunken stupor I'm more likely to make a fool of myself railing against the injustices of my lot in life.  And in the morning all I have to show for it is a headache, an empty bank account and a feeling something akin to regret.

I've come to realise that my life is slowly spiralling into something reminiscent of an absolutely fabulous episode but less amusing sans the english accent. And despite the fresh promises I make myself as I get ready each time, every post-big-night-out I die a little inside.

I have to admit, I am slightly horrified that at 22 I no longer have the stamina or elasticity I had at 18.  In my glory days we'd go out three nights in a row, drink the bar clean each time and still get up for class at 8am.  Now if I venture into the city on a Friday, I'm still hating my life come Tuesday. By Thursday I'm still promising myself my drinking days are over and then just when I'm starting to feel a little like my normal self, it's so-and-so's birthday all over again and I'm back to where I started.

My mum has always said that 'nothing good ever happens after 2am' and as much as I hate to admit it, I think she might be right.  Between 12 and 2 I'm having the time of my life. After that I'm throwing up in an alley way, crying in a potplant, reassuring her that the new girlfriend is ugly or doing something else I am sure to regret come morning.  Something else foolish that I hope my grandkids never find out about and blackmail me with. 

I am on a mission to change this pattern - to go home early while the night's still amazing - before it becomes just another link in my chain of regret.

I'll let you know how it goes.

For now though, unsurprisingly, today's lesson is an easy one. 

Lesson Fourteen:  Nothing good ever happens after 2am.

Wish me luck!
Have a great week xx

homeward bound.

It has been a rough couple of weeks so I'm off to the homeland to get some sun.  After five law exams, being cooped up in the library squished between rows of dusty old books no-one will ever read and people who refuse to shower regularly, I need it.  I plan to use this time for reflection and detoxing.  To achieve this I'm going to commit to a much better diet: fish, fresh fruit, vegies and lots of water (all the things I aim to eat at home but always find better tasting, sugary and carb-loaded alternatives for).  I might even channel some 80's Olivia Newton John and get physical  by going for a run along the sea wall every morning, climbing the highest mountain a few times, or by  swimming every single day.
Failing that I might just lie on the beach and drink until life makes sense again.
Enjoy your week. 
xx

have no regrets; make no apologies.

Sometimes I feel like this life wasn't meant for me.  Granted, that thought usually strikes at about 4am when I've lost all my faith in humanity because I'm 1000 words short on my essay or I'm trying to teach myself legal principles because I didn't go to class but you get the point.

Sometimes it just makes me wonder - how powerful one single moment can be to move you from one path to the next.  What is it about my yesterday that brought me to this tomorrow?  And is there a way back?  A way to undo this reality and replace it with a different one?

I mean I get it.  After high school I made sensible choices; ones that some people aren't lucky enough to even consider.  I should be grateful.  And I am - really.  I just wonder where I would be - who I would be - if I'd done things differently.  If I'd been brave enough to say then what I feel now, I wonder what my forever would have been like.

Because in my daydreams I'm flatting in 1960s Soho with chain-smoking artists wearing my black beret and hippy scarf and jewellery I handmade out of bits of melted-down cutlery, staging protests against the man through art and poetry, oozing rebellion from my every pore.

I always wanted to be the tortured soul who wrote amazingly painful lyrics and painted deep emotional water colours kinda like Monet's "Water Lilies" except dark and broody.  Imagine my dismay when I found I completely lack any remote artistic or musical talent so thus ends that dream. Woe is me.

For now I guess I'm still figuring it all out but I hope when I get there I'll be satisfied I didn't move mountains only to sell myself short.


Lesson Thirteen: Be brave. Be bold. Be you.
xx

stupid cupid stop picking on me.

How do you get to contentment without having to go through the awkwardness of dating?  I'm not sure if I'm just missing the gene that makes you want to embark on that whole expedition or if I'm just lazy but quite frankly, it’s exhausting.  The little white lies and the mind-games that no-one ever wins and the unspoken codes that you're not supposed to violate and the invisible scorecard you're marking his qualities up against the minute he opens your door; memorising every detail, hoping he'll come across good enough in the compulsory post-date debrief with the girls.

It's kind of like a test you can't study for but worse because you never know how you did or if you're even on the right track. In fact, I'm tired just thinking about it. And to make it worse, the whole time you're having this inner monologue - about whether or not you should say the funny thing that just popped into your head in case he thinks you're weird coz you're talking to yourself - you're supposed to be effortlessly witty and charming and seductive all at once.

Am I the only one who obviously slept right through "Human Interactions: Romantic Relationships 101" at birth?   Because most other people seem to get through it with relative ease and some even manage to do it with enviable flair. But me? I'm still trying to figure out where the rules are written. The ones that say I'm supposed to be his everything without losing 'me' in the process. The unwritten code of conduct that tells you to smile at his jokes, flit effortlessly between intelligence and naivete and still toe the line of enthusiasm without falling into an abyss of desperation.

It's a complicated little dance that everyone else seems to know the steps to - the 'making less of things so you don’t seem petty'.  The 'making more of things so he seems impressive'.  Trying to reach that happy medium of cool and vulnerable.  So that it doesn’t look like you need a man.  Or even that you want  one.  Just that he should work hard if he wants to be yours.  All that seems to be inbuilt in the average person but mostly, it just grates on me.

I'm hoping some day I'll have this whole game figured out.
Otherwise, I had better get to liking cats.

Lesson Twelve: Play to win.

Have a lovely week. xx