Don't want to go to bed. There's never anyone there. It's not what you might suspect that bothers me though.

It's the safety, the way that what you both understand goes unsaid precisely because you both understand it anyway. The way you feel you're protecting them yet at the same time stealing something private when you wake before they do and silently watch them sleep. And how when you open your eyes and turn to see them gazing at you, it feels as normal as anything you can think of in the world.

It's the way that minutes don't matter when you're trying to get up without waking them, slowly and quietly, using their breathing and motion to gauge when to stop still, and when to move carefully towards the edge, and then out. It's being gently corrected and reset in the dark when you shuffle onto your side or reclaim your arm from across their chest, and going with it because even when half asleep, you can feel yourself lazily smile at their touch.

Don't want to stay awake. There's too many people here.

I've just watched a documentary called Paradise Lost; The Robin Hood Hill Murders. It concerns the murders of three primary school age boys in Bible belt America, and the subsequent convictions of three teenagers, based exclusively, from what I ascertained, to be a confession crafted by the police officers and then fed through the mouth of one of the suspects, who is mentally handicapped, and also the fact that these suspects, by wearing black, listening to heavy metal, and generally shunning the expectations held by the community for people their age, provided an easy scapegoat; a place to lay the blame.

Obviously, the film goes into much more depth than I can here and so I'd recommend this be watched, and carefully considered, by anyone who considers themselves, or even thinks they might be considered by others, as being away from the mainstream. In the wake of what's happened in Lancashire recently, theres a certain resonance to this film which makes me upset and indignant; but most of all, resolute.

Maybe it doesn't matter that you thought you were doing the right thing at the time, because what was 'wrong' was actually better for you. All the laws you never broke, drugs you never took, all the people you didn't fuck, all the promises you kept to yourself, were all mistakes.

Every time you thought of the consequences, you were thinking too hard, and now you only get to think of what you could have had.

The horizon is on fire, the sun has kissed the sea goodnight
With midas' lips and a blaze is now burning beyond the skyline.
It will not reach me, but it will keep me warm for a while
Long enough for the lovers and the lonely to both feel alive.

The waves will stand up tall and sing
They will cry out, crest and sink
My fingers will press on strings
I will lie down, rest, and think.

An afternoon of throwing stones into the sea,
Wishing each one was a memory.
Hardened little heartaches that could just be cast away
By soft hands that miss how you feel.

The waves will stand up tall and sing
They will cry out, crest and sink
My fingers will press on strings
I will lie down, rest and think.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've started to recognise faces of people I don't know. By this, I mean I'm becoming familiar with the cast of strangers who regularly buzz around the hub of town. However, one stranger is more familiar than the others, whilst still being someone I don't know.

A few months ago I was at a party, and as is often the case, became seperated from my friends. No problem, right, because its a party and therefore part of the point it to socialise. In this case however, I didn't socialise as much as I spent the evening talking to a particularly nice girl, discovering we had a surprising amount in common.

To provide a frame for this picture, know that such a thing is a rare occurance; I am neither adept nor experienced in the field of talking to girls I find attractive, or at least, not in a way that makes my affections known. Normally, I'll strike up a conversation and proceed to inadvertently go through the checklist of fail, which is as follows: The opening three part process of pointless remark, self deprecating follow up, attempt to regain facade of self esteem followed by an awkward silence, a hurried mundane question, and then eventually the bitten tongue, stifled proposition or a forced cheerful adjournment. The end result is a dismal invisible pallor which I wear too often, and almost inevitably in situations like the one this tangent has meandered from.

Think of this as directions for a film, perhaps. A script. 'Cut back to the party.'

We must have been talking for two hours or more, non stop, with candour and honesty from both of us which I secretly found astonishing. There was none of the usual fear that disagreeing with someone you've just met can bring either, which I find to be rare. Not a single box on the checklist of fail had been ticked; she'd even managed to slip into the conversation that she wasn't with a boyfriend, which if you buy into these sorts of theories, is a 'sign' or something equally as assumptive and basic.

Cutting to the chase (I don't want to write another long post, especially as this isn't actually a big deal; it's intended more to be funny than anything else), her friends decided it was time to leave, and by virtue of this, so did she. Just as I was starting to consider asking for some way of getting in touch with her at a later date, or maybe even trying for a kiss. I say that now, but I'd imagine I was busy being indecisive, and that her taking off 'suddenly' made my mind up for me. Futile, of course, but thats how I work.

Now, going back to the beginning of this self indulgent little anecdote, a few months have gone by and now she's literally everywhere I go. In town, in the library, in the street. We share eye contact every now and then, but I wonder if its just a succession of casual glances that we all issue daily; looking but not seeing, if you will, or if she remembers me.

We've only ever shared two hours, but still I think these things and remember that evening fondly. She told me her name just the once, but I could still tell you what it is. I could still call to her if I wanted to.

It's ridiculous, completely ridiculous, but then isn't that the point?

Maybe sometimes when people hug you, it's because they want to be held as much as they want to hold.

I'm approaching a point where everything's going to go away and I have no say in it. What's worse, is that I'm meant to be celebrating this, even though I don't know a single person who is in the same situation as me and feeling anything less than numbness. I think dread is the most common factor. And I also think that behind this numbness and dread is a panic and a fear about loss. The loss of freedom, the loss of friends, the loss of the bonds that it's taken literally years to weave and tighten. They're all going to be cut away.

It's something that, no matter what I'm doing physically, has been dominating my mentality for a while now. I'm sorry to say that, if you've been speaking to me over the course of the last week and a half or so, the words have been reflexes, instinctively filling in the silences between your sounds. At times I've literally had no idea what I was saying, purely because my mind was entirely devoted to considering what you mean to me. (I nearly used the past tense then; 'meant', and it felt like a jab to the ribs). I've walked out of pubs and clubs with people, laughing and smiling, and then as soon as I turned the corner away from them, tucked my chin to my chest, put my hands in my pockets and hurried home, where the distractions are, all the while babbling to myself, verbalising concepts and thoughts in an insane attempt to format and expel the mounting sense of grief I can see being inevitable in a few months time.

I got home today, and did something I do every so often. It's not a seizure because I incite it myself, and it's very much a more vivid rendition of the regular twitching and tweaking I do throughout the course of my waking hours, and probably even in my sleep (I wake up in strange distorted positions sometimes). It's hard to describe, but it jars and strains me, tension and release takes place. I climb furniture, I double up and shake violently, I stand tall and hurl myself around my room. It's always in my room, never around others. It's not the most elegant or mature of actions, I'm pretty sure.

It lets out the stress a little however, and as unorthodox as it may seem, I like doing it. It makes me stop thinking about the kind of things I mentioned above. All the same, I can't help but worry how utterly deranged I would look should anyone see. And more to the point, how right they might be.

I get the feeling that writing all this down won't do much to alleviate whats wrong here, and that I'll still be under this cloud for a few more days. I usually am, and it's fucking annoying because I always thought catharsis was meant to make you feel better.

An explanation.

It's always struck me, until now, that blogging was something horribly self important and pretentious. Much like writing a note on facebook, or creating a livejournal entry (does that count as intertextuality? I do love a bit of intertextuality), making a blog was just another way of blathering on about the mundanities of your day, or manifesting some kind of semi passive aggressive plea for attention. The act of placing private feelings into a public forum, by default, seems to imply a wish for them to be taken heed of, and paid attention to. And if that's your thing, fine. I just think sometimes, that a stunning lack of awareness is present on the behalf of those who glorify in writing their every activity or emotion. I think that because I do the same, and I often recognise the feelings written about so often in myself. Which in turn, leads me to think why should I, in all honesty, give a fuck about what you've done when its as simple and common as what it eventually boils down to?

But today I altered my view, (as made evident by this even actually existing). Perhaps instead of the fault lying with others, it's mine. Or at least, it's shared. Understanding what people are really thinking and feeling is uncomfortable, but only because everyones so afraid to say what they truly have operating inside them that such openness is seen as unusual, while in my stupid naive and romanticised view of things, I'd like to see it as the standard.

I'll admit to hypocrisy here and now, on a massive scale. Not only am I hurling my innards into the ether in such a familiar style as thousands of others, and all in the hope someone will care, but I would also admit to being the biggest culprit of this kind of well-intentioned fraud. It's only through the pseudo-anonymity of the screen (because, to be honest, the only people reading it will probably be those who know me) and the cold removal of having to take in reactions that I can be true.

And so we get to the point, and the purpose of me starting this.

I am not always a well or happy person, and I would tentatively call that an understatement. I do not believe I operate or think in the same way as the majority, and in a way, I hope that's true because if to be normal is to feel how I do sometimes, the world must be filled with people who are fucked.

But in an effort to try and allow a way in, here is where I want to have no boundaries or restrictions. This will be full externalisation of the internal. Chances are it won't be pretty or fun a lot of the time, and I still feel a little like I'm becoming part of some machine which indulges in self pity and only pauses to congratulate itself but I'm ignoring that right now, and trying to negotiate with myself about the validity of me doing this. I intend to make this known only to a select few, chosen on the basis of how much they mean to me. They are the people whom I feel have only my best interests at heart, and so I want to hide nothing from them; it feels like it would be doing wrong by them if I did.

I've just realised: The fact I've gone into such paranoid depth about something as simple as this kind of says all you need to know, really.