I've just finished reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery. It's an odd book in that nothing really happens in the story, yet you still stay captivated by it all thesame. It's translated from French and The Guardian describes it as "essentially a crash course in philosophy interwoven with a platonic love story" which is a fair description. I liked it, but find this curious because it's not the kindof thing i go for - it's quite pretentious, completely obsessed with classism (but maybe that's cos its characters are mainly Paris' bourgeoisie), it throws the term "anorexic" around lightly (as though referring to something cultural, like a style or look, as opposed to a deadly psychiatric illness..), and nothing actually happens. If i'm honest, part of the reason i was drawn to the book was its weird title and its cover (i love illustrated book covers - i'm in aesthetic bliss if i walk into a Waterstones).

i am in north carolina at my grandmother's house. i am depressed.

one time i ran away to los angeles and lived in a storage closet. i had nothing but time and a broken heart. tim kept telling me to hitch a ride north and WWOOF on a farm. but i stayed in the storage closet. i spent $100 on oil paints and i painted portraits of my mom's mom.

her name was betty. she died the year i was born. there is a unicorn on her gravestone. she is buried on top of the hill in the horse pasture. her family was mean and horrible but she was spirited and happy. they had an old huge work horse to pull the plow with and when she was 9 she trained it and rode it away from all of them.

my dad went away to a little wooden house in the rocky mountains, and then to a house under a hill in the ozarks. he talks to me on the phone and says, "they're a crazy bunch down there. don't let them get you down."

so i am sitting here watching the western horizon turn from burning red to dull brown, like old blood.

Well, christmas.

Christmas is so very good at being lovely for some, but such a horrible time for others. I guess the pressure for you to enjoy yourself and spend time with family really highlights if you don't have the ability to do these things. It's cruelly double-sided. I phoned home today to speak to the 4 left there. It's not right that teenagers should be alone for christmas day. They've found it tough - lots of tears and arguments, and one had her boyfriend visit specifically to dump her. Phoned best-friend-at-home who's in his little flat alone today. He sounded bored, and unsurprisingly rather sad.   
I feel very lucky really.

I find Christmas particularly odd this year. It's been odd the past few years because i've wanted so much (my mum, love, an end to my mental turmoil, etc) but cannot receive those, but then can be lavished with material gifts. And this year it's similar, but i'm lacking materially/financially a little this time. A few days ago i was digging into my savings to buy simple groceries like Asda Value baked beans ... and then today i'm just swimming in luxurious food, sipping pink champagne, and have a massive pile of presents. When i return to Lincoln the only cash i will have with me will be christmas money from my aunts, which i'm sure they imagine me buying something nice with, like some new shoes, but that will have to go straight out for the £26 rent i owe and stocking up on food, toilet roll, etc. It's a strange parallel - here lavishing in middleclass excess, and then going home to my financial self-sufficiency (if you can call benefit-scrounging that...but what i mean is financial independence from my family) where my housemates are so skint that the newsagent took pity on them and gave them some groceries for free.
And then it makes me think that lots of things about christmas and our society as a whole... they're just all wrong somehow.

This place is heavy with memories and old emotions. It's quite stifling actually. It feels like i'm suffocating.
I'm thinking about getting rid of a lot of my belongings. Empty my room so much that it's blank and unrecognisable. A lot of my new friends are poor so they have very little in the way of material possessions, and they sell whatever they can (mainly to buy drugs, but nvmd), and it's made me question whether i really need a lot of my stuff.

I am incredibly tired and physically depressed. I expect it's mainly due to my mental state. It's quite annoying.

I feel horrible feeling homesick for Lincoln and wanting to get home asap. I know Emmy is somewhat offended by my suggestion that here isn't home for me anymore. I should want to spend time with my family, and i do, but it's hard. The people round here too - it must be a middleclass thing - being wrapped up in trivial stuff, not talking about anything important. It makes you feel more alienated in a way. And it's not like my family is that bad in that way either - not that wrapped up in bullshit - so i should be glad. I guess it's a bit of a backward culture-shock because i'm back in this environment again, after spending time around people who have nothing, and address life in a whole different way.
I don't even know if i'm making sense. Ah well.

Fluff has a new game where he hides in silly places... I'm at dads now. I'm homesick. I miss Fluff and my at-home friends and the house (even though it's a messy damp/mould-ridden crumbling fag-smelling wreck) and how there's no mirrors there and Lincoln and everything.

Am feeling some semblance of peace within myself. Like maybe i've shuffled a tiny bit in the right direction. This weekend has been nice. It's been very cold and has snowed (this is a Big Deal). I've hung out with Simon. We did a little xmas shopping, went up the hill to the cathedral and farmers market, hung out with my housemates, went on a late night mcdonalds trip and befriended some drunks, had Wetherspoons christmas lunch, had snowball fights, Simon burnt his eyelashes off (whilst attempting to burn his nasal hairs..!? Odd), we all exchanged xmas presents. I ate ostrich. Less than 2 days til dad collects me. It will be nice to be at dads for a few days: our house is damp and mould so we're all constantly unwell so it will be nice to have a break from that. And will be nice to have my food bought and cooked for me too.     My housemate gave me a USB glitter lamp as one of my xmas presents. I'm overly captivated watching the sparkles moving across my desk and curtains..

I don't feel good at all. In fact i just feel horrible all the time. I'm so fucking depressed. There's nothing i want to do, and if i do something i enjoy i'm worried i'll 'contaminate' it with how bad i feel. Simon and I have totally split up this evening. He left in tears 5 hours ago and haven't seen him since. How can something which you know is the right thing to do just feel so painful and wrong? I'm in a numb haze of pain and am just not understanding why it (well, i) went wrong. I just want it all to stop, just the pain to just go away. For the constant tension within myself to ease, for my mind to stop buzzing hazily, the headache that's been nagging at me for days to slip away. I want to slip away, just cease to exist, just dissapear, not leave any mark, be forgotten, not even a passing ghost in someones memory. I want to sleep - all night, all day, no waking and staring at the ceiling for hours, giving up and then trying to read on the sofa downstairs with my eyes sore. I want to eat too - to eat a whole satiating meal without feeling like i'm choking on a lump in my throat each time i swallow and feeling sick with the wrongness of everything - i want to feel well, not dizzy and weak and achey. Everything's just wrong, wrong, wrong, things were not meant to be like this.     

This ^ is Fluff's favourite position. He purs in my ear. This is Fluff. Have realised he doesn't have fleas afterall. The boys were very determined to persuade me that he did, which i think is probably because they're jealous that the cat gets more female attention than they do. But i've come to the conclusion Fluff doesn't have fleas because he never seems to be itching and his fur is silky soft and smells like he's been well-washed. Fluff came across snow yesterday, probably for the first time (cos he's a baby!). He doesn't like it because he can't catch it and play with it, and because it's wet and cold. So he decided to curl up in my bed and sleep instead.