mylolita

Myself and D went to our new local last night.

I love saying that because our old local had such fun, romantic and sometimes bad memories that I felt like nothing else would compare. Oh, and when I say local, I don't mean local pub, I mean local restaurant. Local Italian. We hardly drink out so our local is basically, the local place for stuffing our face and falling asleep in a food coma like overly indulgent Roman pigs on loungers!

There is a beautiful cobbled street in town with town houses that have stone steps up to their doors. Underneath are basement windows that have been turned into a few cocktail bars. Not the pretentious types at all (I can't, I really can't stand them - I once went to one where it was a fake speak easy and this pretentious guy had the most pretentious handlebar moustache you've ever seen and it was twirled and you thought, no, that MUST be fancy dress surely?! And you realise it's not and they're all deadly serious in there, like, really taking it serious, and people are getting let in on how "cool" they look and, barf, I can't go on. Okay cocktail though but, rubbish waist coats and those moustaches...), but, where was I?! The good types! The lovely types. The dimly lit, great, genuinely friendly service types where if you go in a few times you just automatically become friendly with the waitress and you end up curling your feet underneath you because you feel at home types.

It's a beautiful street and our new, local Italian restaurant habits one of these delightfully ensian town houses and it's a quirky, over the top but extremely Italian interior. The service! Just the best food ever.

There's nothing I now like more than throwing on something nice and heading to that restaurant with D. I also had the best cappuccino I have ever had in my life there last night, and I couldn't sleep till 2am. Beautiful.

Lo x

Interesting journal!

Thank you Dias!

What a lovely comment - it's good to see you around again, I really enjoyed reading your twenty facts. You seem cool.

Lo x

D has invited a few guys around tonight.

Normally, I'd be straight in and up for a party. For being so girly, I'm always one of the guys, whether we hit a strip club or go drinking or stay in the house. I don't feel it tonight, I kind of want D all to myself. I won't share you!

I also feel like I've received a little bit of a compliment lately. One of my newest friends, C, from the old days, the office(!), has been using me as a bit of a sound board to her complaints and issues and I don't mind it, not one bit. Normally, I think I would start to feel a little bored, not of her, not at all, but I would feel bored that I couldn't just "fix" the issues. Maybe I've got more of a male brain than I let on?! Who knows. Maybe that's why I get on with men so much. I love men, I adore them and in return they often adore me. Not in a physical or sexual sense, just in an appreciative way, the way a man appreciates a woman who simply cuts him slack and accepts him in all his taboo, manly glory. I don't expect men to wash the dishes or groom themselves or to be Calvin Klein pin ups and live a life of a metrosexual man the way the media may indulge us women into thinking - I just accept them and love them, brutish and vulgar as they can be and they like me for it. I guess I see it in myself sometimes. What a dude I am! Oh my God, I sound like a lesbian.

Anyway, C just happens to be a lesbian, I seem to get on with them well also. Go team! But I have this boyish way of hearing a problem a friend has and I simply want to offer some magical solution and they be like, "Oh wow yeah life's fixed woo let's have a cocktail!"

Unfortunately, I'm learning to just listen and really, it's a lovely thing. I don't even "mmm" anymore in-between them speaking. I don't like the sound of my own voice anyway.

So, Lo the soundboard, Lo the listener! God! I never thought I'd say THAT! Now, I know most of my weaknesses and listening is definitely waaaaaay at the top of that bad list. I am a terrible listener. Too much chatter going on in my brain to focus in on other things but, maybe I'm mellowing out as I get older or something, that teamed with my old man brain or something, but C has been calling and my husband raises a brow and cracks a joke about me and her and lesbians and, y'know, you get the picture, but really, most of my secrets are out to her and I don't say this lightly. Sounds like a love affair?! Please, don't get the wrong impression.

No, my secrets - I would be the opposite of a "Tell All" magazine. More like a "Hide Most, Tell What You Must" magazine. I don't mind mystery. Why is the general trend lately so against mystery? It used to be cool, right? Strong, silent types? Mysterious, troubled damsels? Where are you now? Now it's cry openly and tell everyone every single thought and spill your life on a therapists couch and pay them handsomely for the pleasure.

But I don't know, I don't know if it will last - hopefully she will figure the things out that are bothering her soon and things will go quiet.

No one calls me anyway. I hate talking on the phone.

Lo x

We hate it when our friends become successful

And if they're Northern, that makes it even worse

And if we can destroy them

You bet your life we will

Destroy them

If we can hurt them

Well, we may as well

It's really laughable

Ha, ha, ha

- Morrissey, The Smiths

Lately, lately I feel like I start everything with lately... durrrrrrr.

Lately! Lately, I really do feel like it's true, my dear Morrissey was right, friends hate it when you become successful.

I will sound big headed, pig headed, really repulsive saying this but I must be honest and if I can't say it to them I must say it here - that they absolutely can't stand it.

I think back to all the times others are supposed to be happy for you, to celebrate with you, to share in your joy and all I see is a distaste flicker across their face and true feelings are revealed in that split second more so than any flagrant, empty "congratulations" they could all coo at once.

Your every progression and moving victory seems to make them just so mad. Madder and madder each time, and they have strained smiles and they can't say a good word about you anymore and they can't even pretend to be interested in your life anymore. You have moved so far away from their world. Their world stays the same and yours is always moving, growing more vibrant and more luxe and more happening every passing week to the point where they never even ask you how your year was, let alone your month, or your week, or your day - they don't care about your days because most of their days are dreaded and negative and full of personal struggle which they put upon themselves. They don't want to hear about your days, because your days are mostly good, and they can't stand it.

Compare compare compare, thats all they do, while they shake your husbands hand and give you cold, at arms length hugs.

I would rather talk to the wall and drink a solitary coffee than surround myself with these people who used to hold me dear. Or, I though they did? And then you find yourself looking around at a party you're throwing while they drink your alcohol as if it is simply expected of you and without thanks, like remorseless taking from a huge, faceless corporation. They don't ask anything about your life or you but endlessly talk about themselves, filling up the air in your house with their insecure self praise because it makes them feel better for an hour or so, because they think they're fooling you, and you think, well, maybe they can see it flicker across my face as well? Maybe they know that I know?! Is this all just some awful game of concealed hate?

You feel as if you are in a Shakespearean play and someone will pull the dagger on you in the dark, in your back, if they just so could, oh if they could get away with it and have you out of their minds and lives forever! To stop the comparison, oh but to end the self hatred! Because when they look at you they don't see you, they just see a mirror, and looking back at them is their own bleak, stark, ugly reflection in all it's envy and self hate and they can't stand it.

I think the flicker is the mirror - it catches the light. And you see them for what they are!

I don't have many friends anymore, and the ones I do have, I'm not so sure about anymore. No one wants to know me anymore. And honestly, in all brutal and critical honesty, I haven't changed, not one bit. I am no more generous or less generous than I ever have been, no more less flamboyant or kooky. All that has changed is my material possessions and my net worth and such a stupid, insignificant thing has created a moat around me of which my friends think they have to swim across or some ridiculous metaphor c**p. I just don't get it. I really don't know what I've done. Am I supposed to say sorry? Am I supposed to apologise!?

We hate it when our friends become successful.

Lo x

Lolita, do you know about the Bloomsbury Group and ? charleston House!

Afternoon Silverbirch!

I have vaguely! Wasn't John Keats part of that group of writers?

I have to say I am much more on the side of Oscar Wilde here... I am always on the rebellious side my dear Silverbirch! Oscar Wilde to me is like the original punk rocker of the written word!

As Morrissey wrote:

A dreaded sunny day

So I meet you at the cemetry gates

Keats and Yeats are on your side

A dreaded sunny day

So I meet you at the cemetry gates

Keats and Yeats are on your side

While Wilde is on mine.

Tell me more though! I know nothing about it!

Lo x

tiredofvampires,

"Lolita, I made a point of saying I had no preference one way or the other. You said this journal had turned into a wreck since people started responding in it, in the last few posts, so I said, if that's the way YOU feel, you maybe should make it private or solo. It was an uncontrived, honest suggestion, given your reactions to people chiming in."

I think you completely miss my sense of humour in most of my posts, especially my first reply in response to a few of your posts while I had been away. That seems to have been terribly misunderstood!

I was writing sarcastically when saying my journal had gone down hill, y'know, I was making a joke? I don't really think I'm that good?! It was a joke. Probably a very British, dry one. I have noticed this a lot when I write on here but I think this site is full of mostly American users who completely miss the point of British humour and unfortunately it gets lost in this journal and seems to cause outrage and infractions. Not saying I'm some obviously hilarious comic or something but it was a joke to let you know, so, it's not like everyone's ruined my stride on here or something. Really!

Once it is in this section, it invites dialogue, so I was saying, if you feel it damages your journal to engage with dissenters, unless you tell them to please leave, those are the options. That is how this journal forum has worked. But everyone feels differently about how they want their journal to operate. Until informed otherwise, one can't know. It's an individual choice. I have been welcomed in my unsolicited critiques or advice, and i have also been told to please cease posting. But open journals here and unsolicited advice are a regular occurrence here, and it's not considered rude overall. The other subforms on this site are for topical advice on particular questions that are not ongoing life chronicles, but that doesn't mean journals do not contain loads of advice from people who participate.

I understand you like to give advice freely and make comments on my journal - we are on an advice forum after all, but I operate firstly within the general etiquette of the real world and then secondly I play fiddle to the created forum etiquette of ENotAlone. I still think giving advice when not asked is generally rude no matter where you are or which country you are in, especially where I come from and live, and I take it as that. My stance on that issue will always be my natural reaction. If you can't accept my cultural customs then thats fine, disregard them, I really don't care, I am a little disgruntled but I move on, which brings me onto your final point that you will graciously leave me alone and cease commenting on my journal which (you may find strange), I don't want you to stop doing.

I don't want to shut people up or throw my toys out of my cot and say "Waaah! I don't like what someone says so they better go away!" I really don't operate like that. Being offended or disagreeing with someone is not cause for telling them to leave or stop commenting. I believe 100% in free speech, whether I or others like it or not and do not want to follow the general feeling I get from the rules of ENotAlone that if someone dislikes something someone says, they should get a slapped bottom and told to leave, or threatened with infractions. If it's not hate speech or insighting murder or anything actually serious, words are just words and if people are offended or don't like them, me included, so what! Let's get over it! Someone doesn't like my tone? Oh well! I don't like theirs! Who cares! Big deal! Are we adults or children in the play ground rushing to tell teacher?!

My main point is just this - comments, absolutely fine and more than welcome, but advice when not asked for is rude (in my opinion) and really I'm taken aback by it and can't help but dislike the attitude it exudes (in my opinion). I mean, other etiquette laws don't apply here, for example, if someone comments I will always reply, because I feel that it is simply good manners and it would be rude to not reply, but it's not written in stone here within the guidelines of ENA? It doesn't mean it still isn't rude to leave a comment without a response, or to say thank you, etc.

"P.P.S. FYI, a "Solo" journal is public, but people can't post. So there's that."

TOV, you seem to be repeating yourself constantly! I am aware of a Solo section for journals, but again I like the freedom an open journal allows me of accepting and reading the odd comment or, imagine! I may even want to ask a question or ask for advice in my journal someday! And if I do, I'll be able too on here because it's open. If I put my journal in Solo I won't have that freedom/option. I am tired of explaining myself when I say this journal being open gives me a slight therapeutic feeling which, I am sure you would agree, as the whole point of this site is surely some kind of therapy (whether that comes in advice, answer to a question, venting, ranting, writing, blogging, or whatever else) and therefore be happy with my reasons to keep this journal public.

I don't want you to feel like you can't comment on here - you are more than welcome to comment, it's a free world and it's a free, open journal. I don't want to demand the final say and have you shut out and then respond to your comment also. But if I do want advice, I'll ask for it, if thats acceptable. I'm doing just fine lately and I'm simply enjoying writing and enjoying the odd comment I get here, I think thats enough don't you?

Lo

Tiredofvampires,

I don't know where you have made the assumption I:

- Have little or lack empathy

- Measure people by their financial success

- Believe women who can't go to school and have a life of horrendous religions oppression can just "get it together"

- Have no real life experience of poverty, abuse or hardship

- Think I live in the South of England

I don't know where you've got any of this from as it's never been mentioned in any response or in any past post of my journal.

You know, you mentioned making my journal private yet again, and I can't help but think you would love it to happen as you bring it up almost every time I defend myself against any criticism you make.

My simple reasoning for not removing this journal from public and sending it to some private realm is simply this - regarding manners and British ones at that, let me put it this way - in life, it is considered rude to give advice when not asked for it. And by giving me advice when not asked, you are being rude by general standards, not just British.

I do not ask for any advice on my personal journal.

This is an online diary which I find therapeutic purely because I know people can read it. Purely because it is public. If I wanted no one to read it, or have a chance of reading it, I would simply write one at home. Without the knowledge of it being public, there is no feeling of purging for me (or not as much), and therefore the kick I get out of writing on here is left a bit wanting. Why would I use a platform ENA to store private writings anyway when I could simply just type them in my own computer?!

What I assume is this - if someone wants advice, they post in the advice section of this website and submit their problem as a question and put this question under a fitting section in the website. Then people go back and forth and have discussions on pros and cons and on we go. I have asked for advice in the advice sections of the forum plenty of times.

The journal section however (and yes, I realise I am writing a diary on an advice forum, the hypocrisy), seems to be a more personal and sacred space, whether it is private or not, and therefore I believe should be treated with some kind of respect. And that is a respect for peoples privacy when they divulge personal matters and thoughts in an online diary, that they are just that, thoughts, and are not questions on the advice section.

If you really cared that much for my mental health or desperately thought I would be at an advantage to some heavy ideas you wanted to share with me, I would think the etiquette would be surely to private message me?

When people dive in on here and freely let their tongues loose in someones personal space I feel like they are trespassing almost in my own mind and I'm slightly jolted by it.

I think you may get your wish soon enough anyway, as I have been issued with an infraction from ENotAlone for 'Disrespecting and Flaming' members. I would like to say I feel I have been disrespected and flamed, and all I have done, slightly sarcastically at times, is defend my own character as it has been attacked on here, not just recently but many times over.

I thought sarcasm came under the same umbrella as humour, but apparently people can't gauge that through posts and again, maybe it's because I'm British and Americans just don't generally get British dry wit on here, it maybe doesn't come across well, but ya'll offended by it and demanded I get an infraction, whatever that means. Talk about a tough crowd. I imagine after writing that sentence and again, my sarcasm going unnoticed, I will be banned by tomorrow.

I have my own personal political views and lifestyle choices spread across a critical chopping board and am told my posts leave a "bad taste". Defensive sarcasm and a bit of not taking things too seriously is apparently not humour but flaming and disrespecting and therefore I am now being babied in my responses I am sure.

Well, I am no professional writer or writer of any kind or merit, but on penning this journal and in the spirit of free expression, I will not be nannied and told what I can and can't say and what views I can and can't express here in my own journal that I use for therapy. You would think I had openly supported some awful cult like the Ku Klux Klan or called someone an awful swear word. Alas, nothing quite that shocking to give everyone something genuine to complain about! That would be too easy I guess.

If no one ever sees me here again just know this - I will be writing, and writing more, and I will always advocate free speech and the right to defend ones self against character attacks and false claims against my person!

No matter what responses come, I am actually a nice, lovely, generous, kooky and sweet person. A real cat. If you met me in real life, you would probably like me and God, you might even want to be my friend. I'm alright to hang out with and you won't ever have a boring conversation. Things would be glamorous, I promise. ENA is not glamorous, and that gets on my wick a bit; so me being banned soon is probably for the best. Never did like the colour scheme anyway.

Also know this - I have had many, many a private message in support from people who are sick of the general attitude ENA seems to cultivate.

Because yes, I do have a flair for the dramatic (why is that said like it's a bad thing?! Are you not entertained?!), if I could help it, I really did not want my potential and final last post to be another rebuttal and defence of my opinions and character but, you can't always get what you want. (Morrissey).

I did want to go out with a bit of a bang or at least something memorable or, heavens!, even a bit witty if I could manage it but it's all gone to pot and much like life nothings perfect which is truly awful for a bit of a perfectionist like me. I can't stand to ramble and now you're all making me go on and it's not my fault at all of course.

I seem to have a knack for not doing anything much and getting kicked out of institutions. College seemed intent on getting rid and now this, another musty, bland institution of oppression wanting to hoist me out for an offence I didn't even know existed. I could write a big old huge entry on that but that's another story for another day and another time in another life.

As usual, all creativity is stifled. For a second there I actually believed it might not be the case.

I'll have to get away with it elsewhere.

D will be back from a two day business conference soon. He's been away too long. I miss him. I can't wait to see him. It pales all this ridiculous faff into comparison and ultimately, this journal means absolutely nothing to me. There is life out there and as much as I adore, I absolutely adore, noting what I can of it down; the best part is actually living it. I have much more living to do, whether some of you like the way I do it or not, is really none of my or your concern.

And on that note (take it as you will - I'm sure you will), I bid you adieu and goodnight.

It's a beautiful night. Here's to the dreamers, the thinkers, the creatives, the do-ers. This night is for you. I known them when I see them. And if I were to dedicate this awful mess of words, self pity, drama and tangents I call a journal to anything or anyone, it would be you. Thank you to those who have supported me. You have been rare, but the best people normally are, ay!

Sod it.

Lo x

Hey Lolly, I hope you will write again if at least mail me. I've really liked reading your journal - even if AI don't agree with all your views.

 

Anyway, I found out some shocking news today, and as you are English, I want yo share with you, hear what you think, and sort of throws a bit of a spin to some of the opinions here.

 

Well, the news - my sister has been researching our family ancestors for over 10 years, and she has discovered that Queen Elizabeth of England and I and my sisters share a Great Grand Ma Ma. Her name was Baroness Eva, and I can tell you more if I go back to my sisters pages. She is 22 times my Great MA Ma and 18 times Cousin Elizabeth's Grand Ma Ma.

 

Well. My thoughts, the Queen is my frcking cousin! I'm no royalist and liked Johnny Rottens version if Gid Save the Quuen. Hit me wondering, we'll sort of luck of dice - well. Choices in marriage partners, well what if . . . The marriage partners of the past few hundred years changed, what if some children lived and some died, and someone from my family ended up as king or queen.

 

Well, As much as I'd like to stay in her holiday home in Scotland and not have to worry about the price of horse feed, Cousin Liz, can have her life. I'm a nobody, I don't have a lot of money, but most if the time, I love my life!

 

I know you like stories and writing and you're a thinker, and you like a laugh so thought you might like that. Anyway, I suppose half of England us related to Cousin Liz!

Silverbirch,

Dear, dear Silverbirch!

I have left my reply to you till last.

I don't know you but I get such a beautiful, lovely warm vibe from you. Okay, not just because you agree with me and are so so so very complimentary of me but, I just get this feeling that if we worked together or passed each other in the shops daily that, y'know, we'd like each other and we'd be friends I hope I am not being too weird or presumptuous. In another life, Silverbirch! You are one elegant, classy lady. Thats just the impression I get from you, and with that and your new information you have given me that you are practically related to our royalty here, again, it doesn't surprise me one, little, bit!

You are truly a lady (with or without the title!)

Please message me with more information. I would have all their heads roll of course but, I will support you if you want to try take over Buckingham Palace - it needs a re-vamp anyway!

Lots of love, it is always a pleasure and a treat to see you have posted,

Lo x

Have you figured out posting pics yet? Your place sounds so neat. What is the square footage of one floor (I know there's four)? Are all the ceilings super high or just the main floor?

 

Word of advice...focus on one room at a time. Your bedroom first (if it's not done). Kitchen (if you cook). Bathrooms.

 

You'll get there

 

Faraday!

 

SO lovely to hear from you! You can't imagine! Your voice, post... it's like a voice anyway! It's so good to hear. Like the sound of spring breeze through an open window!

 

I haven't yet but I will. I am terrible with technology. This is pushing it for me!

 

Thanks for the advice, we always try to do it the right way but end up fumbling around and going the long way, usually ends up being the expensive way and we kick ourselves! Anyway, things are really coming along and it's starting to take shape, I can even imagine how things will be now, even in the rooms that are empty and need lots of work.

 

I hope you are well! Please feel free to message me and let me know how everything is going with your renovation.

 

Lots and lots of love,

 

Lo x

I will add my meager two cents to this thread and say I stand in solidarity with you, Lolita. I am fairly young (27) and work in accounting/financial services. I make good money for my age, but I would not miss the grind of work if the means to fund my lifestyle could be supplied in another way. We are aligned politically. We are aligned in believing that life, more often than not, is a product of our own decisions more than it is a product of our own circumstances. Obviously, people are born closer to the finish line than others, but that doesn't change how I feel. Anyone can do what I do and make what I make, and I am weary of arguments to the contrary when nothing other than 40+ hours of hard work every week stands in between them and me. I am not uniquely gifted.

 

Just wanted to show you some love.

ProtestTheHero,

Firstly, thank you for the support. I left this journal knowing the potential offence bomb my post would leave in my wake and never looked back till now. I was genuinely shocked to see some replies in support so for that, I say with total shock, thank you.

Tiredofvampires mentioned you have a journal? No offence tiredofvampires, but this is the best thing you've said yet and I will definitely, defffffintely have to look it up.

You have yourself probably a very obsessed potential reader here.

About to go stalk and again, I agree, thank you, we're not mad are we? Surely our theory is a theory in practice? I wasn't born on a throne and I don't live on one either.

ProtestTheHero - it looks like a hero can sometimes come up against a little protest, right?

Lo x

PS - We are the same age. I hope you are finding being 27 better than I am. Not looking forward to 30...

I like your writing style, Lolita. I hope you do find other things to keep you occupied and agree with Mrs. Darcy that writing is a good idea.

WithLove,

Thank you for the lovely comment.

I have been working on the house five days a week and am obsessed by returning this beautiful building back to its formal glory! I am occupied but apparently still able to stir up some mega trouble on ENA even in my absence, not hard to do these days though or maybe I have a knack for it?

Ohhhhhh

Lo x

Dear tiredofvampires,

Or I feel it would be more appropriate to say, 'Dear Constant Critic'.

Anyone who puts anything out into the public domain has one I guess, and I'll take it as a compliment. And yes, I do launch this diary out into the public, as you have mentioned many times before, as if it justifies an excuse to try and pull me down, and thats fine, I get that, thats life! But the fact this diary is open is the reason this is some sort of twisted therapy for me, therefore your seeming request for me to make this private will not happen. Sorry. Not sorry.

I'm going to come off defensive and maybe a little mad, well I am I guess, firstly because I can announce something as happy and joyous as starting a family with the love of my life and you can completely ignore this and twist the rest of what I have said like some journalist spin doctor working for some God awful Hollywood magazine who seems hell bent on putting a negative spin on almost every single little thing. Many people like me are tired of this constant, negative drudging that surely, something must be up and if you are happy, you shouldn't be, you shouldn't be allowed to be and mostly you should feel BAD, guilty even, because others aren't. Well, I also refuse this. Sorry, but not sorry!

I read your post months ago and meant to reply, but life took over, not that it's an excuse, and please do not be mistook, I have not spent my time mulling on your points for those months, but I do apologise for the delayed reply, because I feel rude, genuinely, and I don't like not replying, it seems ignorant, and I do apologise this has come so late. But I am going to defend myself and give you my rebuttal. You can post on here as much as you like, as you may of gathered I am completely all for free speech and yes, I leave this journal up for public comment, even though I don't demand or crave dialogue, criticism or appreciation, and why should I? This is purely a selfish thing and I write with me in mind, but now I must write with you in mind and your points. I apologise again if I am hazy, as I have not re-read your post and am going from memory.

Firstly, the Constant Critics of this world, I personally find often react faster instead of thinking before they speak, which ironically I think you are asking me to do, to stop and think and ask myself your silly question. Maybe if you hadn't dived in against your better judgement, you might of asked yourself a question, which would be, maybe she already has? And secondly, who am I to preach as I don't know her background fully, or her husbands, or pretty much anything factual about this person? How am I to know she already doesn't have experience in these awful situations? If you had asked yourself some questions before, you might of saved yourself some embarrassment... in my opinion, embarrassment, as in my opinion you are simply wrong and you are a hypocrite. This could of been avoided easily if you had asked yourself some questions instead of asking me too.

To poo poo the whole conundrum, I have asked myself that many, many a time, and often. What if? I ask myself what if constantly. What if my father had died when he had his accident? What if I hadn't of had to have an abortion? What if I'd never met my husband? What if what if what if. And why would you think I never ask myself this when on the absolute whole I am eternally and painfully grateful for everything and everyone I have in my life? Am I supposed to dwell on these things? Am I supposed to hold myself prisoner to guilt and constant mind questions because I'm in a different situation to someone else? Because people have it worse than me? Well, people also have it a lot better than me, and people also have it a hell of a lot worse than the people you think are in poverty also.

You know absolutely nothing of where I come from or my background. You have no idea how my husband came up from the gutter by himself, with no help from anyone, to create a company single handedly. You may have no idea what it is like to own and run a company, if you could even manage to start a successful one, then how difficult it is, a 24 hour non-stop mind-fu****y. But you might do, but then again, I would presume you don't, or I imagine you wouldn't of wrote what you have.

If you want to know a certain kind of crushing, constant stress, start your own successful company, then come back to me and try to complain that people with money have it easy and everything is a frolic in the park.

I met my husband when he had hardly anything, just a glimmer of something I saw to be very successful and I could see it in him, in his eyes and in his core. He just has something and it is a constant, relentless drive. I wake up at 2am to the light of his phone and the glare of his e-mails. You can't switch off, there's no holiday pay, no sick pay - everything rides on him, he has a lot of pressure. He's been in both worlds, both pressure on different levels but just the same. When you have four people who rely on you to pay their wages so they can pay their mortgages and feed their children and you need to make a sale - this is a different kind of pressure. Everything has a pay off, everything has a price. Do you think this makes our relationship easy? Do you think any amount of money helps these problems? Do you think there is no work?

Poverty in my opinion and experience is something that is merely a starting hiccup and an unlucky entry point in life. That is where the luck of the drawer ends in my opinion. You can't chose where you were born, but everything after that, in my opinion, is no excuse. Awful things happen to people all the time, rich and poor and in between, but anyone and everyone can elevate themselves to whatever they want if they have the determination and know their talents and put in sheer, hellish work time. You make your own luck.

I have helped and supported my husband in his business for 8 years. I have helped and made him at every turn. Do I deserve no credit? Do these things just fall into people's laps? Not mine. Not ours. I could of made many other choices in life, I could of ended up with men that were wrong for me, quite easily, I could of been weak. Do I get no credit for making the right decisions in love? Is that not a type of strength uncelebrated? It is simply waved off with a hand as luck. Well, good judgement is not luck, good judgement is a skill, and I have made some good decisions. If I had made wrong decisions which would of lead me down worse paths, I believe you wouldn't of scorned me, I think you would of said poor me! And you certainly wouldn't of been asking me these things in the first place.

And this is where I come stuck and start to wonder, when people who are less fortunate say others have it easy - even financially, I couldn't tell you, we are mostly on the bread line. Business works a funny way with cash flow. I'm not going to explain it all on here as it's personal and simply bad taste, but when I mentioned Donald Trump in my above post, famously he was going bankrupt and he said to his first wife on seeing a homeless man in the street, "That man has more money than me." It's true. Yet he was still a billionaire on paper.

Obviously my husband is no Donald Trump!!! Not to say he could never be, I have full faith in him, he can have whatever he wants because he has the knack of getting it, but the principle is the same - some of our worst off friends often have more money than us. I can't explain fully but it's all in assets and stock and it's private but, it's stressful, believe me, and sometimes we scrape money together to buy a sandwich but yet I bathe in a solid copper bath. Welcome to the world of the knife edge of finances and believe me, it ain't always pretty. If you were to experience it you may find yourself wishing for £10 an hour and to scrape your rent, because you'll have a lot less money pressures. Trust me.

And so comes my disliken to what I would call the 'social justice warriors' of this world. Their attitude. They preach and judge before thinking and definitely before knowing. It's an embarrassment and not only that, they often make things worse. So they see someone in poverty, struggling to feed their children, and they look to the state and others to blame and victimise the person and they say, what can we do for this person? What can the state do for this person? What have we done to this person? Searching for blame, fault, or some justification to then take from others to make the less fortunate one's situation improve. My opinion is, these people can't see the wood for the trees. People away from these situations can look from a distance and sometimes this gives a better perspective, to not be in the constant struggle, they can offer solutions and ideas the person deep in the situation may not of thought of through their efforts being wrapped up in simply surviving. And I think this principle is what this site is mostly based off. Exterior advice away from the depth of someones situation. The blame and victimising helps the person not one jot.

Now, you may not agree with me, you may think it's in bad taste, but I think someone like Donald Trump has that perspective and attitude to solve these issues. My other opinion to which I hold very close and believe in completely, because it does work, for me and my husband and in principle, is not outward help, but helping yourself. You see, my message is one of much greater positivity, that you can do anything if you have the will and put your mind to it. I could name many examples, obviously one being my husbands, but I'm not going to drag up his own personal success story as it's boring and really doesn't strengthen my point much further.

Sometimes I wonder; would you rather hold the victimised view of no hope and this is the way it is, some people are lucky some aren't, or would you rather feel that deep down, the power is within you and you need no one else to make a success of your life no matter how or what that means for you? Which philosophy would you rather subscribe to? And most importantly, which one actually works? I would argue mine does, and it comes from no social justice warrior mentality, no blaming, just simply to know yourself and use you to your advantage. Everyone has talents and everyone has personal power in some form, no one is a victim in my eyes and especially not if they want to be.

Also, to add to your question of what I contribute to society? Maybe because you think I don't have a slavish 9 to 5 anymore therefore I am a poor little rich girl holed up in a golden cage shopping everyday (even though, hell, that would be contributing to the country and area's economy more than most people - at least I wouldn't be taking away in state benefits!), but apart from me thinking you are very rude for saying this or suggesting it, myself and my husband contribute more than most people I know. He has created jobs, we contribute to the economy, charities (wildlife mostly), and I litter pick in our area off my own back and the fact we are doing up our house has improved the street so much it has caused a bit of a mini property boom on the crescent and two more houses have sold and are being renovated too. Not that I have to justify my existence. Hell, sit by a pool all day for all I care, I really don't, it's not important, I don't measure people in those terms, I find it shallow. Who is the most self sacrificial? Please.

But all this aside, and after my defending myself, I have one question for you.

Next time, before you speak, maybe you should ask yourself something, and it goes a bit like this:

'What if I'm wrong?'

It is a much better and more useful question than what ifs.

Lo.

I know when I write here, I am writing to myself. And this week, some things have been written for me somewhere in some conceptual stars that I don't fully understand. I've been taught lessons about myself maybe I didn't want to hear. I feel like things have been building up to this very moment and I can't even put it into words. I feel inept. I can't express anything.

What a week.

You know the phase 'you have revealed yourself to me'? Well, I've thought and said that phrase for the first time many a times this week.

I have lost an old friend. I have lost other friends. Everyone has divided against me. I feel like an island out at sea, clinging onto D, a palm tree floating in the ocean. I feel like everything I've ever know and been sure of is drifting away from me. I feel a vast emptiness all around me, everywhere I look, everywhere I look my only sanity is D, my only life line is my husband.

I'll start with the borderline ridiculous.

I love America. I absolutely, absolutely love everything it f*****g stands for. If anyone knows me, they know I adore the pop culture there. I dream of moving there. And you know the biggest thing to happen in America (and in my opinion, to the alt-right movement against the social justice warriors of the liberal left), is the election. And more importantly - Donald Trump being elected.

Now, I don't want to get political, although, I am very political. I love politics. I love discussing it, especially when I should't. I guess we'll come onto that point later. But as much as the opinion is divided and the jury is out on Mr. Donald J. Trump, I've gotta hand it to him. Is it his alpha male status? Is it is cool, calm collect? His charisma? His wit?! Is it his straight talking, actually answers a question policies whether you like him or not? Is it his anti-I'll-stick-it-to-the-establishment swag? If you didn't guess already, my God, I love me my Trump Daddy, and I believe he's gonna fix it.

Whether you think I'm technically insane now is up to you. But please, try to have a sense of humour about this and see my light-heartedness behind my seriousness that I agree with this guy but my God, I can have a laugh, okay? I can laugh at a meme. It's alright.

A massive Trump supporter here. I massive Brexit supporter here. Yes, I also voted leave. Call the mobs now. Get the lynches ready people.

I'm sure everyone has heard of this pestilent evil called Facebook, draining us of our humanity, communication and aptitude for life and anyone else but ourselves and selfies? Well, I am now, officially (maybe slightly proud of this), like, totally Facebook liberal left enemy number one. And do you know why? For having the absolute gaul, the absolute ARROGANCE apparently, to post that I like Trump and also, I had the audacity to say that I thought Islam wasn't a peaceful religion, that I didn't believe in it and no, I don't respect it at all and YES LIBERALS, IT OFFENDS ME.

I too can play the offence game.

If you have ever witnessed a Facebook "debate", or seen a pack of wolves stalk prey, you will know how my one voice got treated on the lovely place we call the internet.

People I've went to school with, people I've grown up with, people who were bridesmaids at my wedding have passively aggressively called me a bigot, a racist, sexist, stupid, putrid (my favourite one out of them all, ten points for originality), brainwashed, Islamaphobic - I could really go on but you know, some of them thought they'd swallowed a dictionary and that made them right. These people have basically said to me "Lo, I've known you all my life. You're one of the most sweet, generous and kind people I know but, you know what, you dared to put your opinion out there and stick up for a different point of view and do you know what, you're actually a nasty piece of racist scum" and, you can imagine, worse.

Now, what does my running inner monologue me say about this? I want to rightly defend my honour. I hold my own for what I think is a decent amount of respectful speech and answer the fly off question time everyone throws at me and no one gives me ANY credit and they bully and pack up on me like the f*****g minorities they hysterically claim to defend. I am blinded by the irony of it all. I am... honestly. The mind boggles.

Back to not only being public enemy number one and by the way, I have a flood, I mean a FLOOD of nasty, hate filled women personally attacking me, but Quentin, one of our oldest and dearest friends (he was the one with the tent pegs - long story, no time), but we all went out for a very civilised dinner last night along with Cobain who also works for my husband (I wore a velvet dress and really, looking back, there is nothing better to do civilised battle in than a velvet dress).

Quentin was the biggest baby and spoilt brat you could imagine and denounced our years of friendship because he didn't agree with a grievance D rightly had. I won't go into it because like lots of these things, it's not just the one thing at that one time but a small build up of little nags and he'd harboured this s**t up whilst pretending to still like us.

Naturally, I defended my husband when I think he's in the right, as I would anyone. We end up walking home in the cold because he was too much of a man child to even answer a simple question or acknowledge there must be a problem.

The mean, character assignation part of me wanted to tell him to go run back to his mama's basement, go to sleep and tell his therapist all about it like I give a f**k, but, I was wearing velvet and I think this thankfully prevented me from crossing the line there. God bless velvet.

Anyway, as you may know how childish group friendships can be, this now means by default we have fallen out with everyone else apart from Cobain who seemed to actually be very reasonable and understanding throughout all of this.

I haven't been able to sleep well for three days due to all the overwhelming confrontation in my life and I just sat in bed and looked at D and said "Am I crazy? Are we crazy? Are we bad people? If not, why is everyone against us?"

Why does the more money we get and the bigger our house is mean that everyone suddenly tries to get all they can from us like it's okay because "they can afford it!" Oh yeah! How about common decency?!

I am truly, honestly, deeply... well, I don't know. I just don't know. Does this all make me a monster? In my heart I know it doesn't. I know I am not. I can admit when I'm wrong and I apologise when it's warranted but, I just don't know.

In England today, the place we live in hangs in a sombre, winter mood. It's poppy day, remembrance day, and it seems perfectly timed that all this has fallen on this morning - a day where people died, people my Grandparents knew and loved, for the freedom of speech, and my right to say how I feel and my right to offend. People march down the street where we live. Today, on this somewhat solemn, grey day, me and D, in all the confusion of this whole mix up, the world being turned upside down, feel more in love than ever and decided to start a family.

Lo x

Baby, life's what you make it

Can't escape it

Baby, yesterday's favourite

Don't you hate it?

Life's what you make it

(Everything's all right)

Baby, life's what you make it

Don't backdate it

Baby, don't try to shade it

Beauty is naked

Life's what you make it

(Everything's all right)

Baby, life's what you make it

Celebrate it

Anticipate it

Yesterday's faded

Nothing can change it

Life's what you make it

Life's what you make it

(Everything's all right)

Make it, make it

- Talk Talk 'Life's What You Make It'

A night alone, but not a bad one. I'm starting to really like cocktails, I mean, I really like them - most nights! What the hell, sometimes life feels like one huge holiday and I have an issue indulging every passing whim.

Just sat here curled up on the couch with the lights low, fire on, candles lit and R'n'B playing - memories of what seems like past lives are coming to me in mischievous, secretive waves. Often in life, I have had to pinch myself because the reality has seemed like a dream. I can't wipe the smile off my face when I think back on some of the things I've done. I keep thinking about when I was 19 and dancing, stripping - my God. I have lived three lives already. I have done more things in my life, entered different worlds most people will never set foot in. I have been alive and felt alive. I have been bold. It seems so long ago, that young girl. I am still that girl, deep down, she comes out and dances when no one is around. She crawls across the floor and flicks her hair, rolls and turns. She still arches her back like a feline. Nothing will make you feel more alive like seduction. Oh my God, I'm writing this slightly drunk.

Sometimes, times like these where I'm sat and the sound system is filling the halls, the basement, the house, I long to be back on stage. It's pure exuberance. When I was there it was never a performance. This is something people can't understand. It was never a performance. I tell you what is a performance? Life is a performance. Day to day, drudge to drudge, thats performing. Go now, sit here, do that, pay here. All the small talk and the politeness - there's your performance. No; on stage I was truly and exactly me for a brief 4 minutes. No hang ups, no strings, no niceness. To have no inhibitions, even for such a short time, is truly a freeing thing.

I love the music of Nina Simone. She once did an interview titled 'To Be Free', and in it she describes something close to what I desperately try to clutch at and summaries and hopelessly verbalise. To feel truly free. And when I danced, that was it - no fear.

What's free to me? Same thing it is to you. You tell me. Just a feeling. It's just a feeling. It's like how do you tell somebody how it feels to be in love? How are you going to tell anybody who has not been in love how it feels to be in love? You cannot do it to save your life. You can describe things, but you can't tell 'em. But you know it when it happens.

That's what I mean by free. I've had a couple of times onstage when I really felt free. And that's something else! That's really something else! Like all, all, like, like— I'll tell ya what freedom is to me: No fear! I mean, really—no fear. If I could have that half of my life... no fear.

Lots of children have no fear. That's the closest way—that's the only way I can describe it. That's not all of it. But it is something to really...really feel. I— Wow. Like a new way of seeing. Like a new way of seeing something! - Nina Simone.

Have you figured out posting pics yet? Your place sounds so neat. What is the square footage of one floor (I know there's four)? Are all the ceilings super high or just the main floor?

 

Word of advice...focus on one room at a time. Your bedroom first (if it's not done). Kitchen (if you cook). Bathrooms.

 

You'll get there

 

Hi Faraday!

 

So nice to hear from you! How's your home renovation coming along? Anymore gardening? Fill me in!

 

Thanks for the kind words. We wish we could have done one room at a time, but it's been more economical with work men being free at certain times and materials coming in to do a kind of blanket effect on the whole house. It's coming together in layers like a time consuming onion! Nothing is completely finished and nothing is completely as it was when we first got the house last September.

 

I am struggling to find an app for photos? I tried to upload a few from my iPhone but I get an error message. Someone suggested that it may be the quality or size is too big? All my pictures have been taken on my phone and are in my album on there so I'm a technophobe seriously struggling here!

 

Square footage... oh man! I'm not sure. I could work it out but to measure it would take me ages! When we first looked at the house the estate agents had a plan with measurements but I've done a quick internet search and can't find it. Without sounding like I'm bragging or anything, it's pretty big, especially for the UK. The ceiling in the living room and kitchen, ground floor, ground bathroom and back entrance hall is about 12/13 foot in height. It's a Georgian property so the windows are huge and the doors are large as well. The two windows in our lounge are wooden sash windows with shutters that are about 9 foot tall. The ceiling height in the first floor bedrooms is the same minus about a foot - roughly 12 foot. The basement ceiling has been lowered at some point, we think in the 70's, and is normal height. The attic bedrooms on the second floor ceiling is normal height also, if not a little lower. There are five flights of stairs (not including little steps of 3 or 4 down to lower bathrooms) and from the attic landing you can look all the way down to where the basement stairs start and the drop in total is just over 100 foot. It was a b*****d to paint, I tell you that!

 

There are 4 fireplaces left, originally there were 7, but some had been taken out before we moved in. The living room has a really nice rouge marble fireplace, or French marble as I think it's known. Some people think is gaudy because of it's dark oxblood red colour, but I really love the grey and cream streaks in the marble. It reminds me of a fossil. One of the rooms in the basement has room for a full size snooker table plus a sideboard plus a sofa! So I think the square footage is decent, not that it really matters to us because I think the true sense of luxury and space comes from the high ceilings and the intricate coving and craftsmanship everywhere in the house.

 

Because of the age of the house, the thing this place is missing is a large family bathroom, as the Georgians had toilets separate from wash areas and normally had a bath in a bedroom (we've taken that idea back in our own bedroom by installing one there). At the moment there are three toilets, one en-suite and one shower room/bathroom. When we moved into the house originally the basement had another kitchen in it, so we had this house with two kitchens which was a little mad! Originally a live in maid and cook would of probably been in the basement, but now the live in cook and maid is me, we ripped the second kitchen out which was truly awful and have a stripped back basement with nothing in it but drying plaster and a joiners work bench.

 

Everyone who comes to the house always finds something new we never noticed. We had an electrician work on the house and he said,

 

"Do you know your joists are solid mahogany? They don't make 'em like this anymore!"

 

It's amazing how beautifully things were built then, the attention to detail is beautiful. It's so well put together it's hard to think it's over 150 years old. The brick on the outside wall is 18 inches thick. The house seems to keep a constant temperature too - cool in the summer and cool in the winter! Ha! Never too hot and never too cold. Not sure if that's a bad thing or not but I know I'm wearing jumpers all the time here!

 

We have the historic deeds to the house and the crescent we live on was especially prestigious at the time of it's building. One of the original occupiers of the house was a shipyard owner, the other a dentist, etc. Much more distinguished than me and D! We have the hand written receipts to commission electricity being installed. It's really interesting but we just don't have the time to go through it all! I can't wait till everything is settled.

 

Crazily we were originally going to put an indoor pool in the basement, but we think we might put one in the walled yard behind the house eventually (but, seriously, this is a major pipe dream!) I will tell you one thing though - I am definitely getting a hot tub at some point! I'll need one after all the work, I'll be a haggard bent over woman after the turmoil of doing this thing up!

 

I desperately want to send you pictures! I wish I was good at technology - this is the wrong era for me, really! Do you know a simpler way Faraday?

 

Sorry to go on - as much as I complain about doing the house up I truly love this place. It is really my dream house. I have to pinch myself every time I wake up in the morning. I feel like a Queen. Now I don't work, my friends refer to me as 'Lady of the Manor' which you know, is really tacky because, durrr! It's a town house

 

Lo x

This project, renovation, home re-haul - whatever you may call it, is starting to take over.

A year gone by since we bought it was marked when September came around. Looking back and remembering how it truly was when we first moved in I can safely say without being too hard or too easy on ourselves that yes, we have come along way. IT has come along way. 'It' being this place and sometimes the feeling is more us against it, not with us. It can beat you some days when you step back from a room and look up to the ceilings that need scaffolding to even get up to the height to paint, and your eyes seem to hunt out, locate and fixate on every problem (the big and the small), and you start to feel like it will never end. You feel like the horizon is far, far away, but the sun is always setting. Always setting on your day and never enough time.

I can't complain, I must stay positive about the whole thing. Yes, sometimes I just want to go to bed. Sometimes I just want to relax or have a cocktail with friends. Sometimes, I just want to not have to walk four flights of stairs in the middle of the night to the only toilet we haven't ripped out which sits in stripped, naked surroundings on the ground floor. Sometimes I browse nice interior shops for beautiful little trinkets and towels and bed linen and have to stop myself when I remember all over again we don't even have a kitchen installed yet.

D is what I would call an old Hollywood 'strong, silent type' - you know, cue the therapist scene in the first pilot episode of the TV series 'The Sopranos'. Tony sums it up perfectly. Where have the strong, silent types gone? The guys that just get things done and don't b***h and moan about their feelings and this and that. They are endless rocks and providers and you never, ever see them crumble. You never catch a tear.

Well, thats my husband. I see them now and then, the strong, silent types. They're a rare breed. Now and then I look at friends and I'll see behind them a fantastic support network held down by a provider. They seem to be the ones holding it all together, always being positive, silently assuring everyone they love they'll protect and take care of them and anything and everything that may come their way. It's always sorted, it always gets done, the curtain falls to the tune of a happy ending.

I can say I've never seen D properly distressed and I've never really seem him properly upset. He never lets me know he's worried. But lately, he's not been sleeping, and it's gone on for months.

It's very unlike him. Yes, his mind is always elsewhere - normally business, he has a daydream habit, but it's never taken over. Well, thats what the house has done in these last few months. Work has intensified and every plan has been pushed into overdrive. He's run the renovating of our house exactly like he does his business; well, like a business. I work 7.5 hours a day as a full time decorator and I don't sit back to flick through channels and I don't spend hours in the bath reading anymore. The main rule is we always, definitely, without fail, have the weekends off.

I wake up sometimes to see him turned around, back to me with the glare of his phone casting a ghostly glow on all the pilled up pillows around us. I wake up to hear him shuffling and turning. A cough at 2am. A floorboard squeak at 4:30 as he walks the decent to the bathroom.

He's juggling running a business and running this house project and for the first time, financially, he's having a moment. Cash flow is a little tight and he has a lot of things going on in different areas. I can see his eyes glaze when he daydreams and I can almost imagine him trying to compartmentalise everything he has to do that I, very selflessly, have no knowledge about.

As always he assures me that it's fine, and I know full heartedly that it will be. I know everything always works out in the end. He always makes it right. We've been through this so many times before, but I guess the added turmoil is we've never had a four storey house to do up at the same time. He's always pulled through, normally spectacularly, like a magician pulling a white rabbit from a hat. Last year it just happened to be a white car for me. He always manages it and I never know how, but he will. In the meantime, all I can do is ride this out with him and be there with my own type of silent support. I guess so much communication in life is unsaid and unheard. We live in a world of silent communication where things are just kind of... understood? Without a word been spoken. Is that what a connection is? Maybe.

I read an article recently that said 18% of couples who endure either a major home renovation or build their own house split up or divorce. The key word in all of this is exactly that - endure. It is some kind of self inflicted, sadistic endurance that I am finding I don't have the stamina for but simply have too. Will the struggle make this whole thing even more sweeter at the finish line? I hope so. Everyone keeps telling me, "Oh, but if you had all the money and just got other people to do it you wouldn't have that same sense of satisfaction." I hope they're Goddamn right because I tell you what, it's a b****y amount of slog for a sense of satisfaction.

Satisfaction must come delayed in the form of smaller things. Curling up under layers of fresh duvets to D on a cold October night. Having friends circled round the desk in the middle of my non-kitchen with warm beers in their hands. Dancing to music through the speakers by myself to the reverb of the echo from empty rooms. Having old men with cigarettes hanging out between their lips tell you you've missed a bit when you trim the hedge in the garden. Watching the people of this city come and go.

Lo x

I'm curious about something...

 

In choosing between being at work, looking at the clock and just waiting for lunch and the end of the day, hoping the time will go fast so you can leave, but having something to do all day that puts you in contact with people, produces something of value even if its drudgery to perform, and makes you feel part of "the rest of the world"....

 

and having all this freedom to do whatever you please, and not having to do dreadful tasks each day that are asked of you, but feeling a beast of boredom constantly at your ankles, prodding you to find this or that to stave off loneliness, the malaise of idleness, feeling cut off from the rthythm of the rest of the world and hyper-aware of aloneness when you are not distracted by some passing pleasure...

 

which of those states is more endurable for you?

 

Being pre-occupied by the fight to find something meaningful through the boredom...or doing concrete things that you dislike doing that give your life structure?

Hi tiredofvampires,

Honestly I have never felt part of the real world and this is something I seem to struggle with regardless of whether I am in work or not.

What has surprised me is how bored I easily get of everything. I used to start a new job and everything was great for the first month or so, and then after I would become painfully bored. All week I have been treating the house and doing it up like a full time job (well, my husband has made me because he won't stand for me mooching around the house), so for 7.5 hours a day, Monday to Friday, I have been full time decorator of our humble abode. The shock to my system was a brief trip out to the supermarket mid day, I think it was on Thursday. A real shock to the system.

In my opinion, it seems like I have traded the working zombies for the dosser zombies and I can't get the balance I thought I would in-between.

Don't get me wrong - it is my dream, passion and love to work on the house, but when all that stops and especially when D goes away on business, I am left feeling very isolated, especially at the weekends when everyone is off doing things and I only have a small circle of friends. I could keep myself busy but I don't know what with. Heaven help me, I don't want to take up crafts or knitting or even worse, baking. Getting into Cath Kidson and having my bowls match the pattern on my apron - I would shoot myself in my face.

What I do have to realise is I always feel very down when my husband goes away. I always have done, when working full time or now, free and with lots of time to myself. It's part of my nature. I even stop eating when he's gone. I nibble snack food but stop eating proper meals. It's like I start going into hibernation and mourning for something, like owls that stand gormless and shell shocked in the middle of the road when their mating partner gets run over. That's how I feel. People have told me this is wrong, I need to find my own amusement and not be so reliant on him for my happiness, but I honestly don't know how I could even begin to be truly, I mean truly, be happy without him. I feel this is a Romeo and Juliet situation me and my husband have here. If he died, I would hurl myself from the nearest bridge. It is an all consuming thing, this love.

I do use this journal as an outlet for a good old rant, and often I get it out and go about my daily life feeling much better. As I may of mentioned here before (but I forget and repeat myself like an old woman all the time), because this journal is an outlet, I am more inclined to post negatively on it instead of positively. When I feel positive, I really don't have much need for this journal and I am busy getting on with life and enjoying myself to write on here.

Writing on here for me is a double edged sword - it makes me feel worse, but it sometimes makes me feel better. But often, I almost always regret what I have posted but I would never take it back, because it was the truth for me at that time and in that moment.

I've had a boring day and tried to fill my time up searching for some kind of fun I just don't get from my friends and family anymore. I used to be so happy in my own company, but I am so used to being with my husband that I feel like part of me goes with him when he's away. Part of me is in London now and it's probably why I am so blank and my post is so bleak. Although I hope there is some humour in there, because at the end of all of it I always have to laugh at myself. Anyone who knows me would tell you that. If you haven't read any humour in my post or poking fun at the situation, I am afraid I haven't been clear or you have read it wrong. I am not a serious person, despite all this drivelling I do.

Lo x

EDIT: A side note; I completely didn't answer your question! Would I rather be a useful member of society doing a worth while thing I hate no matter how mundane instead of mulling over my own thoughts here at home bored - the answer is a resounding, definite, all consuming no. No no no. I would still be far more miserable with the dreary and oppressing office looming round the corner on a Sunday afternoon. I think I will give freedom more time to do it's thing. I am really not used to freedom. Like a lottery winner who can never imagine what it's like growing up with "old money", I don't know how to handle this new found, lucky gift. I think I need to learn!

I can't believe I feel lonely when I've been around people most of the day.

Why is the contact and conversation never enough with other people? Selfishly, I feel like I'm trying to get something from them, and it's dangling there and I can't reach it, and I keep on drinking coffee with friends and talking s**t and there is this feeling of near satisfaction of some kind or a connection, but it's just not there, and I'm trying to cling on for a longer interaction - one more coffee, one more drink, does anyone want to order? Oh I love this song let's stay! But everyone's lives must continue and I, like them, am a slot in a diary and ever expanding busy schedule of the mid twenty somethings who are approaching thirty like life itself will end when the clock strikes at twelve on the big three-oh.

The only person I gain any completeness from is D. Cue the sick bucket, but it's true.

Without him I am alone as a human in this world, and the world is this half done house, and I orbit D, and he is the sun. And without him no one on earth understands me and I am truly, hopelessly; alone.

He went away yesterday morning on business and I knew within half an hour I needed to make plans for this weekend to not become a slouch fest inside my own head of thoughts and a big, empty house. I end up like I do now, three hours into my own company and I am surviving off milky coffee and miniature diet cookies. I fall to pieces. I don't want a hobby. My hobby is buying stuff and playing house. I can't buy anything and I can't play any house - there is no one to play with, no one to entertain. When no one is here to validate me I wither and die away. Life is like a stage and the audience has left and the seats are empty and I am the actress in my own play with no audience to regale or entertain I simply stand, blank and dull, until the lights can come on again and I am back in character.

The awful thing is, when the loneliness like this creeps in, I start having the temptation to put a blanket over me. A blanket! Like a pig in a blanket! I hate it. I hate the whole thing a blanket over you laid out on a couch like a flu victim stands for. To me, it stands for giving up, being a huge slob, being a huge big fat old looser laid on the couch with your blanket around you protecting you from the nasty world outside while you churn up your time marathon watching ridiculous box sets that are, everyone knows it, well rubbish (unless it's The Sopranos).

My friend S, who is C's (Cobain's) finance, does this ALL the time. I walk into her house and she's there, given up like a beached manatee, spread out on the couch with a God damn blanket over her. The blanket seems to be the cherry on top of it all. Tt seems to seal the deal for me, holding bad connotations. I swear, I will never lay down on life like that on the sofa unless I am ill or near death. Even then, I expect to have lipstick on and a velvet gown over me instead of some awful, scraggy beat up blanket that was hand sewn when going through a "craft moment" a couple of years ago when knitting was supposed to be cool. I can't go on even writing about it, I feel ill now at the thought.

My plans were lined up nicely. I was seeing S and C this morning, quiet early for a Saturday morning to be there at 10. They must of known I was desperate as I am never, ever exactly on time, and I was early. They looked shocked. Maybe I am ill.

The hour long drive there was nice but didn't calm the nerves as it normally does. Firstly, I couldn't find the right music for my mood. This always irritates me and puts me in a rushed, kind of frustrated state of mind. It's a big deal for some reason. The weather is perfect. It's not the weathers fault, even though strangely it should be in normal peoples worlds. It's raining hard, grey, cold like Autumn is peeping around the street corner, but I love that and enjoyed picking out some knitwear. I love boots, I love coats, I love everything about dressing warm. Summer clothes kill me, I really am not one of those people who loves all the bright colours and the hot pants. Don't get me wrong, I am a fan of showing skin, even if it is my pale skin, but there is something so glamorous to me about a beautiful knitted polo neck under a heavy woollen coat and knee high boots, a leather skirt. Maybe it's because I am a December baby.

C and S were slouching around in their house that is always, always dim. They really struggle to put a lamp on. I'm not sure why. It's always kind of dark but you can't place your finger on why. There is always the smell of stale food, mostly unwashed dishes in the sink and you know the bed is unmade and there are clothes, shoes and food wrappers under every chair and side table. Damp washing is hung on the cold radiators getting foisty. It is always chilly and I always regret taking my shoes off and having to endure naked feet the whole time we talk. I have to curl them under myself and cusp my feet in alternating hands in-between cups of java.

I always come away from there slightly, I don't know, deflated? That aside, I did enjoy having a catch up. I'm glad S's career is going well and she is on track for a promotion. She deserves it. Despite her couch manatee ways and that blanket practically living on her back, she is a hard worker when it comes to what she does and I am sure she does it well. I can't believe we will all be turning 27 this year, apart from Miss Gee. She's the baby. She's a Spring one is that Miss Gee.

After my visit of a couple of hours (which is enough of me for anyone), they have to shoot off to a BBQ in the pouring rain and I move onto my next stop for some kind of entertainment and relief: my mum and dads.

Now, when I go there off my own back, you know it's bleak. I guess I thought since I was in the area I should see them. They're always at home if they're not camping or going to a vegan rally, so I go through the routine I always do. Park my car next to theirs as tight as possible because I know only I need to get out. Knock on the front window and glance at the white shutters either side and notice there is always a cobweb in the left shutter, peer into the room with my hands and face to the glass and see my dad on the couch strumming a guitar or watching the snooker.

My mum had done a really delicious soup. She is very healthy and completely against any type of product coming from an animal. Beautiful soup with fresh bread - lots of pepper and salt. I have to have my pepper and salt. I collected a few parcels that had been dropped off there and showed my mum how to online shop for some new ankle boots that she is after. She had to rush off to see my Grandma who only lives down the next few streets. I can't face my Grandma because I'm already socially drained of any energy through stagnating in my own company for a short few hours and being in a dim, damp house. She will suck all the joy and happiness I have left for the day out from me as soon as I see her. She will start her emotionally manipulative complaining and crocodile tears. I can tell my mum doesn't want to go, but she throws on a girlish rain coat (even though she's 52) and rushes out into the rain, her shopping bag ready to be filled with my Grandma's list of things she needs my mum to get.

I bow out of this second and fateful social visit when I see my dad reaching for one of his ukuleles and make my excuses that I have to leave because I'm meeting another friend. I feel guilty but it's such a dull day full of dull things that I want to try and inject some excitement into my being and it's not happened at S and C's and it's not happening here.

Running to my car I slam the door and turn the heating up full blast and turn to my phone. Miss Gee. She's always up for a giggle. I text her and ask her if she fancies a visit to a sex shop 20 minutes drive out of here in an hour or so. She texts back straight away dying to go but she's not local due to having to be called to work unexpectedly. This makes my heart sink.

I love looking around sex shops. It's a strange hobby of mine. Normally I go with D on a rainy afternoon or if I find myself slinking around the house bored with nowhere to go, but I can't quite get the energy up to go alone, even though I actually have something in mind I might want to buy. I find myself already reversing out of my parents street and my mind starts suggesting different activities alone. I could go to the retail park 15 minutes drive from here, maybe buy a little top? Maybe treat myself to a new nail varnish? I could wander around for half an hour and then go home, somehow making this whole mash up of seeing people worth while as I now have nothing to show for it and feel very deflated for some reason.

I end up driving home in bad rain hanging onto some lorries tail lights and still not finding my perfect music for today. I still can't find it.

I'm bored, in need of attention and a bit turned on. This is torture. I can't bring myself to work more on the house and I really don't want to clean. Maybe I should sort through my massive pile of clothes in boxes that I never wear and try to organise them for when we see the right wardrobes. I don't even have the energy to nap. I hate naps anyway. I only do them twice a year and I've already had one up to now that I regretted.

I feel hungover today and I haven't even been drinking. I think I am drunk in love, or oh so crazy in love, as Beyonce would say.

Here is a time I really do wish I had a fabulous friend like Grace Jones. Instead I will have to play Private Life by myself.

Lo x

I work in multiple capacities for a non profit organization that supports foster children as they come close to aging out of the system. I tutor these kids in math and language arts, teach them life skills for living independently, and work two days a week in a thrift shop that supports the organization. Every job with this organization is important to someone and makes a difference. Working in the store is a hoot!

Now I can understand why you like your job so much! It's better when you're actually making a difference - something fulfilling must be the better way!

I'm glad you love your job jig! I envy you, I do!

x

I loved the 'camping' story. Funny as hell! Not everyone hates going to work. That's a generalization I disagree with. I don't get hating work. I really don't. I love going to work, it's what I live for. I love my boss, my coworkers, the actual work, the pay, just everything! Isn't it funny how different people view heaven? Mine is away from home and yours is centered on it. Interesting, isn't it?

Hi jigsup,

Thanks for the response! I am really generalising here for drama as I often do when I start getting all quill in ink and all that but I really hated all the jobs I did apart from one which was extremely unconventional! Of course not all people hate their jobs. Most of the jobs I have worked in have been in very depressing offices or minimum wage gigs where people are either there saving for university or using it as a stepping stone to get onto something else. My experience hasn't been the best because (barring one job), I've never done anything I truly love!

I think if I drove to work everyday an editor for Vanity Fair I might be happy, although a part of me thinks maybe not!

I really am a bit of an old-fashioned gal! I wonder if the freedom will get boring though - thats the main thing. Even though my mind has turned to mush already it needs some kind of use!

Nice to hear from you. Can I be nosy and ask what you do for a living?

Lo x

Like everything up to now in my life, in the end, I get my way. I got what I wished for.

As I sit here watching cars and bus interior lights glide through the gaps in our high box hedge, I am free. I do not have a job.

Isn't that what I've always wanted? If only! If only I wished and wished, I day dreamed, I drooled at the work clock as the hand ticked from nine to five, I savoured the thoughts of walking out the door into D's arms and never leaving his bed in the morning to wade through sleepwalking people shuffling brief cases and paper boys on bikes. I squeezed my eyes close on a night, I hoped beyond hope for this moment.

Twenty six. Married. Kept woman. A beautiful house. My own car. My own clothes. City breaks and expensive furniture. Luxury, luxury, luxury. Talk of starting a family. Twenty six. I got it. I got it in the end.

My fairy godmother sprinkled dust over my eyes to wake me, and I stretch out of my slumber not to an alarm, but to the sun creeping through the shutters. My days are filled working on this elegant house we managed to somehow get our unworthy and very grubby hands on. I paint all day and the paintings never done. I work hard on the basement, I toil happily over the curved banisters. I sand each door as if it were as pleasurable as running a hand down a lovers back. My work is caring and my work is for me. My work is now for D. My work is for us.

There is a whole world I never knew about. A new world I have entered unnaturally for my age. I get this feeling I am intruding. I am not meant to be here.

While all the normal people go away to their work places for 8 hours, normal society is taken off the streets and the transport systems and the buildings. I walk the supermarket when I want and what I see is not the usual. A food shop used to be on a Friday night. Always late or at the weekend because, of course, you work and don't have time to waltz casually browsing the aisle during the daytime light. I have entered a new world - the world of people who don't work. And those people are mostly, horribly, old.

They are so lifeless and grumpy. They drudge the shop floors using their trollies like zimmer frames. No rush, no go, just painfully long decisions on which cheese they need for that week or if they have enough fish to get them by till 'Fish Friday.' I feel like I am a witness to this world, not there with them, but an observer into this unknown time of day. Two o'clock is especially a strange time. A lifeless time where I live. The walking dead are everywhere - either near death or dead in the brain living off the government and always walking besides a bike, walking the streets like extras in a film. The vivacious part of me doesn't belong to this world, yet here I am, with them in it. Am I really to become like them? Is this some kind of pre-warning? Another zombie force left over by the zombie work force I always tried to escape, going away to their hives to be busy, productive bees, while these husks of people wait around and busy themselves with crosswords and made up chores?

Generalising aside, my dad came round to the house yesterday to help with some DIY.

Halfway up a scaffold attaching a light, he asks me without looking down:

"So! How are you finding your new freedom then!?"

And honestly, all I could say was:

"Strange."

Lo x

I can feel a change in the weather.

The last weeks of beaming sun have been given away by falling, golden leaves in London parks. We were in the city for nearly a week. I went away with D, three quarters business and quarter pleasure. A lot of driving on his part - he was exhausted. By the end of it all we got home early in the morning in a daze. I remember sitting on the end of the couch staring at the floor with a cup of something in my hand tranced out for God knows how long until I realised I was looking blanker than ever. That's when you know it's time for bed!

I always feel strange coming away from London, as if London is the centre of the world, and when you're in it, you're really IN it, amongst it all. Nothing ever stops, something is always happening. Constant, relentless, interesting, cool action. Always cool. Everyone is mostly very cool. It makes me tired and kind of irritated, the rushing and everyone being so painfully aware of their own appearance, but when I get back home to a quieter life I feel like I've lost something and I want it back. My little private love hate relationship with that town.

I have been obsessed (once again, my obsessions seem to go round in cycles), with the singer Grace Jones. I've seen her in interviews. I find her maybe a little too aggressive for my tastes, but i can't help but really like her, and I love, I LOVE, her blatant boldness. 'Slave To The Rhythm' has been my go to on repeat for that week in London, one headphone in my ear while we drive around doing what we need to do in heavy traffic and close heat. The music seems very fitting to everyone sauntering, running and walking around, going about their very important and very artistic lives. I need a friend like Graces Jones. That's what I need.

I feel like it's been forever since putting pen to paper here. I've been all over. The camping trip went well, apart from our dear friend Quentin getting over excited like a kid in a candy shop and running his mouth off from picking him up at 10am on Thursday till D ended up putting him on the ground with his arm behind his back at 2:30am on Saturday.

It's not that he's mean, but his sense of humour is hilarious for about a day or two, and then the constant p**s taking and ribbing really starts to wear thin. I felt warn out by Saturday morning and kind of ready for home (don't mean to be a kill joy - sorry Quentin). Long story short, our lovely friend who put us up has a fantastic garden with a beautiful pool. We went canoeing when we got there (after a few drinks of course!) to check out a camping spot, but ended up soaking each other because we're childish and went back to the house to have more drinks, potatoes and chicken.

"Camping" ended up in our friends back garden. OKAY! Okay okay, not really... hardcore. But it still was camping right? Give me that one? Ha! Anyway, cue relentless Quentin personal jibes for a couple of days solid. I think it was probably late Friday afternoon. The sun was out and a few of us got in the pool. I got everyone some drinks and I watched from the comfort of my floating doughnut; Quentin, in-between his typical jokes, grabbing D from behind and pulling him under the water then laughing. D wears a cap back to front all the time, it's his thing. Maybe because he shaves his head bald now, I don't know, but thats his thing, and this hat was getting soaked and floating up to the surface and then he was grabbing it. I kept looking over and D kept laughing but not giving anything back. Bobbing there with my plastic glass in hand I could feel a storm brewing in that luke warm pool.

Fateful Saturday night comes round and after a BBQ and days of staying up till the sun rises everyone's pretty tired. I get a bit cranky when I'm tired. OKAY! Okay okay, I lie, I get really cranky. D calls me 'Moody Woman' - makes it no better. It's nearly 2am or something like that, I don't know the exact time, and Quentin and Cobain complain that their new tent is too small for them. They're both quite tall, Cobain is just shy of 6 foot and Quentin is about 6'3''. So kind (but moody) woman I am, I start properly pegging their tent so that it stretches out the foot area and gives them more space. I do this to everyones tent, and lastly ours. Now it's time for bed. So we climb in, chat a bit, and then the lights cut and everyone's gone quiet. This giggling comes from the boys tent and like b****y clockwork with his larks. Quentin has run around the back of our tent and is pulling out the pegs. Harmless, totally harmless and just a good laugh I know, but I half jokingly tell him does he mind because I personally put those God d**m pegs in with my own fair hand! D rustles from his sleeping back and he says:

"Q, put those pegs back in the tent, Lo took an hour putting those in."

Nothing, just more laughing and then he starts trying to push the tent over. Alright, harmless as well, but I'm tired and we've just bought it PLUS just put it up, and I think days of relentless ribbing causes D to fly out of the tent - just in his underpants. D is only about 5'8'', but he used to box and has fantastic, strong rugby players thighs (I love that).

Now, girls will say buying flowers, or proposing on top of the Eiffel Tower, or showing up on a white horse, is the most romantic thing a man can do for you? I will tell you right now girls, the most romantic thing a man can ever do for you is put a guy on the floor and make him eat grass in his underpants because someone needs to put your tent pegs back. Honestly. That's it.

D gets him to the ground straight away and I've poked my head out of our tent, watching it all unravel with glee and complete satisfaction.

"Q - you're going to put all the tent pegs back in for Lo."

"No way man! F**k off!"

I watch this surprisingly happy. I do what any damsel in distress does in every 50's film when her boyfriend defends her honour. I fain mercy.

"Don't hurt him D!" I say this while stifling my smile. I am mentally rubbing my hands together.

"Are you serious?! You're starting to hurt me. That hurts!"

"Put the pegs back."

A few minutes go by and D has Quentin's fingers pulled right back. I can see the sweat coming off Quentin's forehead in the dark. Only two more seconds of suffering this imposed manoeuvre and he's yelled out and suddenly and silently the pegs are going back in the ground. D climbs back into the tent and goes back to sleep. I curl back up next to my shirtless, short brute who has triumphantly defended my peg honour. I want to rip his pants off right in that tent through the sleeping bag! Five minutes goes by and I hear Quentin leave his tent.

The next morning we have overly dramatic heartfelt apology and news that he stayed up all night freezing in his bed because he was too filled with shame to get his duvet that he'd left in the tent.

So romantic.

Lo x

I got so much done on the house yesterday, it was like I had new found energy after a weekend of rest. Well, not full on rest, but just doing enough to keep things ticking along on the domestic front without busting my balls and messing my nails up.

Nails are definitely not intact now and are chipped to hell with going through the mill, DIY style. I've taken the usual red off and can't wait to put it back on again tonight after a scrub and a soak. Oldest and best friend Miss G has invited me to dinner at her and her newish boyfriends place. You can tell I'm getting old and boring when I think a relationship thats been a year is new. Oh, to be new! They moved in his friends place (they're both junior doctors) about eight months ago and I still haven't seen it. I was never invited, even. Miss G can be a strange cookie over certain things and tonight the conditions must of been just right for me to get an invite. The wind must be blowing softly south and her cleaner must of just left after a dust off. I want to leave in good time so I can drop by the florists and get her a nice bunch of something.

It's bizarre, but we never see much of the good doctor and when we do he is very socially awkward. Kind of shy but in an arrogant way, does that make any sense? I can't put my finger on it. She's so bubbly and a bit of a ditz; like me really. I always imagined her settling down with someone completely different. She's always gone for the academic types and I know an old fashioned geek gets her hot, but the good doctor?! I'm not sure. Just put it this way - she's mega sexual and I couldn't even imagine him kissing her.

I'm going to stop bashing my best friends boyfriend - he seems a nice guy and who am I to judge? He's always sweet enough when he's round ours or we go out and I've got an invite. I'm having to travel down but I don't mind the drive. An hour is a nice enough amount to time. Back to my old home town. I'm sure nothings changed.

Everything's changed here, even in the short space of a week.

It was my mum's Birthday last night (is it bad I don't know how old she is anymore??!! Early 50's?!), and for the first time since our show down where we assassinated each others characters and said things to each other that when said to any normal functioning person, would never be moved on from, my sister came round to see the new house for the first time and it was like nothing ever happened. It was like we had never even had an argument, ever! Let alone verbally massacred each other in the bedroom we shared together for 18 years.

It was all very civil and I got my mum drunk. Really easy to do. All the women in our family are light weights, including myself. My dad always says, 'Two glasses of anything.' That sums it up.

I love entertaining and playing hostess. When we have people round, even though the house is in a pickle, I can for once just sit back and enjoy what we have without feeling guilty I don't have a paint brush in my hand. There was a massive change in myself last night. Maybe I was just feeling in good spirits and was happy my sister wasn't determined to bring World War Three to pass, but they came slightly early and I was covered in emulsion and wearing the scruffiest painting clothes I have. We all got a glass of bubbly and I forgot about it. The old me would of been mortified and would of probably made everyone wait (and dinner), until I had washed and changed. I didn't even care! This is a leap for me. Maybe my standards have really slipped. My friend C says it's because I'm married! The cheeky b*****d! Just waiting to blimp up now - anytime soon I suppose.

Birthday without a hitch, sister seems calm and without a grudge and the house is moving on fast. Life is good.

Beginning of my second week of freedom from another soulless office and I am really, I mean really, getting a taste for it now. I'm almost enjoying myself 24 hours instead of just over the weekend and evenings. I want to pinch myself. Surely this isn't fair on the rest of the world? I hear the usual traffic getting started at 7:30 in the morning and I roll over and curl back into D and want to squeeze myself in glee!

Full diary this week and a short week for working on the house. The lady (our good friend who let us get married in her beautiful garden) has invited us and some friends camping. We're going down on Thursday. I'm driving the boys and myself down and then meeting D there on Thursday. We'll call our friends the boys Cobain and Quentin. I say Cobain because C looks like Curt Cobain and the other D in my life (friend D!) is a wannabe film geek and director, so I'll call him Quentin, for Quentin Tarantino. Cobain and Quentin are old and good friends. I'll bundle them into the car and we can head down with some tunes on. It should be fun if they trust me driving. D has had to leave today with work and will be in London for the rest of the week, but will meet us at our friends on Thursday.

I very rarely write about things that haven't happened yet but I'm excited for the trip. This will be my first time camping and apparently you have to canoe to the island where we'll be camping for one night (phew, one night only!). My flower girl is coming too. She's 9 and we get along like a house on fire. I guess it's because I'm a huge kid myself really.

I remember staying with our friend © who has the garden, and flower girl before I got married. I grew really close to my little rose holder! It made my heart ache at the thought of one day having a daughter of my own and how nice it would be. I felt so protective over her.

We went to get our hair cut a week before the big day and I always have a very straight cut, short 40's fringe, Mina Wallace style, and when asked by the hairdresser how she wanted her hair, flower girl wanted her's exactly the same as mine. Best compliment ever. For some reason, she thinks I'm cool. She's too young to know any different, but anyway, I like that. She's cool. We're a cool team. D is very sweet with her as well - I know he'll make a great dad one day, and that makes my heart ache double.

Oh god, I'm getting soppy. I need to balance this entry out with something melancholy or things will start getting sickly round here.

Better pick the paint brush back up and get ready for dinner.

Lo x

I would love to see photos of the building site!

 

Imagine that, finding history in the walls...that's so fun I wonder what else you'll find in the coming years and renovations? Very exciting

 

I wish we could have bought an old home like that. There just aren't many here- our city wasn't established until...late 1800s, and most of the houses back then were tiny two bedroom shacks. The really nice ones (the ones that were owned by extremely wealthy families) are now in our Heritage Park...they've been restored and are kept like museums. I would love one of those houses

 

Hi Faraday!

 

So do I just download the app and I can upload them? I am honestly SO rubbish with technology it's crazy how I even get by. How the hell I ever worked in an office is beyond me!

 

Lo x