Imitation is the highest form of flattery

I'm in New York again.
Finally.  

I'd forgotten what an onslaught New York is.
It's a big city in the way only Americans could do a big city.  It's loud, and it's grimy, and the drains don't quite take the smell of sewage away.  There's dirt everywhere and the heat from the subway rises up through great grills in the street and washes over the panting pedestrians.  Oil and bitumen assails you from roadworks and construction projections.  The traffic is constant and everywhere and they all honk their horns and no one moves.  People stand around, hordes of them, outside buildings and on corners and places that don't seem important.  Seven here, twenty there, a dozen waiting on the next street.  They don't move.
It's oppressive.  God it's intimidating and terrifying and so beautiful.

The buildings rise up and up, they tower over the chaos of the streets and hem everything in, keeping it tight, pressing it closer together.  It narrows your view and focuses and channels even the daylight in a way architects and designers dream of.  
Rocketing, rattling tin can Metro cars with their 70s era shades of desperately happy and comfortable orange, so perfectly like their city; grimy and noisy and fast.  Chrome reflecting off everywhere, dazzling, like the city.

The constant traffic blocks up roads alongside sidewalks that are wider than the entire Strand.  The overbearing towering blocks are gleaming and golden and gilt in beautiful, indulgent art deco styles.  It screams decadence and tragedy and desire and something that refuses to die and you don't want it to..  Golden and Silver Age Hollywood.  Rapture.

The women, my god I never get over the women here.  Runway fashions.  The kind even supermodels only wear for that one catwalk because you can't actually buy them, and no one would ever wear them, you cant even walk in them.  Celebrities on the red carpet don't have them.  New York women are wearing them all.  The Carries and the Samathas and Mirandas and Charlottes who hate that that's how everyone only ever thinks about them anymore but love that everywhere does a Cobb Salad and lets you talk about sex openly nowadays (and why shouldn't they?!).  Dear god the women here are stunning and powerful and determined.

New York scares me.  I can't even imagine what it must be like if it's your first big city.  Your first proper city.  But god its beautiful and stunning and intoxicating and addictive and just try to stop yourself from whirling around it.

Nostalgia

The Worst Thing

Do you realise how hard it is not to punch and throw every single thing you own, even though your hands are already bruised from repeatedly hitting your car earlier, because your roommate is sleeping, and the worst thing you could have to deal with right now is someone to actually ask you what's wrong?

You are the part of me I wish I didn't need.

Bear with me, this is likely to happen a lot over the next few days and weeks....

Augustana - Either Way I'll Break Your Heart Someday

Charlie Puth - Clarity (cover)

Boxcar Racer - There Is

Anberlin - A Day Late

The Other Guy

The selfish part of me needs for you to stay
'Cause boy you keep a smile stretched across my face
And I would give anything now
But you would lose everything now
The way your lips move when you say my name
The smell of your hair on my pillow case
And I would give anything now
But you would lose everything now

If I'd had it my way I'd never let you walk out the door
But my heart is heavy with something that I just can't ignore

Boy, I'm sitting here wondering what it is that we've done
Baby who am I to be that other guy?
'Cause I've seen tables turned, a world of hurt
I'd never wanna feel twice,
I know what it's like from the other side
So baby who am I to be that other guy?

This could be our home boy, a special place
Something much more than your great escape
Boy I would give anything now
If you didn't had everything now
It doesn't have to be that you feel the same
You're telling me your love for me would never change
Unless you change everything now
It doesn't mean anything now

If it's him that you've chosen, then we need to stop closing the door
'Cause while he's at home waiting, then we can't pretend there's something more

Boy, I'm sitting here wondering what it is that we've done
Baby who am I to be that other guy?
'Cause I've seen tables turned, a world of hurt
I'd never wanna feel twice,
I know what it's like from the other side

Ooh oh, I know it's not an easy choice to make
Ooh, 'cause no matter what you do
A heart will break
Boy, I'm sitting here wondering what it is that we've done
Baby who am I to be that other guy?
'Cause I've seen tables turned, a world of hurt
I'd never wanna feel twice,
I know what it's like from the other side
So baby you decide who is that other guy?
'Cause baby, who am I to be that other guy?

Jesse McCartney - The Other Guy (with some gender edits)

Warning

Some of the more hilarious extracts from the diary I was asked to keep by the psych for the last two weeks:

"Lots of new people to meet today - stuck with my head constantly analyzing every thought and action wondering if it was correct.  Should I stay and talk?  They're not here to see me.  It'd be rude to leave.  I really want to go but now I have to talk to them.  I don't know anything about this person.  This is not a good time for me to he trying to make an impression on people.  I never know what to say here.  Oh sex, this is good, this I can do, sex is easy, I'm good at sex.  Oh god they're going to want to sleep or talk after aren't they.  I'm rubbish at both.  I'll just lie here till they're asleep and then go to the bathroom and then back to playing my game."

"Everyone is dumb.  Everyone annoys me.  God why can't they all just fuck off and die, can't they see how much I hate them all ... I smashed 2 glasses.  Threw them at the wall.  Had to clear it up of course.  Don't want to warn them."

Other Worlds

Whilst on blogs about dealing with mental health issues, I fully recommend my friends blog: Nervous Type


Honestly, until he started this I had no idea how good his writing style was.  He describes the experience of hypomania far better than I ever could, and the syncopated nature to his writing manages to perfectly express both the overbearing, never-ending, demanding, increasingly fast runaway nature of depression, but also the distracted, blissful, wondrous ,amazed, boundlessly energetic nature of mania.