As we kiss hard on the lips and swear this year will be better then the last...

Christmas is like being drunk because you have urges to text people you probably shouldn't in the spirit of goodwill and tidings of the season and all that.

No. 1 on the list that I definitely should NOT under any circumstances text is my ex, because he's still an asshole, and still doesn't even realise he's an asshole.  If he ever comes to the realisation he's the one that fucked up his life I might reconsider, but even then, his re-crashing through my life back in August didn't exactly end well for either me or him so I think my head has finally just learnt whatever happened, he's now an insanely toxic person.

No 2. #bermudaboy.   Who was an asshole, but an asshole that realised he made a mistake and made a pretty genuine apology and continues to reach out.  But that doesn't erase the hurt or the future doubt, plus he's still in Bermuda and until that changes there's not much that can happen there aside from just both hurting oursleves by wanting people we can't have.

No. 3: #travelguy and this is one I really SHOULD text because there was fun stuff happening with him and then I kinda dropped off the face of the earth for him when ex-recrash happened (see 1 above) and I'd should, and would really like to, try and apologise for doing that to him, especially as he was going through some rough shit at the time.  But I should text him later, when it won't just get lost in the Christmas deluge.

No 4: #boy1 who I wanna text, but that's just cause I want an excuse to flirt, and I'm sort of struggling to find ways to do that with him easily cause we don't really hang out.  A long game I still have every intention of playing, but I don't think this is the right move.  New Year's probably is.

No 5: my best friend from primary school, mostly as a last ditch effort.  He's dropped off everyone who knew him's radar and I haven't heard from him except seeing the occasional fb post of his in years.  Which sucks.  And yes dropping off the face of the earth is a frustratingly recurring problem with my friends which when you have anxiety and abandomnent issues from a personality disorder causes ALL SORTS of problems, but I never really give up on people, no matter how much I probably should at times (see, again, 1, above)


But Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, whatever it might be to the rest of you.

At least I said it finally

I don't quite have the confidence to send this direct, but I need an outlet and I mean it.  So if you see it somehow, that's okay.


I'm aware it's 4am, I'm aware I'm drunk, but hell it's giving me the confidence to do this.   It's a shame I didn't get to see you at Lauren's wedding, it would have been nice to clear things between us somewhat; I always maintain the worst we could do is beat the hell out of each other and no one would be shocked at that.  I'm glad you saw FDC in New York, he appreciated it.  I hope Johnny is okay and I wish the best for you.  I may miss you, and love you, and hate you, but I still wish the best this twisted life will grant you.

Clear as day

My mental health has deteriorated massively again over the past few months.

I'm doing a good job of hiding it in many ways, but I'm acutely conscious that without warning, one day, one of the many fragile glass baubles in my life is going to hit the ground and shatter explosively and disastrously.

My emotions and moods go through 50 different changes a day, and yet there's an undercurrent of white hot hatred sitting through it all in my head the whole time, even when I laugh and smile, it's at the world not with it.

The borderline personality disorder is running rampant these days. The constant sense, or fear of abandonment rife in my thoughts, my social circles closed down to pretty much 3 people that I feel I constantly have to tease contact out of.  It's probably nothing like that at all, but I see it in everything.

And then of course there's the constant paranoia, combined with my own hyper analysis; the curse of too routinely having your worst suspicions proved right in the past to be able to ever convince yourself your doubt is misplaced.  Trust is something that's usually too wounded in my now to be of any good use to convincing myself my head is crazy.

Work isn't helping to be sure.  The last 6 weeks have been pretty god awful in a variety of ways.   Worse yet is the constant stream of commentary from just about every person in my life telling me I'm being undervalued - frankly, my who knows I'm fucking good at the things I do in life and few people could keep up with me, but having every single person in my life comment over the last few months on what they think I should be doing, funnily enough, makes me feel god awful.

I still lack for purpose or interest in living.  I never had a strong one to start with but I havent ever managed to regain anything concrete the past few years.  And I still lack confidence in my ability to fix that problem after the last time to bother trying to again

It's one of the reasons I've thrown myself so hard into the Lib Dems - it's pretty much the only thing I'm genuinely enjoying recently.  It's a distraction from every other voice in my head and hellish day, keeping me occupied for a bit, even if I have to be somewhat fanatical about the whole thing in order to achieve this.  And I've rarely had my skills and curiosity recognised and encouraged so readily.  But it's ultimately a overcompensation and facade hiding much deeper problems.

I still lack for a purpose or interest in living, years later nothing convinces me to stay except for the utter lack of confidence still in my ability to fix that problem after last time - a fact which no doubt causes comfort to friends, but feeds my own sense of abject failure and hatred at both myself and the world.

I go to work, I pay my bills, I go out, I see friends, I eat food, I plan for the future, I continue to manage all these things when I have no desire to because I have no idea how to fail nor would I ever be allowed to by an array of forces I find hostile and unwanted.

When it crashes down, don't say it was unexpected.  I've seen it coming for miles.

Still wondering...

You're supposed to care. 
About life. 
In some way.
It's supposed to mean something to you.
To live.
You're supposed to keep wanting and trying to do that.

You try to connect with people, and pretend that things have meaning or impact any more than some artificial, ephemeral, momentary set of chemicals firing synapses lighting up neurons and assuring you that yes you do feel and care and for once maybe, or at long last it finally matters in even the most cursory and selfish way.

But it doesn't.
You don't.
Those moments and people go by and they have no more meaning 30 seconds later when out of view than they will in death.

We can all pretend and even get good at it and forget even to ourselves how insipid it is.  Or you can spend your waking and sleeping hours with a million different voices telling you every moment of every day how long ago you stopped caring, when you stopped believing, or trying, or finding a reason to fight and carry on, and now your existence is largely a product of resigned apathy that your lack of motivation has become so ingrained you no longer can bring yourself enough to care to change it in either direction.

You're supposed to care.
But I still can't see why on earth I need to anymore.

Personal Pronouns

Theresa May posts on Facebook and Twitter:
"If I lose just six seats I will lose this election..."

Firstly, note the use of I, not the Conservative Party.
But more importantly, this shows just how ridiculous it is that the Conservatives should be so complacent about this election when their position is in fact so tenuous as to be not just in danger, but eliminated if they lose a mere 6 seats

May is so self-assured of her victory that she is campaigning on a manifesto that even includes restarting the fox hunting debate, taking lunches away from school children, and bringing in flawed voter ID and internet censorship laws.
As one friend pointed out: "if these are their campaign promises, what the hell are they planning to sneak in quietly after the election?!"

6 seats isn't many and some good strong tactical voting could cause May and the Tories to rethink their positions as a result.

If you vote Conservative in this election, you will get May for the long haul.
If you vote Conservative, you will get Hard Brexit with no final say by the public and a very limited say even by our elected representatives.
If you vote Conservative you get someone who prioritises foxhunting over the NHS.
If you vote Conservative you will get an increasingly authoritarian and invasive state, far worse than anything the EU ever regulated.
If you vote Conservative you will have no guarantee that the changes Brexit brings will still leave you with 28 days holiday, the right to paid leave, or to discuss your working hours, or retain your job when you are sick for a long time.
If you vote Conservative, you will get confirm that it's not about the Conservatives, it is about Theresa May, her personal vision of dystopia, and those 6 seats.

For the love of all god(s),

#anyonebutthetories

Skies of darkest blue

A friend posted this today which struck a chord:
https://unguardedweb.wordpress.com/2017/05/12/behind-dark-clouds-and-silver-linings/

I'm doing better than him.  Mentally at least.  But I have a whole host of problems, physical and mental, and every day I run up against blocks that remind me I'm forced to adapt, and in many cases, limit, my life.

There's the daily pills that keep my immune system from collapsing.
There's being audibly wheezing from he stairs to my friend's place after going up and down them twice whilst helping them move out.
There's the constant question in the back of my head, that maybe I have to accept that a mid level 9-5 office job is the best that's sustainable for me mentally, despite how that infurirates me in its own ways.
There's the days when I sit for 2 hours at a train station because I'm in so much pain I can't move to get home and I just have to wait it out
There's learning, long ago, how to get through 2 or 3 days at a time on no sleep, because it happens so regularly I couldn't classify it as sick time and keep a job.

He's right - you just accept it.  You have to.  You occasionally wonder at all the things you could do if you didn't constantly adjust your life just so you can get through your days without breaking down in some way.  But that doesn't stop it from being the case.

I tweet about my cramps
But I sit there, for 2 hours, in the cold and the wet.
Until I can move again.

Storms approaching

This rambles a bit, I couldn't quite find the words I wanted, or the order I wanted, and I certainly haven't edited it, but here goes


"It'll be war"
I said, following the Brexit result.  A bit doom and gloom perhaps, but like so many I saw in the result the affirmation of the downhill slide I'd been witnessing, and trying desperately to push to the back of my mind for a while.

Increasing radicalisation.  Increasing partisanship.  An increasing 'us or them' mentality.  It was all someone's fault.  The immigrants usually.  From across the world there were 'immigrants' (we called them 'refugees' once upon a time) fleeing warzones and persecution and bringing their foreign problems with them.

The other day Comey was fired.  Let's be clear, Comey was an asshole; at best he was manipulated, and at worse he intentionally revealed spurious and questionable information about an ongoing investigation for political benefit.  But his firing doesn't sit right in a lot of ways.  The most thought provoking comment I saw on the subject was the following:
"First they came for the Attorney General, but I did not speak out; then they came for the Director of the FBI...."
It's a theme that gets replayed over and over at the moment by those attempting to counter the us verses them approach of today's politics.  At what point will we stop being us, and one by one, become them, to find as in Niemoller's poem, there is no one left to speak up for us(i.e. them)?

Today I read this:
RUSSIA ENDS INVESTIGATION INTO ANTI-GAY ABUSE IN CHECHNYA CLAIMING THERE ARE ‘NO VICTIMS’
I'm biased of course, but the phrasing jumps out at me.  It's not "we found no signs of abuse", or "we found no evidence of activity at these locations."  It's "there are no victims."  Which sounds ominously like Kadryov's gay people "do not exist" in Chechnya.
Maybe they did, until very recently.  Maybe no longer.



The absolute fear that society is sliding into some nazi-esque style oppression and purge is especially strong amongst young intellectual liberals.  We were raised in safety. the advent children of Europe.  There were singular terror events of horrific nature, but there was no extended at-home conflict.  We were far from war, far from the descending conditions and conflicts that lead to violent outbreaks .
My mother was raised in the post-war society.  She played in bombed out shells of buildings as a child.  Rations were still in effect.  Maybe her experience grants her the perspective to see a difference I can't.
But when I was 11, and first thought I might be gay, the age of consent was still different; you couldn't marry a same sex partner, civil partnerships didn't exist and were barely even a topic of discussion.  Matthew Shephard was killed that year.  It was a defining moment of me approaching my sexuality as I realised there were many many Matthew Shephard's that didn't get a newspaper article about them.  A family and children was out of the question.  Being gay, or bi or whatever, meant an isolated life, or one of secrecy or both.
When I was 21, the age of consent was equal, civil partnerships were well established, there were murmrings of what would become the marriage equality battle, celebrities were gay and on tv and when they left the public eye it was to look after their adopted children.

The world around me had changed in a profound and incredible way.  In such a short space of time.  The growing possibilities were endless.
And now?  Now almost another 10 years later, the world has shrunk very small indeed.  From a growing discussion on how Trans and more being sidelined and ignored in the LGBT+ acronym, we are now back to deciding where it is okay for people to use a toilet cubicle or not.  A gay couple went to a pub local to me and one was glassed in the face for holding hands.  There is a growing body of evidence that suggest that gay men in Cechyna are being persecuted, and more worryingly the goverment response is to say 'those people dont exist'.  There is a video going around of an MEP who said openly, in European Parliament, that "women must earn less than men because they are smaller, weaker, and less intelligent."  He was suspended for a mere 10 days.  A punishment he has previously faced several times, on one occassion for giving a nazi salute in Parliament.  This man was voted in and hasn't been forcibly evicted by a group of pitchfork bearing women and men who find his viewpoints unconscionable.  House Republicans in the US recently passed a bill that would amongst other dire classifications, once again, make rape a pre-existing condition, allowing you to make someone's healthcare insurance premium more expensive..  The fact forced sex against your will and consent was ever considered a pre-existing condition is somehow already acceptable.  The West is celebrating that only 1/3 of people in France voted for an extreme right wing candidate.  As recently as 2 weeks ago a Tory MP told a group of A-level students that being gay is wrong.

My mother wonders why I am worried.
Because no amount of being white and male will make up for the fact I have sex with men.  Because just as quickly as society expanded and changed, I've seen it close up on itself and people-at-large do nothing about it except the occasional tut.  Because the people telling me to calm down are ones who will probably be up against the wall much later that I will be.  Because when I first wondered about my sexuality and how my life might be, this was the kind of thing to be scared of if people found out.

I am scared because given the dramatic changes forward and back in 20 years, it's only a small step for someone to decide I am one of 'them'.  That I am the problem.  That those kind of problems don't exist in this country.  And my country, Europe, the US, will do nothing except maybe hand out a 10 day suspension.