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Having spent a week and a bit feeling very lonely and wondering if anyone would notice, if I just faded away, things are looking up now. Mainly because Dan is coming this weekend for a week. I’ll show him all the sights and sounds of Aber he’s already seen and heard but it will be fun!

This blog was started in January 2009, I believe and if you look back at some of the earlier blogs, it’s quite amusing how much I’ve changed since then. It used to be more detailed to begin with because I had more to talk about, I had more action-packed days but it was also about a completely different set of people. That’s one thing I love about blogs/diaries/journals. You can see yourself growing up and developing as a person and I guess online, everyone else can too.

That’s kind of a vain way of looking at blogging but it’s true. I guess we all secretly want to be watched and listened to like some crazy form of Big Brother and if you keep an online diary for long enough, that’s exactly what happens.

Productive Use Of Time

So I have a reading week in November, yay! Dan is also coming up in a couple of weeks, yay! I’ve had a productive day today, having written a short story and read the preface to Lyrical Ballads, yay!

I’ve had a day where I’ve felt like a good student. I’ve read quite a challenging essay by Wordsworth and understood quite a bit of it and I’ve written a decent short story about getting up. During the production of the short story, I discovered the joys of online thesauruses, which I’ve never used before but I really should when I’m writing. You just type a simple, bog-standard word in and it gives you lots of posh ones which mean the same, to use instead, therefore making you sound learned and intelligent. Real useful.

X Factor is a joke and I no longer know why I watch it. If that Gamu girl, who I have absolutely nothing against, comes back in, it will be a fake, overdramatic travesty and pointless to watch. The results are very suspect and although, it’s entertainment, it’s unfair.

Nuff said.

And So It Begins…

Aber can be awfully lonely sometimes.

Lectures start tomorrow and I guess I’m looking forward to them and getting back into some sort of routine. To be honest, I’ve only got one module I have to read for this semester as the compulsory one is theory and I only have reference books for it.

I should probably write more to be honest. I haven’t written anything in a while and it’s worrying that I haven’t really felt a proper desire to. A lot of things have changed and I just don’t really know what I’m going to feel like doing from one day to next. Not sure if that sounds quite worrying and sinister but I assure you it’s not meant to.

I already miss people a lot and it’s only been a week. Sad times.

End Of Summer

I’m going back to Aber in the morning. Everything is packed and ready to go pretty much. The last few days have been difficult to say the least and I haven’t really been ready to go. I’m still not but of course, there’s nothing I can do about it now.

I’m sure I’ll be ok when I get back into the swing of things but it’s hard leaving everyone again. I already miss Dan and I saw him on Wednesday. He showed me the new ferrets at his house. The male is cuter than the female, I noticed.

I don’t know what it is but I don’t trust women at all. It’s probably the all-girls school thing that has done it. I just get nervous of them and I can never take what they say at face value. I’ve learnt that you can’t even fully trust the ones close to you. Sad point of view, I know but I’ve got reason to have it.

It’s been an awesome summer to say the least and I’ve done a lot of things i.e. loved, hated, laughed, cried, partied hard, slept lots, worked hard, lazed around, eaten too much, starved myself, earned money and blown it but it’s been amazing and I’ve been happy. Just real happy.

Stupid Comments

Dan said he’s going to write down all the stupid, amusing things I say. Apparently there’s a lot of them. I do tend to not think about things when I’m with him because he makes me so blissfully happy, so I guess they would come out more often when in his company.

Makes me feel silly but if it makes him laugh, then I guess it’s all cool.

Bowling

So for Sophie’s 19th, we went bowling.

Tenpin Bexleyheath is one of the biggest bowling alleys you will ever see. It boasts about 30 lanes, a decent sized arcade and quite a large bar/restaurant, complete with several TVs which play cheesy music videos. The ultimate hangout for 15-20 year olds. I’m aware that bowling parties are generally considered popular with 7 year olds but it’s equally fun aged 19.

Men generally win, I’ve noticed. I suppose it’s all about the arm strength and the speed they can bowl at. The more petite girls tend to lose, unfortunately but I suppose that’s obvious. It’s really quite interesting to see that everyone seems to have different approaches to it.

The men in the lane next to us were quite literally lobbing the ball down. As in, the ball bounced. Their method was probably quite dangerous in fact but the number of strikes between the four of them did seem to rise.

I gained my first two strikes in many years. I don’t even know how, as I tend to bowl quite slowly and my arm muscles suck, so there isn’t an awful lot of power behind it. However, I always seem to do quite well. I never win but I never lose.

We had three games and it still didn’t get boring! Bowling is awesome.

Love

I’ve realised recently how much I depend on Dan for happiness. I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing but he stayed here last weekend and now he’s gone, I miss him so much it hurts.

This kind of feeling isn’t often still present in relationships which have been going almost 2 years but I’d say it’s a lot stronger now than it ever has been. Maybe it’s the fact I’ve grown up or something weird like that.

I’m 20 in 4 months time. That’s scary.

Meh

I’ve got into the habit of spending almost an evening a week at Dan’s house, just chilling in his room and it’s awesome. Sure, we’re rarely alone there but I just love spending time with him in his natural habitat and playing with the kitty. She doesn’t get much attention, so I give her cuddles and strokes and she loves it!

Back to work this week after holidays and being ill. I’m still a bit ill and I felt reeeally bad last week with a temperature and cold shivers but I’m getting better now. The doctor prescribed me a very strong cough medicine, which will make me drowsy. He said to take it 3 times a day but if I did that, I’d surely be asleep all the time, so I’m just taking it once a day.

I’ve seen two Stanley Kubrick films in one weekend. A Clockwork Orange at Dan’s on Friday night and The Shining yesterday afternoon. Both missed aspects from the books, of course but I guess that’s always inevitable. The Shining, however, was significantly different with regard to characterisations and some parts of the plot were missed out. It wasn’t as sad as the book either. I was wary of seeing The Shining, as the book is one of my favourites but I did like the film, even though it wasn’t 100% faithful to the novel.

Back to uni on the 25th September. That’s the start of Freshers’ Week and I guess we should be there for all the partying and stuff. Kinda looking forward to going back but it will be a bit hard leaving everyone again. Sometimes I wish I’d picked somewhere closer…

Holidays

So I’ve been away and come back and been to Gingefest and gone away again. Mexico was pretty epic but a little too hot. I don’t really like heat. It gives me headaches and makes me ill. I spent most of the holiday feeling like I needed a shower.

The good news is that due to contracting a Mexican stomach bug, I’ve lost almost half a stone. I’ve probably put it back on again now but it was nice while it lasted. I do need to get my size under control though. Deadly diseases related to fatness do haunt my mind every day and it’s not good for my stress levels.

Gingefest was AWESOME, even if my men did not attend. I saw Dan before I went away again and gave him the Mexican guitar I got him. He’s given up reading A Clockwork Orange but he’s read Animal Farm and redone his journal, which he had to, in order to continue uni. So I’m very proud of him.

Work is plodding along. However, they’ve hired far too many admin assistants and naturally with 7 people working on data inputting, we’ve completed it all fairly quickly. Good news is that another job-lot of stuff came in last week for us. I only hope there’s still things for me to do when I get back.

I’ve discovered yoga, which I think I want to continue when I get back to Aber. It’s really calming and at the risk of sounding like a hippy, it really makes you feel at one with yourself. Ok, it does hurt my muscles and I’m all achey the next morning but I’ve done it twice this week and I like it so far. I think if I combine it with swimming once a week and a Slim Fast shake diet, I should lose weight, right?

Online Friends

An old internet friend of mine, Matt recently got back in touch with me. Those of you who read this blog closely enough will have noticed that he commented on a few recent posts and we started talking again on MSN. This reignited friendship didn’t last and it was due to a number of reasons.

First of all, he confessed to having lied about a few “facts” about himself, when we initially began chatting. When this was revealed to me, I thought “Ok, fair enough, inside he’s still the same guy I chatted to”. However, the conversation moved onto rocky ground and despite me drumming in the fact that I’m in a pretty serious relationship, I’m afraid he left me no choice but to click the Block button followed by the Delete button. I rarely use them but in some cases, there’s nothing else you can do.

I’d also begun questioning what else he’d lied about and sure, I’d seen him on webcam, so I knew he wasn’t an old, fat, balding man with no life but still, it planted doubts in my mind that what he’d told me was 100% true. I can only thank my lucky stars that I’m no longer a naive, lonely 15 year old.

I’ve been speaking to people online for the large part of my teenage life and although, I’m aware of the dangers of internet strangers, of course, I never seem to have had an awful lot of trouble. Well, this must mean I’m lucky, you might think? I don’t know about lucky. I’d say more wary.

Sure, I’ve met people from online before. My first boyfriend Karl, I met on the internet. He turned out to be safe. Richard, although I started talking to him online, I knew he was who he said he was because of the connections we had in the real world. Then there was Dan, of course. The best “Hey, thanks for the add, how are you?” message I ever sent. On all three occasions, I was a bag of nerves at the first meeting. Two of them, of course, I wasn’t even sure the person I expected would turn up but all three times, the right person arrived.

I’m not saying that situations where young girls are seriously hurt or killed by internet paedophiles and fakes aren’t as common as they’re made out to be. They are incredibly common but I’d say it’s because of the naivety of the girls involved. I’ve spoken to hundreds of people online before but I don’t meet up with just anyone. I don’t meet up with anyone until I have enough proof they’re who they say they are. Being careful is the key and I think that’s what kids need to be told, not “Don’t meet up with anyone from online ever”. They just need to do the right research and be extremely careful.

Yes, every time you meet up with an online friend is a risk but if I hadn’t taken that risk, I wouldn’t have met Dan and there’s no way I’d be as happy as I am now.