#stimlposts

~~~ 25/09/016 ~~~

I have been way off the radar recently, as I have been struggling through the last month or so of uni. I’ve been trying to juggle 3 courses, 2-3 days a week at work and 1 day a week at a student placement..... in other words way too much.

It is now the end of the first week of my 2 week break and I have officially done nothing to catch up.

At about 5:30pm I woke up from a 3 hour nap and decided to change what was happening.  So here is my plan so far for next week to catch up on my lectures.  It is well spread out, but I know myself well enough to know if I don’t have regular breaks I will just get distracted half way through my lectures.

I am also going to get back into properly using my bujo alongside this weekly plan.

So I made a really tough decision on Friday… I resigned from my job.

To be honest it was done under duress from my mum, but I know she is right, even though I hate admitting that.  I have been letting my study slip away from me by focussing and fretting on work/placement, and in reality, I’ve just been doing a shit job at everything I do.

I really want to do well at uni, which is why I dropped a subject, but I essentially picked that up again with my placement. I’ve been neglecting learning the skills properly for my placement, I’ve being doing what I have to, to get by at uni, and the same for work. I have not been doing anything to my full potential because I have been to overwhelmed with the quantity of what I have had to do. Mum basically made the decision for me, and said I need to cut something out. And that is my job.

It was really tough to do, because I am not a quitter and resigning just felt like I was a failure and just a cop out, the weak way to deal with things. I’m still not 100% convinced it was the right decision, but it’s done. And now all I have to do is start trying to dig myself out of this hole I’m in from not studying/learning properly.

Rules: answer 11 questions, ask 11 new questions, and tag 11 people

i was tagged by @thvles​!!

1. What’s your irl ‘superpower’? I have a habit of fixing things, mainly technology, where I can find fixes or workarounds to get things working correctly again!

2. Do you prefer studying alone or studying in a group?

Generally alone, the exception is the day or two before an exam where I like to study in a small group to get questions answered and test myself.

3. What’s your favourite tv show to binge watch? That’s a tough one! The genre would definitely be crime shows, but to pick a particular one, I’d probably have to go with NCIS as that is what got me into crime shows way back when!

4. Handwritten notes or digital notes? Both! If I’m doing programming, digital notes are easier.  For more english based subjects (not that there are many n engineering) I prefer handwriting notes.

5. What are you looking forward to? A break! Not that I’m getting one currently between semesters! I work 4 days a week, and on the 5th I am doing a Machine Learning course as part of a placement, so not much downtime!

6. What’s your favourite place in your city/town? The lookout in the foothills a short drive from my house. I love getting up before sunrise and driving to the lookout and watching over the entire city.

7. What’s number 1 on your bucket list? To own my own home.

8. Which fictional universe would you move to? The Wizarding World, or Middle Earth.

9. Poetry or prose? Why? 1. What’s your irl ‘superpower’? Poetry, as there is a certain beauty in the rhythm and the way words can roll of the tongue.

10. What’s something you wish you could afford? Same as number 7! A house.

11. What’s your morning ritual? Wake up at 6:30am, walk my puppy, feed my puppy, eat breakfast, shower, brush teeth, get dressed for work/uni, make lunch, then head out of the house around 8am generally.

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and now for my questions!

1. What is your all time favourite book?

2. What kind of music you listen to while studying

3. What you do to stay organised in daily life

4. Go to a play or a musical?

5. What would your ideal job be (ignoring self-doubt, grades etc)?

6. What one thing would you change if you could do it over?

7. What’s your favourite note-taking/revision method?

8. Favourite place to study other than your desk at home.

9. What is something you learned in the last week?

10. Read the book or watch the movie?

11. Is what you’re doing/learning now, what you always wanted to do?  Why?

How many times have I sat here trying to write this, or gone through an imaginary conversation with you over and over again in my head?  How many hours have I spent crying over you and how you make me feel?  Why today have I finally decided to write this all down? Because I snapped.  I finally had the huge breakdown that has been building for a year. And I didn’t snap at you, I snapped at my mum, the only person who even remotely cares about me anymore.

Where do I even begin?

I want to know you. All of you, everything about you. I have known you for almost 3 years now, but we’ve only really been friends for a year and a half, and a year of that has been me endlessly chasing you and doing anything I can to be a part of your life. And yet, I don’t know a single thing about you.  What is your favourite colour? Your favourite food? Movie? Sibling? Subject in school? What? I know nothing personal about you, and any time I ever got close to finding something out about you, you push me away or change the topic.

I have been trying for a year to get to know you. You seem to take an interest in me, so we talk, we catch up, we hook up, have a bit of fun, then you disappear. Without a trace, you just stop talking to me, avoid me at uni, make it impossible to hold conversation with until I eventually give up.  Tearing myself to pieces trying to work out what I did wrong, why I’m not good enough, why don’t you want me anymore.  I start to get over you.  It’s tough.  We have the same friends, go to the same uni, hang out at the same places. Yet I still try to get over you.  It takes every ounce of strength to not message you when I see you go online, yet somehow I start to manage. A couple of days go by without me thinking of you. Then all of a sudden I find myself alone with you, we get talking, you are as charming as ever, and there I am drawn straight back in, seemingly forgetting all the heartbreak and pain from just days earlier.  And I let this go on.

You are perfect to me, we go out to lunch, you invite me over for movies, but then we start getting too close again? Maybe that’s your thought process, so you push away.  Stop inviting me over.  Push off trying to make plans. Ignore me again.  So I try, yet again to let go.  This time it’s harder, because I fell harder. I fell in love with you. The idea of you. And I don’t even know anything about you. Nothing. But I forget all of this when a few weeks later you start talking to me again, and messaging me first.  No longer is it me making all of the moves to converse, you are showing some effort, which gets me so happy and excited.  All of our friends know, and do their best to get us together, making everything perfect for us to spend time alone together, and what do you do, nothing.

So I try and get over you again, but this time the lack of interaction lasts barely a week and it’s drawing closer to exams.  I am always seeing you, maybe not alone this time, but you’re not ignoring me, which gives me hope.  Final day of exams, we drink, a lot, we have sex and then you go home promising me we’ll catch up soon.  A week goes by, two, three and still nothing. So I try and get on with my life, working myself to death when I finally build up the courage to talk to you and ask what the fuck is going on.  You like me, but don’t date friends.  You’re really interested in me, but you don’t have the time to commit.  But hooking up when you feel like is okay. So I agree of course, saying it’s fine. Doing whatever I humanly can to keep you in my life. Keeping myself as an option.  Yet still, nothing.

One day I get a message, apologising for ghosting me.  But with the added disclaimer of oh but I didn’t know what that was until today. Because, of course, not knowing the modern term for it makes it okay. Yet, I say I got over it and we start talking again. You’re drunk which makes it easier to talk to you because you’ve lost his inhibitions and I go with it, relishing the fact that you want me and my attention there and then, so of course I willingly give it to you. I’m left with yet more promises of oh imagine the things we’d be doing if we were together.

You go to Japan, so we talk, you keeping me constantly updated on the fun times you are having, promising when you get home we’ll celebrate your birthday with just the two of us, and imagine the things we could be doing.  I go to work one night, for Jody to show me messages between you and Faye saying the exact same things. And what makes it even better is I saw Faye soon after and she said nothing, and still says nothing of all the interactions, dates, flirting I know that happens between the two of you because I’ve seen it and know about it and have been told about it. The same day you were talking to me about wanting to spend time with me when you got home, you were sexting Faye. But again, I didn’t bring it up with you because there was still part of me that wanted to forgive you, and thought about all the times you called me gorgeous and seemed to care and made an effort.

Dale’s party. You went out of your way to wake me up at 6am to drive me home so I could meet up with my friends at 8am for breakfast. We spent the whole night talking and the whole journey home talking. You dropped me off and we hugged for what felt like an eternity.  I never wanted to let go and it felt like you didn’t either.  You only pulled away to kiss me and promise me that we would do this again soon because you missed me and wanted to spend more time with me.  

So to try and take you up on that I invited you to my best friend’s gig.  I knew you had a meeting, but I said it was okay to be late, because only I had to be there to support my friend.  I picked you up from home.  Dropped you at uni. Sent you fucking directions with an attached tram timetable to make sure you knew where you were going. I’m checking my phone all night, thinking wow this has been two hours, is he okay? I haven’t heard from Nat; I wonder if something’s happened to him. I message Jayden, who I know is with you and says oh the meeting finished over half an hour ago. Then you message asking if it was worth you still coming, and you did warn me you were going to be late.  I said it’s okay, a before act is still playing so there is time for you to get here.  But you have homework from the meeting, so I make it your decision. Of course I want you with me, I wanted to spend time with you, I had pictured the whole night in my head.  You’d be standing beside me with your arm around my waist and we’d be listening to the music and I’d go to take you home and we’d spend ages hugging like always. I wanted you there. But instead you made the decision to go home and do some work. And I had to turn around, compose myself and go back inside to face my friend and his questions of where you were, to which he said god I want to punch the kid in the face, and I said I’d probably let you if he were here.

It's probably incredibly irrational that I am still so angry at that, but you stood me up. I said before that night if it was too much I could try and find someone else, but you insisted that if it was okay to be late then you would come.

I invite you to my birthday. You see the information and don’t reply, see me at uni and say nothing, but still I put you on all the door lists hoping you would make the effort, because you seem to decide the day of things whether you go or not, so I hoped that was the case with me too.  I message you that morning, and you say oh it’s my exchange student’s birthday dinner tonight, so you probably can’t go. No happy birthday and apologies, just sorry probs not. Maybe I shouldn’t expect a happy birthday, but I had hoped.

And then there’s pub crawl.  We were talking since Monday about you spending the night at mine after pub crawl and I’d drive you home in the morning.  You didn’t want to be an inconvenience, but fuck I would have said or done just about anything to get you to come home with me that night.  I was having dreams of you in bed with me cuddling me whilst we slept.  Thursday I messaged you, knowing how flaky you are to check whether you were still spending the night and you agreed. So all of Friday, I did my best to make sure you were in my sights at all times, because I was responsible for you.  I had made a promise to you that I would be your transport and accommodation for the night and I wasn’t going to let you down. I am injured, but still stick it out because you want to stay out. I am in absolute agony, which you can clearly see but I still stick it out because you wanted to stay and I was responsible for you. Then Morgan comes along and notices I’m in pain and not having a great time and says why don’t you go home, and I reply I can’t Nat wants to stay out and I’m taking him home. And she goes, oh I thought I was taking him home, we were talking this morning and he said he didn’t know how he was getting home.   That fucking broke my heart and I didn’t even try to hide it.  That was the last straw, so I said I was going home. Why should I hang around in pain when you had no fucking intention of coming home with me?  Why would you string me along, let alone when I am visibly in pain and you know that I thought you were coming home with me. But of course you try and sweeten it by walking me to the front door, hugging me and saying make sure you’re safe.  Half of me wanted to slap you, and half of me was trying to scream out for you to come with me.  Still after all of that.  I still wanted you to come home with me. But as ever, I said I’m fine and walked off.

What do I think of all night and first thing when I wake up? You. Where did he stay last night? Is he safe? Should I ask how’s he’s feeling? Should I ask about the 21st he’s going to? And then I thought, no he should be checking up on me.  I’m the injured one, I’m the one that should be noticed. And you finally did at 4 in the afternoon.  You messaged me and we chatted on and off for a few hours and that’s it. All I’ve heard from you since.  And the feeling when I interrupted myself writing this to go and check to see if you’d messaged me on Facebook.

I need to change.  But I don’t want to. I think I am in love with you Nat. And I have no idea why. You have done absolutely nothing to earn that and it makes me so angry.  I have to let you go for my own sanity but I don’t know how to.  Maybe I should send you this. But I know I won’t because I still want you in my life, and something like this will push you away.  But you need to know this is how you have made me feel. Sad, worthless, pathetic, depressed, lonely. God I have never felt so lonely in my life.  And for what, the collective total of maybe a month in the last year combined that you have payed attention to me and treated me right.  You have no concept of feelings.  I’m not and never was expecting a long term relationship with you, but I at least deserved to be treated with respect and as a human being. Not a toy that you can play with as you please.  To be fair, I’ve done a good job of helping you throw me around with my pathetic attempts at throwing myself at you, but that still doesn’t give you the right to have me if and when you want me. It’s not fair.

I deserve better.

You are bad for me Nat. And you have and continue to hurt me. I need to stop feeling the way I do towards you, before I do any more than just cry myself to sleep. I can’t be the only person you have done this to.  And I’m pretty sure if you keep this up, you will get to a point where you become lonely and realise you missed out by treating me and no doubt many others like this.

One day I will be happy without you, and I hope that you see that day and regret how you treated me, and regret not taking me while you still had the chance.

I deserve to be happy.

So I’ve been messaging Nat a little more recently and to my surprise he’s talking to me first as well! He’s away in Japan snowboarding at the moment so is always sending me pictures and just having quick chats in the evening, flirting from time to time. Which has been really lovely and I’ve been enjoying it thoroughly.

However at work tonight a mutual friend told and showed me messages between me and another close friend Faye that he was essentially doing the same thing with her. To be honest that really threw me for six because I’d had both of them seperately tell me they weren’t talking to eachother anymore (as recently as last week) so I was quite shocked to see it. And more shocked to see it being provoked by him.

It kinda hurts that at the same time things just seem to be looking good between us, it’s just looking more and more likely that he just wants to use me to get his dick wet. Fuck my life. So now I’m sad and frustrated for starting to get my hopes up yet again. How many times does he have to do this to me before I stop giving him another chance :/

So little old me has just gone and fucked everything up that I just said I wouldn’t do….. Fuck.

Nat and I have been messaging constantly since he apologised to me, and to be fair he has been drunk for a lot of it, so the conversation has been a lot more flowing and honest to say the least. Things turned sexual pretty quickly considering he was with all “the lads”, and to be honest I didn’t mind at all. It’s been a while since anyone has talked to me in a sexually interested way in a long time.  Even when Nat and I were sort of seeing each other, all the messaging was very civil and polite, never racy, flirty or downright sexy.

He got back from his little drunken escapade with the boys this afternoon and invited me over. I’m not dumb, I knew it was to have sex, but I was totally okay with it.

We chatted for a bit, we watched Archer on the couch cuddling. He kept kissing me on the forehead until it eventually led to sex. Which didn’t last that long at all hahaha I’m going to take a stab in the dark and say the last time either of us had sex (well I know for me for certain) was after exams in mid-November, so a while. We laughed it off, got dressed and went back to cuddling and watching Archer.

I’m in a tough spot now, because I totally enjoyed that, and have wanted to do that for a while now, but thought I shouldn’t for my own sake of sanity.  I can’t help that I like him, or that I’m attracted to him. It just is how I feel. And the last thing I want him doing is changing his plans out of guilt of his realisation of what he did to me beforehand. So I’m really hoping that this was a casual thing, that can happen more frequently, but not make shit weird.  Hopefully this time around (if there is a this time around) can last a little longer.

This is a question that I am now starting to ask myself a lot.

What really spurred me into thinking this was the having a conversation with Nat just under a week ago.

I finished exams last Tuesday, as did all of my engineering friends, so a bunch of us decided what better way to celebrate than to get drunk (as engineers and uni students do). I was unlucky enough to have 2 exams that day, so by the time I finished and joined the rest of my friends they were already pretty drunk, so I played catch up. The night went on and we decided to move to a club to keep drinking and have a dance.

This we included Nat, alongside 5 other friends.

The whole night Nat and I had been flirting, getting close, but I was holding myself back a little, because I wasn’t sure if I was misreading signals. Thankfully?!? Tdep was really really drunk, and Westie was wingman-ing like a boss and I ended up kissing Nat a few times and he kissed me back.  After this we got real close. We were almost inseparable the whole night, he always had his hand on me or vice versa. It started to get late so Nat and I headed back to uni to grab our bags from a locker. We were both super drunk and super tired, so he suggested we go find a place to nap to sober up. We went up the fire escape to the top floor of a building where he grabbed me and started kissing me. 

This inevitably led to sex, which was incredible. At the time it was super enjoyable, even though we were at the top of a concrete stairwell. Once we finished we passed out cuddling, completely entwined in each others arms. It was pretty adorable, not gonna lie, and I haven’t been cuddled like this in a while.

We eventually woke back up at maybe 3am and I suggested we should probably go home, but every time we went to make a move he would grab me and keep kissing me and tell me he didn’t want to go. Finally we made it out of uni and to a taxi rank where he kissed me good night and we both left.

The next few days I was working full time so didn’t have a chance to message him, but I did find some bruises on my back and legs from rolling around that night, so on my break one day I messaged him this thinking how funny it was, to which he apologised, and I then replied with something along the lines of I can’t complain considering how I got them. Which he saw... and didn’t reply...

This is when I started thinking, did I cross a line? Maybe he regrets what happened and doesn’t want reminding of it? Is he scared that I’ll go crazy obsessive like I admittedly was last time? To be honest I shared that fact, because I thought it was funny and a happy reminder of the night, and I always share stories like that with my sexual partners, I feel it keeps things fun and not serious all the time. I left it and shrugged it off, thinking maybe he didn’t get the humour.

It did get me thinking of should I ask him about it though.  Should I ask him if I am too forward? Should I ask him if he enjoyed the other night? Should I ask him if he regrets the other night?  Nat is such a difficult person to read because he is not open about himself, his emotions, his thoughts, so it is always hard to get a gauge on what he is feeling. But at the same time as wanting to know all of this I didn’t want to push him, because I know he doesn’t like opening up. Which made me think even more that I am too forward, too open, too honest.

In the end I was too scared to ask Nat this, so I turned to my close friend Joe. I asked him if he thought I was too forward. His first response was has someone told you this? He almost seemed upset at the notion. I said no, just curious. And he vehemently emphasised that I wasn’t, and he liked that about me, because he was very similar. And that made me think. I’m not too forward for Joe, because he is a very forward and blunt person himself, but perhaps I am too forward for someone like Nat, who is very placid and internalises everything.

I respect that not everyone is open and honest, to the extent that I am, and I guess that is something that I have to work on, knowing other people’s boundaries. But then again, do I? Do I have to change the way I act, behave, speak, what I say around people because it might offend them? I guess I do to fit in, to be accepted.  But is that really being true to myself?

So after coming to the revelation of moving on, one of the things I decided to do was to not initiate any conversations with Nat.  If he wants me in his life, he has to make the effort, otherwise I’ll end up back where I was a month ago. So for the last 2 weeks I haven’t initiated any contact or seen him physically.

Then I rocked up to my first exam on Saturday, and my first thought (aside from pure dread of having to sit an exam) was where’s Nat. And I immediately scolded myself. I didn’t know how I would react to seeing him, and I was already anxious enough about the exam without the added pressures of seeing him and what he would do etc etc. So I went and found my other friends and tried to calm down.

After the exam (which went horribly :/ :/ ) I left the pavilion and almost walked straight into Nat. He was there smiling and joking around distracting himself from the exam. So I walked straight up to him and another friend saying hi and waving, so which I was really quite warmly greeted back.  I don’t know why I was so shocked by this greeting, perhaps I though he could sense my inner turmoil so would be rude or something, idk, but it was nice. And what surprised me even more was that I didn’t feel sad, or regret, I just felt happy, he lifted my energy.

I felt happy to be around him.

I didn’t feel stressed, or conscious of my actions, I just felt natural, which is something I don’t think I have ever felt around him whilst in the presence of others. I feel like this when I’m alone with him, but never when I’m with others, so it was quite a pleasant response.

We chatted for a bit, joked around, and then we went our separate ways, and I still felt fine.

Fast forward 2 days later and he message me telling me he has my ruler. So we started chatting, me arranging to collect it at our next exam. Then I jokingly mentioned his cider which I still have from a party like  a month ago. Next thing I know we’ve organised for him to come over Friday and get it, and we chatted about revision.

This probably seem completely meaningless and like nothing to the average person, but for me it was a huge step! To have a conversation with Nat without stressing over everything I’m saying, making sure it is perfect and I don’t overstep boundaries, or say the wrong thing, or seem to keen etc etc it feels incredible! It was just natural conversation... it was me! And I feel like it was such a big step for me. The only downside is the first thing I thought of when he said he was coming over, is how can I make this end up in us kissing.... That is something I need to fix, because if I have the expectation of something happening between us, I will inevitably be let down again, which I don’t have time for right now.