all i want to so is cut and cut until i bleed all over those words you wrote. coat those pictures and notes. until all i can see is the sea of my blood and none of the lies you said.

Body Dysmorphia Disorder

I can say it as many times as I want, and you can reply with the same answers but at the end of the day it is how I see myself and my body.

I do nothing to help my situation. I don't attempt to fix it. I just complain.


Story of my life.

Start a new chapter Lauren, I hear you scream. I reply...but this one is so well-worn, so comfortable, so easy to slip in between the pages and keep rewriting the same old lines over and over...

petrify me.

Helplessness. You know, that feeling when you are falling and you reach out to grab a helping hand but miss by millimetres.

I have had such a good past week in my areas of my life. New laptop on its way. Progress with one or two essays. Major steps forward with this BBC tv program. It was all going so well. I knew it couldn't or wouldn't last, not because I'm a massive pesimist but because that's life.

Right now, I am tired after such a huge high of a day. I should be dancing on the roof after today. It was amazing. Filming with the team, interviewing such a lovely band, getting told I wasn't as bad as I thought I was. On top of all that, I also got an essay back which I was certain of failure and got a 75!

So, I hear you ask, why aren't you happy Elcie?

Well, it's because I have a lot more work to get in and very little time. I don't have enough money to buy the things I need, nor the things I want.

The worst part though? it's because I don't feel like we are ok.

There is something missing. Something I can't quite put my finger on. Something has changed. I don't know if it's me or if it's you but something is different. We are different. We don't seem to fit together anymore. We don't seem to travel along the same path. We don't seem to love as hard.

I am petrified of losing you. As my own, as a friend, as someone who just exists in my life. I am petrified we have drifted too far and have no way back. I am petrified we will drift further over the coming months and never even look back.

But most of all, I am petrified that sometimes I think it is inevitable.

Home Sweet Hell

It takes just a few hours before I start feel myself suffocating. When I was younger and we used to go on holiday I would adore coming back to this house. I loved driving through the village and up the driveway and dashing upstairs into my room. But at some point this must have stopped. I think it was when I moved away. I tasted freedom and the future. It was sugary, addictive and slipped into my heart. Often my feet begin to itch and I dream of faraway places, but I always doubt if I would cope. Yet, every minute I spend in this four walls, I know I won't just cope, I will love.

I won't spend much time here over summer, I'll see my brother and maybe some friends but I will strive to hide from those who take their hands and put them in the swirling mass of my thoughts and just mix them all up. They wrap fingers around my heart and squeeze, until parts of it become bulbous through the gaps between each finger and then stretches so thin you can see each silver scar.

Often I speak of my scars itching, craving metal and often I speak of the pieces that make me up which lie all over the floor. But rarely do I say that, somehow, someday, I will learn to sew and stitch each piece together until it forms a haphazard but whole picture of a girl I once knew.

I always do certain things just to rebel. I will soon be doing something that may be seen as a rebellion and a large one at that but it isn't. This thing is simply the start of learning to sew. As we all know, you need a needle to sew, but your thread can take many forms. My thread will be ink. Not everytime but definately this time.

I can fool you all.

I can fool even myself. I know that I have slowly been heading further and further down the spiral of self pity, possibly my lowest point was having my housemate pick me up off the kitchen floor and take the glass and knife from my hands. Having said that I can fool myself into believing I am ok about last summer. I am waiting for the day that I stop talking about it so much. I hadn't thought about it properly in a while, then just out of the blue, I did and I panicked, I cried; but mostly I hurt. Recently, I have realised I need to see someone about it...you'd think that I'd be over it but I'm not. I have these dreams and visions about my car being crashed into or crashing my car. I try to hide from my family but when I go home it is so obviously unavoidable everything just falls apart.

Have you ever rolled out pastry? Ever rolled it out too much so that it goes paper thin and see-through and then you end up ripping a hole in it as it sticks to the rolling pin? That's how I feel. Stretched too thin. Clinging on to the walls of my mind so hard that sometimes I can look down at my hands and see the dried blood under my nails.

It's like people think I'm lying...

I simply cannot understand it. I tell them I can't do it. I cry. I get mad. But still they don't believe me when I say I can't do this work.

How do you explain that the girl who was once an A student, now would probably be a low C student? And that is being generous.

I'm just not cut out for University. I could blame it on my 'depression' but what if it isn't that? What if it is all a psychological problem? When I believe I can't read something I just give up and don't bother to read it. Am I lazy? Am I stupid? Am I ill?

I want to do well. I know I need to do well. But is this what I want to do? Can I do it? Do I have the courage to just quit? If I do, will I regret it for the rest of my life?

I am at a loss. A complete loss.

The noughties are over and out.

And so ends the decade of my teenage years. There was:

• The last year at Church Langton where I ruled the school
  
• Middle school and being bullied
• High school and Benjamin Buchanan
• 6th Form, depression, crazy friends and the Panic nightclub.
• University, a new boy and all the same problems

How can I sum up the last 10 years? These words can try: school uniforms, Emma Gibbon, Badges, 9/11, local gigs, Sarah Wilkinson, Sophie Witcombe, Jake Clayton, boys, Max, rats, cats, Molly, Benjamin Buchanan, Puppy and Kitten, sweatbands, pink hair, Switch NX, tsunami, Myspace, The Pill, GCSE's, weed, Theo Stuart, Nike Air Force 1's, Jack Daniels, football world cup, fluoxetine, A Levels, smoking, drinking, skiving, blue coontail, narcotics, tattoo, The Co-op, primark, Philip the Fiat Punto, facebook, wedding, tattoo, Sam Clayton, University of Hull, fresher, The Lawns, Morgan A, Geography, the boy across the hall called David Yexley, room 22, septum piercing, Jack Wills, lacrosse, amaretto, Genevieve Lavin, mattress on the floor, balcony sex, snowball fights at 2am, lack of revision, tattoo, wedding party, Liam's car crash, hospital, market research job and so much more.


What a way to end the year, sat on my own in my parent's lounge, pissed off and upset. Lets be honest, I knew New Years Eve would be a massive letdown. It always is. I always hate it.

So what are my New Years Resolutions? None. It's pointless making any when I won't keep them and I will just let myself down.

Will my posts next year be any happy? Doubtful. Will I know what I want to do in life? Unlikely. Will I be any happier? One can always hope.

However, I will make the same resolutions I make every year...stop letting people treat me like shit, sort out my money issues, be happy with my appearance, do different things, see different places, meet new people and simply be happy.

But don't worry, I know I won't keep them.