I usually keep my feelings to myself, or at least between me and a few close friends, but sometimes you just need to vent, and let it all out to be lost into the depths of cyberspace.

This doesn't even go that easily into words, but I'll try. I'm torn between emotions right now, I don't know what I think or what I want to do.

First the anger. I can't believe that you're still playing the victim here. I'm not perfect, far from it, and I know that. I know that I can be irritating to some people, (and discovered the other day that I have an annoyingly posh voice), and I'll accept that I'm stubborn sometimes, and perhaps take the piss a little too much. But no one is perfect. I genuinely do like people until they give me reason not to, and try to show it. Now take a look at yourself, you're also not perfect, and you've treated me and certain other people like dirt on the bottom of your shoe recently.

Now miraculously, I haven't changed over the last few months, I am the same person I always was, so I can't see what's sparked this sudden hatred of me that you seem to have developed.

Then the frustration. Am I invisible to you now? I saw you earlier while I was sitting with another friend. You only looked at me once in that entire conversation, and that was only when I asked you a direct question and you couldn't avoid it. You've been doing this for weeks. Every time I appear you disappear, you barely acknowledge my presence if I'm sitting next to you, and ignore my attempts to be friendly.

Finally, despite every reason you've given me to dislike you by treating me like shit recently, I still can't help but feel an overriding sense of sadness, and loss. We were so close, I told you everything, and you knew me inside out. We had our songs that listened to together, and we both knew every word to, and I can't listen to them now without feeling pangs of sadness sink deep into me. I remember lying all night with you on the trampoline at your 16th birthday, and watching the night drift into day as the sun rose over the horizon. I remember seeing you with a hole halfway through your leg, holding your hand and swearing blind that it was just a scratch, not wanting to worry you. I can remember telling anyone who suggested that you were effeminate that anyone who can lie there and look at his bone through a gash in his leg and not panic was more of a man than any guy I'd ever met. I remember watching you fly solo for the first time, and feeling proud to be the one there with you. I remember visiting one of the most harrowing places on this earth with you, but being comforted when I looked through tear filled eyes and saw you looking over at me. I can remember giving you my favourite painting of the series I did for my GCSE, writing on the back of it and meaning every word, and still meaning it now as I write this.

I miss what we had, and I wish we could go back to it, although somehow it looks like you don't want to, and we never will. Whatever I did to deserve to be cut out of your life, it must have been terrible for me to deserve this, and I am truly sorry for it.

Even now, I still wear a necklace with your initial inscribed into the back of it, and it just reminds me of how I've loved, and lost. So is this an opportunity for a fresh start? Or is it really the end to something beautiful. It's your choice, I've done all I can.

for how long do you let sleeping dogs lie?

As if my life wasn't stressful enough right now. And there we go, I've already made this about me again. In all honesty it's not, never was, it's about someone who I might well be closer to than almost anyone else in this world. Just thinking of them going through what they did gives me a physical pain in my chest, which crushes any other thoughts out of my head.

This was in essence 'a sleeping dog'. Gone, in the past, unspoken of and unthought about. At least by me. The other night, a late night conversation revealed that there was far more to this dog than I realised, more of a snarling, snapping wolf than a slightly growling terrier. The things I heard that night had me alternating between tears, shaking with sickness and rage and breaking into a cold sweat (I didn't even know that was possible).

So right now I have a dilemma, but it's not even my dilemma. I know at some point I'll be asked to give an opinion on it, but I don't know what I'm going to say. Do I let it lie, leaving a shadow threatening to creep into her life, or do I attempt tell her to bring some tiny amount of justice to world, and by doing that either fix it or risk throwing that shadow straight over her.

Right now it's all I can do to keep my head above the water, and walk tall like nothing's ever been wrong in this world.

:)

maybe we haven't drifted as far as I thought we had. I'm feeling an islandy underwater connection type metaphor here....

...

I guess that it just goes to show, however far you think you've drifted apart, your true friends will never stray out of arms reach, and really you're still as you always were, you just didn't realise it x

.

Don't worry, for all the B.S I give you sometimes, I get you, I really do, just the same as I always did, and the same as the way I know that you know me. I know I'm talking rubbish half the time, and probably taking the piss a bit too much, and I'm hoping that you know that too. But really, believe me, for all the times that I rip it out of you, it really means nothing, and we're just the same as we always were, if not more. H.S.A

Jeez...I have issues...

We had our GCSE certificate presentation evening a few nights ago. It should have been a really great night, because after all, our years results were the best our school's ever had, and we all had a lot to celebrate.

But somehow, I couldn't shake off a feeling of regret, and that I'd failed somehow. I know it's crazy, by most peoples standards I did great, 7A*s is hardly failing. But still, I always look back on it and feel like it just wasn't good enough. I hate admitting this, and I very rarely do, becuase the response I always get is something along the lines of 'what are you talking about, I only got........, you did great' etc. And to be honest, I know a lot of people would love to have the grades I got, and I always feel bad admitting that I'm dissapointed in what I did, because I know I really shouldn't be. But I still am.

I guess it's because I put so much pressure on myself to be the best. However well I do, I still won't think it's good enough. I've always been like that, but even more so in the last few years. Ever since I decided that I wanted to be a vet, I've known that nothing but the best grades will be good enough. And sometimes, it's a good thing, I always work for exams now (partially as a result of feeling that my GCSE's weren't good enough), and really push myself to do the best I can (and by the best, I mean as close to 100% as I can get). And I realise I sound totally out of my mind, but sometimes it really gets me down when I don't do as well as I could have done.
Again, I try not to show it, but for me, I count a B instead of an A as not being good enough (last week we had a Biology test, I got 86%, 10% lower than I did in the last one. Even though I was ahead of the rest of the class, I still had this nagging feeling that I was getting worse and not doing well enough). And I never really talk about it because no one really understands it, and just tells me I did really well.

I guess it just comes down to the fact that no matter how much pressure teachers and my parents put on me, it can't come close to the amount that I put on myself. I know I really should let up on myself sometimes, but I just can't, and I don't know if I ever will. And I can't decide if that's a good or a bad thing.

And they say WE think we know everything?

I've just found a blog promoting abstinence in teenagers. It has got posts on how 'safe sex' teaching is corrupting us, how the HPV jab is encouraging sex and is dangerous (I'm not even going to start on that, I'll just say that I had it and didn't feel the immediate urge to go out and have sex as I was now 'invincible'), and the usual celibacy stuff. I'm not going to comment on the subject of whether I agree with abstinence (not now anyway), as that's not really what I want to get at here.

What really got me was the single mindedness of the writers of the blog, in thinking that obviously, as teenagers, we are idiots. Obviously.

I'll give you some quotes from this blog, my comments are in blue.

First of all, one about the sex ed system: "Those who write the “health
education” curriculum, oversee the lesson plans and have the greatest
authority in education believe that there are no taboos, and no boundaries
on a teenager’s sex life." Because of course, I was taught how to use a condom to prevent STD's and that means I spend my time sleeping with every guy I see, because, you know, us teenagers are actually a different species and have no ability to think for ourselves without someone jamming stuff down our throats.

Many educators are obsessed with promoting a promiscuous lifestyle. One
particularly disturbing tactic is to strip our little girls of their natural
inclination toward modesty and replace it with an attitude of sexual
dominance. They teach young women that the way to get ahead in the world is
not through their grace, or goodness, or intelligence - but through their
sexual power.

Combine this reality with the theme of my last two columns, which are about
the entertainment industry’s elevation of a highly sexual and crassly
powerful young female image, and we’ve created a culture in which our
precious little daughters are constantly bombarded by messages that degrade
their innate value, reducing them to nothing more than sex objects. Excuse me? I've come through the sex ed system, and I don't consider myself a sex object. Frankly, I'm insulted that people can actually generalise like this, and decide that everyone is the same, and since we know about safe sex we are all sex dolls. Sorry Mr Hotshot propaganda guy, but I beg to differ.

Ok, now for my favourite bit:

When a teen is attempting to make a decision regarding what to do in any given situation they like most humans, you would think would use logical reasoning and weight the pros and cons. You would also think that they would think of how their decision might influence others around them such as their parents and their peers, however this is not true. Teens on the other hand are very egocentric, or self-centered, with their thinking, they do not seem to care about how their decisions will influence others, and as a result only care about themselves, or that is how it seems.

Teens also think in a way which psychologists call “magical thinking” this is the “it will never happen to me” type thinking. Therefore, they do not think that anything bad can happen to them, therefore they succumb to peer pressure and as a result may make negative choices, such as choosing to drive too fast, or to drink a beer or two, or to go to far sexually with a person of the opposite sex. They do not think that the negative consequences can follow because in their minds, that “can never happen to them”. So, they do not even consider the consequences such as wrecking harm to themselves or others, or pregnancy.

Parents often find it difficult to deal with teens and their skewed ways of thinking.

I told you, teens are obviously a different species.....

Is anyone else sick of the mentality among people like this that we are uncapable of making our own decisions, and will ruin our lives if left to think for ourselves even for a single moment?