Gonna put on that mask of make up & pretend everything's okay.

Sometimes, just sometimes, I want to sleep for days. I want to sleep until I feel better and the world around me is right again. I haven't felt like this for so long now, I'd forgotten I'd ever felt like it. That was until last week. I haven't slept properly for two days. I sleep for a couple of hours and wake up, toss and turn then burst into tears.

I don't know who I can talk to about things. Right now, nobody seems an option. So the internet, a blank screen sounds pretty perfect.

Because, everything is out of my control now. My best friend is depressed. Another one of my close friends is too. I've gotten to a point when I don't know what to say or do with either of them anymore. Going out doesn't help, it just makes it worse. They're both competitive girls and see others successes as their failures. They don't feel good enough with themselves, and nothing that anyone can do or say will change it. It's spiralled out of my control. A cheery text and a few cocktails used to pull their moods up, but now, it only makes them worse. It's horrid to see two people I love dearly act and think in the way they are at the moment. On top of that, yesterday my grandma, the only grandparent that's still standing, got her results from the memory clinic. She has Alzheimer's. The worst part about it is she didn't expect to have that thrown at her. She hasn't been herself since my grandad died two years ago, but when you hear that word, you assume the worst. After my mum told me I've been plagued by the nightmare of one day having to face up to the fact she doesn't know who any of us are anymore. My mum keeps reassuring me that she won't just deteriorate over night, but even so, a gradual process is terrifying. I've only ever heard of the horror stories associated with Alzheimer's, so of course I'm expecting the worst and focussing on what's going to happen in the future.

On top of all of this, I had a job interview yesterday and have to start tonight. Which is probably the world's shittiest timing. I'm no where near in the right mental frame to take in new things and listen to instructions. I'm exhausted and emotionally drained. I've been walking around in a numb state today. I just feel sadness, and dread at the thought of spending three hours in the pub my grandad spent most of his life dedicated to. That's the only reason I got the job. Because my grandad's name is engraved absolutely everywhere. I'm not ready for it at all. I don't need it right now. And I know for a fact I'll blow this trial period and be back at square one. But, to be honest, square one seems like a good place to be right now.

I think this summer has really gotten to me. I've been off university since the 5th May. I don't properly go back until the 27th September. I'm doing freshers in Sheffield from the 19th. I need some normality. Five months off sounded like heaven whilst I was chained to my desk slaving over my coursework, but at the moment, it's a fucking nightmare.

So how's it gonna feel when I leave this town?

i love sheffield. honestly, i really do. but right this second, i want out. if only for a little while. i just want to go away for a bit. but then, if i did, i'd be dying to come back. i need this polluted city air in my lungs to survive. it's a lifeline. i keep questioning whether i've done the right thing. i'm suffocated here, but at the same time i'm free. i need it. it's home. it's been the last nineteen years. it's where everyone drinks hendersons relish like it'll stop being made. where you can only get the greatest cheeseburger in the world three days a week. where all the good tours miss out, and i moan and groan about it for days on end. where it'll cost me £4.30 if i want to go further than hillsborough on the bus. where everyone understands my accent, it's not a novelty. where breadcakes are exactly that and i'm not lost in dialect translation. i can complain about this place to the stars and back, but i know deep down, i'll always love it. it's always going to be home, no matter how far i run, or how much i pull away, it'll draw me back, somehow. it's where everyone is. all those people who've helped make me what i am today. every single one of them is confined within the limits of this city, until they all disappear. but, i know they'll be pulled back by that magnetic force. it's where i'll feel most comfortable and like myself. it's home.

every single song reminds me of you.

over and over. splashed all over mtv. i listen to bands you hate to help me forget. again and again. you tainted the songs i once adored. wrecked my favourite films. dented the things that have made me up to be who i am. i wanted to fall for you. hard. i wanted butterflies in my stomach. i wanted the novel romance. the type all those authors have written about. i want our story printed on smooth pages. i want the world to know. i wanted to feel something towards you. but i don't. i can't let myself. it hurt for a while. then it stopped. numb. just cold. frozen in time. those feelings are trapped in a block of ice. it stops them from aging. stops them becoming bitter and twisted. love is scary. it all starts out so happy and slowly disintegrates. i don't want that to happen. it terrifies me. i don't want to be bitter and hateful at forty. in twenty years i still want to love someone. to adore them. the thought of ever losing them to kill me and tear me apart inside.

those songs still remind me of you. again and again. the memories are disconnected. a part of something else. trapped in that block of ice. forever. those songs, those words woven together to create something beautiful are much more than you. and always will be.

Consider yourself one of my best friends

You know how there's always that friend you're not really friends with?

Yeah, I've got one of those. Honestly, I don't believe I've ever been without one since being twelve/thirteen years old, that was when the corruption of the Regina George alike secondary school girls began. We were all Cady's at one point, and some morphed into Regina's. I was a Gretchen. Desperate to be liked and loved, and couldn't understand why people would hate me. Ever so slightly conceited, I know, but I shed that skin after a year or so.

But back to the friend you're not really friends with. The friends I have at the moment are probably some of the best I've had in my short life. I don't know if it's because we've just grown up or because we genuinely like each other, but there's less bitching. Way less bitching. To be honest, the only one that gets bitched about is Beau, and that's not so often. That mainly comes around after we've been sitting in Yates for two hours waiting for her grand arrival, only to have her disappear somewhere between there and Babylon.

Basically, Beau is the friend we're not really friends with. She's quite flaky, and flits in and out of everything. She's very much a fair weather friend, coming and going as and when she pleases. It sounds awful, but she's the friend we're not really friends with because of this. That, and the negative effect she has over everyone. Beau would be a less severe Regina in our world.

But the rest of us are just, us. I was done being a Gretchen a long, long time ago.