A Letter To…

I wish I could explain all the words and all the hurt. It’s because I couldn’t in the first place that it’s ended up like this at all. At least, that’s what I hope it is because I like to give people the benefit of the doubt and you’re no expection.

Piano

We have a piano in our house. Not a tinny keyboard, not even a full heavy electric job with pedals and weightings and what have you – no an actual, proper piano which RF bought from a charity shop in second year and hence has followed her within Durham.

(I have two housemates, both of whose names begin with an ‘R’, rather inconveniently for the purposes of this blog. She will hence be called RF and he will be called RM.)

Anyhow, she has just been playing it, rather lovely-ly, and I have been listening with my door open. Listening to a live piano played musically has a wonderfully calming effect on me – particularly if it feels spontaneous – if somebody is just playing for their own pleasure. Some of my favourite moments at home-home are when, just very occasionally, my Dad sits down to play and he loses himself in the music and I creep in and curl up on a sofa at the other end of the room, and I can just focus on him and his playing and the music, and without having to say or do anything just feel a part of that.

I need that calm, I really do. I don’t know how to articulate my life at the minute, but I know that the piano helps.

Change Of Address

I left my university-home of two years on Saturday – and it really has been a university-home, not just a university-house. I’m sad to go, and there’ll be certain things that I’m really going to miss about it – living on the edge of the countryside, the sunsets, my bedroom with its gorgeous big window, the well-equipped kitchen, the bathroom. Not the plumbing, admittedly…

I’ll miss my housemates too. Even though my relationship with one of them was strained by the end and with another disintegrated to the point of practically non-existant – he didn’t even bother to say goodbye – they’ve been good people to live with. Sure, they’ve driven me mad at times, especially in the kitchen, but I’m sure that’s mutual in one way or another. There was an ongoing battle over me insisting on leaving a tiny, first-floor bedroom window an inch open when I went out so that the room didn’t become unbearably stuffy, and thus ensued a mini cold war between me and someone else (I know not whom) which involved hide and seek with the key. But hell, they’ve put up with me this last year, which, y’know…! At least they get a break from me now. I wish I did.

Anyhow, it’s OK. Because while I’ll miss my old house, I have a new one to move into in the autumn, on which a lot of time and energy has been spent recently. Two new housemates. A new location, and a hundred-fold easier food shopping to look forward to. A lot of new bits and bobs as well, because this house is unfurnished and so we are desperately going round trying to acquire beds and mattresses, desks and wardrobes, and the like. We do have a table and chairs now, however, thanks to a beautiful, beautiful set that I acquired from the YMCA furniture shop on North Road for a bargainous £95*.

I think that’s the thing. I normally struggle a lot with change, but it’s a lot easier if you have something to look forward to. Maybe I’m learning :-)

x

*The Quaker network’s been great as well. Next stop, Freecycle. Oh, and if anybody in the Durham or the West Midlands area has stuff they’re chucking out…

Idiocy

I am so completely dippy at the moment it’s not true. Tonight was the Choral Soc Exec handover meal. I only realised when I saw some photos of the said meal being put on Facebook just now and I suddenly thought, “Shit, I was meant to be at that!”. Normally I’d've remembered in time to throw a nicer top on before heading out or at least half way through the night, even if it hadn’t featured in the evening’s immediate plan.

Then again, I probably still wouldn’t have gone even had I realised sooner, given the circumstances (although with texted apologies, admittedly). Sometimes people are just more important.

Oops…

Dear God

, if you’re out there at all. Or indeed in here, I’m not fussy, honestly, I’m not.

1. Please make my hip stop hurting constantly. You have no idea how painful it is, and if you could rid me for good of this stupid back problem at the same time that’d be awesome.
2. Any chance of some sun?
3. Or some proper emotion? This constant dull nothingness is getting kinda tedious, and it’d be nice to be able to interact properly with my housemates before we have to move out this summer.
4. Do you really have to keep allowing all these bad things happening to people I care about?
5. You’re omniscient, right… so you can explain Maths to me! Nothing more annoying than a smart-arse who sits there being smug and refusing to divulge, though I realise that I’ve probably been guilty of that myself on occasion before. I’m sorry. But I’m really really stuck at the minute, so pretty please? Just some clues.

Yours sincerely, Amen, and PleaseThankYou,

Lucy

Coincidence

I discovered yesterday that another friend is on Citalopram, and has been since approximately the same time as I started on Fluoxetine. And I didn’t know – it sounds as though nobody did.

I feel bad that in trying to be open about my difficulties, I was creating a self-centred drama under which hers went unnoticed. I’m sad that she didn’t feel she could talk to any of us about it, although I know only too well that you have to do so when you start feeling able, irrespective of the people surrounding you. Most of all though, I’m angry at life, and asking that age-old question that can never be answered: why, why, WHY?

Will You Be My Friend?

I am having a Facebook-friends cull. I could list my reasons, but instead I will quote a friend of mine who did a similar thing, because she puts it much more clearly and inoffensively than I ever could in this mood at this time of night -

“I have had a clear out of my friend list. First off, if you’re still on it, found this on your news feed and opened it out of curiosity: congratulations. I actually care enough about you as a friend that I am interested in knowing what you are up to. [*felt honoured at this point*]

To anyone who was deleted and is reading this to find out why: I don’t care. I can’t remember the last time we spoke, met up or anything in a similar vein. We don’t talk anymore, we have nothing in common and frankly I don’t care what you’re up to. Except for in one or two rare cases (you can probably deduce who you are, feel free to message if you’re that desperate to know) I don’t dislike you. I just don’t see the point in pretending we are ‘friends’. For me this is a tool to keep in touch with people easily. If we still don’t talk and I don’t care enough about your life to want the occasional update in my news feed – bye bye.

I am still happy to talk to you and hey if you end up having some sort of place in my life again I may well add you again. But for now – meh. Can’t be arsed having you clog up my friend list.”

And the nice thing is that I’m quite encouraged at the proportion of people on there that I do still care about and do still appreciate news of in my life.

‘appenings

Things what’s been ‘appening recently, in no particular order. It’s a bit of a long’un, I warn you:

- At about half twelve this lunchtime, I experienced a moment of real triumph when I finally got my basic GUI to work. No glitches, no incorrect syntax, no user-traps, and a beautiful, beautiful programme that does exactly what it’s meant to (and I even know why!). I had a bit of advice in the early parts from a CompSci friend who has a rather quicker grasp of object handling than I, but we both agreed that him pointing me in the direction was a much better approach than him actually doing the coding for me – and I designed and built the actual interface part myself from start to finish. Which I have to say I’m pretty proud of, considering that I’m by no means the fastest coder and that this is where I am only twelve hours after first sitting down and going, “So, MATLAB….”

I would post a picture, but unfortunately I only have access to the software on the university computers so it may have to wait for a future occasion. I know, I know!

It’s not the end of the road by any means, but what’s left to do simply involves modifying and titivating what I already have – all the code is essentially written. Oh, and then I have to make it into a 15-minute presentation for seven days’ time. And write a 4000-word essay… but hey, I’ll be in a much stronger position to do that with the programme there.

x

- In a related vein, I’ve come to a decision of sorts with regards to my degree. And I guess that the above paragraphs tell you that decision already – I’ve decided to carry on as best I can. The citalopram has by no means made things go away as such, but it does seem to have made me sufficiently stable to contemplate thinking about things again, even if to a slightly reduced capacity.

The fact is that the university have left me with no choice but to fight or accept failure. And I am going to be of the ones who fights their damn hardest.

When my parents came up ten days ago, my Mum and I discussed strategies – for working, and modules, and the like. As a result, I have now spoken to two lecturers about Stuff – about the fact that I’ve been struggling, about why I haven’t handed in any homeworks this year, and about the fact that it will take an absolute miracle for me to pass this year and that any help would be appreciated. In addition to the fact that my Maths Teaching lecturers already knew*, that covers half my modules. Well, two and a half, anyway, and that includes the second half of Number Theory which is the one that I really can’t do.

x

- As of a few weeks ago, I have two new housemates and a prospective house for next year, which is nice. I’ve met the second housemate twice (!) and have yet to see the house, but I’ve been very nicely guaranteed a bed in college should that all fall through, and it’s quite nice to have some security. Great as college was in my first year I really don’t want to move back in, and at one point I thought that I was going to have no choice – and the one thing worse than living in college would have been living with people who didn’t know me or my situation.

x

- I was sitting in one of the IT classrooms earlier, playing about with bits of code and trying to work out why I couldn’t assign a value to my global variable (I figured it out eventually**) and idly watching the screen of the lad just in front of me (yes, bad Lucy, I know). He was on Google Maps. He typed in somewhere in Cumbria, and zoomed in really close on to what looked like a school building. He paused there for a while, then scrolled the map along, following a series of roads along a particular route.

I know where he was scrolling. He was scrolling home. I had to look away because I was in danger of being overwhelmed by the homesickness that prompts me to do the same thing.

It’s funny how similar we all are :-)

x

*Reason 1: Summative coursework. Reason 2: I was in close contact with large numbers of school kids six days into fluoxetine. I mean, come on?!

**Two identical variable names, one global, one local. Yes, that was very stupid.

Marriage

I went to a mixed school. I am at university with a lot of hardline Christians. I am twenty-one, which is not an unreasonable age for this sort of thing, and hell, I’d've been past my sell-by-date years ago in some parts of the world.

So I can cope with people getting engaged, even though it scares the hell out of me that people of my age are getting ready to spend the rest of their lives together. I can cope with the fact that a friend of my age has a two year-old (just about). I can even cope with friends a year older than myself getting married because, y’know, they’re big and old and into the scary real world. What I am finding difficult to cope with is today’s discovery that one of my Facebook friends from the year below me at school, has got married and is now about seven months pregnant, while in what I think might still be her first year of university.

It’s not that I disapprove particularly. It’s  just, like, big. And scary. And I’m not that old and I’m not that responsible and I want my Mummy, not to be someone else’s Mummy! Not that I’m going to be for the immediate future, but y’know… When people put ‘Married’ on their Facebook relationship status, they don’t actually mean it, right?

“_____ _____ got married on Friday. No, really.” :-S!

Avoidance

One of my housemates, with whom I have now been living for eighteen months, seems to be doing his best to avoid me completely. It’s not necessarily that he won’t talk to me, but he seems to shy away from placing himself in a position where he would have to do so.

True, we don’t coincide in the house a huge amount. True, he often keeps himself to himself anyway, and true, I haven’t exactly been a fun or relaxing person with any of my housemates of late. But it would be nice if I didn’t have the feeling that he waits until my door is closed before he goes out to use the bathroom. It would be nice if he didn’t avoid looking at me when I enter a room. It would have been nice if he’d responded when I said ‘good morning’ to him from my bedroom a few minutes ago.

Maybe he just didn’t hear. I’m probably just being paranoid and self-centred.

Probably.