I'm sitting in the library and for some reason it smells like lasagne and pistachio kulfi. Great smells...not too sure about them together.
This is going to be a fairly random note; I don't have the mental capacity today to try and put it all together.
I had to move a few minutes ago, and I think the cute guy I was sitting opposite might think that I don't like him anymore. I'd better go talk to him when he comes back to his seat, and tell him I just needed to use the plug point.
He has a really nice smile. People have been smiling at me a lot lately. :)
LOL my friend Nathan just sent me a link to a page with topless pictures of Leo the Lion...niiiiice. :D He's been trying to get me into photography recently - as a photographer, not a model - and I think this is his latest attempt. Might work, actually. ;-)
I use facebook a whole lot more than myspace, because I generally find myspace to be disorganized and hard to navigate. One thing I do like doing on there, though, is reading blogs of famous people. Some of them are the usual boring stuff - OK, most of them are the usual boring stuff - but now and then I come across one that's well-written, interesting, and presents them in a new light. I have very little patience for celebrity culture, and generally I don't think about famous people at all, either in a positive or a negative sense. They're so far removed from me that I don't even consider them the same breed of people most of the time. And it's weird, but oddly pleasant, to find out that sometimes they're just like me. Well, almost. :)
I got my books from Amazon in the mail a few days ago - The Complete Poems of Edgar Allan Poe and the fifth and sixth Obernewtyn Chronicles by Isobelle Carmody. I'm on the sixth book now, and they're really good. Which is a good thing, since I've been waiting forever for them. (She published the first book in the series in 1987, and I read the book in 1989, which gives you some idea of how long it's been. It makes it interesting, though, because you can really track her personal growth and the growth of her abilities as a writer, through the books, since they were written so far apart.)
The bank gets most of this week's paycheck. Boo hoo.
Bonfire night tonight, but the firework display here in town isn't on until Saturday. I'm hoping to go to that with Lori and Chris and Ryan...if they remember.
I was in Wilkinson earlier and I think I scared three teenagers out of buying condoms. Oops. That's not a good thing, IMO. Some of you would say, teenagers shouldn't be having sex...but I've learned many times over that not having condoms is NOT going to stop them having sex. Not most of them, anyway. It's just going to stop them being smart about it. *shrug* You work with teenagers, you learn to pick your battles. "Use a condom" is a battle I can usually win. "Don't have sex" is not. Even assuming I agreed with that idea in the first place.
It's funny, though, how when you're a teenager you get embarrassed by so many things. I wouldn't even buy underwear for several years. I got over the fear of buying bras when I was about 13, but other things, like tampons and condoms...forget it. And then suddenly, when I was about 17, I just didn't care anymore. It wasn't even a gradual process, it was practically overnight. One day I would blush every time someone mentioned bodies or sex, and the next day I had no embarrassment left. Now I grin when I have to go to the personal aisle of the store, because I know there'll be teens in there who are in the exact same position that I was in 10 years ago. I wish I could tell them that it gets easier, that there will come a day when you don't care who knows you're having sex, but if I said anything it would just make them feel even worse.
I found a really neat cami top today that I don't think I've ever worn. I bought it a couple years ago, and then didn't have anything to wear with it. It's the deepest indigo blue, almost royal blue, and it has these little tiny elastic spaghetti straps - thinner than spaghetti straps, really, more like vermicelli straps - that cross over in the back. It's a really sexy top, very much like something you might see in Victoria's Secret (still my favourite clothing store in the world - wish the shipping costs weren't so exorbidant), and I feel good wearing it.
I had to cut some of my hair last week - the bit in the front - because it was damaged, and for a week I didn't have any idea what to do with it. The short stuff just sort of sat there, all fluffy and disorganised, and I bore a strong resemblance to Dappy from N-Dubz. (Yes, Dappy. No, not Tulisa. Dappy. The guy with the hat.) But finally I managed to cut it into a more-or-less straight fringe, and with a little help from my hair straightener, I've got it looking OK. And I'm actually starting to warm to it. It makes me look younger. It makes me look - and Oh My God, I can't believe I'm going to say this - it makes me look fashionable. With the fringe cut, most of the blonde has gone out of my hair now, aside from a few bits that are mostly hidden by my ponytail, and it's very obvious all of a sudden that I am now a brunette. This is weird for me, because aside from the short period of time in college when I dyed my hair black, I've been blonde for at least ten years, maybe more. I THINK of myself as a blonde. Yet I'm starting to like the brown hair. I can't wear my normal (bare) makeup with the brown hair or the fringe, so I've been experimenting with eyeliner and mascara and darker eyeshadows, and then lipstick. And I look...well, I look kind of good, I guess. Good in a different way. Before I looked pretty, but I looked like a pretty soccer mom. Now I look 19, and a lot sharper and less suburban than I did.
I can't believe it's November...I have so much to do, and no time or money to do it with. I need to call Tony tonight, and start planning for Thanksgiving. I desperately need to do some Christmas shopping. I've found loads of things that *I* want, but very little that would be suitable for anyone else. And there are half a dozen people I want to see. I need to call Jackie and make an appointment to see my Dad - and I've no idea about how they're going to recieve me, after I've been AWOL for so long - and I want see Sasha, and Becki, and I really NEED to see Oli.
Of course, Oli and my Dad both involve going to London.
When my Dad had his stroke, I visited a lot at first, and I started having really bad nightmares right afterwards. I assumed it was stress, maybe compounded with my heart problems, but it didn't occur to me until recently that it might be to do with London itself. Something that I haven't admitted to you guys is that I've basically avoided the city since the rape. It's been easy to hide, because I don't HAVE to go there most of the time, and if I do, it's usually with someone. Before Papa's stroke, most of my trips to London were to see him, and just involved the outskirts - Highgate doesn't really feel like London to me, anyway - and half the time he picked me up or dropped me off, so I wasn't alone much. I saw Curt a few times, and he picked me up and dropped me off in his car. I went to work a few times, but I mostly commuted from home. And I didn't go clubbing. I didn't shop. I didn't hang out in the West End. I didn't go to see friends.
I didn't even realise what I was doing, really. I suppose I knew, but not consciously. And then when the stroke happened, and I HAD to be in London a lot of the time, the nightmares started. And stupidly, I wondered why.
People sometimes ask me if I'm still scared of Obie. I suppose a part of me will always be scared, because he's crazy and unpredictable, and there's always that slight chance that he'll come back. But most of the time, I don't think about that. If he comes to the house, I'll defend myself and anyone else there. What I'm most scared of is not remembering. Nobody wants to talk about the rape. We certainly don't talk about it in my house; my mother uses half a dozen euphemisms, like "the Obie thing", and any time I mention it I see her face go blank and she stops listening. The biggest mistake people make with rape victims is to tell them that they don't need to talk about it. When someone says "you don't need to talk about it", what they really mean is, "you don't need to tell me, I don't want to know". I'm sorry if that sounds cynical, but it's the truth, at least as far as I've seen. People need to talk. My mother didn't want to tell people about it at first, and she forbade me from telling the newspaper or writing into a magazine, saying that with the amount of money his family had, they'd hire a good lawyer and sue for libel. But you can't keep something like that secret - at least *I* can't. When something becomes a secret, it makes you feel dirty, and eventually ashamed. And I'm not willing to do that. I'm not willing to keep quiet because other people get uncomfortable. I've already made the sacrifice of not talking much about it when I'm there in person with someone, because they become awkward and don't know what to say to me, and it's just not worth it. But I will NOT keep it under wraps. Although that said, there are a few people I'd prefer not to know about it, since I know that they'd spread rumors about how I'm making it up to get attention. So just use your judgement - if you know someone doesn't like me, probably better not to mention it to them.
I talk because I'm scared that I'll forget again. My biggest fear, worse than him coming back, worse than him stalking me, worse than anything else - is that I'll forget his face. And then one day I'll be out in London, enjoying myself, and some guy will hit on me, and we'll dance and get friendly, and he'll ask for my number, and I'll give it to him...and it'll be HIM, and I won't know it.
This is what I have nightmares about. And sometimes I have other nightmares, too. I have nightmares about guys who get to know me, and then I find out in one blinding instant that they're friends of his, but it's too late to save myself from them. The worst of these dreams involve other people that I know, usually members of my Dad's family. The other night I dreamed that I was meeting Haley for something, I don't even remember what, and Delroy was there with a friend of his, and we talked, and hung out, and Delroy left and the friend stayed, and I don't remember what happened next, but suddenly we were in a dark alley at night, and I was finding out that the guy only made friends with Delroy because he was a friend of Obie's and wanted to get to me, and he hit Haley, knocked her into a wall to get her out of the way, and then he was tearing at my clothes and biting me on my neck and the whole thing was happening again. Different place, different guy, but same thing. It's not always Haley in the dreams. Sometimes it's Stacy, or Amy, or Lucy, or one of my cousins. Sometimes it's my Dad and Jackie, and we're at their house, and they've invited a guy in as a guest because he said he was a friend of mine from college who was trying to get in touch with me, and then the dream goes much the same way as the Haley-dream.
I do wonder, sometimes, if this isn't one of the reasons I've been avoiding visiting my Dad. Not just the fear of London, but the fear that I'll bring something unclean and wrong into their gentle, safe lives. My Dad's family are good people, all of them. I don't know how tough they are, because I've never had the opportunity to find out. But I think of them as sweet, innocent, CLEAN people. And I don't always feel sweet and innocent and clean anymore.
I go through phases where I don't think of Obie at all, and then phases where he bothers me a lot. I'll get over it; I always do. Part of this phase was precipitated by a TV programme I watched last week some time. It was supposedly an experiment to find out how racist people are - I say "supposedly" because I'm not convinced that it had merit, at least not the way the woman ran it - and much of the content took me back to the days after the rape, when I had to deal with the accusations from Obie and his lawyer, and even from the police and CPS, although to a lesser degree. It was a hard time - the aftermath was harder than the rape, believe it or not - and it's not something I like to be reminded of. I probably shouldn't have watched the programme, but I kept thinking that if I saw it through to the end, it would all be explained and I'd learn something. The only thing I learned is that I don't like fanatics, even when I agree with their cause.
I'm OK. I know you lot are worrying, because that's what you do, but I am OK. I'm not going to have a breakdown or anything. I'm just...dealing with things in my own time.
Halloween was good. I handed out a ton of candy, as ever, and have definitely kept the local dentists in business for the next few months. Classes are going well, too, and we're now learning about food, which has stimulated my appetite. :) Lovely Eli, who usually sits next to me, wasn't there yesterday, but I had a lot of fun with our table, and when Magdalena made us move and sit with people we didn't know, that was fun too, and it was nice to talk to some new faces.
OK. I have a backache, and I need to get home and eat something. The smell of pistachio kulfi is driving me mad. And I want to take a bath, and read some more of "The Stone Key". (That's the sixth Obernewtyn book, btw.) I skimmed ahead just a little, and found out that Domick is going to die, so I'm very sad, but it'll still be a good read.
Hope y'all will forgive me for not replying to messages today - my brain isn't working well enough to give you guys the attention you deserve, so I'm going to leave that until next week. Or perhaps work on them when I'm in bed. :)
Happy November!
This is going to be a fairly random note; I don't have the mental capacity today to try and put it all together.
I had to move a few minutes ago, and I think the cute guy I was sitting opposite might think that I don't like him anymore. I'd better go talk to him when he comes back to his seat, and tell him I just needed to use the plug point.
He has a really nice smile. People have been smiling at me a lot lately. :)
LOL my friend Nathan just sent me a link to a page with topless pictures of Leo the Lion...niiiiice. :D He's been trying to get me into photography recently - as a photographer, not a model - and I think this is his latest attempt. Might work, actually. ;-)
I use facebook a whole lot more than myspace, because I generally find myspace to be disorganized and hard to navigate. One thing I do like doing on there, though, is reading blogs of famous people. Some of them are the usual boring stuff - OK, most of them are the usual boring stuff - but now and then I come across one that's well-written, interesting, and presents them in a new light. I have very little patience for celebrity culture, and generally I don't think about famous people at all, either in a positive or a negative sense. They're so far removed from me that I don't even consider them the same breed of people most of the time. And it's weird, but oddly pleasant, to find out that sometimes they're just like me. Well, almost. :)
I got my books from Amazon in the mail a few days ago - The Complete Poems of Edgar Allan Poe and the fifth and sixth Obernewtyn Chronicles by Isobelle Carmody. I'm on the sixth book now, and they're really good. Which is a good thing, since I've been waiting forever for them. (She published the first book in the series in 1987, and I read the book in 1989, which gives you some idea of how long it's been. It makes it interesting, though, because you can really track her personal growth and the growth of her abilities as a writer, through the books, since they were written so far apart.)
The bank gets most of this week's paycheck. Boo hoo.
Bonfire night tonight, but the firework display here in town isn't on until Saturday. I'm hoping to go to that with Lori and Chris and Ryan...if they remember.
I was in Wilkinson earlier and I think I scared three teenagers out of buying condoms. Oops. That's not a good thing, IMO. Some of you would say, teenagers shouldn't be having sex...but I've learned many times over that not having condoms is NOT going to stop them having sex. Not most of them, anyway. It's just going to stop them being smart about it. *shrug* You work with teenagers, you learn to pick your battles. "Use a condom" is a battle I can usually win. "Don't have sex" is not. Even assuming I agreed with that idea in the first place.
It's funny, though, how when you're a teenager you get embarrassed by so many things. I wouldn't even buy underwear for several years. I got over the fear of buying bras when I was about 13, but other things, like tampons and condoms...forget it. And then suddenly, when I was about 17, I just didn't care anymore. It wasn't even a gradual process, it was practically overnight. One day I would blush every time someone mentioned bodies or sex, and the next day I had no embarrassment left. Now I grin when I have to go to the personal aisle of the store, because I know there'll be teens in there who are in the exact same position that I was in 10 years ago. I wish I could tell them that it gets easier, that there will come a day when you don't care who knows you're having sex, but if I said anything it would just make them feel even worse.
I found a really neat cami top today that I don't think I've ever worn. I bought it a couple years ago, and then didn't have anything to wear with it. It's the deepest indigo blue, almost royal blue, and it has these little tiny elastic spaghetti straps - thinner than spaghetti straps, really, more like vermicelli straps - that cross over in the back. It's a really sexy top, very much like something you might see in Victoria's Secret (still my favourite clothing store in the world - wish the shipping costs weren't so exorbidant), and I feel good wearing it.
I had to cut some of my hair last week - the bit in the front - because it was damaged, and for a week I didn't have any idea what to do with it. The short stuff just sort of sat there, all fluffy and disorganised, and I bore a strong resemblance to Dappy from N-Dubz. (Yes, Dappy. No, not Tulisa. Dappy. The guy with the hat.) But finally I managed to cut it into a more-or-less straight fringe, and with a little help from my hair straightener, I've got it looking OK. And I'm actually starting to warm to it. It makes me look younger. It makes me look - and Oh My God, I can't believe I'm going to say this - it makes me look fashionable. With the fringe cut, most of the blonde has gone out of my hair now, aside from a few bits that are mostly hidden by my ponytail, and it's very obvious all of a sudden that I am now a brunette. This is weird for me, because aside from the short period of time in college when I dyed my hair black, I've been blonde for at least ten years, maybe more. I THINK of myself as a blonde. Yet I'm starting to like the brown hair. I can't wear my normal (bare) makeup with the brown hair or the fringe, so I've been experimenting with eyeliner and mascara and darker eyeshadows, and then lipstick. And I look...well, I look kind of good, I guess. Good in a different way. Before I looked pretty, but I looked like a pretty soccer mom. Now I look 19, and a lot sharper and less suburban than I did.
I can't believe it's November...I have so much to do, and no time or money to do it with. I need to call Tony tonight, and start planning for Thanksgiving. I desperately need to do some Christmas shopping. I've found loads of things that *I* want, but very little that would be suitable for anyone else. And there are half a dozen people I want to see. I need to call Jackie and make an appointment to see my Dad - and I've no idea about how they're going to recieve me, after I've been AWOL for so long - and I want see Sasha, and Becki, and I really NEED to see Oli.
Of course, Oli and my Dad both involve going to London.
When my Dad had his stroke, I visited a lot at first, and I started having really bad nightmares right afterwards. I assumed it was stress, maybe compounded with my heart problems, but it didn't occur to me until recently that it might be to do with London itself. Something that I haven't admitted to you guys is that I've basically avoided the city since the rape. It's been easy to hide, because I don't HAVE to go there most of the time, and if I do, it's usually with someone. Before Papa's stroke, most of my trips to London were to see him, and just involved the outskirts - Highgate doesn't really feel like London to me, anyway - and half the time he picked me up or dropped me off, so I wasn't alone much. I saw Curt a few times, and he picked me up and dropped me off in his car. I went to work a few times, but I mostly commuted from home. And I didn't go clubbing. I didn't shop. I didn't hang out in the West End. I didn't go to see friends.
I didn't even realise what I was doing, really. I suppose I knew, but not consciously. And then when the stroke happened, and I HAD to be in London a lot of the time, the nightmares started. And stupidly, I wondered why.
People sometimes ask me if I'm still scared of Obie. I suppose a part of me will always be scared, because he's crazy and unpredictable, and there's always that slight chance that he'll come back. But most of the time, I don't think about that. If he comes to the house, I'll defend myself and anyone else there. What I'm most scared of is not remembering. Nobody wants to talk about the rape. We certainly don't talk about it in my house; my mother uses half a dozen euphemisms, like "the Obie thing", and any time I mention it I see her face go blank and she stops listening. The biggest mistake people make with rape victims is to tell them that they don't need to talk about it. When someone says "you don't need to talk about it", what they really mean is, "you don't need to tell me, I don't want to know". I'm sorry if that sounds cynical, but it's the truth, at least as far as I've seen. People need to talk. My mother didn't want to tell people about it at first, and she forbade me from telling the newspaper or writing into a magazine, saying that with the amount of money his family had, they'd hire a good lawyer and sue for libel. But you can't keep something like that secret - at least *I* can't. When something becomes a secret, it makes you feel dirty, and eventually ashamed. And I'm not willing to do that. I'm not willing to keep quiet because other people get uncomfortable. I've already made the sacrifice of not talking much about it when I'm there in person with someone, because they become awkward and don't know what to say to me, and it's just not worth it. But I will NOT keep it under wraps. Although that said, there are a few people I'd prefer not to know about it, since I know that they'd spread rumors about how I'm making it up to get attention. So just use your judgement - if you know someone doesn't like me, probably better not to mention it to them.
I talk because I'm scared that I'll forget again. My biggest fear, worse than him coming back, worse than him stalking me, worse than anything else - is that I'll forget his face. And then one day I'll be out in London, enjoying myself, and some guy will hit on me, and we'll dance and get friendly, and he'll ask for my number, and I'll give it to him...and it'll be HIM, and I won't know it.
This is what I have nightmares about. And sometimes I have other nightmares, too. I have nightmares about guys who get to know me, and then I find out in one blinding instant that they're friends of his, but it's too late to save myself from them. The worst of these dreams involve other people that I know, usually members of my Dad's family. The other night I dreamed that I was meeting Haley for something, I don't even remember what, and Delroy was there with a friend of his, and we talked, and hung out, and Delroy left and the friend stayed, and I don't remember what happened next, but suddenly we were in a dark alley at night, and I was finding out that the guy only made friends with Delroy because he was a friend of Obie's and wanted to get to me, and he hit Haley, knocked her into a wall to get her out of the way, and then he was tearing at my clothes and biting me on my neck and the whole thing was happening again. Different place, different guy, but same thing. It's not always Haley in the dreams. Sometimes it's Stacy, or Amy, or Lucy, or one of my cousins. Sometimes it's my Dad and Jackie, and we're at their house, and they've invited a guy in as a guest because he said he was a friend of mine from college who was trying to get in touch with me, and then the dream goes much the same way as the Haley-dream.
I do wonder, sometimes, if this isn't one of the reasons I've been avoiding visiting my Dad. Not just the fear of London, but the fear that I'll bring something unclean and wrong into their gentle, safe lives. My Dad's family are good people, all of them. I don't know how tough they are, because I've never had the opportunity to find out. But I think of them as sweet, innocent, CLEAN people. And I don't always feel sweet and innocent and clean anymore.
I go through phases where I don't think of Obie at all, and then phases where he bothers me a lot. I'll get over it; I always do. Part of this phase was precipitated by a TV programme I watched last week some time. It was supposedly an experiment to find out how racist people are - I say "supposedly" because I'm not convinced that it had merit, at least not the way the woman ran it - and much of the content took me back to the days after the rape, when I had to deal with the accusations from Obie and his lawyer, and even from the police and CPS, although to a lesser degree. It was a hard time - the aftermath was harder than the rape, believe it or not - and it's not something I like to be reminded of. I probably shouldn't have watched the programme, but I kept thinking that if I saw it through to the end, it would all be explained and I'd learn something. The only thing I learned is that I don't like fanatics, even when I agree with their cause.
I'm OK. I know you lot are worrying, because that's what you do, but I am OK. I'm not going to have a breakdown or anything. I'm just...dealing with things in my own time.
Halloween was good. I handed out a ton of candy, as ever, and have definitely kept the local dentists in business for the next few months. Classes are going well, too, and we're now learning about food, which has stimulated my appetite. :) Lovely Eli, who usually sits next to me, wasn't there yesterday, but I had a lot of fun with our table, and when Magdalena made us move and sit with people we didn't know, that was fun too, and it was nice to talk to some new faces.
OK. I have a backache, and I need to get home and eat something. The smell of pistachio kulfi is driving me mad. And I want to take a bath, and read some more of "The Stone Key". (That's the sixth Obernewtyn book, btw.) I skimmed ahead just a little, and found out that Domick is going to die, so I'm very sad, but it'll still be a good read.
Hope y'all will forgive me for not replying to messages today - my brain isn't working well enough to give you guys the attention you deserve, so I'm going to leave that until next week. Or perhaps work on them when I'm in bed. :)
Happy November!
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