Past Scents

Day 29

Frida Kahlo, Sylvia Plath, Liza Minnelli, Anais Nin, Edith Piaf, Audrey Hepburn, some of the worlds best female painters, writers, singers, actresses had many many lovers in their vibrant, extravagant lives. Not only this, but these lovers were intelligent and philosophical and able to do wonderful, moving things. I live in Dorset, where the closest you'll get to a male form performing a "wonderful moving thing," is pissing his name into the sand at Southbourne beach. Maybe its my age or maybe its the horrifically boring location that makes me read Oscar Wilde and William Blake, trully doubting that they were really men. Because no man I have yet met under 45, reads, writes or seems to care about history or anything outside their bedroom. Great, this is what I get for taking an interest in things?

Don't get me wrong. In no way, do I request sitting at home on a Saturday night, discussing novels and the Tudors. I am the first to grab the litre of Tesco Value vodka and march out of the house. But I do get sick of talking about friends and clothes and boys to the girls, and terribly bored of hearing the guys talk about... God knows.
Why am I not 24, in London, doing something interesting, with exciting new people? Travelling in a pack of hippies and doing very stupid things and buying art and couche avec les beaus hommes and protesting nuclear weapons.
But no, I am sat in Southbourne, writing a blog and depressing over the fact that my ex-boyfriend, who I should logically despise, doesn't want to text me on Boxing Day and my mother is the only one for company because everyone is seeing relatives. What even IS Boxing Day??!!

Three days now I have woken up at 12ish and laid in bed till 3ish thinking in loud circles. As a child I never had a teddy bear. If anything, I thought the idea of playing with a lifethreatening animal in the stuffed toy form was pretty creepy. So I never slept with toys. But I keep waking up in the mornings, when the sickeningly cheerful Christmas sunlight is already obliterating my blinds, to see that I've been holding a pillow in my arms all night and find myself clutching to it for dear life. (Consequently, I dream beautiful things which are all smashed up the second I wake up.)

Additionally, as a christmas present he gave me (apart from some other, interesting gifts) two bottles of body wash. This wasn't an effortless attempt to get me a gift from Boots, which every other human being does for someone at least once, when they can't genuinely be bothered to get a thoughtful gift. It wasn't a suggestion that I need to wash. The catch is this: the brand of the body wash is that of the cologne he used to wear when we were together. The smell is a giant slap of dizzy and grinning nostalgia, and I'm back there, 3 years ago, when he still wanted me. I fell asleep with the bottle under my nose, sniffing it for comfort like some weird, body wash drug addict. I woke up at around 2am, to see that I had got the soap all over my sheet, but didn't even care because I curled up by it all night smelling out heaven. All that brought on memories, which twisted and squirmed in my dreams like they didn't want to be there themselves. I open my eyes and just want to go push myself back into sleep so I don't have to be conscious, tracking the hours of sitting at home, thinking about it all, and how pathetic it is that I still cry on the phone when he mentions her. Get a grip, get a grip, get a grip.

The not so funny thing is, this getting worked up doesn't accomplish a sense of closure but simply makes things worse. I get to a state where I miss him more and more and because he doesn't text or call, I feel hurt. So when he does text or call, which he does, I just sound like a ruined mess in the reciever, which gets him angry. So, I am upset and he's angry because he feels he's done something wrong. I get more upset because I've got him angry and he hasn't done anything wrong. He sees that I'm more upset and becomes really fuming. I start crying because I feel like he's raging at my over-emotiveness when its not my fault. And on we go, bickering about who texts who, how much we see eachother, a reply to a message, why can't he see me tomorrow, silly things we don't care about when really, both of us are just frustrated that the other is frustrated too. Like he said yesterday, "we're not good at arguing." And we really aren't. So we get over it and move on.

I see him next week. My amazing friend Christina is flying over from Moscow for a week. I have known her since I was about 6months old and life has recurringly bumped us into eachother over and over, so now we see eachother annually if we can. She looks like a French actress. She is my counterbalance in femininity. She is a pretty little flower with a serious opinion. And she knows almost nothing of what has happened in the last year. Her flight tonight was cancelled, she should be arriving tomorrow, fresh and ready to shake some sense into my Girlish, dramatised state of mind.
I am trying so unbelievably hard to drag my thoughts away from dark corners and boxed up memories and just wall him out. But the harder I try, the more difficult it is. Everything is him right now. I need to go out, see people do things. Come on Christmas, be over already.

I know I just need to see him. So I can get inspired, and write more of what I've written in my head and romanticise like a child.

I have tried to stay as positive as humanly possible. I doubt I've succeeded.
Still, in love.
My fingers are frozen and aching from typing.
Goodnight.