A Review

Day 34, 35, 36

I haven't written for a few days although I've needed to. Christina and her mum left for London this morning and until now its been hectic, running around, looking at things, showing every inch of Dorset.

Firstly, its the New Year. 2011 has hit me in the face like a slab of ice and it still hasn't quite sunk in that its here. Although, I am tempted to go into the usual MeandHim Saga, I feel I should focus on 2010 and its ridiculousness.

2010 changed me hugely as a person. Well, we're changing all the time, of course. Some one hearing that I've "changed" would instantaneously jump in to inform me that our skins cells, hair and eyelashes are constantly changing and that really we're never the same person we were five minutes ago. Fuck off. Any normal human being would twig that I meant... what's the word? Emotionally? Psychologically? Mentally? None of those. I think I have become a little more the person I have always wanted to be. Just a minute amount, but hopefully that means I can slowly grow into her, and then probably realise that I don't want to be that at all, and decide I want to be some one entirely different. But I can feel myself growing into someone who, if I met, I could possibly, actually like.

Firstly, Once Upon A Song. That "silly idea" which I convinced the brilliant Helen O'Connor should become a reality. 6 months of crying, and shouting, and auditioning about 80 students, and creating ridiculous rehearsal schedules, scribbling notes on the back of my hand, calling microphone companies, finding music, costumes, props, writing names, teaching dances, hunting down students, irritating the fuck out of teachers, printing tickets and programs, discussing lighting and refreshments, and now I couldn't tell anyone what my favourite part of directing a school musical was, because it was the most rewarding thing I have ever done. After being a step away from going insane or stabbing some one, sitting in the wings of my school stage and watch 50 people perform something that I clumsily glued together in my amateur attempt of being a director, I wanted to go back and do it all over again. We raised 1,332 for Haiti, but it wasn't really that which made me sob in the wings at the end of the last night.

What else? Mack and Mabel, my first show outside of school, with my best friend. My appalling tapdancing, the hilarious costumes and the lovely, lovely people I met, made the 2 hour journeys to rehearsals in the middle of nowhere twice a week, utterly worth it. The summer concert, the choir shows.

Caught In The Net, my first leading role outside of school. That brilliant Ray Cooney play, that had us in fits all through rehearsals and during the the performances themselves. Repeating my lines in my head every night before going to sleep, acting like a spoilt brat and spending a few hours at the pub after each rehearsal - an amazing play to do. Apart from losing my voice on the last night, being handed a giant bottle of port by the producers mum and being instructed to "gargle away" in the wings, to apparently help my throat, when it just got me drunk by the second act.

The summer - night after night after night of drinking cheap alcohol in my wreckage of a flat because mother was away for six weeks. The pornographic drawings made drunkenly on my bedroom walls in black marker, some one peeing in my kitchen sink, breaking the living room blinds, smashing a few glasses, complaints from the neighbours and staying up till 11am with any random bunch of people that decided to turn up at my house, watching Kill Bill. The guys hotboxed mums bedroom, people were having sex in every room except mine and the warm and messy nights merged together into one huge house party all summer long.

Vienna with Fenella Courage - one of the most memorable weeks of my life. Great food, amazing sights, a great deal of drunken nights at Bango Bar with black Mike and White Mike. Mozart concerts, the most beautiful hills and rivers, art galleries and scorching hot weather. Oh and our spontaneous day trip to Slovakia where we got sunstroke and decided to go to Tequila night until 5:30am the same evening anyway.

My trip to Krakow, an adorable little city, with delicious Polish food, long evenings at Hardrock cafe and great architecture. Auschwitz. A place that I can't forget even months later, I think about it everyday and it haunts me. But still, I am so glad I went and saw all of it, although I could never fully understand.

Debate club, that hilarious lunchtime once a week, where my co-leader and I try to act organised, and stuffed with "leadership skills," and have a laugh with some of the brilliant people that attend.

The panto I'm preparing for this January, in which I do an Indian dance (to Jai Ho), an impossible Irish jig-like routine, the Lambert walk, and a finale in which I am required to literally bounce like a basketball.

Five relationships, all relatively short and sweet, some shorter or sweeter than others, and all completely hopeless. I don't know what I was thinking in some of them. Some, I can see exactly what I was thinking, but I am far to stubborn and driven by ideals to put up with people who are nothing like me. Then again, the way things are looking, I may never find anyone remotely like me, because I seem to be mentally handicapped. Anyway I am friends with all but one of them.

This year eased my bitterness about her, and what she did to me all those years ago. I understand what happened a little more, it was niether of our faults and I just wish she could see that being my friend doesn't mean we'll return to what we were before. It could just erase the awkwardness. But I truly think she feels as cheated as I do, and the end of our friendship wasn't exactly sugarcoated.

This year made me understand my psychotic, raging mother more clearly. I am slowly learning to deal with her a bit better, so perhaps my pledges to never speak to her once I leave home could be altered a little. In reality, she is an amazingly strong and intelligent woman, often misunderstood, especially by her own daughters. But that doesn't change what she has done to me, and what a horrific mother she can be and has been in the past.

My disregard for my selfish, egoistic, bastard of a father has definitely augmented. My sister and I are on more neutral terms than ever, speaking once a year about nothing of any importance and nothing we care about.

I have made some absolutely irreplaceable friends, who I could list for hours, and they've made me realise how important it is to be able to laugh at something everyday, because otherwise you get sucked into a vacuum of bad moods and short tempers.

I have tried to work harder but am unsure that I have succeeded. I have forced myself to read some books which I couldn't put down. I watched Sophie's Choice and Harry Potter and The Italian Job. I worked two jobs at once and almost died.

I did things I never thought I would do. And I am still doing them now.

Of course, I felt betrayed and used and lied to. Several people hurt me hugely this year. Certain things, didn't go to plan and I have cried more times than I care to remember. I have acquired a couple of bad habits but hopefully they're outweighed by the things I have learnt to do and not do.

In conclusion, I think I've had a year that every teenager needs at some point, to be able to see their own reflection in the mirror, realise what a piece of shit they really are and convert their lifestyle to a self-improvement and growth programme. I have done this to a certain extent.

There are many things I would kill to go back and change but, for now, I guess those things were put there for some masked purpose. Hopefully I'll see why soon.

2010 made me punch a few too many walls, 2011 better make up for that.

I love him, like a child.