This is an excerpt from my diary, when I was 19. It was coming towards the end of my year out, and I had been working in a nursing home for elderly people all year. I had just passed my driving test. It’s about 11:45pm and I’m lying on my bed, listening to Royksopp. I’ve…
This is an extract from my diary, when I was 18 and got my A-level results. I didn’t get any As. I had hoped that the university would still let me in because I’d done an extra A-level, but they didn’t. In the end, I re-applied in my year out and got into a better…
It’s probably obvious that my writing patterns have changed a bit, since I was single and started this blog. I used to write 1-2 posts a week, often posting a new one on Saturday mornings. Now, I’ve been with Andrew for over a year, and I’m writing less. This is for a few reasons. Firstly,…
As a therapist, people sometimes ask me how I cope, spending all day, listening to people’s problems. And they’re right to ask. In a standard week, I have several conversations about suicide, as well as talking to people about how they were abused as children, or attacked, tortured, trafficked or nearly killed as adults. Most…
Once, at Christmas, I saw a lady crying, in a toy shop. It was one the saddest things I’d ever seen. I was Christmas shopping with Balthazar, and we went into a big toy shop, to buy presents for our nieces and nephews. It was busy and there were Christmas carols playing. There was a…
There’s never a dull moment. The last few weeks have been hell at work. It’s the ever-increasing cuts and equally fast-growing targets and pressure. The last few weeks I’ve been trying to see too many patients and been staying late for hours, trying to get letters, referrals and notes written. Just as I was approaching…
When I was driving us home from our troubled weekend away, occasionally Andrew kissed my shoulder. “Ah, that’s nice. What was that for?” I asked. “Because you’re brilliant,” he replied. When we got back to mine, he stayed for half an hour or so, then went back to his place. Things seemed slightly less easy…
I’m going to write about the last few weekends in the wrong order. The last post was about Andrew meeting my parents. It went OK, but I found aspects of it a bit disappointing. The next weekends: we celebrated our one year anniversary, which was OK but, again, a bit disappointing then we were supposed…
The last few weekends have been a bit disappointing, relationship-wise. Andrew met my parents, and the following weekend, it was our one year anniversary. The first weekend, Andrew and I went to the Lake District, to stay with my parents. It was his first time meeting them. I went round to his, late on Friday…
*Apologies for the delay writing this post. I was writing a different post, which was a bit more esoteric, but I’ve decided to come back to that. Then, every spare moment, I’ve been re-touching the sodding woodwork in my bathroom.* Last weekend, Andrew and I had our first conversation about moving in together. On Friday,…
One of the ‘challenges’ that Andrew and I have come across, is sex not lasting as long as we might’ve hoped. It’s a challenge we often ‘come across’ unexpectedly quickly! Andrew seems to feel a lot worse about it than I do. The layout of my gynaecological zones means I’m never going to come from…
Last weekend, I met Andrew’s parents. For a while, he’d been speaking vaguely about us going back to his home city for Easter. (I won’t say where he’s from, to avoid identifying him, but it’s one of the smaller cities, a couple of hours from London.) Then, by Thursday, nothing had been mentioned, so I…
A couple of weeks ago, I had my last counselling session. I had a few final topics I wanted to talk through with her, while I still had the chance the trip to Paris, and how Andrew got depressed some work pressures an issue with my friend Ruth As I was walking to the session,…
I wrote most of this post back in February, but then everything happened with the anniversary of the fire and I wanted to write about that instead, and didn’t get round to completing this. Now it feels more relevant as Part Two of this saga has come up. Andrew and I had our first proper…
One of my best friends came to stay this weekend. I’ve realised she’s a jelly-fisher! The ‘jelly-fisher’ concept was introduced in Bridget Jones’ Diary. In the film, they say talking to a jellyfisher is like swimming in the sea, and being stung repeatedly by enormous jellyfish. But actually, in the book, that’s not quite what ‘jelly-fisher’…
