Bear with me.

I'm exhausted, stressed and close to tears. It's finally happened, my belated January blues, the winter depression everyone talks about. That's what I feel like now. The bags under my eyes get darker every day, I'm irritable and getting lazier as the mornings get darker and colder. Uni is just causing me a lot of unnecessary stress, and I hate that. Assignments are flooding in, deadlines are looming and decisions have to be made, fast. I feel like I'm losing my friends, to uni, to other people, to everything. I can count on one hand how many times anyone has attempted to contact me in the last couple of weeks, and it scares me. It seems like everyone knows what they want, what their end goal is, what they're aiming for. While I sit, twirling a pen between my thumb and forefinger, absent-mindedly daydreaming about one day writing some fabulous bestselling novel or something. I want to scream (into a void, perhaps) or just disappear for a few days, hibernate and pull myself together. Sort out my work, and my immune system, and boost my mood. I'm a nightmare lately, I'm moody and stressy and I'm intolerable when it comes to anyone else. I feel like I might just eat everyone alive that comes into close proximity with me. I'm constantly checking my watch, counting down the days, until my week off. I need some down-time. Some rest. Some peace. It's hard, I feel like I push people away sometimes, I know I do, but that's only because it's for their own good. I'm just saying, if I want to be on my own, it's because I need to be. I really need to stop stressing and start smiling again.

Writer's Block.

An icy, lonely, irritating destination. A labyrinth of misery and headaches. It gets under your skin, makes your fingertips itch and your head feel like it might implode any minute. I've arrived. For uni, I've been asked to write 1000 words on something of my choosing, in prose. The only specification being, it has to be my interpretation of 'face.' I shrugged it off when we were assigned this activity, underestimating how much that actually was, when I was given the freedom of writing something of my choice. Evidently, I've got too much to choose from. My eyes can't focus, my fingertips are dying to write something wonderful and explosive that will leave everyone speechless when I read it out, but there's nothing coming. My wonderful/explosive/decent ideas have all seemed to run dry. There's nothing interesting anywhere in sight. I feel like I either go gushy and scarily into my real-life when writing today, or otherwise, it's totally emotionless and let's be honest, my gushing is the lesser of two very close evils. I have Arctic Monkeys playing, (I did have Neil Diamond in some desperate bid for inspiration, but it just made me want to cry into my coffee, so AM will substitute.) Saying that, AM always make me want to go out. As One For The Road strums, I imagine myself slumped effortlessly in the Brit, a drink in my hand, and the jukebox overloaded with demands for Arctic Monkeys and the Beatles. Writer's block may be the most frustrating thing ever. I know I can write. I realise I have the ability, and the enthusiasm, the intellect and the drive, and yet, blank. My word document sits lonely in another tab, engulfed in white space. It's screaming to be filled in, with anything. It's craving letters of some description, and a subject matter I just cannot seem to settle on. My indecisivity (is that even a word?) has hit me. My phone keeps buzzing familiarly, a welcome distraction from this awful dilemma. I give up. I can't force myself to write, evidently. So, my thousand words will have to be postponed. Don't cry now, will you? I'll try not to, but I'm not making any promises.

Bittersweet.

I turn the big, ugly 2-0 on Tuesday and I've never been more unhappy about it. It's not the fact I'm no longer going to be a teenager, (although I'm not thrilled about it) it's what it represents that makes me sad. It's the fact that I'm turning a corner, a new decade is about to start, 

twenty years worth of life, and I don't think I've got much to be happy about. What have I even got to celebrate? I'm an unemployed almost-twenty year old with no real achievements. I've never felt so boring, and I hate that. It just seems to be adding up to multiple bad days, not just one. Not only am I at uni 9-5 on my birthday, so that means I'm up from six and won't get home til at least six at night, tired and ready to scream probably. I feel in the midst of a quarter-life crisis, and I've began to question everything. From my degree choice to my aspiring career path to everyone in my life and their capabilities. I'm twenty and the only constant in my life is my family, and I won't even be able to spend my day with  them. My close group of friends seems to be dispersing gradually and I feel like I'm losing another friend every day. A day to be remembered? Not likely. I don't want to be twenty. I'm not ready. I wanted to achieve a lot more before I got to this milestone, so I'm feeling like a failure slightly. I don't think I have the support system i first thought, which is awful. To say I'm unhappy at the minute would be an understatement. Although I will say this, I'm going to try my hardest to keep hold of the important people in my life right now, and hopefully, when my next decade comes, they'll be the ones holding my hair back when I've drank too much. If not, I'll hold the door open for you myself, because I'd rather watch you walk away than make the effort with someone who doesn't care about me.

I don't like today much.

It's Saturday, and I've done it again. Spent the night before pouring alcohol down my neck like I was getting paid to, and yet coming home with 25p. Yes. And managed to upset someone I really didn't want to. Arguments, tears and tantrums. Last night's themes. I've got a post-Friday night hangover and such an awful cough I sound like I'm a 40-a-day smoker, and I've never touched a cigarette. I'm feeling so guilty, so bitchy, so...nasty. I don't feel like me today. I feel like someone else. Sitting in my room, blasting party-ish music as some sort of motivational attempt to convince myself, and my liver, that I can actually hack hitting Sunderland tonight for Betty's birthday celebrations. I drink too much. I feel hideous. I don't look much better. This is all stupid and disjointed, because I'm half-hungover, half genuinely ill, although no one in my house seems to fathom the 'genuine' part. I wonder why.
 
I'm drowning out the bad stuff. Or attempting it anyway. Life, I guess, goes on, whether you're happy or unhappy, upset or angry. I guess the bad times make the good times even better. I wish I was an optimist. I wish I was a glass-half-full kind of person, but I'm really not. I don't even get the concept. I love everyone in my life right now. Why is it that the nice people get screwed over and I end up trusting the ones I shouldn't?

My head is well-and-truly battered. I smell like a brewery and I feel like I'm still slurring my words. I've only had like three and a half hours sleep and I don't know how much longer I can last before I drift into a deep, deep sleep mid-sentence. I'm feeling the 'horrible person' vibe today. I don't know what to do with it. Advice is being thrown at me left, right and centre, but I guess I have to, and do make my own decisions. Whether they're good or bad, will remain to be seen. I'm forgetting everything for now. I'm going to slap some make up on, to make myself look less like an extra from a zombie film and more like a human being, albeit a very unwell one. Things get better in time. Apologies wear thin, but they don't lose their sentiment. Well, mine don't anyway. I'm just saying.

I'm going for a Nando's. I need comfort food.
#bingeeaterandbingedrinker

Truthful lies.

My head is all over the place at the moment, it's like I can't concentrate on anything. I don't trust myself to make my own decisions, because every time I do, I get hurt, screwed over or let down. So, if I don't trust myself, how the hell am I supposed to trust anyone else? I realise I can't let my mistakes hang over my head forever, but they do seem to gather like a bad smell. It's like I can't get away from them. My own decision-making is gradually going downhill, so should I trust myself, when I seem to be the one constantly at the root of my own unhappiness? I'm too gullible to recognise a lie, and picking them out of the half-truths I get fed, is becoming increasingly difficult. Mistakes may make good stories, but eventually, you get tired of repeating them, it gets you down. How do you spot a good thing when you see it? Especially if you don't really trust your instincts? I have friends all around me, telling me to "be careful" and "watch my back" and all of the other trashy, half-hearted yet from-a-good-place comments, as if I'm the five year old who is unable to decide which crayon to draw with. I feel insulted when people don't trust my opinions and my instincts, yet I feel like maybe there's a reason they're so quick to dismiss my trusting ways. Maybe I do just make mistake after mistake after mistake. I need to figure out how to pick out the good times from the crowd, discard the bad decisions and not dwell on things that make me unhappy. To break the cycle, I must trust myself and have the courage of my convictions. Every time I say "I trust you," I need to learn to mean it with every bone in my body, so that when someone tells me otherwise, I can confidently dismiss them. It's not my fault, trust is such a dirty word.

Pass me the chicken soup.

So, the sun is shining, the birds are singing and on the surface, this can only mean one thing. A recipe for a successful day, in the north east. As anyone will know, it's a very rare occurrence that we get a visit from that big yellow thing in the sky, so when said holy day arrives, everyone is out in full-swing; happy smiling faces, sparsely dressed people, donning sandles and shorts and very occasionally, sunglasses. But, for me, that recipe just isn't hitting the spot. Why? I'm not feeling myself. In more sense than one.

I'll not give you an unnecessarily dull somewhat-psychological analysis of my state of mind, or any sort of morbid list of my medical symptoms of illness, as that's also pretty boring to read (I presume, I don't mean to insult anyone who may actually find my illness interesting, you total sadists.) Kidding, obviously. Cold-like symptoms in June. You're thinking WHAT? So am I. I am never usually unwell, so when I am, it really gets me down. As for the last few days, exhaustion has set in. I've been even more miserable and intolerant than usual, and increasingly anti-social (and I hate myself for that.) I'm bored to tears. I feel like I have had such high hopes for 'Summer 2013' for so long (hence the inverted commas for entitling!) that it was likely it would fall short of my expectations, and it hasn't even started yet. Not, completely, anyway. I know, this sounds dreadfully pessimistic, but as I have said on many occasions, I am a negative person by default, although I kind of hate that. I just don't think I'm making the most of the time I have, and hardly ever see my friends, due to their prior commitments or my refusal to appear second best or even last resort. I've been so moody lately, I'm sick of being in my own company, yet am somewhat comforted by it.

On a more positive note, I invested in my own Kindle the other day and have fell head-over-heels in love with it. I already have a few dozen titles on there, just sat on their literary haunches, waiting to be read. I can now proudly say I've not only just finished reading my first book on my Kindle, but one of the first books I actually couldn't put down, for first time in months. I love that. Discovering a book, or an author who writes such pure genius, with such wit, that you connect in a way that makes you grin. The said book is The Dinner by Herman Koch. I won't give much away, as spoilers are hideous and I'd hate to be reading a blog and the ending to be revealed in three short, quipping lines, like a comedy act gone wrong. Originally written in Dutch and then translated into English, The Dinner follows the story of two couples and their families, revolving around a dinner at a restaurant, one night. It's obviously, so much more than that. An international bestseller. Read it. You must. It's one of the most brilliant, witty, sarcastic pieces of literature I've ever feasted my eyes on, and will undoubtedly spend weeks spouting off about Koch's wonderful writing style.

So, I guess I best actually try and pull myself together. Sick of feeling sickly and blue. I think it's about time I loaded up on chicken soup, miracle cures and whacked on my best smile, even if it is false for a while. Because, eventually, I won't need the chicken soup. In time (hopefully soon) I'll feel better, and I'll be back to my old (well, nineteen year-old) self, happily pessimistic and a lot more sociable than I have been lately. Promise.