Juno + parents = hypothetical pregnancy awkwardness

Yo.

it's December 23rd today - which makes it Christmas Eve Eve, and I'm off school now for two weeks. Instead of novel editing and rewriting, or doing some much needed physics revision I've spent my time off so far buying last minute Christmas presents.

I just watched the movie Juno (GREAT film) with my mum which turned out to be a mistake, because she's been going through a stage where she confronts me about anything teenage pregnancy related whether it's a story from a friend, an Amanda Palmer song. If I mention one of my friends' boyfriends or anything like that, she'll raise an eyebrow and a little glint appears in her eye. I went out for lunch with her today and made the mistake of bringing up two of my friends who she knows have been in a relationship since about August.
"So who else is dating?" she'll say, all of a sudden patronising and smiley, like she's asking one of the kids in her class what Santa's bringing them for Christmas. "What about you, are you dating?", which I shrug off with a "mhnehh." "No, you're not ready for dating yet," she assures me, which always makes me feel about 12 years old. The worst thing she says is, "So do they snog?"
She's more immature than we are.
But today I decided to come right out with an honest answer instead of being evasive, so when she asked me how soon I'd tell her if I got pregnant now, I said, "I probably wouldn't. I'd go get an abortion sneakily and you'd never know."
She blinked at me. "How would you get an abortion?" she challenged.
"I'd use a fake name. And I could pay for it, there's money in my account and I hope some of my friends would chip in. They care about me."
"So you couldn't tell me?"
"If I needed to. But that's only in an emergency."
And I would: telling her would be inconvenient. She'd want to know who I'd had sex with and then describe him to all of her friends on the phone. In some ways she's more gosspiy than my teenage girl friends.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5VgLOs0LwQ
This is Jonsi, who I came across just a few days ago and I really like so far. Jonsi is an openly gay musician from Iceland, who is blind in one eye and was lead singer of the band Sigur Ros. I was completley surprised today to find that HMV actually had not one but two copies of his album "Go", and Wikipedia defines his music as post-rock, ambient and baroque pop. I bought "Go" (a present from my great-aunt, who always gives me £20 at Christmas to "buy myself something nice), and I'm loving it so far, it's calm and magical and sort of takes me away somewhere.. The track I posted above, "Go Do" is complete beauty. To me it sounds like horses hooves and fields, and something else. It's lighthearted and happy, dances between soft and strong, loud and quiet, peaceful.

Tomorrow I'm singing Christmas songs and playing guitar at something called Plot 13 (that's the place it's at, I call it so because it makes it sound so much more exciting than it really is) in front of fifty or so people. The upside is, they aren't people I know. I'm excited and also nervous, it's probably good for me even though I'm going to have to wake up at 7am on Christmas Eve -> eventual sleep deprivation. It's the holidays but I've been so busy that it looks like I'm still sticking to my school sleeping pattern for the time being.
So I have to go and sleep now, see?

If we don't speak before, or I'm not back here, I hope you have a wonderful Christmas.

- lizzie

Cats, "The Disappearance of Alice Creed" and P4A

Callie is sat next to me, padding around and making mruh noises, because all of the thick white stuff outside makes her paws cold. The cats are fighting because they're bored and there isn't very much else to do.

I've been away from the internet for about two days now, mainly because I didn't really have anything I wanted to share with anyone, and so I kept away from Twitter and Facebook and here until I didn't have anything else to do.

Friday night was strange. In the time I'd spent being a teenager so far, I'd never been particularly drunk or smoked or other stuff that I'm supposed to screw up my youth by doing, until the other night when I suddenly tried a little too hard at being exciting and hardcore. Nothing very bad happened, just enough to make me realise that it's probably better to spend my free nights sat at home on my computer drinking mocha.
Is that bad?

The good news is that, The Things We Stumble Across/The Wall/my 75% written novel is safe! Two weeks or so ago, my beloved laptop took its fourth trip to our favourite repair shop after a virus from a chain email, and had to be wiped completley. I don't trust Norton very much, and I've lost a lot of random crap I'd written, and for a while I thought I'd lost my novel, until this morning I found a memory stick that it was on.
I am so, so thankful and relieved.

Last night I watched a movie called The Disappearance of Alice Creed and it was completley brilliant, and it scared me more than any film I've seen before. To begin, two men in balaclavas shop for some soundproofing in B&Q then kidnap a young girl. By the end, there's so much more reason to everything. It was extremely low budget, there were three actors we saw in the whole movie. It built up an incredible amount of tension and fear inside me, I remember sitting and trembling during one of the first few scenes. The plot and the characters' past is unravelled throughout the movie, with no flashbacks but simply conversation.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX-LOYRupUA
I also want you to watch this - one of my favourite musician's videos for something going on on Youtube called Project 4 Awesome. Kina Grannis is a brilliant singer-songwriter and also an incredible woman, and I really did cry watching this video, and it surprised me because although charities' causes have made me sad and sympathetic before I'm usually quite a heartless cow when it comes to crying, as I've mentioned a lot. After Christmas when I'm no longer broke, I really do plan to donate to LLS.

I hope you have a good week.

- lizzie

Priorities, Nicci French Novels and Soul High Fives

Today somebody told me that I was being over-dramatic, and it scared me.

I'm pretty co-dependant in some ways, and I didn't realise it until recently. A lot of the time I'm around people, large groups of them, I get distressed and sulky and I shut myself off because I feel isolated or ignored or like I just don't really want to be there.
But I do like people. I like being alone with just one person, and usually any one person will do, because a one-to-one conversation is so much eassier to carry out that shouting and numerous topics and interruptions. If I get on well with somebody, to the point that conversation is so easy we're talking as we think things without encoding, it's like gold dust to me.* I met somebody a while ago who I was so similar to, and understood so well in some ways that it was as if they prodded through my intestines, set off wriggling motions in my stomach and high-fived my soul.

I also get attatched to objects and memories. M y drawers, my phone, my "C" drive are all full to the brim with things that I ignore and don't want to let go of. When I was a child I would stay up as late as I could the night after Christmas day because I didn't want it to end.

My French exchange partner has been so perfect and lovely over the last week she's been staying with me. We got on really well, her English is excellent and when I played her "I'll Be Your Man" (see last post) on the car radio she didn't ignore the music, like most people I play music to/at in cars, but she said she loved it and asked for the name of the song to write it down. On Thursday, I cried at random intervals throughout the day because I won't see her until March.
I felt pretty angry at my friend, who'd trotted into school at 12 o clock (we'd all had to be awake since 4am to drop the exchange students off, some had gone back home and spent the morning off school) and told me I was being over the top. But it was understandable. If it wasn't me, I would have quietly thought the same.

When my grandfather died, my mum called me; at the time, I was babysitting with my best friend.
"Grandpa George died," she told me, and the first thing I felt was guilt because I'd been talking cheerfully until then and then more guilt because I was surprised at just how much nothing I felt. I told Poppy, she hugged me, and I felt strange because I couldn't cry or feel or even think about it very much, at first.
Over the last year, exchange partners (German, then French) leaving have lead me into crying buckets but not deaths in the family, finding out the guy I thought I was in love with was in a relationship, even some really sad movies have possibly been more important but I never felt the same about any of those.
Apparently, I should sort my priorities out.

*Since last week's episode of The Apprentice, I've started using "gold dust" as a similie a lot. Forgive me.

___________________________________________________________

Again, that was a lot of self indulgent crap so I want to make up for it by talking about Nicci French.

Sean French and Nicci Gerrard are two ex journalists, I think, a married couple who write murder mystery novels and psychological thrillers under the joint penname Nicci French. As with a lot of books, I read "Losing You" on holiday because it was my mother's and I'd run out of my own books to read. It was brilliant, the twist in the ending was fantastic and I drank it all up within twenty four hours. I also read "Until It's Over", which I reaally liked and was beautifully written. it inspired me to want to write about roommates who were randomly thrown into living in a house together. And I did.
I was painfully disappointed when "Land of the Living" wasn't quite as good as the others, and now I think about it "What To Do When Someone Dies" was almost a waste of my time.

I don't know what the point to that was. You should give some Nicci French novels a try, especially if you like a story with a twist at the end - I do, and I was so shockingly delighted by "Losing You" that I think maybe my hopes were built up much too high by the time I read the others. But "Losing You" is absolutley excellent, and read some of their other books.
They're good. You'll like them.

I lost control. (sorry, contains talking about myself)

You've got me all mixed up inside,
These thoughts keep entering my mind,
I know these struggles all too well,
Guess I'm just one to kiss and tell
-Back Ted N-Ted, "The Mirror"

So. I did something stupid the other day.
If you’ve read this closely, or maybe even at all, you might have tried to guess but I haven’t done what you think. That would be more stupid. The other ironic thing would be that not even someone that read my blog would have thought of what I was thinking of then at all. Anyways.
A while ago, I went through an odd stage where I thought I was in love and around four months later, meaning now, I reached the point where I decided I’d tell my friends, or maybe just one of them, because it’s what teenage girls do. I’m not the sort of person that tells my friends everything I feel, just everything but this.

The situation it came out wasn’t really ideal, my friend and I were in a crowded place outside the canteen when she exclaimed, “Oh my God, it’s -insertnamehere-!”.
Her sister, Jemima, two years younger than us, had no idea what was going on but was passing and yelled, "-insertnamehere-!"
Rosie looked at me and her eyes lit up a little. "Wait, I know who -insertnamehere- is! Omigosh, what happened?!"
And then various more complex rumours began to circulate round the group of about ten of us, like gossip does. It's the kind I'd never been the subject of before, and I probably should have known it would happen. It was an experiment, and I didn't like it much. Lucky, none of them will have an oppurtunity to tell -insertnamehere-.
Now things are a mess. Over the last two days, it's developed and no-one understands, several people are mad at me because they feel like I owe them some kind of explanation for things that aren't to do with them. But I know how they feel.

I didn't think I'd feel like this. I thought I'd maybe just tell my best friend, who I should tell if anyone, and have time and space to explain it thoroughly and maybe cry a little and I'd feel better. That's not how it worked out. Suddenly everyone thinks things are a lot bigger than they area. My friendship group is dealing with bulimia and light sexual harrassment at the moment; it seemed like the time to tell someone my big thing. Now people think I'm pregnant and all sorts of things.

That's the only time I'll involve myself with teenagegirlytype behavior. I've learnt my lesson now, and I definitely won't use song lyrics to talk about my feelings because it's super-lame. There won't be blog posts like this again. Or situations I hope.

Goodnight xx

When Things Go Wrong: a letter to my 20 year old self

Dear Lizzie,

Is that still your name anymore? So far I've been a Beth, an Elizabeth, a Lizzie and recently I've been thinking of becoming a Beth again, when I leave school and appear somewhere where I can change my name because people don't know me, but it's easier to become something else when you're five, and there aren't twitter accounts or organ donor cards or email addresses.
I have so many things to ask you.
Do you have a job? I'm guessing you're maybe still at university in the last year, but it depends how long you're doing what it takes to do whatever you've decided to do. That was a mouthful, even though I typed it.
I feel oddly sheepish writing to you, because you're a grown woman and clearly, I am not. I don't completley like the taste of coffee yet, I still worry about things like my hair for longer than I will have to when I'm you, and I've not done half the awesome things that I hope we're going to.
I'm scared to think too much about what you do. It's because I honestly don't know how things are going to turn out - I think I'm not naive enough to believe I'll ever be a writer, not in the way that people like Neil Gaiman are, because right now I don't have the concentration, and spend time worrying about the future, I think, amoungst other things.
Are there really complex iPhones now, and do you have one? That would be awesome. Do you not get spots any more? What colour is your duvet sheet? Where do you live? Are you in contact with all your extended family, cousins and stuffs? Is anyone dead that's alive now, did any of your friends from school marry and have children? 20's young, I know, but it happens.
According to a mock Wikipedia page I wrote about by 32 year old self (a rainy day), by 2018 Guitar Heroes or whatever it'll be called should be pretty succesful, and you should have left university and living in London, in a flat with Poppy for a while, with maybe a cat, drinking a lot of Costa and on the brink of being published and wonderful, a novel that's yet to exist or be thought about much. Something in my mind says that somewhere, this is being read by a scruffy, overweight budding accountant/Tesco employee, blushing in a bedsit, but I have no idea what I can achieve. Something in the middle, at least.
I'm publishing this to my blog which no-one reads, so I don't want to use names, but there's someone who's only a small part in your life right now who you (I should say I) think about a lot and won't be involved with until you're/I'm/we're at least thirty, according to the Wikipedia page, but it felt like something I should mention. I'm sure it won't happen. He is far away and unlikely. Still, an important chapter of the stuff I think about right now.
Are you still in contact with any friends from school? Poppy, I hope, and Becky and Emily Rhodes. Maybe Kathryn. Possibly even Alison, I don't know why. Emily-Marie will make an effort. Of the others, I'm doubtful. I hope that high school won't seem as big a deal as it does now to you.
There should be something to summarize, because I need to go to bed now, but as usual, there's no point for me to make. I'm talking about things I don't understand, but please do something useful, or that I'd want. I'll remember what I was like now then, when I'm you. Remember all of the things I thought I wanted to do, and the Wikipedia page of hopefullnes.
I have to wake up at 06:30 tomorrow, to finish my Media Studies homework.

Lizzie

Love, and sandwiches (turkey breast, light mayonaise and cucumber on toasted hearty Italian, please)

One of the hundreds of things that annoys me about people my age (and there's lots, I'll write a list of them one day) is the way they use the world "love". Two of my friends are in relationships, as of recently, both with people they only met about a week before they started going out and already, apparently, they are in love. They all are.
Within hours, second only to changing their Facebook relationship status, it's screamed over their walls, latched onto their MSN name and at the end of every text. And yes, I'm inexperienced and my opinions are supported only by music and semi-famous people I don't know for real, but clearly they don't actually love this person? It's hard for me to understand how someone that's been in a relationship for an afternoon can believe they love someone, that they matter to them as much as their parents and siblings, and very close friends.
Recently, I battled inside my head with the feelings I had with someone and whether it was being in love. And I remembered an internet forum discussion about a similar thing, and someone saying something like "True love is like believeing you can find all your happiness in one person". And I thought, where is all my happiness? The answer was in writing, in hope that I'll do something useful one day and people will need me for something, and that I know on November 5th this year my best friend and I will go to London and see Imogen Heap.
The question came down to, would I rather the Imogen Heap tickets or a relationship with *insertnamehere*. I honestly had no idea. And that made me realise that if I had really been in love, it would be no contest.
That's what they all need to do.

Another thing that occured to me is that one of the main things I don't like about myself is that I don't really care what a stranger that stumbles on my blog thinks about me, but I care a lot what people at my school do. Recently, twice, I blurted out things I wished I could tell my friends about to two of my email penpals, both who live in America. Neither have replied yet.
Yesterday, I went to see a movie with my friends. I got the bus too early and had some time to kill, so got myself a Costa iced tea and a sandwich from Subway. Walking to the cinema with my sandwich, I saw some people I know, girls from my school that would be cheerleaders if we were American, and felt a sudden urge to hide my sandwich fast.
Why? I want to kick myself now. I care way too much what people think of me. I'm only painfully shy around people my own age that aren't my friends. Did I feel like I was a loser then because of my sandwich, or because I wasn't wearing half as much make-up then, or because I was alone?

I'm going to go now. But I'll come back soon, sooner than I did last time, with some more naked thinking and pointless theories about the world.
If you actually read this, I love you. (just realised that was really ironic). G'night.

Lizzie