Coming Home Again

Dew dampens the grass, chilling my bare feet as I exit the car. The cool night air wraps around me; it may be Spring but the rain has kept the temperature down.

Stars pierce the night sky.

I pause despite the cold and stare up at them. Living in the city I don't get this view any more, and I've found that I miss it.

Edge past the wheelbarrow and rain-drum to reach the front stairs, which in turn lead to the small square front veranda. The smell of the house leaks out as soon as I open the door, familiar and reminiscent of my childhood. The feeling, of home and hearth and safety, washes over me.

As ever when I come home I slip into old routines.

Bags dropped in the exact same spot as I'd dropped them in high school.

Hand bag tossed on the over burdened table.

Immediate scavenge through the fridge to see if there's anything tasty.

Now, sitting rugged up at the dinning table, watching idly as the Dog tries to get attention, I see flickers of our past. In my mind's eye a different couch takes up the northern wall of the lounge room, a different TV sits atop the stand. My brother shrinks in size and my mother becomes less gray.

Change and Life and Death and Moving-on and Growing Up and Moving Out and Coming Home Again

Things we don't wanna Feel

Pushing through the haze of alcohol in my head and the press of people I follow the solid shape of his back, trusting him to know where he's going. After all, he's sober.
"I think she went outside." he calls back over his shoulder as he reaches for my hand to drag me down the stairs.
We always manage to misplace people in this club, but by the end of the night we'll have found them, either with someone we know or with a new friend they've made in our absence. 
More often than not I'm the missing one, but tonight my best mate has done the disappearing act.
"I just need to tell her I'm going."
Probably the tenth time I've said that, but if I don't focus I'll forget.
The solid wall of cold air halts me in my tracks as I step outside, making me wrap my arms around myself and swear quietly. Hugging myself thus I look around for my mate.
"So your friend was coming to get you yeah?" Something warm gets draped around my shoulders and I look up to see him slinging his jacket over me.
I smile, "Yeah he should be here soon, so I gotta tell her I'm bailing."
He just nods and again leads the way around the corner to where people usually go to smoke. We spot a mutual friend and head over.
"Hey have you seen Michele?"
Exhaling a cloud he nods and points toward the small alley between the club and the next building. He says something but I'm too drunk to notice, so I just drag my sober friend toward the dark gap.
It takes my eyes a second to adjust, and when they do I wish they hadn't.
It's so weird seeing them like that. I'd never even thought about the two of them in this way together. I guess he'd gotten here to pick me up and had found her first.
She looks up as his mouth moves to her neck and gasps.
I paste on a seedy smile and wiggle my eye brows, trying to ignore the heavy feeling in my gut. Why do I feel so shit? I've seen her hook up plenty of times before.
Graeme wolf whistles next to me, and even to my ears my giggle sounds high strung. It has too sharp an edge.
Refusing to meet his eye as he comes up from her neck I grab Graeme's hand and bail.
We dive back into the noise and heat of the club, recklessly welcoming the distractions of sweaty bodies pressed against us.
Only when we reach the dance floor do I turn and look at him, to see the hurt in his eyes. I'd known he liked her for a while now, any one could see it to be honest, and I guess he'd never seen her with another guy.
But what is surprising is the sympathy in his gaze as he looks at me.
What a way to figure out you have feelings for someone huh? The self-deprecation voice is snide and leering in my head, making me wanna punch it. Even though it's me. 
Warm lips press gently to my mouth, and at first I'm at a loss. But natural responses kick in, and soon his hands are gripping my hips, sliding up under my shirt to my waist as I thread fingers through his curls.
We find a wall and he pushes me against it, kisses deepening until he's stolen my breath.
Panting he pulls back and holds my eye.
Deliberation, for a moment, as we both realize what were on the verge of.
Without a word we walk out of the club, his hand in my back pocket, and go to his car. Without a word we choose to forget and fall off the edge together.

Plucking Petals

As a nineteen year old female, it's a fairly decent bet that I've seen my share of chick flicks. They're fun, Dramas and Rom-Com's alike, so yeah even though I do like my gore and action I still fancy me a chick flick.

Among my favourites is He's just not that into you. Not for any particular reason, it's just entertaining. And as Borders has gone into receivership, and everything is super cheap at the moment, I bought the book as well. It's like a funny ass self help book, and I got it mainly as a joke. Half the stuff in it was either "well duh!" worthy or slightly depressing (I need a boyfriend... or a fuck buddy). But I didn't read it with myself and my relationships in mind.

So it's come as a bit of a surprise that I've started thinking of the advice in relation to actual guys.

Enter the guy. Because I'm paranoid that someone I know will eventually find this I will leave him nameless, and he will simply be The Guy. He lives with my brother (which would actually give his identity away in a heartbeat but oh well fuck it) and completely incidentally he and I have spent quite a bit of time together over the past two weeks. We'd met months ago, but I didn't live with them back then. But now I do. We both keep late hours. We both have a hyperactivity problem, which leads to a lot of Nerf wars. We both talk a lot. So we get along pretty well, actually we get along really well. It's totally platonic and he's never flirted with me at all or anything like that, so I haven't given that side of things much (Much) thought.

Then comes the conversation, where I realise that he thought I was a lesbian. Legitimate reasoning, last he knew I was dating a girl. So after explaining my sexuality (at 7 am I might add) I'm a bit confused when he just laughs and walks out. Then when he leaves for work he pats my head and ruffles my hair. Which he has never done in the whole two weeks that I've been sleeping in his lounge room.

So now I'm noticing changes. He teases me more; when he texts me he uses more emoticons, winking faces in particular. And now, with me back at mum and dads for only two days he's gotten bored while studying and started texting me for no real reason, just to chat.

Weird.

My first assumption is that he's simply gotten used to me being around. But I can't help the tiny little voice in the back left corner of my head saying that maybe he has feelings for me. Usually I kick myself when I read into what a guy is doing. And after reading He's just not that into you even more so. Despite that I can't help it. I'm trying to figure it out without going nuts, and I've fairly well convinced myself that it's nothing. Less than nothing. But the tiny voice refuses to shut up, and it's getting really annoying. Any tips for shutting it up? Because I don't want it to convince me to start liking this guy, because to be honest I like him too much. If that makes sense.

Well if I'd known at the time

For the first time in a long time, today I woke up before my dad. Which means that I have had plenty of time this morning to ponder the things going in circles in my head. And you know what? I think I'd rather be in bed. I've only briefly mentioned on here that I've broken up (in the past 2 months or so) with my boyfriend of 18 months. And I guess that's because it's not a bad thing. I'm glad that I did it, and haven't needed a place to rant. But the more I think about the relationship itself, the more I realise what a mistake it was to spend that much time in it.

Have you ever done something for someone, burned a bridge because it was what was best for someone else, and then had that someone turn out to be... well not exactly who you thought they were?

Nick, my ex, had this friend. Sarah and he always used to get into fights, and usually I'd stay out of it, just keep my head down and let them sort it out. But he didn't like that, he told me that I should stick up for him and defend him. Which I didn't want to do. I mean, if I got into a fight with one of my friends I would NOT want my boyfriend to get in the middle. No matter what, my mate is going to forgive me. Doesn't mean they will forgive Nick (And considering all my mates hated Nick anyway...yeah).

But during one of their fights I finally caved, and started abusing Sarah. Which ultimately shut her up about Nick, but pretty much made her hate me. I didn't care. She was never really my friend, and I don't usually care what people think of me. At the time I'll admit, I felt a bit guilty, because it just felt wrong to be saying those things to her. But as time passed I kind of forgot about it, all that changed was that I didn't see her as much as I did before.

However.
Ah there's always a "however". I finally got sick of Nick's crap, and dumped him. And that got me to thinking about the mistakes I made while I was dating him. Sarah being one of them.

Like I said, she and I weren't friends to begin with. But I never really gave her much of a chance, and in retrospect I know that I always had fun with her. She is bright and bubbly, and yes she has a few issues, everyone does. She's not the sort of person that I could be close with, but she is someone that I could hang with on occasion and enjoy it.

So bridge burned and regrets made. But at least I've learnt from this whole thing, and I'm hoping I don't make the same mistake again. Because if there's anything I really hate, that's realising I made a mistake when it's too late to fix it.

Yeah...

Ah hell, again?

Having just discovered my dads new hiding spot for his Rollie's, and a six pack in the fridge, you would think I was in a better mood than I was when I posted earlier tonight. Wouldn't you?
Well you know what buddy, you would be wrong.
Sitting here, ignoring my parents neurotic puppy and listening to cake, sipping at a partially stolen beer, somehow it has me reminiscing about high school.

Have you ever known someone in high school, who you had a major crush on, but who was your friend?

Yeah, I had about twenty of them, no hyperbole!

And you know what the sucky thing is? I'm still friends with most of them, at least on facebook, and I just realised, that in most of their cases I'd still definitely go there. But they either never knew I liked them, or think it's cute and all in the past.

Which, okay, I wouldn't necessarily date every one of them, but I'd fuck a decent amount of them.

And it's times like these that I'm thankful no one knows about this blog!

Little bit of a Problem

Okay, so it's confession time again. Time for me to 'fess up about things I'd rather not lay claim to, and to admit to uncomfortable truths.

So here it is, in black and white:
I'm addicted, to boys.

Now I know what you're thinking, sure thing, a lot of nearly-20-people are a bit preoccupied with the opposite sex, it's only natural. But that's just it. It's not me being a bit pre-occupied. I'm addicted to male attention, of pretty much any sort.

You see for the past two weeks I've been crashing on my brothers floor. He lives on the fourth story of a four story apartment block, in a little, slightly run down, 70's style apartment. He lives with his girlfriend. And two other guys.

Plus, it's the "party house" so there's almost always a few extra people around, most of them male.

Most of them single.

So without my even intending it I've been with guys pretty much 24/7 for the past two weeks. Which I haven't been complaining about in the slightest. I've always know that I like male company, and I don't mean that in a purely sexual sense. I just like hanging out with them, kinda being "one of the boys". It's how life was when I was a kid.

Well, when I was a kid I didn't subconsciously asses every guy I see and rate him as to how easily he could get me naked. I didn't think about sex almost every spare minute of the day (which, considering I'm unemployed and homeless, is quite a few minutes), and I didn't flirt anywhere near as much as I do, even as a young teen. When I was younger I didn't try to see how many drinks I could get a guy to buy me, nor did I pretend to get mad at guys just to see their reaction.

Point is, I didn't view guys in quite the same way as I do now.

Plus the fact that I haven't been laid in about a MONTH isn't helping.
(You have no idea how frustrated that little baby is making me)

But now, I'm back at mum and dad's house, for the next five or so days. Where the only "guy" is my dad. Who I have a few...shall we say problems with?
So I'm sitting here at the computer, talking in the background with my mother about Internet scams and the like, all the while wondering how in hell I'm going to cope.

I know I lived here for eighteen years.

I know I wasn't always surrounded by people, even that there was a time I shunned human company in favour of a good book. Which I still do.

But Goddammit I want to at least have the choice!

So, one week.

No alcohol, no drugs. No boys.

No fun.

Guess I'll be spending a lot of time online the next few days. Please post interesting things for me to read!

♥