World's Oldest Gap Year Student
I can't beleive it's over a year since I posted in here! Well, it's time to archive the old and write some new, methinks.
Last time I was here I had just got a new job and was saving for a summer travelling around Europe (postponed from the previous year, postponed in turn from many years ago ...) The future looked so bright!
I did not get on in the new job. My savings did not go as far as planned. Driving back from visiting my boyfriend early one Monday morning I was in a road traffic accident on the motorway: mercifully I walked out of it (I still can't beleive it!) But my faithful car crumpled around me in a rather surreal manner. The whiplash was not nice, and my back still makes ominous crunching noises. Work stressed me out. As the economy went down the toilet, I got made redundant. Redundancy pay does not last very long. The lady at the Job Centre assessed me as married to my boyfriend, and my boyfriend (understandably) disagreed - net result was no money and mounting debts. And not going to the gym for a year (eating chocolate, bread and olives in a B & B instead) caused me to put on two stone.
The last few years of managers, colleagues and random people assuming that I should be married and having children - even calling me a selfish slag to my face on one occasion - really started to mess with my head. It should be fairly obvious to most people that I'm pathologically unattractive, since most men run screaming at the sight of me (or throw things at the "fat munter.") How does that make me selfish or a slag? My life is an endless tortured drag of diets and exercise and make-up lessons and bad haircuts... All the while my fertility slips away and I have to pretend to be happy for all the other people who just seem to swan around getting married and having children as they please. I have to pretend that I chose this life. That's just rubbing salt in the wounds.
Not a happy bunny.
Oh, and my mother decided that, since she can't constantly bug me for not buying a house, she will use her weekly phone call to tell me how old I'm getting. As if I'm not already terrified enough of going through years of IVF treatment and sperm donations on my own, just to produce a child with off-the-scale autism that I'm too menopausal to care for.
Let's look on the bright side - there was a brief period of affluence (between paying off the debts from moving house and losing the job) during which my boyfriend and I bought a memory-foam mattress and OUR OWN SOFA!!! Unless you have rented houses with other peoples' decrepid sagging sofas and / or the ageing futon you bought off ebay for the bulk of your twenties, you cannot begin to imagine the joy and luxury of having your bottom caressed by your own, new sofa! This sofa has already got me through some dark times. And it's practically a necessity now that my back's shot.
Well, I wanted to go back to University, and the threat of redundancy was the kick up the backside I needed. I'm poor and happy. And planning that damn interrailing trip again!
I'm going to have to do this the proper student way, selling all my possessions on ebay and doing ludicrously crappy jobs and fundraising schemes on the side! There's also the possibility of working while abroad: I found an organisation that monitors a wolf colony in Russia and needed volunteer scientists, and of course there's always the option of being a TEFL English teacher.
Check out how much I wised up! Not for me the 9:00-5:00 (or 7:30-6:30) daily grind, with a heap of whining about how my life's passing me by, while my professional salary somehow disappears. I got here late, but better late than never!
Last time I was here I had just got a new job and was saving for a summer travelling around Europe (postponed from the previous year, postponed in turn from many years ago ...) The future looked so bright!
I did not get on in the new job. My savings did not go as far as planned. Driving back from visiting my boyfriend early one Monday morning I was in a road traffic accident on the motorway: mercifully I walked out of it (I still can't beleive it!) But my faithful car crumpled around me in a rather surreal manner. The whiplash was not nice, and my back still makes ominous crunching noises. Work stressed me out. As the economy went down the toilet, I got made redundant. Redundancy pay does not last very long. The lady at the Job Centre assessed me as married to my boyfriend, and my boyfriend (understandably) disagreed - net result was no money and mounting debts. And not going to the gym for a year (eating chocolate, bread and olives in a B & B instead) caused me to put on two stone.
The last few years of managers, colleagues and random people assuming that I should be married and having children - even calling me a selfish slag to my face on one occasion - really started to mess with my head. It should be fairly obvious to most people that I'm pathologically unattractive, since most men run screaming at the sight of me (or throw things at the "fat munter.") How does that make me selfish or a slag? My life is an endless tortured drag of diets and exercise and make-up lessons and bad haircuts... All the while my fertility slips away and I have to pretend to be happy for all the other people who just seem to swan around getting married and having children as they please. I have to pretend that I chose this life. That's just rubbing salt in the wounds.
Not a happy bunny.
Oh, and my mother decided that, since she can't constantly bug me for not buying a house, she will use her weekly phone call to tell me how old I'm getting. As if I'm not already terrified enough of going through years of IVF treatment and sperm donations on my own, just to produce a child with off-the-scale autism that I'm too menopausal to care for.
Let's look on the bright side - there was a brief period of affluence (between paying off the debts from moving house and losing the job) during which my boyfriend and I bought a memory-foam mattress and OUR OWN SOFA!!! Unless you have rented houses with other peoples' decrepid sagging sofas and / or the ageing futon you bought off ebay for the bulk of your twenties, you cannot begin to imagine the joy and luxury of having your bottom caressed by your own, new sofa! This sofa has already got me through some dark times. And it's practically a necessity now that my back's shot.
Well, I wanted to go back to University, and the threat of redundancy was the kick up the backside I needed. I'm poor and happy. And planning that damn interrailing trip again!
I'm going to have to do this the proper student way, selling all my possessions on ebay and doing ludicrously crappy jobs and fundraising schemes on the side! There's also the possibility of working while abroad: I found an organisation that monitors a wolf colony in Russia and needed volunteer scientists, and of course there's always the option of being a TEFL English teacher.
Check out how much I wised up! Not for me the 9:00-5:00 (or 7:30-6:30) daily grind, with a heap of whining about how my life's passing me by, while my professional salary somehow disappears. I got here late, but better late than never!