(no subject)
I’m happier in Brighton. Or at least, not living at home with my parents is immeasurably relieving- no scrutiny, no assessing, no guilt. It’s simpler and I can think about other things. I was cleaning the kitchen at 1am and Jez and Lloyd came home from the pub, and it seems that to a large extent everything is as it was. New terms at Sussex are like re-settings of stopclocks, almost completely erasive of the term before. Nothing happened. Nothing happened. The break provides a mnemonic distraction from the other world of university, which is annoyingly little like ‘real life’. I feel like I’m being given a second chance, which is comforting seeing as certain social elements of being at home have caused much worry and concern. Unfortunately, my friends had to experience a very spaced out and complacent me, not sharp on any analogy or anything in particular. There does feel like there’s a small pressure to come back from university with ‘something to show for it’ each time. Like ‘look, look who I am now!’. I watched Candy in bars and coffee shops being lively and wonderful and ached for that, wished that I could have maintained the same level of energy, even though I’m glad to be calmer now and not quite as manic as last year. The nervous, jittering charisma that seems to run through quite a lot of my female friends is both inspiring and exhausting- it’s a workout to keep up with, although not without enjoyment. Fast words and gestures jabbing at the surrounding space, a bodily illustration for everything they say. I find myself becoming a mirror to them, tapping into this dualled sign language, this code of communication. It seeps into all the in jokes and anecdotes like floodwaters, and suddenly everything smells of it, everything is damp on the bottom with the laws of how we interact. Sometimes I worry. It’s a niggling paranoia. It’s a constant paranoia.