Nobody's baby, everybody's girl

I think lately I've been worried about saying important things and making bold statements in case they turn out to be wrong. Perhaps it's a symptom of starting out in a new place with new people, I'm not sure. Regardless, it's cowardly, and there's nothing that I hate more than a coward. Maybe one day I'll look back at this blog and think God how wrong I was about x, but I don't think that's a good enough reason to stop saying honest things, how they appear to me at the specific moment – I ain’t got the answers. So hold on tight kids, it's a big one this time.

So, I have this theory (and ample evidence) that I can be anybody's perfect girl for roughly two weeks. Now this of course has certain restrictions; the men who are attracted to me, as well as 'perfect' not meaning flawless - it means being right in that moment. I should also explain that I'm under no illusion about my faults and merits, I know where I stand. I desperately want to dispel this theory, to find evidence to the contrary or another explanation, so this is my way of working through the options I guess. Welcome to the ride.

Convincing fake relationship (still give it 2 weeks tops)

I wonder sometimes maybe if the men I've been involved with have seen me as an embodiment of the life I lived at Cambridge; perhaps they wanted a piece of the glitter, of the fun, of the (often slightly idiotic) abandon. Every romantic involvement that has been of any kind of gravity has begun with tumbling intensity, snatched moments and urgency, urgency. The reflection of myself I could see in the mirror of them is beautiful, it's me at my best. Suffice to say I'm not perpetually at my best, (especially spending 50% of my time hungover). It’s just not possible to run around all the time, to constantly have arms open to the air - one has to catch ones breath between the laughter. Thought: volatile living attracts changing minds? It was always in the quiet moments when I could feel them slipping away - it's easy to make someone want to keep you when you look like you might bolt any second, harder in the stillness. Waking up in the mild mid-morning to find them already awake and staring at nothing, me waking next to them perhaps more hard work than they'd bargained for. 

One person who I was involved with told his friends that he'd "found the kind of girl he wanted to spend his life with". Now there are two tell-tale red flags that arise from this statement; firstly the wording - "type", what type am I? His type? The type? Can anyone actually accurately be described as a type when we're all such walking balls of contradicting, ever-changing chaos? Nah. Secondly this happened the morning after the night we met. This is where my part of the blame begins to sneak in - I unashamedly love a love story, so when one is offered to me, regardless of how temporary and how ill advised, my god I will take it. Is it my fault for being so naive or their fault for offering me a grand romantic narrative they can't live up to?

To be honest I don’t think that assigning blame is all that useful in solving ye grande riddle. These guys don’t know what they're looking for, and before being sure, they think they've found it in a sweet little package, so throw everything in because that seems like the right thing to do - I don't think I could ever blame anyone for doing this, it's the way I believe life should be lived, and this is why every time I’m so willingly complicit. My flatmate suggested last night that this happens to me so often because I expect it to – I attract these difficult guys because I subconsciously anticipate things being difficult – like I said, I love a love story and aren’t all the best ones difficult? Yessir. But I don’t think I distinguish very well between things that are worth the fight and things that are best left alone, (I’m from the north, everything’s a scrap). In the end I need to accept that for some people I cannot be the answer; as both Bob Dylan and Johnny cash said; it ain't me babe. If people try and make me into their answer, into their perfect girl, of course things will unravel, of course I can't live up to what their questions demand, I cannot be enough for them if I rightly demand to keep some of myself, for myself.

____

For throwback to past blog tirade of relationship-based outrage click here

It's not about you, it's (about) me

Starting at the end of exams and continuing over the summer I went through a phase of reading autobiographies. Prior to this I’d never been keen at all on non-fiction, even less so on autobiographies, so I don’t really know what triggered the sudden switch. From a psychological point of view maybe I was subconsciously desiring to see how other real lives had played out, given that I was on the cusp of beginning my own ‘real life’ (we all know Cambridge doesn’t strictly count as real). During this period I read three notable books; I’m With the Band by Pamela Des Barres, Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher and Wild by Cheryl Strayed – all of these books are incredible and I cannot recommend them enough. I finished all of these a few months ago now, but like a bad breakup, I’m still not over them, I can’t stop turning them over and over in my mind. Perhaps as a result I’m finding it difficult/near impossible to engage properly with fiction at the moment, a little voice in my head won’t stop saying; ‘yes but do you actually care what happens, it’s not real, this didn’t happen’. These autobiographies came along at just the right time; during the last months of Cambridge and for a little while afterwards I felt more awake to reality and more in touch with my place in it than I ever had before (disclaimer: I did not take LSD) – this was not a moment for fiction when the real world was so utterly compelling. 

A common idea about fiction is that it’s our tool to escape, I believe autobiography as a genre is the exact opposite of this. Because the events being recounted actually occurred, we are forced to face them with the author – the most human and genuine problems presented to us by a genuine human voice. The best autobiographies are written with unflinching honesty, at certain points we should know that the writer is uncomfortable with what they are telling us, that they are offering to the world a self-confessed uncomfortable truth about their deepest selves. This is part of the bravery of self-narration and also part of the catharsis. 

I originally started this blog in order to reclaim my own narrative that I felt had been taken from me (see the sass that started it all here), since then I guess it’s become an autobiographical space of sorts. At the beginning I was so so scared of writing about myself - I didn’t want to do something narcissistic. I was also worried that what I had to say wasn’t worth saying, because who am I but another 21 year-old dot on the planet. FOOL. Why would I ask who I was to write about anything when there was only ever one possible answer anyway: myself. I exist within a narration and have a voice to share it and, given these two very fortunate circumstances, it would be almost rude to keep myself to myself. The women whose autobiographies I’ve read have led incredible lives, but that does not make mine any less extraordinary – in any autobiographical narrative the same things crop up, and this is because they are the things which make up the crazy experience of a life being lived.

Still not a narcissist

Even though this is bad marketing, possibly encouraging competition in blogland (got ma eyes on you), I wholeheartedly recommend that everyone do a bit of self-narration, don’t let anyone tell you your life isn’t interesting enough to be recorded – it damn well is. Though this cry is universal it goes out especially to women; men have been navel-gazing for years, writing women for centuries, dominating the autobiography for bloody ages – create your own narrative, come and claim what’s yours.