I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you what a waste of time Valentines Day is. I’m sure you don’t need to be reminded of February 2006’s personal nadir, a week prior to being prescribed meds for depression (switching valentines cards around in the mail pigeonholes at university). I’m equally sure you don’t need to know that the top Valentines gift this year from buyagift.com, according to their PR minion, is Harness-Sphering for Two at £59 (you wonder, don’t you?)
For what it’s worth, I’ve stopped feeling properly bitter about it all since I’ve stopped being a student. And also for what it’s worth, after four years of being celibate largely by negative choice, I feel as though I might actually now be ready to date someone properly. Whether anyone’s ready for me is another matter. Since I started looking, there’ve been quite a few casual offers I’ve not had the time or the inclination to follow up, and one or two who seemed seriously worth pursuing but who now seem to have gone quiet in the last couple of weeks, leaving me unsure as to whether they’ve moved on and if so, unsure whether to take this personally or not. Taking recent experiences into account, I’ve tried hard to present a picture of myself that is both positive and honest but I don’t know how well I’ve succeeded and sometimes wonder whether the only way I will succeed at sounding positive is by being ludicrously economical with the truth about the past decade of my life – knowing that this further carries the risk that I come across as completely blank and empty, or worse, come under attack for deceiving someone later on. It is all well and good advising me to hold back on going into certain topics which might be less-than-alluring to a prospective squeeze, but it is difficult if someone seems genuinely curious to know and genuinely appears to empathise. And it would be nice if they were honest about being put off by what they were told rather than just vanishing.
Thank you again for all your support re the Magda stuff. Her words have left me largely content and relieved, but also partly wondering whether or not I should take the advice she gave, in a roundabout way, and seek therapy of some kind to deal with the obsessive thoughts that I still have. It is not that the thoughts are violent or distressing or complusive or very sexualised or anything of the sort that a therapist would be obviously concerned about. They don’t impede me from doing stuff in a way I can quantify easily, or influence my life decisions in negative ways. They are, for the most part just musings connected with either the arts, pop-culture or everyday mundanities, that I would like to share with her or have her opinion on for one reason or another. But the point is that are always there, and I know she would rather they weren’t, which has caused me guilt from time to time, and made me wonder what, if anything, is the matter with my brain. In the year or so since her last big show finished, my Google-finger has been rather busy again so I’m going to at least reign that in by designating one day per month to it (rationally, no show will run for less than a month, or with less than a months’ notice so it’s unlikely I’ll ever miss her in anything worth seeing). I am hoping that knowing she is aware and mindful of what has gone on will make me less resentful of her which will also help. I suppose we’ll see. The proof of the pudding, and so on.
Elsewhere: I’m now on half-term. A very strange sentence. For regular teachers, this means a rest, or a marking marathon. For me, it means story-pitching, short-story writing, and working on a short-film script with a local filmmaker. It also means flying in the face of financial ruin and treating myself to some theatre for the first time this year (at this point in the year last year I’d already been to eight shows). That’ll tide me over nicely until a Williams play at the Finborough in early April, an Ayckbourn play at the Orange Tree in May (both cheap), and another Williams play in the West End, probably close to Easter (not cheap). Just had a peek at the National’s new season brochure and seen a couple more Williams plays in there: O’ Favourite Dead Guy, why must you bankrupt me?
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