Now then, why is it?

That I am so very eager to please you?

Because pleasing others isn't what you do, not what you esteem yourself on, so why on earth should I set such great stock by it when I want to help not please people, which are different things? I desperately want you to like me, which is silly and needy. I don't think you've ever desperately wanted anyone to like you. I don't think many people are desperate for others to like them like I am. Well, they are- my brother's becoming a cock because of it. But...

There's something strange about the way I do.

I must stop pleasing you

Paranoid Android.

I don't feel quite so bad as I did earlier today about a variety of things.

I can be quite ridiculous.

I am sad about being larger, and so I will eat less and move more. It's all very simple. I will also drink more water.

I am fed up about being gazumped by someone who appears to be a better version of me in every way, so I will just have to be a better me.

I am going to go to the House tomorrow, and be happy, because going there makes me so. Other things that make me happy are earning money and creating things. So I will do that too.

I am going to ask for my part back, from the theatre. I would love it back. It would be wonderful.

It's difficult to be happy for other when you yourself are unhappy.

Because unhappiness becomes the general barometer.

My family felt christmas was nice, but flat, this year. I didn't think so- or maybe I did but I didn't like them saying it. I haven't really been out of the house much today, so I feel a bit strange and flabby (though that might be because I am flabby, currently). And I've eaten loads.

I don't know why I didn't like them saying it.

I think I'd like a christmas where we don't watch TV, maybe just a film, christmas carol, and when we sit about or read or go on a walk. I got some good presents though: a lens for my camera, so I can take it about again, a book of black paper from my brother, two strong small propelling pencils from my sister, some oil paints, a watercolour sponge, The White Tiger and Shakespeare's complete works were my favourites.

I have decided to begin wearing only quality clothes that I love.

And to lose weight.

When I have done the second I will begin the first.

I am also going to get my hair cut. Soon.

I really would have liked to see her today, but I felt strange. My grandma came, tea was late, I went to see a friend and we played a good game at night, and I didn't think there was a right time, and I felt strange saying I'd be popping off to see her anyway. Though I would have liked to. I will tomorrow, but it's not quite the same statement, seeing someone the day after. I worked out what I would have taken her: a load of mince pies for the people, because they're useful, consumable and not directed to her but are for her, and a card. I've made a few for friends with robins on, but I'd have made one for her with a hedgehog wearing a christmas hat. She said she had an encounter with a hedgehog once- it had gotten into her house, her cottage as was, and was eating food in the kitchen. I'd have liked to draw a hedgehog sat at a christmas table. If she was an animal, she'd certainly be a hedgehog. She looks like one- cute and small, spiny yet oh so innocuous, with unlikely fervour. Not that hedgehogs are usually imbued with fervour. Trotting around with surprising speed, they certainly share that in common.

Earth as hard as iron, water like a stone.

You said, you thought you'd end up somewhere green on a hill with water, you don't want to do a degree anymore, you get tired of the mother role. All bits of information I'm going to store up together to make a big thing.

That you didn't know what to say about wheelie bins. That made me laugh. It was a response to something I said, something like you were always yourself, you always seemed to know what to say or do about what mattered. As if you care about wheelie bins, as if it matters you have nothing to say about them. What matters is that you say what you care about and do what you care about, and that is what I want to do to.

A psychology degree, smashing pots with mad people, teaching in a progressive school, alcohol clinc worker, no keys liberation, a cafe from free food and rejecting a ten pound donation, living in tents with no possessions, marble tops and rejecting meat and husband in one go... these are things I will remember. I hope I remember the nuances too.

I am glad that I make her laugh. I wonder if she wants me around at all. I can't tell, because she lets everyone around her even when it's not what she wants- shooing people out the other day, but I can stay for tea, but maybe she wants something from me? I'll never know.

Snow has fallen, snow on snow.

Eating has been going well-ish. I have been drinking alcohol. But mostly keeping under, I think. Today I did a five-mile walk and ate:

A piece of swiss roll and a baked biscuit-300

A jacket potato with tuna and vegetables-500

A piece of trifle-200

4 chocolates-200

Which is 1200, so I am happy about that.

In the bleak midwinter is a lovely carol.

She came to see me.

I got a text message today that said was I in, I want to drop off a present and I was hoping so badly it was her. She doesn't know where I live, and she wouldn't give me of all people a present. But she did come to see me at work, and others haven't. But I felt so stupid there.

Stupid is an overruling feeling lately.

What can I give her, poor as I am. If I were a shepherd I would bring a lamb, if I were a wise man I would do my part. Yet what I can I've given her; given her my heart. And she doesn't know, which is fantastic and sad. Or maybe she does know. The wise man is particularly pertinent.

She said she doesn't like playing the mother role all the time, and sometimes she feels she has to. I am trying to work out what sort of 'role' she is to me. I can't fathom. Does she see me as a daughter? I am probably young, naive and ludicrous enough to warrant guidance and... cloying and needy. Because I do need her.

I would like her to think of us as friends, despite the age gap, despite the wisdom gap. She is very wise. Pertinent. Just as I am thinking, if I knew what she thought of me, I could be satisfied (not happy, but satisfied), she came out with the platitude that you can only judge yourself, and find out who you are without others. And it's so true, and I hadn't even voiced how I was feeling (but maybe I didn't need to, maybe she was just picking up on what is evident, that I need guidance, and advising me as such).

She makes me want to give her things.

In the bleak midwinter.

Well, I cannot be happy, I think. I cannot be happy that I have got a job when everyone else is doing so much better.

But then, I can be momentarily happy. I just keep my eye on what everyone else is doing and feel I'm falling, falling, falling behind. Ugh.

Why?

I feel like all my friends must know I'm this horrible petty person, and must hate me for it, and I must be the person they least like. How else? I only whine, and my problem is just that I'm not good enough, not that I've got actual problems, family problems. I feel so stupid. I feel like they must know and not really want me around.

But then...

I went to see her, Lenny Stalker, and she said some amazing things and made me think different. I can't stop saying stupid things- she said she got rid of all her stuff twice in her life, to stop it defining her, I think, to stop other people defining her and to make her freer. Well, I couldn't help saying she was good at talking and organising, and giving my opinion, and she went a bit quiet and I thought, oh no, you've been stupid. She knows and she won't want to see you again.

She came to see me in the shop and I felt so embarrassed. Because I had to ask people about loyalty cards and serve her as my manager was watching, though I didn't ask her, but I felt strange taking money from her. I felt strange. I felt like I wanted her to watch me and see me doing things. She said she did grotty jobs. This isn't exactly grotty, but I felt like I was in salesperson mode- I said I liked the books she'd bought, but I felt like I wasn't talking properly, like there was a gap between what I meant and what I said that would be glaringly obvious.

I think it's just me.

Being at her house makes me feel different. I want to take her something, but she probably wouldn't want possessions. I don't know what to give. I'd like to give my time or a poem or something, but I don't think I could without making it seem silly. I'll probably draw her a christmas card and take it today.

Tickle me pink I'm rosy as a red appleskin except I've never been quite as sweet.

1 slice toast with marmite-100
a smoothie-200

bens praline cookie-400

chocolate-250
curry and rice-400

chocolates-200
cake-240

gah. 2000. I suppose I stood all day. Curry might be 300 instead of 400. But even so. I need not to be eating this much. Tomorrow I will bike to town, buy christmas presents, eat well. Yes.

Pray for the people inside your head for they won't be there when you're dead.

I think I am narcissistic lately, and I can feel people becoming bored of me. I need to focus more on others, not just in the whiny adoring way I do. Which I am about to do.

Three people.

I am hoping Lenny Stalker will be the person that ends up doing the shelter with me. I don't know if she'll find anyone. I think she's lovely. I wonder how it will be. I do like her a lot.

Then there's you darling. Sweet and awkward in it. Terrible at art, brilliant at working, not knowing quite how good you look. What there is in the narrowness of your nose and the evenness of your wide smile. Your earnest eyes. They crinkle lovely. You just need someone who knows what you want and how to give it to you. I don't think I am that person.

Today was a good day.

Because I might have a job, I might have two and I have to choose. Pros and cons list is to follow.

Two of my friends contacted me, which makes me feel less awful.

I ate:

meatballs and chips and peas-400
5 chocolates-250
1/2 a fairy cake-50
some curry-300
dates-100
2 pints of lager-300

1400. Or 1500, and I've walked round town.

Songs I should remember that I like for reference at auditions

Ladies who lunch (Carol Burnett/Anna Kendrick)

I'm Still Here. I think it's a fosse number.

The first time I volunteered at the shelter.

I felt worried because:

1. I was worried I'd do it wrong
2. The other volunteer would be impossibly cool and I would lose out.
3. How hideous I would look in the morning, how L.S. would know that I'd been wearing makeup and was trivial, how the other volunteer (who was beautiful and thin, but not disdainful and actually good to spend the night with) would think I was hideous.

Well, I think I kind of did it right, I hung about for a bit in the morning. L.S. might have been surprised at the state of my face, but she didn't seem to be too shocked (though I suppose it's not something she'd care to admit to. She's probably too concerned with global issues to let the state of my skin register). And it was good, and I had fun doing it and I felt better about myself and wanted to be there again. So there is a lesson in itself.

The article wasn't that bad, and I need to stop being a wimp.

I read it. Mostly it's young entrepeneurs and single mums, people who are four or five years older than me that have done well.

Maybe I just expect too much of myself.

I am always worrying that I do/am doing the wrong thing. Maybe I don't do the wrong thing. Has anything terrible happened to me as yet? No. Why do I feel like I'm wasting my life then?

Here are good things that happened today:
1. One of my friends here now knows I'm bisexual and seems ok with it.
2. I had a good night last night with people I liked.
3. I got an interview for a job I won't hate. The first interview, but at least it's a shot.
4. If I am being rejected anyway, I am considering auditioning for Grease in London. It would at least be fun. And noone would know. I wouldn't tell them.

Oh, I need something brilliant in my life. Here are a list of my worries.

1. I push people away, and I haven't had contact with people I considered proper true friends for a good while. Do they hate me.

2. Loan, which is accruing interest. I could work one day a month, and that would pay it back. But I don't know.

3. Everyone I have spoken to (bar him, the director I had and my second cousin) have cacked all over the idea of me going to stage school and think I should take some time to develop. This means they think I am silly and foetally underdeveloped in my life plan. Everyone seems to get this look on their faces- oh no, she's gone mental, bless her- if I mention it. My Mum looks like she's trying to swallow her smile- she looks like she does when she sees a homeless or particularly obese person. That's the level of disdain/pitiful sympathy.

4. That cacking means I think I don't want to go. If I was really good, then people would encourage me. I can't be that good if people aren't saying it. I haven't looked further into applying because I'm worried about my loan and how it would affect that, worried about failing and everyone knowing, and worried about what everyone thinks of me trying for it. These are the reasons I didn't tell anyone. The RADA workshop didn't do my confidence any wonders- I wasn't the worst there, but out of a tiny pool, I wasn't the best either. Maybe I was the worst and I just didn't know. Jesus.

5. I will never find something I'm happy with/ I'll spend my life chasing silly dreams. I was so set on it. If people can put me off this easily, how will I ever find something I really want to do?

6. I'm having black dog days at the moment. Because noone is contacting me from University, and I am contacting them. Maybe their lives are busy, but it feels like I've got dull and uninteresting and I'm dragging people down so they don't want me, so I'm dull, so they don't want me...I'm sending a very belated present to someone, maybe this is why she and that pocket of friends don't seem to like me so much anymore... the others, I'm at a loss, maybe I'm being self indulgent in my trucking with them.

7. I don't know how I can build a new life here.

8. I have the overriding feeling that noone thinks I am at all capable of making my own decisions without significant guidance, far more than anyone else needs.

9. I couldn't even bring myself to read the feature 'how it feels to be a young woman in the 21st century' in the Guardian today. I bet it's all about successful young things, that are my age, that are doing wonderfully. No doubt some will be at stage school or on journalism courses.

10. I cannot, for the life of me, see what is good about being me. I thought I had an idea of what I wanted, and I'm not sure I want it anymore.

11. My brother keeps wiping his social superiority in my face, knowingly. I know that it's probably because he feels jealous that I'm more academic, but he could be too with a bit of effort, and he's probably going to do just as well at university/beyond, if not better. I am feeling crap at the moment, and he just makes me feel worse. I don't know if he knows how crap I'm feeling. I don't think he would care if he does/did.

12. I am getting fatter and fatter, and it's horrible. I feel pretty hideous at the moment- like I'm growing face chins, my parents keep nagging me to sort out my clothes and buy new ones and get a haircut, because everyone takes me at face value and I can't keep scragging about like this. I hate it. Why do people take me at face value? Why can't I be a valuable human being if I don't look beautiful? Why do you have to 'make the best' of yourself? Can't you make the best of yourself by developing your mind and helping people and being generally brilliant, like Lenny Stalker?

This last one I can do something about. The rest are a horrific merge of hideous entangling ideas that are shaping my crap existence, but I can deal with all of those better if I felt better about myself. And I might feel better if I cut my hair, or sorted my clothes, but I know for sure that I would feel a million times better if I was thinner. I went a bit off track today, and drank yesterday but I will start being better.

I'm so contradictory. I am mainly attracted to larger, chubby people. With men, taller, with women, it doesn't matter about height, but I prefer people with more meat on them. I don't find thin people attractive- I'd worry they'd snap. I suppose I'm really worried they'd hate my body. Or my body would be too much for their body. I don't want to touch thin people. I crave a comfortable body. The girl I like at the moment isn't comfortable in hers, though. So a body that is comfortable for me but not for them, a contradiction once more. If I put on weight, I get a hot feeling across the back of my neck- I am embarrassed by myself. But I am not embarrassed for her. I think she's lovely. I can't think of anyone I'd want to touch more.

Maybe the characteristics I associate with thin people- untouchability, fragility- are ones I crave myself. Mum can't help commenting on, 'little dot' children, and I like it when people worry about me as opposed to ignoring me completely/aggravating me about the way I look. And as for being untouchable, I always feel that people are cannibalising my life (my parents, but sometimes now even the odd well-intended friend will drop me a look that says, you're delusional, or talk to me about, 'the future' or say, 'so what are you going to do') and I suppose that what I really want is for everyone to get out of my life, for better or worse, and regard me as an equal. Not to touch the areas I feel most sensitive about. I want them to withdraw their tanks and their armies of well meaning concern and let it be my territory once more. That's a metaphorical quibble rather than a literal one- I suppose I don't really like people hugging me, apart from certain people, and vanishing and becoming more fragile would be a subconscious attempt to say stay away, I am not ready to be touched by you.

My aunt.

Had meningitis at an early age. She's disabled. She's got the mental age of a young person, about ten. She's in bed most of the time.

My Dad grew up with her and I sometimes wonder if he sees me as her. I know that I look like her. I catch it sometimes, in my dark eyebrows or the way my nostrils are. I'd be her, if she'd been healthy. I'm not pretty, but I am... I make people want to look again, I think. If she'd been healthy, she could have been like me instead of making people look again because of the way she is. Maybe Dad would have had someone to share secrets with and play with and bounce off, like I do with my brother and sister. Someone to compete with on even ground.

My Grandma spent a lot of time looking after her and not much on looking after my Dad, who was bright.

So I suppose in teaching me he's teaching her, and teaching himself. I'm what he could have been. I'm what she could have been.

These feel like horrible things to say but they're the truth. Here's another one. She might come over for christmas, and I don't want her to. I don't want her to be laid out on a sofa bed drinking coffee through a straw whilst we eat a roast. I won't be able to. I don't want to have to make forced happy conversation.

I think she might come and I don't want her to.

I feel horrible. I know how much she would enjoy it, and it's one day, a few hours, of my whole year. Christmas doesn't mean that much to me. I don't want a perfect christmas. I don't want presents, so it's not as if I'm sacrificing something massive.

I know noone wants her to come. But we should have her.

It's just that the things I like about christmas- the mince pie making, the dinner, the walk after (which might not happen because she'll not be able to go on it) are all dimmed by the prospect of this occasion.

I want to go and help in a shelter on christmas day. Granted, she will be there. But how is it that I am quite happy to share a shelter with twelve people, all homeless and nontheless resilient, but not one relative, who loves me and who loves my father, and who deserves a good christmas at least once instead of the dull, semi-heated and fatty conversation, or food, doled out at her Home (with a capital H, it's a house, not a home) this year.

It might be her last.

Why can't I do it with a spirit of being happy? Of making the best. Why can't life be like a children's book, where the disabled person turns out to have so many amazing qualities and it's sad and happy instead of just sad?

Why am I so selfish? If my Dad, who has sacrificed so many years to her, can do this, then so can I.

Happier things to think on that people have said.

I'll get the bad one out of my system first:

"You need to put more graft in, like your sister"

Said by my psychology teacher to my brother. Now, this may seem good- I put graft in. But really, my brother is charismatic. He'll get by on his own merit, he doesn't need to put graft in, and he's bright anyway. I, on the other hand, put graft in and got nowhere, and I'm not the brightest or the best, so why bother? What are good intentions when they come to naught.

Better things,

"You look so cool"

By her. Remembering that she thinks this makes my heart swell. Maybe she doesn't anymore, but she did once. She used to say it every time we met.

"A man said we were sisters because we've got the same eyes"

Said by a girl working at a bar with me with beautiful eyes, lots of eye makeup and mascara. She was kind and nice. The best thing was, I wasn't wearing any eye makeup- and she was really pretty, so it was good to have someone say that. We both had blue eyes and red hair.

"God, I thought you were a boy"

Said by a punter at the same bar. I find this flattering because of what it insinuates. Because of my sharp jawline, cheekbones, the fact I've got hardly any chest therefore can't be thought of as fat, because he said this after I'd moved, thus my movements must be feminine? I like to think I've got an androgynous physique.

"You should act. You're good"

Said by him, and by a director I esteemed. I assume the director was being nice. Maybe not. I never could quite come out of my shell with him. But these are the only two people that have ever encouraged me to follow what I want. Everyone else takes my passion for acting as a marker of dissatisfaction or not knowing what I want to do so throwing myself after this one thing. I find that vaguely insulting, like I'm a small child that doesn't know what I want. So it's good to be told by some people that it's not stupid.

Oh god. Maybe I'm completely wrong about everything.

Is what I think sometimes.

When I let my Dad in an inch and he takes a mile. It's my fault really. I don't say how I feel enough, so he doesn't know when I'm feeling red raw about job rejections and just can't take even mentioning it unless it's a joke, and when I can talk or not.

And then once I start talking to him about that, he starts talking about learning programming and how to design websites and everything else, and I just want to crawl the walls, because I feel like I've just let him in on this part of my life and now he wants to colonise it all, wants to take over and make me learn new things.

And he doesn't. He just wants me to try something he thinks will give me a lot of pleasure.

But I think back to the maths tutoring at fifteen, and the reading at two, and how much they weren't fun. How much he wanted me to succeed and enjoy and be advanced, and how much I hated being bent to someone else's desire for my own good, even if it was for me to do better and be better and be happier. Why can't I say this to him? I just don't want the tiresome long debate that comes after it. And it sounds so spiteful, to hold over his head something that he did (especially as he was believing it to be for the best, and perhaps it was, because didn't I get an A in maths, and didn't I do very well at school, and can't I read the fastest out of everyone I know?) decades ago, or seven years ago. It sounds petty, like I haven't moved on. But the truth is I haven't. Why can't I just say, yes, I am petty. Yes, I am inherently spiteful in how I think, and I can't help it, and this is how it is?

Instead, every time he mentions me programming, I just shut off and close up and say, mmm, mmm, hoping that conversational markers and lack of real response will make the issue go away. Because I don't like being such a spiteful bitch without reason, I don't like preventing myself from learning something because of past hang ups, and I want to let go of what I'm feeling because I know I'm wrong because he's right. And I am wrong. I know it. I am who I am because of what he taught me, I'd be nothing if he hadn't spent all that time teaching me things. And maybe that's it, there. I'm scared to take his help because it feels like I can't make anything of myself unless someone else is there helping me along. I want to make something of myself on my own, not because anyone else has helped me. I need to be able to say, I did this myself, without falling back on anyone.

So do I want to be miserable?

My brother's having a christmas dinner with friends from school, and Dad said I should have a christmas dinner with my friends from school. He doesn't understand, I don't think. We are having a few get togethers, and I like my schoolfriends, but I've made others who are really and truly friends, and my brother's schoolfriends are his true friends. He's Mr Popular, and I can feel my parents worrying about my lonerish tendencies, my lack of aesthetic value. They advise me to be more like him instead of as I am. I should be more like my brother. He's charismatic and will get through life wonderfully. I won't. I take things too hard and I'm narcissistic and dull and I'm not even a perfectionist to make up for it and I've got all sorts of strange hang ups. I didn't do well. He'll do well, with less effort too. He'll be brilliant. He'll get jobs and be successful and noone will ever worry about him being a loner because he's got far too many friends. He's bright, and he didn't have the same help as me.

Why do I feel like I'm so much worse than everyone else?