A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse.

You're coming home. Homecoming queen, though you won't feel like that, back to a detached house and too much family.

But to me, you are a homecoming queen. You rattle my magnetic fields because the things that I feel aren't so certain when you respond, even in the vaguest sense, to any invitation. I know it won't lead to anything, and I know that you don't feel about me as I do for you; you never have, it's all one sided and I harbour no delusions. Yet I still can't rid my head of the possibility of you.

It's ridiculous, isn't it. Because I know that the person you adore isn't me. Why are magnetic fields so like Venn diagrams? Someone always gets left out. I hope you intersect with someone who knows your worth, because you are beautiful. I wish that there was some way of you knowing this without revealing my own identity.

Thankyou.

I've been given so much but people just aren't bewitched. I haven't got the power to enchant, and maybe I should just think about doing something else entirely.

Then again, we're young. Don't peak too soon. Panic panic panic.

I like to walk alone. Come to me, comfort me. I suppose I fling off the edge because there is noone to comfort me.

I need to keep my head screwed on. It's so likely to go flying off when I'm surrounded with people that I admire, who can touch and call people love or honey or darling without thinking about it, because I think about things so very much that I couldn't possibly.

Thankyou India. Well, just thankyou thankyou. Because it was awesome, and I forgot to eat, and I learned more from those few days than any number of courses. Just be enthusiastic about what you're doing, be a perfectionist and people will follow. I just wish I was more out than in, or more in than out, or more something than this halfway space that I am. That noone particularly wants, and that's a truth in itself. Noone wants a halfway person. It's all or nothing in every arena and I'm always halfway.

I'm just not as good. So I will have to find ways of being.

Maybe it's because I am just a silly little girl, with no experience of the world.

Everyone says I look young, and I can't have that part because I look too young, and I can't this or that because.

I am so sick of it. I am sick of people not noticing and not caring and not bothering because I am not something worthwhile.

That sentence is a contradiction, because of course people only care for something worthwhile.

I don't want to ask because I won't get so what's the sense in asking if I'm never receiving?

And what's the sense in anything?

I think I am fed up because noone cares what I want, but actually it is because noone listens to what I say that I'm pissed off.

Because I accept, that in the world, fundamentally noone cares what you want. Everyone's out for themselves and why should they care what you want? It doesn't make profit in any sense to care about what people want, it's what they need and what they can take that's relevant.

And the thing is that I just take too much. People walk off mid-sentence when I'm complaining. I am not riveting, unless I'm being funny or happy. Noone cares what happens when I'm angry. If it's my brother, people care. People interact, at least. I get ignored. Or noone cares. Or I get shunted off.

I can put up with noone caring what I want. I accept. It's that noone cares what I say, and the fact that it's so often trodden over, that makes me believe I'm just a person of no consequence. At home, with friends, at work. I don't get work experience, I don't get good tasks, or a bigger room, or a bit of alone time, or fair distribution of household work, or even to go where I've organised on nights out.

I don't get it. Because I'm not nice. I'm not a nice person. It's just that people don't care what I say, and why is that? I wish I could make people care. Is it some physical tic, do I blink too much or speak too fast or what?

I am stopping asking.

And maybe this is why I lie sometimes. If noone cares what I say, then why bother saying anything of value at all?

It's all very well when I'm cooking dinner, or when I won't do something. It's when there's a problem that people couldn't care less. I hate being someone of no consequence.

I hate being me sometimes.

I wondered if I'd given myself away today, because I'd spoken too much about your coat selection, and I do hope you didn't think I was bitching because we weren't at all. I like those coats, though I don't think you do. I like that you don't think about what you're wearing, and that you think you've let yourself go when I think you look beautiful because you look so natural, and clever. And your hair's thick and black, and you wear it the same way every day, and it's perfect. And why is there a tiny white mark, just under your chin, like a scar that twins mine? A sign? Did you know I had one too?

You set me a mathematical problem, and I want to solve it. And you read bollywood fiction and you can't identify with white books, and I suppose I find that a bit strange; or maybe you just don't know enough good books. You haven't read properly for years, despite wanting to do a degree in literature. A cardigan filled with tiny pots of harmful chemicals, and a beautiful mind in every way; you're so pure in motive and speech, and soft and kind but firm despite. Do my hands, which I was contemplating today, look like spam to you? They do to me.

I have never been afraid of being alone. Somehow typical.

It's typical that I'm sat considering you. Always considering someone, and then it's so easy to let it go.

B, you're so incapable of being anything except yourself, and you're so strong. I wanted to roll over and hug you, but you don't like it when you're more upset than the other person. Only, on this occasion, and others, you've got more than enough right to be. I just wish I could give you a hug, but I thought you might feel wrung out by everyone hugging you. I started to wonder if I'd brought it on you by lying, but there's no correlation and I'm not superstitious. It's just a quibble. I was so relieved at the way you were. Tears come later. "It's the end of the road for me and Mum", is a sad thing. And to say it with acceptance and clarity. I don't know if that's how you're really feeling, or if you're just saying it to conflagrate with how I am, but I'd be silent. Not half as cheerfully stoic as you are. I wouldn't cry but I wouldn't be an open book either, and I admire you so much for it. You won't know how much. I'll probably tell you soon. Not that crying would make me judge you or feel that you were less, I'll always admire you. Because I've thought you were brilliant since we met, and you always will be. I would like to be there if you feel bad, if you feel sad- I'd like you to come to me, because I would like to make you feel better, or to share. I think you would. I wouldn't feel awkward hugging you. You've lost weight, but I didn't mention it because then you would have had to say... and you look good, you always have, but it's as a consequence now. I wonder what your Mum thinks?

You said on Friday that your daughter was older than me. I can't help but think that your shoulders must have the sheen of butter. I can't say so. You just laughed about how young I was, and I like you, but we're more similar than that. Not that you'd ever entertain the thought of me, but then, noone I like ever would. I'm too young and too silly, but I admire you and your proud bearing and your certainty. Though I could be your daughter. In another life.

My head's screwed.

One billion angels come and love her now.

So pretty. You're quite kind. You watched with LE when I ate my chips and waited to watch me finish the last one. I couldn't fathom why. Did you just want to know if I uphold my own eating regimens, are you really fascinated? I couldn't tell. I like you a lot because you're kind and handsome, and shy and confident, and not in the least bitchy. It's the antithesis of you. We were all gossiping about GF and her weight, but you're so kind. You didn't defend. You looked at me and just stated, "aren't they mean?" then you walked away. You never denigrate. You've got your own level and you'll not sink. I like that about you. Your name sounds like bells on a chiffon hem, jangling and musical.

You are apart from people though; like LE, you don't like celebration and you don't go in for the social events. You aren't invited. Have you been? Or are you just not around. I suppose you're not strictly part of our department. I think they don't invite LE because she wouldn't come, or she wouldn't come because they haven't invited her and she doesn't feel welcome; it's chicken or egg. I'd like to invite you to something very much.

I wonder if you were a great beauty? You still are a beauty, but not in the pretty sense; you're more handsome, and you're beautiful because of what's radiating from you- assured calm. So maybe that's always the way you've been, but then you're shot through with shyness as well, not with the young ones but with me and with us. I suppose I'm looking for people like me that don't know exactly where they stand, and that's you in my mind but maybe not in reality. I suppose you were an asset, as a daughter, because you're clever and everything else a woman should be; I wonder what your marriage is like. You're sensible- you don't drag your children off to weddings they don't want to attend, you don't do things you don't like doing (a lot like me). I'd have gone over to sit next to you if I could have, but it seemed to obvious, and I stare a lot anyway. You're another one that doesn't remark on MR's weight loss, which I interpret to have the same meaning as my own silence on the subject; you don't remark because, good or bad, comments have repercussions and they're not always the ones you intend.

I can catch your eye across the staffroom, when everyone else is talking about what they would and wouldn't do to their bodies, or what they are doing to them. We eat silently, and I eat defensively. I chomp away because I want to show I don't care. It's my downfall that I do, but it's all modelling behaviour- if I do it often enough, I eventually won't. I already feel disdain for the attitudes of those on diets. So maybe you were the way I was? It could be labelled an eating disorder, but it's been too easily cured and I think it's just different. EDNOS they might call it, but it's not that either. It was what it was, and I am who I am. So who are you? With your dark wavy hair, always the same style, half up and half back in a barette, and your little stride that always looks as if it's vaguely stumbling (though you don't mock GF, who can't walk from building to building without breaking a sweat and gasping for breath) you manage to keep up with my Gulliver strides. We've got the same feet, short and wide. I can always talk to you and I'm never stuck for things to say, which is odd for me. I'd like to get drunk with you and see what happens.

1760 written somewhere else today.

I could do with going on a little light walk. I am not as worried as some of the staffroom women about my hips, but I do like to categorise. I don't know if I am as bad as they are, deep down.

I am vexed with my family. I will take some weed from my brother to even things out. I have to practice underhand retribution because none other is forthcoming; of course, he isn't malicious (though he is; he lies for himself but blarts his little sister's secrets to parents) and he doesn't get the same treatment as us; there's a lot more leeway for skiving school, something I'd never do.

I keep wondering if I'd have done as well in a state school as a private one, not least because of the options; at a private school you can do classics, and you must do one language. At a state, no classics is offered and you don't even have to do what I'd call a proper science. I know not all people are academic, but it worries me when I see bright girls going for GCSE's in Drama or Dance, when they could do either outside of school, progress and do something that would broaden their horizons otherwise.