The boy I broke up with five weeks ago is a kind and noble soul, and he came round tonight to offer me his friendship again. There were so many things he could have said to me but didn’t, and so many things he didn’t have to but did.

The last month has been hard, when I think back, but in a way it’s been helpful to keep my distance, only meeting when brought together in situations that tend to bring out the worst in us. Tonight I am happy and kindof pathetically grateful to discover that I get to keep a friendship that I thought I’d lost for good. On the other hand, I can no longer ignore his good qualities and how much I admire them, especially not after our very honest conversation this evening. It was probably easier to move on when I believed it was the only option.

I am going to have to tread carefully. But, providing I do that, it seems that I have got back someone that I love very much, and however much navel-gazing I do about it, that’s a really wonderful thing.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8352711.stm

“Research published in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology also questions the very notion of aesthetically pleasing genitals.”

I have been questioning that notion ever since I knew what genitals were.

On a different subject, Lou and I went to John’s evensong and formal last night. and it was good. John’s was founded by the same person who founded Christ’s (Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII), but I think she was playing favourites. They could probably fit at least four of our chapels into theirs, so the acoustic is epic, and their choir is a bit more hardcore, doing services every day. and their formals are a lot nicer, om nom nom. But then I came back to Christ’s for compline in our humble, tiny chapel, and that was lovely for different reasons.

Tonight I have two hours of choir then two and a half of orchestra. \o/

Ahahah, I keep sending Ev bizarre emails about how my nano is progressing, and every time one is sent I have a sudden panic that I have sent it to the wrong person. (Cambridge email addresses are very vague, just a few letters and numbers, so this is easy to do.) And if the wrong person got this one just now, that would have been interesting. Part of it runs:

“I was just thinking that today would be the day to have Lucas accidentally poison Alek. then I realised I could have Lucas ACCIDENTALLY POISON ALEK’S SISTER INSTEAD.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

In other news, I think the cold is here to stay now, and I need to start wearing a coat or something. I became convinced of this during a very chilly fifteen minute walk back from the faculty this evening. On the other hand, Cambridge is beautiful at night, and these walks home, back to an empty room, chilled to the bone, is one of those ‘never been so alone, never been so alive’ moments.

Anyway, I’m going to go type into a different window where the wordcount matters more but the content less. Things are good here, there’s not much wrong, I guess I’m just going to be reflective for a while.

Today was very hard. I’d like to say I learned something, but I’m not sure it’s that simple. I realised for the first time, I think, that I need to accept that my friend died. He’s not just somewhere else, and maybe one day he’ll turn up again, maybe one day I’ll look up at his old window in second court and he’ll be waving. He died. It’s been easier to forget that.

Facing the reality of something like this is a really bleak prospect. Speaking to his mother today, she said in a very pragmatic way, with a smile, “I don’t think I will ever recover from this.” She said something similar to me at the funeral and I tried to forget about it, but this time that she said it, almost two months after his death, I have to realise that she’s not being depressing, she’s being realistic. The reality of this is that it’s the most painful and tragic loss that has ever happened to most of us, and if you sit and think about it for long enough you will weep and weep and everything else will fade away.

So no, there’s no lesson to extract. It doesn’t get to be that easy. You carry on, and not just for your own sake.

Remember I thought I’d lost my camera? GUESS WHAT, I got a piece of recorded mail today! I love it when I get post that’s addressed to Hetty. It does the double job of making me happy and confusing a porter.

Anyway, as originally intended:

This is the first half of my plotmap! Stick figures make me happy. The second half is considerably less detailed and involves more inane events, written out in Ev’s beautiful black calligraphy. But my start is more concerned with setting up the characters and dropping hints about all the mysteries and things, so, unlike my last Nano where I had plot but not the deductive reasoning kind, this time I’m having to tread quite carefully and make sure that I include all the stuff that’s going to be important later. I am totally breaking a cardinal rule somewhere by planning this at all.

Also, because I’m not currently nano-ing, I’m writing an essay about why the Jews were expelled from Rome in 19 AD (it’s really interesting! nobody knows for sure!), have a procrastinatory photo of the current state of my desk.

From this you may discern:

• I like postits
• washing up is currently fighting a losing battle

Speaking of losing battles, I am going to have no time for work in the next three days. In the words of Tim Gunn, “This worries me.” Tomorrow, choir goes to London.

In more really dreadful and awful news: I got myself a twitter. I’m a bad person.

This is how King’s looks at the moment. Another few seconds’ walk up that way and you’re on the bridge looking over at King’s College Chapel, so it’s funny how this avenue of trees is the most beautiful part of my walk home.

I’ve been asked to do a reading for Charles’ memorial service. It’s a few verses in Ecclesiastes, beginning There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven. They’re easy lines, but I am going to keep practising until I can read them without getting choked up.

Nanowrimo is absolutely fucking awesome and is making me very happy. It turns out I am good at writing rubbish really quickly, and feeling like I shouldn’t edit (or show anyone what I’ve written) means I can write in a loose, snide sort of way that only works when I stop thinking about it. So I’m going to spend a little more time writing about the treatment of Jews in Rome in the 1st century AD, then I’m going to go break a 3000 word barrier. IT’S NOT TOO LATE TO JOIN ME YOU GUYS.

Oh man, Nano starts in four hours. Ev and I had an incredible planning session last night where we wrote out all our characters on postits and wrote ridiculous scenarios down on more postits and then threw them at each other. I really need to re-set out all my paper and photograph it. Hang on.

Damn, I appear to have lost my camera. ANYWAY, she gave me things like “Someone gets poisoned!” and “KIDNAPPING” and I gave her “Someone loses a pet (death or literal loss)” and “Accidental theft”. (We both wrote some nice events too, but they’re less interesting somehow.) Somewhere along the way I picked up 28 pieces of paper and things started to gel and now I (sortof) know where I’m going, which is a Good Thing. In a bid to include them all, I might even put buried treasure under the castle. It can keep the slash dragon company.

And speaking of, I’ve had Jess and Stu here for a few days and it was so so nice. Cambridge sucks you in sometimes, especially now, and it’s good to be reminded that there’s a bigger world out there with people who don’t think you’re a soulless demon girl. Well, they might, but they might like that kind of thing. Now they’re gone and my room is a bit quiet but I feel like a better person again.

I went a little crazy tonight. I am glad that college wants to remember my friend and toast his memory but it is over a month since his death and I was doing alright and then tonight I was cornered into talking to people about all our sad feelings and now I’m back there again. There will be one more goodbye at his college memorial service, and it will be horribly painful, and then we’ll finally step away from the sharp edge.

I think this is an improvement.

and I can’t let it go
and I can’t get through

Tomorrow we’re saying goodbye to a friend. Forever. Again.

I’m living inside my novel at the moment. Mirrors are banned in the castle, something to do with them being misleading and magical, and I think it makes sense. I wear my watch on my left wrist, for one thing.

I’m putting my camera in my bag tomorrow. Cambridge is at one of its most beautiful times and I’m going to take a walk through King’s.

Dinner’s cooking. Times like these I really wish I had a hob; tonight I’m doing sweet and sour caramelised shallots in the slow cooker, and it’s meant to be with egg noodles but I think it’s going to be with bread and cheese instead. this is what the book next to me would call cross-cultural assimilation. only more tasty.

I’ve been busy. I can’t say how glad that makes me. This term is as different from the last two years as I’ve been able to make it, and it’s working. Charles’ death has made me realise that eventually you grow up and you become a person with souvenir scars and thoughts that will never leave you but which you can’t afford to give space to. I will never stop feeling the loss of his death and I’ll never again be young enough to feel invulnerable. The only thing I can do is carry him with me.

Another recent loss received its silver lining last night. I’ve been busy, as I said, and a lot of it’s been to distract me, but it’s also happened because I couldn’t before and now I can. Last night I went to a birthday formal for someone I like but don’t socialise much with outside of choir. Matt doesn’t know her very well, I don’t know many of her other friends, and if I’d still been in a relationship I wouldn’t have gone last night because oh noes, who would I sit with or talk to? It would’ve been easier to have a quiet night in with the boyfriend. I still thought this, but since I don’t have that option anymore I went anyway and I ended up having a really fun time with people I hadn’t known so well before. Loss hurts, but I’m slowly learning to live the things I guess I already knew: being alone and being independent are just a matter of perspective, and no-one but me can make me strong. and you can also invite strange boys back to your room to fix your internet, which was an entirely unforeseen plus point.

Two other really cool things coming soon:

• Nano! A few late nights ago, I sat myself down with an A4 pad and I drew a castle, then a stick figure, then many more stick figures, bullet points, arrows, and suddenly I had people and secrets and a sparky, love-hate dynamic between my two mains that I can’t wait to write. The paper’s gone up on my wall so I can gaze at it. still needs moar plot, but this is a really nice start.
• Jess and Stu are visiting on Tuesday <3333333333