He takes my hand or I take his hand or we both take each other's hand, I'm not sure entirely, but after a few seconds of fluid motion we're both standing up. I sort of lean, fall into him. His T-shirt feels soft. The flesh below it is warm. He's warm. I put my hand on the small of his back. I really really want to run away with him now, right away.

The trees and the lights have suddenly taken on a whole new level of beauty, intrigue. I feel like I could get lost in them just by staring at them. Lush. Glowing. A thousand fireflies. Being a little kid. On my father's shoulders. There are so many lights it's all I can do not to trance out on them completely.

Things are beginning to blur. He's saying something: 'We're leaving now.' I look down at the floor, at everyone, and suddenly I wonder whether he's fucked her. He has fucked everyone.
Everyone.

His cheek brushes mine. We are kissing. Just like that; a fluid motion. Hard to explain. The way it just happens. We close our eyes. His mouth is warm. Slippery. It tastes of lollipops and something else I can't identify. His tongue forces its way into my mouth. I don't resist. Mine is on his teeth. Smooth. His hand. On my side. It's warm. Mine on the back of his neck. The skin there is smooth. Warm. His hair. He forces me deeper into the kiss. His mouth. Electricity. These noises he makes. Noises I'm making. Pushing forward and back against one another. Suck.

He breaks off the kiss. I'm kind of embarrassed. And I want him. Totally and completely, and I'm going to die if I don't get to kiss him again, dance with him, sleep with him, absorb his body into mine.

Moments like these I forget about everything else. Moments like these, nothing matters. With him, with whoever. I can forget who I am. Forget anything else exists. No future. No past. Just this.

For a second, as I'm staring, hypnotised, at the lights, I'm a little kid again, and the events of the intervening years have never happened. There is nothing of my parents' coldness, or the gap that has slowly opened between us. Nothing of the secrets. Nothing of the drinks or the pills, nothing of the boys or the 'promise to call you' and 'promise not to cum in your mouth', the staying out at night or the crawling home in the morning. And as those things which have been buried, half forgotten, begin to come back to me, they bring a sadness with them. The kind of sadness that seems so clear, the truth of it can make you double over, suck all the air right out of you. The lights make me remember a time when I was still sheltered from the world. When I could sit on my father's shoulders and I know that while I was there, nothing at all could hurt me.

The image - the trees and the fairy lights and my breath in the cold air - begins to fade. I try to grab hold of it again, but it's like trying to grab hold of a dream once you've started to wake up. I realise that, more than anything, I want some part of that innocence back. I want to be overwhelmed as much as I was as a child. I want to be able to be overwhelmed.

It makes me uncomfortable when people say they love me, so why do I crave it so much?

As we enter the room, noise swallows everything. The music hits me, assaults my body, and it's a pounding force. Narcotic. Suffocating. Beautiful. It's hard to explain, but it's like being inside some great, pulsating womb. I close my eyes for a second and let my body dissolve into it, and it's like being a little kid again. I spent so much of my childhood sitting in front of my Nintendo, and what I seem to remember most about old video games is the music, synthesised, repetitive; I could sit for hours on end and just listen to it build then fade away, sequences of tiny artificial notes endlessly repeating themselves. The thing of it was that although the ambient soundscapes that accompanied the big-eyed anime boys as they went to rescue their princesses, or find their magic crystals, or avenge their dead brothers or save faraway worlds from forces too evil to imagine, were meant to be heard and then forgotten, they somehow transcended that, and anyone who ever played those games as a kid now has some small part of that embedded in their consciousness. Electronic music was the sound of my childhood, and as I stood there in the here and now and closed my eyes and let the ethereal synthesised keyboard lines swirl around me and the beats pummel and assault my body, it's like being there again, like childhood, somewhere I can be safe and warm, and I'm not even kidding about any of this. And I stand there and sway for the longest time, because there's this one particular song playing, with a high, swirling keyboard line, and it doesn't seem as though it can go any higher, and it swells and then fades away again then comes back and it swells and fades and swells and fades and I'm hypnotised by it. I stand there and sway, lost in the purity and the beauty of it, and for a second it's like I'm not even there anymore. It's like I've disappeared completely into the music.

You've got my heart in your hands. What you do with it is your choice, but I don't think you even realise. I've given you my heart, my everything to you - and you still don't notice. If you do, I guess you just don't care. Well guess what - it's not doing that much for me anyway. So go ahead. Throw my heart onto the ground, underneath your shoe. Put all of the anger and sadness I've projected onto you for all this time and crush my heart. Don't stop until it's in tiny little pieces, embedded in the cement. I don't want it, you don't either. Let's give it back to the Earth, where it came from. Maybe it'll be more appreciated in Hell, that's where I belong.

Here's the sick, twisted thing: part of me thinks I deserve this. That maybe if I wasn't such an asshole, it might have turned into something real. If I wasn't such a lame excuse for a person, something right might happen to me. It's not fair, because I didn't ask for Dad to leave, and I didn't ask to be depressed, and I didn't ask for us to have no money, and I didn't ask to want to fuck boys, and I didn't ask to be so stupid, and I didn't ask to have no real friends, and I didn't ask to have half the shit that comes out of my mouth come out of my mouth. All I wanted was one fucking break, one idiotic good thing, and that was clearly too much to ask for, too much to want.
I don't understand why everyone puts up with me.
Am I that pathetic? Do they get a merit badge for picking up the pieces of a wrecked human being?

The shards of broken glass cut into my hands and knees as I crawled towards you. This disease leaves me crawling, crawling to people and always wanting more. No matter what I get, it's never enough. Are you sick of me yet? If not, you should be. I sure fucking am.

Post-hookup awkwardness.
Gotta love it.

I look around at other people and notice that they are solid in a way that I am not. They think and talk and laugh in distinct ways. Compared to them I feel like a cardboard cut-out, a piece of gauze in the shape of a human, blowing in the wind, changing colour all the time depending on the strength of the light. My personality is cobbled together from all kinds of bits and pieces stolen from those around me. I try on the pieces like articles of clothing. When I get tired of one I try another, sometimes almost in the same moment.

Were my hands cold as they wrapped around your neck?
Good. I hope you fucking freeze.

"I know my head isn't screwed on straight. I want to leave, transfer, warp myself to another galaxy. I want to confess everything, hand over the guilt and mistake and anger to someone else. There is a beast in my gut, I can hear it scraping away at the inside of my ribs. Even if I dump the memory, it will stay with me, staining me. My closet is a good thing, a quiet place that helps me hold these thoughts inside my head where no one can hear them."

I don't want to feel like this anymore. I'm sick of it.

Speak.

I hid in the bathroom until I knew all the buses had left. The salt in my tears felt good when it stung my lips, like I deserved the pain. I washed my face in the sink until there was nothing left of it, no eyes, no nose, no mouth. A slick nothing.

Every single song I listen to, every show I see, every book I read.
Somehow, all of it relates back to you.
I don't want to remember you.

Stop burning bridges and drive off of them instead, so I can forget about you.
Please.

Relapsing.
Exercising.
Cutting.
Generally being depressed and hating myself.

This is my life.
What it has been since year 8 and it will be this way until I die.

This sick feeling in my stomach has become the norm.
Nobody needs to know.
This is not a problem.
It's just my life.

You're back, and I'm the happiest I've been in weeks.
Thank you.

Oh all the wants and all the needs.
I don't want to need at all.

I stayed there on my own for a while, in that alleyway in the rain, getting wet. He'd smoked his cigarette till it had burnt right down to his fingertips then he let the soggy butt fall, plop, onto the wet pavement, where it landed right next to his foot. I was rocking slightly, getting hammered by the rain.
I leant back against the wall and let the rain hit my face and run down in random pathways, into my mouth and out again. It stung my eyes; I closed them tight and then opened them again, letting it sting them some more.
When you hurt, really hurt, you feel it throughout your body. It starts in your middle and spreads out, down your thighs and into your arms. Oh it is so easy to say this now, but that was the start of the end, when he turned away from me. That was when I started losing control.

I'm just a notch in your bedpost, but you're just a line in a song.

I feel so empty yet so heavy at the same time.
I knew I shouldn't have done anything.
I haven't slept in three days and I haven't eaten much in that time either.
I thought I couldn't feel any worse than I did, but surprise surprise, it's possible.
Why did I do it?
Why did he do it?
Why did he say those things?
Why am I such an idiot?

I hate myself.
So much.

I am breathing shit air into my lungs.
It is being absorbed into my bloodstream.
I am literally full of shit.

This, this thing we did.
It's purely physical.
It's two people, aching for the feel of someone else's skin.
It's instinct.

This lust to my brain almost feels like a gun.

I want this. So bad.

I wish I could just sleep all of this away. That would make me happy.
Happier than I am now, anyway.

Stop your insistent nagging. I'll let you know when I'm ready.
Until then, go away.
Please.

What do I believe in?
Well, my pragmatism and romantic feelings about Jesus and Mary were almost equally balanced. A few years ago I would have said God without hesitation.
The year after that I decided it was determinism.
And this year I believe that the universe is arbitrary, that if God exists he does not hear our prayers, that cause and effect are inescapable and brutal, but meaningless.
After that?
I don't have a clue.

Blue is my favourite colour.
Because blue is the most human colour of them all.
Blue veins, blue lips.
The Earth is blue from outer space.
The ocean.
The sky.
It's all blue.

Well, it's happened again. Every time I make a blog I get sick and tired of it after about 6 months. It's time to start anew.

Nobody's going to read this anyway, or at least I hope not. This blog is for my benefit.