9:09 p.m.
/
10 May, 2004

My student loan came in. FINALLY. I just looked at the balance of my account and savoured the complete absence of a minus at the beginning.

Exams start on Thursday. I'll have to start revising tomorrow, me thinks.

Today I:

-Wrote another 5 pages of my new novel.

-Read another chapter of my lesbian history book.

-Watched an Elvis movie, until it got too cringeworthy.

-Played theme hospital.

-Tried to find some clothes that fit. Yesterday, my trousers fell down while walking down the street, It doesn't get any less humiliating every time it happens. I've discovered it's worse when you're sober too.

-Tried to call Julia. I'm thinking she's avoiding me.

-am feeling very down and tired and blergh.

My mother has turned into an airhead bimbo. Or, maybe she always was one. You see, she is an Atkin's Diet Cult member, and she's lost something like 4 stone or whatever, which is cool if that's what she felt she needed to do.

However, now she's constantly buying clothes, which is also fine, as long as we're not going to be evicted or bankrupted or whatever, and she goes up to the pub like all weekend to spend hours upon hours with people she always pretended were stupid and beneath her.

I mean, my ENTIRE childhood, she drummed in to me like a jackhammer that it was wrong to dress up to please other people, it was wrong to subordinate yourself, or hide your strength so that people don't feel threatened. She made me throw away my Barbie dolls and said that there was nothing worse than ending up empty-headed and vain. And certain things never made much sense to me, such as the men she ended up with, like my father, who has only ever dated blonde bimbos and is very up front about only being attracted to stupid, blond, big breasted women; my stepdad, who will not even take his own dinner plate into the kitchen when he's finished eating, because he's a man and that's not his job.

But it seems that all that was bullshit, just bitter ranting by a former bimbo who thought she was old and fat, because now she's getting all these compliments, she's going to these places and saying things like, 'Actually, they're not bad', and having affairs with rich old guys and just saying and doing everything she always told me not to.

And maybe this is just all bitterness, because of all the pain and misery I went through just to please her. Being forced to go to grammar school and leave behind the only people I ever really considered friends, even now. Always working so hard at school to please her, never going out with guys. God, who knows if I might have actually even been into guys before she laid into me about men being bastards who want to fuck and oppress women. Always feeling as though I was falling short in her eyes because I didn't meet her expectations. And guess what, now she's dropped some weight, all that is meaningless. My entire upbringing was a lie, and I'm such a conflicted ambivalent mess because both my parents were just fucked up and taking it out on me.

Now, she says things to me like, 'You know, you could be pretty if you...' Or, 'You're not wearing that out, are you? What will people think?' And NOW, it's my dad who's saying things like, 'You have to do what you think is best.' And who lends me albums and compliments my clothes and thinks I'm doing okay.

I would have turned out better if they had just left me on a doorstep somewhere.