Apparently I am a smart kid. My parents, teachers, and a succession of bosses who fired me, have all told me this repeatedly. This hasn’t stopped me from dropping out of uni on 3 successive occasions, enjoying The House Bunny way more than I should, and spraining my left foot five times in one year. Neither has this stopped me from infrequently going mental.

Now when I say mental, I don’t mean having a barney and smashing a few plates up (though that is fun and I recommend it to anyone who is a bit cross about something, cheap plates only though). I mean mental as in suffering from mental illness. Over my life I’ve taken Prozac, Paxil, Xanax, and Valium, and had so many others prescribed that I forget their names. I’ve been diagnosed with everything from a psychotic episode, through generalised anxiety, to “I guess you’re just in the doldrums hey?”. None of the labels or meds really made much of a permanent difference, and so yet again I have found myself being struck down by a case of the summer blues.

When I was younger and more often out of a relationship than in one I was convinced that once the right person came along I’d be able to shake myself out of these ‘doldrums’ and get it together. Surely I could sort myself back out with the love and support of someone great. Often being with someone was enough to drag me into a happier frame of mind for a while but soon enough I’d sink back into a mire of sadness once the honeymoon was over.

Being depressed, or otherwise unwell, makes for a shitty relationship especially if the whole thing was shakey in the first place. Who wants to unload their many and varied neuroses on someone else and drag them down with you? And if you do will they love you? Will they understand? Will they even care? But keeping everything to yourself makes you secretive, grumpy, and prone to crying fits. Well, it does that to me: results may vary.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been sliding slowly into a miserable frame of mind, and feeling more and more pathetic about it. The same things run through my head over and over: I have somewhere to live, two pretty goldfish, a wonderful boyfriend who I’m madly in love with, a huge project that I’m excited to work on, the sun is shining, my friends are brilliant… and yet none of it helps.

On Friday I was sent on some bizarre course by the job centre, and my advisor said that I seemed unmotivated. She started to tell me to let joy into my life, and that all I needed to do was see the happiness around me and choose to make it part of me. Walking out of her office into the glorious sunshine I felt like I had the heaviest boots ever, my soul felt leaden and I had to breathe slowly to stop myself from crying. All her The Secret-esque talk had done was make me feel even more stupid and pathetic for not letting myself be happy.

On Sunday evening after crying my eyes out over my faulty MacBook charger I took stock. Sure I’ve got so many things to be thankful for, and life could be so so much worse. The people around me: my friends, family, pets, and boyfriend, are wonderful, without them things would be so much worse, but, and there’s a huge but, it’s ok to feel like this. It’s not a choice I made, after all why on earth would I choose to be depressed? That totally defies logic! Rather than being a way of life I chose for myself this is something that happens, and with time and the right strategies it will be something that I can deal with more effectively, without resorting to lying in bed watching Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) all day.

And so really what I wanted to say all the way through this rambling, narcissistic post is that I think I know I’m not alone in feeling this way. There are, maybe, some of you out there who are down in the dumps or worse and hope that being with someone else will sort you right out, or those of you who found someone and are cross at themselves for being unable to shake off a mood that’s been hanging around for so long. All I have to offer is something incredibly cheesy: you’re not alone; I’m there with you, listening to miserable songs, and feeling blue even though I have every reason to be happy. And maybe one day I’ll be a smart enough kid to pull myself up by my bootstraps and get it together forever.

Photos from Model Love and Matt Caplin

I fucking love the idea of matchy matchy dressing with my boyfriend. In fact it’s something I try to trick him into doing regularly, but he’s yet to fall for it and was rather annoyed with me when we left his house last weekend in almost matching scarves. I, conversely, punched the air with glee.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t want us to look like creepy twins, or like that couple who wear one red one green Converse each that Alexander Fury keeps seeing in Tesco, but there’s something fun and ridiculous about being part of a secret gang of sorts who wear the same clothes and do the same shit. I love secret gangs: I used to wish when I didn’t have anyone to ride my bike with that I could get a whole gang of friends and dress them up in leather jackets, then we’d ride around and maybe find a secret island like in Swallows and Amazons, and hang out there for the afternoon. Come on! Who doesn’t want a secret gang? Handshakes and haircuts, secret words and songs, imagine it!

If you think about it being in a relationship with someone is a bit like being in a secret gang as long as you do it right. The best things about secret gangs are how everything cool you do is exclusive and under wraps. So if you and your boyfriend call each other pet names, or have private jokes, it becomes 100000000% less cool and fun when you say them in front of people. This goes double for dressing up. While Halloween is the one day of the year this advice/rule/whatever can take a hike, I want you first to look at Dough Reinhardt’s face and think twice before you dress as the tooth fairy and a… ummm…. depressed molar?

I find that most people and pets find being dressed up like an amusing toy incredibly humiliating no matter how much I’m, er I mean, you’re enjoying it which is a damned shame. Although, duh, your boyfriend isn’t a toy some days it would really be a lot better if he just let you do his mascara, draw a glitter lightning bolt on his face, and squeeze into some co-ordinating platforms, because then the two of you could act out some sweet as fuck Bay City Rollers videos. Or you could wear matching suits and pretend to be city boys. Or put on wigs and pretend to be Lady Gaga and her reflection. The possibilities are ENDLESS.

Just remember the secret gang’s rule: keep it indoors, because then no-one can laugh at you.

Pictures from Fuck Yeah Cute, I Love Pugs, and Jezebel

Firstly I want to apologise for the lack of posts lately, my lovely laptop Lindsay Dee Lohan Jr has a dodgy logic board and so she spent most of the week in the Apple Store until they told me the price, at which point I blanched, and whisked her back into my arms. Anyhow, I’ve managed to find a vague way round this problem so regular service will soon be resumed!

As an avid Archie reader since the age of 7 I for one am THRILLED to see him with someone other than the boring Betty and the mean Veronica. While I know NOTHING about Valerie, apart from her penchant for leopard print, I hope they’ll live happily ever after and that Archie won’t stop hanging out with Jughead, who was always the best character. Maybe Jughead can get with Betty? She seems like the type who could whip up a good hamburger… any thoughts?

Archie Comics via Jezebel

And I don’t want to hear about him either. I don’t care if he bought you flowers, or took you to see a cute rabbit at the farm, I don’t even care if he’s really nice and likes all the same crap you like. I JUST DON’T CARE. If this sounds a bit extreme, let me break it down into exactly why I don’t give a toss.

1. They’re your boyfriend not mine.
No matter how sweet, caring, hot, amazing in bed, this person is, they aren’t doing any of this stuff to me. I don’t want them to do it to me, and I’m glad they’re doing all this supposedly great stuff to you, no, really I am, but it impacts so marginally on my life that to have to hear about, read about it, and get twittered at about it, all the freaking time is about as useful to me as you telling me about how relieved you after your first piss of the day.

2.  All this talking about them is eating into my valuable time.
And your valuable time, and dare I say it? our valuable time. We could be talking about how shitty Lady Gaga’s dancing is when compared with that of Beysus or why everything on the internet comes from 4chan. We could be having an intelligent discussion on the link between yamambas and Essex girls. We could teaching me to burp the alphabet. We could NOT be talking about how psyched you were when Tarquin ran you a bath after work.

3. I don’t know them.
When a friend goes out with a mutual friend there is a slightly more vested interest, I liked both of you enough to be friends with you in the first place evidently. But if I’ve only ever met him with you then I don’t have a clue what he’s like. Maybe in time we’ll get to be best buds, sharing a cup of cocoa in the kitchen before bed. It’s unlikely, he wants to stick his dick in you, I don’t: we are very different people.

4.  Are they really that amazing?
Really? Really really? If you wrote down their qualities objectively on paper would they be more amazing than Cory Doctorow? I mean seriously, think about it, he gave you a chocolate bar cos he called you a mean name when he was angry, really, it’s kind of douchey.

5. Unless it’s exciting, funny, or gross, I just don’t care.
Boyfriend fell over and farted on you? Great! You both dodged a speeding motorbike that nearly mowed you down? Amazing! He fell over while naked and arguing with you? Jackpot! Just think of the rule “Tits or GTFO” and you’ll see my conversation criteria.

Please don’t go away thinking I hate your other halves, or you, I really don’t. Your relationship is probably super exciting… to you and them. I’m sure that they make you see stars and fireworks when you kiss not pencils or empty ketchup bottles because, yeah, I get it, you’re in love. But don’t blame me if when I ask you how your weekend was and you reply with “Well, Rory Boring and I…” I high-tail it out of your presence.

Pictures from these three brilliant tumblrs: Vogue Weekend, Living Loving Maid, and Super Woodbinda.

Someone once told me they were glad to be called shallow because it meant they were attractive enough to have that luxury. While this was, on their behalf, an utter fallacy, it’s an interesting idea. Shallowness is one of those things that we all fall prey to, and when we do, we tell ourselves it’s a one off, an exception, and that normally we wouldn’t behave like this, whereas to beautiful people who are used to getting by on the virtue of their looks alone it is every day sort of thing.

That’s not to say that beautiful people are also shallow, more that they benefit from it frequently, and rarely make a fuss. After all if you weren’t terribly bright, but had wonderful opportunities falling in your lap all the time, you’d take advantage of them too! It seems so unfair to those of us who are neither stunning nor infectiously charismatic, watching those who are less intelligent or driven than us suceed, but I like to think, like Earl, that karma has a funny way of sorting things out.

Let’s take for example, the time I attempted to put my brain on hold and date someone who wasn’t very bright. I’m not saying he was as stupid as my old flatmate who had anal sex ‘by accident’, or the intern who I watched stand outside our building for half an hour staring at the bell without pressing it, or even the girl who I convinced that ‘Smoksumgras’ was a nearby shopping centre, but just plain old not that sharp. My motivations weren’t entirely wholesome though, obviously. He was pretty, and sort of funny, and we’d had a drunken fumble and it had been quite enjoyable, so I thought that in the absence of a better candidate I would just hang out with him for a bit. Men, intelligent, funny, successful men, did this all the time I told myself. In retrospect this sounds really cruel, but he wasn’t picking out the flower arrangements yet either so it all seemed fine.

We went for exactly one date. One. In fact if we’re specific about this we went for half a date. In which time he had checked his hair behind my head so often that I had shouted at him, he had refused to eat any chips and marvelled at my capacity to pack them away, and told me I was being all fancy with my reference to Chairman Mao. The minute I finished my first drink I looked at my watch and asked if he wanted to hop it back to mine and watch a DVD. Although I thought we were both under no pretensions we did end up having to actually watch the DVD before making out, which seeing as I’d seen Vixen at least fifty times was slightly tiresome.

After he left I told myself it could be ok, we’d just talk about Hollyoaks (yay!) and people we knew. We’d eat separately and I’d just tell him to be quiet and look pretty if he started asking questions. Or start making out. Either way it was all going to be grand. After a while we’d almost definately have enough of a shared history for it not to matter anymore. Or we’d have moved on.

The latter occurred soon than I thought it would when, the next morning, I logged on to send him a message on Facebook to find him in a relationship with someone 7 years my junior. And that’s when I realised that he was way smarter than me any day.

Photo of Rock Hudson by unknown. (Please note I do not think Rock Hudson was stupid, in fact I am sure he was really really smart, as well as being smoking hot. Sigh.)

While on the bus to work a couple of days ago I sat near two old ladies. They were discussing the reasons women were marrying later and later, and sometimes not at all. It was, they reasoned, because women were too picky. Back in their day (I have no idea how old they were, but they had pure white hair and milk bottle glasses, so old old?) girls learned to love someone in time, instead of expecting to be in love straightaway. Cute huh? It’s like Stockholm Syndrome but with roses. Awww. This ‘expecting true love lunacy’ is because apparently we women go around with a check-list in our heads, trying to find people who will check all the boxes.

This got me to thinking what I want in a boyfriend, and the list I came up with was pretty ridiculous in retrospect. Here is a what I decided:

• Must dress well. No sandals, no ‘witty’ t-shirts, no polar fleece.
• Interesting teeth.
• Funny or witty but not wacky or zany.
• Taller than me.
• Likes comics.
• Does not have a wiry beard. Or wiry leg hair.
• Listens to decent music, possibly not everything I like because that would be odd, but a nice overlap would be good.
• Not sweaty.
• Does not exercise or talk about eating healthy.
• Likes animals but in a normal way.
• Does not scowl at children.

As you can see it was a lot easier to think about what he wouldn’t be like than what he would be. Although if he looked like this I wouldn’t care what he acted like. Phwoar. For all I know ‘he’ might turn out to be a woman, after all as Patrick Wolf says “I don’t know whether I’m destined to live my life with a horse, a woman or a man.” Nobody does really, you never know who you’re going to fall in love with or when or why, that’s the ‘great’ thing about it. My mother fancies Keanu Reeves and yet she got married to my Dad who is smart, skinny, and very English. Who you’re going to fall for is a totally unfathomable mystery! Only I do hope it’s not the horse.

5. Thieves Like Us – Your Heart Feels
This song is best listened to mid-way through the broken heart process: you’ve moved on long enough not to sniff things they gave you and weep, but not enough to talk to them without wanting to pee. It’s a bit like a 2000s The Rat, but about feeling shitty about seeing your ex-boyfriend everywhere instead of getting bored of ‘the scene’ after breaking up with your girlfriend. There’s a difference, ok?

4. Patsy Cline – Three Cigarettes In An Ashtray
Obivously this song is only applicable when you’ve been cheated on, but shit, Patsy Cline knows exactly what’s going on in your heart and if you smoke it’s even better because you can look at all the gnarled butts in your ashtray and sigh. Even better if some are still his. If you smoke his left overs, you are officially disgusting fyi.

3. Amy Winehouse – Tears Dry On Their Own
Let’s just pretend for one second that after writing this Ames dumped Blakey and got on with her life, because this song is pretty much a distillation of everything heartbreak is: your whole life is grey and horrible, you love him so much but he’s a giant douche and doesn’t care about you, and you keep telling yourself you’re going to be an independent woman, but all you do is sit and cry. But hey! There are topless men in the video! Bonus!

2. Blur – To The End
Although you are nowhere near as cool as Justine Frischmann it’s nice to think that you could be sitting there, louche, drinking whiskey, listening to your ex wonder why you broke up, in classy way. This will probably make you cry if you’ve been heartbroken for less than a week though. (Another bonus from the video: Graham Coxon in a suit. Grunt.)

1. Chet Baker – But Not For Me
Bright Eyes – Landlocked Blues
Listening to these two songs got me so emotional it felt unfair to pick one over the other so it’s a joint top spot. And yes I know this is a cop-out but if these two songs don’t move you then you have no soul.

If you really want to wallow in misery then there’s always my self-compiled Saddest Playlist In The World on Spotify which contains all these, and more! And which always reduces me to a jibbering weepy wreck.

When I was a teenager I thought I wanted fast cars, fast people, bright lights and the big city. My life was so mundane that I wanted someone to come and sweep me away into a new one. So I waited patiently for someone to spin my world around but they didn’t come. My brain constantly resembled a Louise Rennison book: hearts on everything, glitter drenched rainbows over all my dreams. Despite being SO SO IN LOVE all the time I was terrified that someone prettier, or cooler, or smarter, or skinnier, would come along all the time. After all what could anyone want with me when they could be with some raven headed pixie girl who ran her own magazine from the garret of a Georgian mansion?

Biding my time hoping to be dazzled made me bored and grumpy: I was now in my twenties and still waiting. Every day was unbearable. Then I had a revelation. One evening, a shitty rainy Wednesday, against my better judgement I went to see a gig with a friend. At 4am I was standing wrapped in a nothing but a shower curtain on a burning hotel mattress while skinheads danced around me trying to douse the flames with brandy, all of us singing and laughing. And that’s when I realised it: I could be my own adventure.

Maybe it shouldn’t have taken causing a few grand’s worth of damage to an innocent hotel room to realise that but it did. No-one was going to come along and ‘save’ me because I didn’t need saving. All the excitement I wanted was there for the taking: I just needed to reach out and touch it. I’m not saying it’s been some smooth ride since then, nor am I going to claim that my life is a high octane thrill ride, but it’s a damned sight better than looking at every face trying to figure out if they are the one who’s going to inject the glamour into my life. The reason I was so scared of that girl in the garret? She was out there, doing things, not waiting to be found, and I was horribly jealous.

It is killing me to type this, it really is, but waiting to be driven appears to be a, whisper it, girl thing. Boys don’t seem to plan on a jazzy girl coming along and changing everything in their life, unless they’re in an indie film, and then it’ll just be to teach them to get in touch with their feelings (don’t mind me while I barf over here). I don’t want to use the words ‘knight in shining armour’ but that’s exactly what it is.  Whether it’s Josh in Clueless rescuing Cher from a life of braindead inanity, or Robin saving Helen from a lifetime of bogey eating in Wetlands, there’s always a man ready to take the wheel and continue the drive. Even in adverts women are constantly being rescued.

But what happens after the credits roll? Once you’ve finished being thankful for your saviour where do you go from there? When I meet my Future Baby Daddy I don’t want to kick it while he decides the course; I want us to be co-pilots, bobsledders, tandem cyclists, or possibly even runners in a three legged race. If I’m hammering this point a bit much it’s because it’s important!! All these stupid dating books I’m reading (for you! not for me! I hate them!), and all the advice I get from my friends, tells me that if I wait ‘he’ will come. Why do I have to wait? If I can take control of my life in every other way then why can’t I take control here? Waiting turns us into slaves to romance. Waiting makes fools of women, it takes us back to the predator/prey idea of relationships, and belittles the efforts that we make to meet someone new.

It’s hard not waiting, almost as hard as waiting, and there are books, tv shows, and nosey old ladies on the bus, who are going to tell you “When you least expect it, they’ll come along, and then everything’ll change!” but I’d rather be getting on with my life and living it the best way I know how, than counting the days on my calendar until he comes along.

Photos by Yann Faucher, blog title stolen from Heartsrevolution‘s awesome song C.Y.O.A

1. Always wear a condom.
Like duh. Duh duh and OHMYGOD DUH. There are so many freaking things that can infect, inhabit, and eat away at your genitals that it’s just not worth taking a chance. Also, if you get a scary sore on your genitals go get it checked! Alexi Wasser’s awesome blog reminded me of this recently and it is so so true. Who cares if it turns out to be an ingrown hair? Better that than ignore it till your lymph nodes start exploding out of your skin.

2. Don’t take a rock-a-billy guy home. Ever.*
Pomade is really hard to get off bed linen.

3. You are better than that shit.
Sometimes ‘that shit’ is the douchebag you’re with, the insane behaviour you’re exhibiting, or the shitty job you’re in; whichever it is you’re better than that! Think about it! Putting up with a ‘alright’ or downright cruddy life, or partner, means that you are saying that you’re not worth any more. Don’t you deserve to live your best life now? (I love you Oprah!) Aren’t you the most amazing person you know? Why not? Everyone has ugly bits of their body, have you ever seen Megan Fox’s thumb? Everyone is an annoying, nagging shrew sometimes, it’s ok! Flaws are what make us adorable! I hate to go all summer of 69 on you all but seriously you are amazing. Maybe you’re not all amazing all the time but it’s like Dr Manhattan says: “Millions upon millions of cells compete to create life for generation after generation until… against unfathomable odds it’s you, only you, that emerged to distil so specific a form from all that chaos. It’s like turning air into gold.”

4. Revenge is neither satisfying nor dignified.
One of the all time lows in my life was having a friend wrestle me to the floor to take my phone away while I screamed profanities into it. This was after an ex made the mistake of leaving me an abusive voicemail then not picking up when I called him back. The message I left him? I don’t even want to think about what it said but it definitely involved the words ‘fuck you you fucking motherfucker I will cut your head off and spit down your neck if you ever call me again’. It didn’t make me feel any better by the way, I just felt depressed that I’d let him get to me, and annoyed I’d recorded something so utterly mortifying.

5. When times get bad sing Jennifer Juniper to yourself.
It’s better than valium I swear.

Photo by Matthew Feyld. *Advice by Money For Jam

When I was younger and had only just started dating boys the time spent waiting for a phone call or text message was almost unbearable. In fact I can remember vividly, aged 14, before teenagers had mobiles (!) spending a weekend sitting by the my house phone. When he finally called and my mum handed me the phone I was so terrified I could barely talk. Our one date at Finchley cinema was such a let down.

For years I subscribed to the ‘he has to call you first’ mantra and handed my number over with gravitas then pretty much stapled my mobile to my head to make sure I didn’t miss the call. Everything I’d ever watched, read, or heard, said that if he didn’t call me within 3 days then he was obviously not interested. Or just wanted a shag. Boys who were interested in me were supposed to try and get in contact the minute the left my prescence. If they lost their phone, or the paper I’d written my number on, they’d find my facebook, or ask a friend to ask a friend until they got to me again. After all, those five minutes they’d spent in my company were so damn amazing they’d be crazy to let me go. What a dick I was.

Forgetting that other people have lives or other things on their mind besides calling me meant that when someone took a week or more to get in touch I would ride a rollercoaster of emotion ranging from being elated someone liked me, to crushed that they had obviously led me on, to pissed off that they had listlessly texted now they were horny and desperate. Worse was when boys volleyed messages back and forth for a day or two then fizzled away. They were just being polite. Oh the shame. This idea had been drummed into my head: if he liked me he’d do anything to get in touch with me. Anything. Even if it involved calling my work place to find me. ANYTHING.

These days I can’t say that I’m some girl who throws her phone number around like confetti but when I do I try and be zen about it. If someone wants to get in touch with me, they will, but they also have a job, a life, a family, and friends. Sometimes these things will stand in the way of sending me sugary text messages no matter how excited he is about all my charms. Of course people can lose their phones, or pieces of paper, but I believe that if something is meant to be, then God, the universe, or whatever, will make it happen, loss not withstanding. Sure sometimes when you’ve met someone who you want to spoon with for hours then it sucks if they don’t call you, and you can find yourself wanting to bombard them with “Why don’t you love me?” style text messages, but it never works out. Patience is not my forte but I just try and erase them from my mind and get on with my life as if they had never existed. Does that sound heartless? It’s just easier to let it go and expect nothing at all sometimes, so that if something wonderful happens then you are pleasantly surprised. When you expect the moon on a stick from everyone you’re only going to be let down.

This isn’t to say that you have to sit at home waiting for someone to contact you, not all! Text them if you want or if you’re brave call them! Just let it go if they don’t reply after two calls or texts. You don’t want to be that crazy bitch who kept calling just to ‘hang out’ for months. And we’ve all been that person at least once.

Photos by Natasha Kaser and Matthew Genitempo.

P.S If you are the boy I met who liked Acme Novelty Library and helped me take my bike to get fixed, then didn’t text me for 2 weeks, who’s phone number I consequently deleted because you ‘obviously were just bored and thought I might sleep with’ you I’d like to say that I’m sorry.