Category Archives: Personal

Hey, clumsy people: stick to missionary

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There’s no denying it, this post is a rant. So, I’ll try to keep it short. After all, I’m blogging every day at the moment, so it’s not as if there won’t be more words tomorrow. I’ll try and make those words a bit cheerier than these, too.

Those of you who read regularly might well remember Hannah Gale-gate – Hannah wrote a blog post for the Metro where she lovingly listed the ’21 Unsexiest Things About Sex.’

Cosmo, I think, has now gone a step further with this. It started pretty well – I clicked on a post called ’12 sex things men really don’t give a crap about.’ But the universe insists that each and every sex-positive list post must be balanced by a sex-negative one, so, when I foolishly looked at the sidebar of ‘clearly Cosmo has absolutely no fucking shame at all,’ I was lured into clicking on this bullshit.

I could have written this post from a ‘oh great, another article that makes me feel shit about having a physical disability’ angle. But you know what? I’m not going to. I don’t think clumsiness, or even perceived clumsiness, is the preserve of those who aren’t able-bodied. I’ve lost track of the number of women who’ve commented or tweeted since I started this blog to say that they too can’t wear heels, and that they wish they could, even though they’re, guess what, able-bodied.

People are clumsy, no doubt about it. They smash mugs with alarming frequency, they trip over invisible objects, they get their hair caught in the zip of their dress. But it’s not special: *everybody* does those things at some point in their life. It doesn’t FUCKING MATTER.

Yes, I’m angry. I’m angry because I think this perceived lack of grace affects women in a number of different aspects of life – sex and sport being the two that spring most quickly to mind. But mostly I’m angry because that post was written by ‘Anonymous Cosmo staffer.’ You want to write this kind of lame bullshit? Fine. But have the guts to fucking *own* it.

So there’s this bar…

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So pretty close to where I live, there’s this wine bar. Which was where I first met the boy.

About a year later, he texted, mid-morning: ‘Did you know the wine bar’s closing?’

I didn’t. I went, not with him, but with a friend, for one last glass after work. I was feeling sentimental.

It takes me a long time to settle in places. Just as I’m beginning to get comfy somewhere, people start to suggest that maybe, for the sake of my career, my desire to have children, for *some reason,* it might be best to move on. And often, I act on that suggestion.

That bar was just a bar. But when I rocked up there to meet the boy for the very first time, it was pretty much my only haunt. I’d been living in the city less than 4 months. I’d made a couple of friends at work, and my best uni friend lived nearby, but nothing felt like home yet.

We met, or went for post-sex drinks there, often, in the early days. And inevitably, I began to associate it with him. It was where I’d tried to decide if I even fancied him. It was where we’d gone together to a wine tasting on our second date and chatted politely to a lot of middle-class, middle-aged men while his hand slid further and further up my thigh…

The night it closed, he rocked up too, eventually. Friend and I left. He texted:

‘Hey, where’d you go?’

I went back. Obviously.

They’d said they would close at eleven or when the wine ran out, whichever came sooner. The wine got progressively worse, but it didn’t dry up. It turned into a lock in. We were both slaughtered.

When they turfed us out in the early hours, I was desperate to have him inside me. We snogged in the street and eventually ducked between a restaurant and an office block. I was wearing jeans, which was my worst decision of the evening, even worse than buying a third bottle. I knelt in the shadows and sucked his cock, and then we tried, pretty unsuccessfully, to fuck against the wall. It wasn’t the best sex we’ve ever had, in fact, it would probably be up there with the worst. If I could remember the details, that is. But it didn’t stop me thinking about it every time I walked past. *Still* thinking about it every time I walk past, for that matter.

And the bar? It reopened six months or so later, under new ownership. I don’t go there much anymore. It’s not the same as it used to be: it’s poncier, all cream paintwork and yummy mummies.

I’m glad it’s still there in one form or another, though. Because, y’know, memories…

Wicked Wednesday: A flourish of hate

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It’s the editor in me that has to go searching for the dictionary when a prompt has two words that feel like they don’t usually go together – I have to know *why* they don’t collocate.

So, here’s the definition of flourish:

NOUN

1 A bold or extravagant gesture or action, made especially to attract attention: with a flourish, she ushered them inside

For me, that means that hate and flourish kind of do work together: I’m guilty far more often of making bold gestures of hate to attract attention than I am of affection or love.

When I’m furious with him, for example, and I phone him and call him all the names I can:

Cunt. Arsehole. Bastard. Idiot.

I want to hurt him the same way he’s made me hurt, but more than that I do it because I want him to feel *my* pain: I don’t want the fact that I’m suffering to go unnoticed. I don’t even necessarily want an explanation, an apology or a promise that things will be different in future. I just want him to feel shit too.

I’m a bitch, right?

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Three

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In forty-five minutes, the boy and I will have been sleeping together, on and off, for three years.

Fuck, where does the time go?

You’re not supposed to get sentimental about your friend with benefits. They’re the person you fuck when there’s not a better option (that is: a proper relationship). They’re just sex. A stop gap. An itch that needs scratching. A means to an end.

He’s so much more than that to me.

I think he thinks, sometimes, that I don’t like him very much. I wish that was true. Life would be so much easier if he was just someone to fuck: someone whose bed I rolled out of and didn’t think about until I rolled back into it. It would be easier if he didn’t push me, didn’t challenge me, didn’t force me to confront my demons. It would be easier if the sex had been best at the very start, if I wasn’t still learning about what I want in the bedroom. If the thought of losing what we had left me indifferent.

Tonight I went on a date with someone. Someone nice, who I’d happily see again. The type of person who, probably, represents my best shot at happiness. Of course, it probably won’t work out, but if it, or anything else, does, then I think I wouldn’t be what I am right now if it wasn’t for him.

I’ve never bought into what you’re supposed to do. If I want to be sentimental, then fuck it, I’ll be sentimental. The past three years have taught me so much, and for that, I’ll be forever grateful.

Thank you x

I kissed a Scot (and I liked it)

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She wasn’t even a friend.

It was my parents who said I had to go – she was the daughter of one of my mum’s friends, and the family had moved to Aberdeen five years earlier.

I flew from London to Aberdeen on the worst flight I’ve ever taken. This was long before the days of budget airlines and fairly large planes on domestic routes – there were propellors and as we approached the runway at Aberdeen we had to abandon the first attempt at landing because the wind was so strong one wing looked as if it was about to touch the ground.

I was wearing court shoes I could barely walk in. I don’t remember the dress. I didn’t know anyone apart from L, her sisters and her parents.

I was 17 and I’d never been kissed.

Looking back, I think hanging out by the bar was the equivalent of hanging out in the kitchen at grown up parties. Most people were dancing, or gathered around the buffet table. I was perched on a stool, knocking back Smirnoff Ice after Smirnoff Ice.

And there was a boy sat next to me.

I can’t really recall what he looked like. He was skinny, I think, tall, and he wore glasses. We talked about what we hoped to study at uni.

The kissing too, is a bit of a blur. He leaned towards me and we snogged for a few minutes. When I surfaced, L’s mum was staring at me with barely disguised horror. She always was a bit of a judgemental cow.

The boy took my number. L wasn’t impressed, when she found out.

‘He’s a geek, ‘ she said.

Maybe. I still wish he’d texted though.

On the four words it’s really hard to hear…

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The Internet is filled with thousands and thousands of posts about casual sex, friends with benefits, fuck buddies, sex friends – whatever you want to call them. Most of them, or the ones written by people who aren’t sex bloggers and therefore have a tendency to be somewhat less sex positive than you might hope, take a cautionary line, especially if they’re aimed at women. Have casual sex if you must, with the same person multiple times if you’re *really* *really* sure you can handle that, but essentially, be aware that heartbreak is inevitable.

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing about casual sex for a while – largely with reference to Bryony Gordon’s book The Wrong Knickers where she said that no woman really enjoys casual sex. I haven’t read it in full yet, so that post will have to wait, but I do, as you’ll know if you read this blog regularly, have plenty to say on the subject of friends with benefits.

I’m trying to be a bit more upbeat about my current life choices than I was in the early days of the blog, which in practice means I try and write fewer posts beating myself up for caring about him and berating him for not doing the decent thing and ending things for me. That’s what happens in public, anyway…

But truth be told, no matter how many sex positive blog posts I write, no matter how much I love the bruises, the kissing, the fucking, the having my comfort zone constantly challenged, the reality is that, for me at least, a long term friends with benefits arrangement is emotionally bloody hard work.

I care about him. A lot. Certainly a lot more than I should. And I’m not good at hiding these things, so he knows that, obviously. Largely he knows that because of how often I turn on him and call him a cunt.

If you’d asked me 6 months ago, what I wanted most from the arrangement, I’d have said that, sex aside, honesty was the essential. If I asked him a question, I didn’t want him to lie, I wanted to know the truth, no matter how much it might hurt me.

I stand by that, because I think it’s the right approach to take, the grown up one, certainly. But fuck me, it’s harder in practice. We’ve fallen foul of it a couple of times, but there are four words in particular that kill me:

‘I don’t love you.’

Dogs and babies

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Last week, I was telling the boy about something I’d read. A piece on just how beneficial dog ownership is for mental health: it imposes routine on your life, for one thing, but also brings affection, company …

But this isn’t a post about dogs. This is a post about what I said next, when he asked, ‘Are you thinking of getting a dog, then?’

‘No,’ I said, without considering my answer, ‘I’d rather have a baby.’

There was an awkward silence and the side-eyeyist side eyes I’ve ever seen. He reached for his phone: ‘I’m *so* tweeting that!’

I lunged for it, before he could: ‘Don’t you fucking dare!’ and ended up sprawled across him, his phone still well out of my reach.

We were both laughing.

I’ve written before about how much I want children. I’m not ashamed of being honest about that. Wary, perhaps, in case it never happens and I’ve bared my deepest desires to the world only to ultimately fail at making them reality, but not ashamed.

But I do think being honest about wanting kids is still a problem for some women today. When I first started Internet dating, two of the standard questions gave me pause. The first was the one about how much I drink. The friends who watched me fill in my profile cautioned against ticking ‘Most evenings,’ or ‘Often,’ on the basis that it would make me sound like an alcoholic, and encouraged me to tick ‘Socially,’ instead. And I did, because at the end of the day, I don’t think it’s that big a deal either way.

I didn’t ask my friends what they thought I should tick for the question about children. Should I go for ‘Doesn’t have kids, but wants them’ or ‘Doesn’t have kids, but *might* want them?’ In the end, I plumped for the latter, but I do still wonder if some guys might read it and think that essentially, I’m looking to get knocked up as soon as I can.

I’m not. I haven’t reached this point just yet.

On connecting and loneliness

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If you only read for the hot posts, look away now.

When I set this blog up, I had no idea what it would turn into. My Twitter bio quite clearly says that I write about ‘sex and disability,’ but whenever I do, I feel slightly guilty, like I’m somehow letting down my readers. I lose followers, too. But I fully buy the argument that you should blog first and foremost for yourself, so this post, as you might expect of one written at 4am, is really a post for me. To help me make sense of things.

I have a friend who also has a medical issue that dates back to birth. In the last 5 years or so, she’s on occasion expressed frustration with doctors, saying that they never really understood her condition so what’s the point of expecting them to find long term solutions to pain and other problems that flare up. My answer has always been that things have changed since the early 80s. Doctors *do* have knowledge and solutions now that they didn’t have then.

What I didn’t realise was that that applies to me too. Naively, I thought that because I have a condition that affects 1 in a 1000, it was common enough that doctors understood it inside out, and always had.

That, of course, is not true. And it’s frustrating, given that I last saw a consultant at the age of ten. Since then, my only contact with medical professionals around the whole issue has been when something flares up. Knee and hip pain might get me referred for an MRI. It might get me onto a waiting list for a handful of sessions of NHS physio. I no longer get to talk to specialists about it.

Which means that occasionally, I stick whatever symptoms I’m having into google with ‘+ hemiplegia’ tacked on the end. ‘Depression + hemiplegia,’ ‘Anxiety + hemiplegia,’ that kind of thing. And HemiHelp, which is what that link above leads to, is a massively useful source of information.

Last night, I was talking to someone about why I feel so low, or, more specifically, why I feel so lonely. Part of the problem is that I feel like I don’t know how to connect with people – I have problems with small talk, bonding on a superficial level and making new friends. Sometimes, I said, it feels like I might be borderline autistic.

Well, she said, perhaps that’s true. Have you looked it up? So I did. And here’s what came back:

The answers to ‘does your child have associated conditions?’ were as individual as the children themselves. ‘Yes’ is the short answer, for 69% of parents. A majority of parents said that in addition to the visible physical effects of their hemiplegia, 67% of their children have learning difficulties, while 42% have epilepsy, 40% have visual impairments and 34% have speech impairments. Autistic Spectrum Disorder was also reported by a significant minority of parents (14%). Even more parents (86%) told us about other associated difficulties, with the main problem being irritability (61%). This is followed by attention span (59%), anxiety (55%), visio-spatial issues (50%), maths (49%), obsessiveness (44%) and reading (38%) (Parents’ survey: the findings. http://www.hemihelp.org.uk)

Ah. Suffice to say I think I have a fair few of those issues. Irritability? Definitely. Obsessiveness? Yes, that seems fairly accurate too. And the Visio-spatial issues and maths problems are also relevant.

So perhaps that’s why I have problems connecting. Perhaps that’s why I’m bossy, self-absorbed, selfish, and bad at friendship. It’s not a get out of jail card, but it helps to know there might be a reason for it.

Comparison is the thief of joy

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Juniper, at The Cut of my Jib, makes me laugh. We were chatting yesterday and she sent me a message with this quote:

Comparison is the thief of joy.

‘That’s from Mumsnet,’ she explained, which was what amused me. I love the idea of her sitting there trawling Mumsnet for the perfect motivational quote. The original, according to the internet, is attributed to Theodore Roosevelt. Hmmm… somehow Mumsnet actually seems a more probable source. Anyway, more on this later.

I woke up this morning with a sense of shame similar to that I feel when I wake up and *know* that I sent a whole bunch of ill-advised drunk texts the night before. And yet last night I drank less than half a glass of wine. What did I do?

I tweeted about being blindsided by depression.

For someone who overshares about her sex life on the Internet, I feel way more uneasy about talking about my mental health in this way. ‘Look at me!’ it seems to scream. ‘I’m sad! Love me! Love me! Love me!’

So why do I do it?

Because late at night, when you’re alone and it feels like no one quite gets it, it’s easier to share with a faceless crowd on Twitter than it is to tell a real person. Imagine I’d phoned my mum at gone midnight and said ‘Mum, I can’t stop crying. I’m terrified about the future. I don’t know how much longer I can carry on like this.’ What good does that do? All that means is that two people lie awake worrying, rather than just one.

But when I wake up the following morning, it makes me cringe. Telling complete strangers that you’re sitting, shaking, in floods of tears? How pathetic. And that, broadly, is how I feel about my mental health more widely.

I was brought up to believe that mental health issues were something that happened to other people. Other *weak* people. At dinner, when I was a teenager, my mum would occasionally mention a friend of hers: ‘P’s just been put on Prozac again. Seems like everyone’s on it these days, doesn’t it?’ The disapproval was clear.

By the time I was first diagnosed with depression, Prozac was out of fashion. Citalopram was, and still is, the antidepressant of choice. I didn’t start taking it without a fight – my mum’s disapproval was still ringing in my ears – and I’ve never told my parents about the 18 months I spent on it, despite ultimately being honest about therapy.

It felt like a failure.

A lot of what you read about depression tells you that sufferers don’t talk about their feelings, that they suffer in silence, withdrawing, cutting themselves off from the world. I can’t even do that bit right: I’m a noisy, hysterical, selfish depressive – ask me how I feel and there’s every chance I *will* tell you just how shit everything is, that I’ll cry, that I’ll make you so uncomfortable you’ll wish you’d never asked. Most people suffering from depression lose weight. Not me. I stop eating meals, sure, but the food, the fatty, unbalanced, unsatisfying food, continues to pass my lips. Too often.

I’m a failure.

I mean, I’m not, obviously. I have a job that I quite like and that I’m quite good at. I have a handful of friends I see regularly. I’m fucking a guy that I both like and fancy. My family love me. But even though I *know* those things (and I never forget them), in the dead of night, or on an idle Sunday afternoon, they sometimes cease to be true. It feels like no one cares, like I don’t matter, like I’ll never, ever love or be loved.

Of course, everyone else’s life is perfect. That guy my friend’s fucking? Well, he’ll probably fall in love with her and they’ll spend every weekend doing romantic, exciting stuff together and I’ll never see her. (Did I mention I’m
a bitch, as well as being ill?) My other friends live too far away, we’ll drift apart, lose touch. My parents? Well, you can see where that one’s going…

But essentially, this is where Juniper’s quote (hey, Teddy, was that your quote? Forget it, it’s Juniper’s now) comes back in. When I’m low, what makes that low spiral lower still is comparing myself to other people.

It feels like everyone else has plans, exciting plans, every single weekend. Never mind that I’ve already used up my holiday allowance for the year doing fun stuff, never mind that I no sooner get paid than I spunk my salary up the wall doing all kinds of interesting stuff, it still feels like I’m doing it wrong, and everyone else is doing it right. Of course, the boyfriend on the arm in the Facebook pictures doesn’t help…

But it isn’t that, is it, really? I’ve been single and content before now. Friends have had partners who’ve come and gone, and we haven’t lost touch. I’ve been *happy* now and then. No, the problem is that I’m sick…

But sick isn’t a comfort either. People deal with depression in different ways, some better than others, but even I don’t know if I’d rather you told me everything will be ok in the end, or whether you treated me like I’m the same as I ever was.

Last night, I cried until the early hours. I went to bed shattered and burnt out. I woke up this morning feeling much like the sky looks after a storm – my skin was puffy and pale and my stomach was still churning with anxiety, but the worst had passed. My sharp edges felt blunted, as though I were a softer, more approachable version of my usual self. I’m sure a few people will breathe a sigh of relief, reading that.

But I’m not me when I’m sick. I don’t recognise myself. Yes, I have sharp edges, yes I’m a handful. But I’m me. And I have sass.

I want my sass back.

Burning

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I’m on my knees and it stings. Cold concrete and gravel dig into my skin. Am I hurt? I have no idea. I’m bleeding a bit, certainly. There are little red pinprick dots on my teal linen dress. There’s the shock factor, too: a second ago I was upright, sauntering across the road and now I’m a crumpled mess, all burning palms and tears welling.

I fall often, probably once a month at least. I’ve stumbled home with laddered tights, tripped off the edge of a pavement and landed sprawled across the road, right in the headlights of an oncoming bus, loose change and the occasional tampon spilt across the Tarmac. Women (it’s always women, and for that I’m kind of grateful) rush to make sure I’m ok, and I try not to cry. Please, please don’t be nice to me: I’m ok, I’m not broken, I’m just so, so embarrassed. I pick myself up, dust myself down and get on the bus (because that’s the second rule of buses, dontcha know: three come along at once, and if you fall over in front of a bus it’ll always be the one you subsequently have to get on, grit your teeth and deal with the driver’s concern. He did almost run you over, after all.)

In short, when I fall, the physical pain and damage is pretty much the last thing to register. The first is the shock, and the second, hot and unshakeable, is the shame. I burn with it for days after the event, inspecting the heels of my boots for unevenness, mistrusting my every step. If only no one had seen me do it…

And yet at home, tucked up warm in bed, shame is one of the predominant emotions I seek out. I flick through the pages of erotic novels looking for just that: the moments where a character not only submits but allows herself to be shamed, humiliated. Where that shame and humiliation makes her come.

It makes me come too, despite being my greatest fear in real life. Or perhaps *because* it’s my greatest fear. Either way, the burn of shame is both agony and ecstasy, all at the same time.

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