The Secret Garden

Consequences

This is absolutely not another angsty post.

Honest.

It's not that my life has been particularly filled with angst lately, just that my background levels of anxiety-inducing life events have risen to such a degree that it is very hard to see the wood for the trees. Relaxation and enjoyment time is at a premium, so when I sit down to write it's usually because I'm delaying some inevitable crisis and that tends to leak through.

I know my writing style has changed, and I'm going to fix that too. Less chat more substance. It's just that it takes time. Time I don't seem to have.

On Tuesday, my new flatmate (who is mostly sane and lovely) started her barrage of news before I had even entered the house. The kitchen window was open, and I greeted her from outside as I opened the front door, which seemed to her to be the pop of the starter's gun. She was off. I actually felt physically oppressed by the weight of the onslaught.

For my own part I have been keeping it all inside. I think I now know the meaning of "keeping a lid on it" because yesterday I felt that if I opened my mouth at all that everything would spill out in a jumbled heap. I kept my lips sealed, and the words tickled my throat as they jostled to escape.

When I finally did speak, I stuttered and stopped and started again before the torrent of my own news got up to speed. Bex said I sounded like someone starting a lawn mower. There was the initial, abortive blast, a second clipped crescendo and then the third time I roared into life and the tide of noise flowed forth.

Talking helped, but it also started a process that I haven't had time yet to finish. Last night as I hurried home to bed I felt the unsaid words bubbling up in the pit of my belly, and today they have rested uneasily there, filling me up and leaving no space for food.

I feel a bit as if I am living someone else's life - I'm being swept along by the rhythm of someone else's tide. Surge and fall, sway and suck. I feel seasick.

Tomorrow night I might be able to relax. But first the cleaning, and then the cooking, and then the carving of the soap and the writing of the journal and the making of the bed I have to lie in.

I think that last task will be the hardest one of all.

Playing hard to get

I'm totally crap at being pursued.

Really, you would think it was easy, but as soon as I realise that someone might be interested I tend to take my own initiative and always with bad results.

It seems that there's a fundamental truth in all of this that I have hitherto been unwilling to admit - that men like to do the chasing. Now, this goes against everything I stand for, and I'm not sure that I altogether agree with it. Why should a man be the sexual aggressor in a relationship? That can only lead to trouble, right?

But how can there be a relationship when I'm too willing to be caught? Perhaps he would like to pit his wits, to feel that he has somehow seduced me? Perhaps I have to let him let me win?

It reminds me of something a friend of mine once said of coquettish girls: "chase me, chase me! Ooh, can't you run fast!"