Editing Emma: Online you can choose who you want to be. If only real life were so easy...

Still, I can be mean about her online dating antics all I like but she may have a point. I thought it was time to finally communicate with the outside world and get a valid, non-parental opinion. So Steph came over. When she arrived I heard Mum say, ‘She’s somewhere in the darkness. Just follow the smell.’

‘How are you?’ Steph asked cautiously, perching on the edge of the sofa. I looked even more pale and sickly next to her gorgeous dark skin, and she looked really good in her football kit. It sort of made me maybe want to get changed out of my giant, stained pyjamas, but only for a moment.

‘Fine,’ I replied.

‘Clearly,’ she said, glancing at the huge pile of tissues at my feet.

We sat in silence for a moment, and then I broke down in tears.

‘He’s got another girlfriend,’ I sobbed.

‘I know,’ she said, putting her arms around me.

‘And he didn’t even tell me.’

‘I know.’

‘I’m nothing.’

‘You’re not nothing. You’re definitely something.’

We stayed hugging for a while, until she said, ‘Emma, this is all lovely and everything, but on second thoughts can we hug after you’ve had a shower?’ She moved away.

‘Oh God. Look at me. This happened two months ago and I still feel exactly the same about it. I mean, yes, that status only just came up. But we stopped speaking at the beginning of summer. In two months I have made zero progress. How is that possible?’

‘Maybe because instead of actually trying to make progress you keep stewing over how you’ve made no progress.’

I sensed her annoyance, then. It was time to ask the important question.

‘Steph, am I being truly unbearable?’

‘No, I mean… well…’

‘It’s OK. You can tell me.’

She took a deep breath.

‘Well, the rate at which you ask me how I am has definitely gone down in proportion with how much you sit around pretending to be Miss Havisham. But that’s fine, there’s definitely an allowance for this.’

‘Ugh, for about two weeks, not two months. I’m so sorry.’

‘Emma, it’s OK, I don’t mind. I’m just a bit worried. Don’t you think it’s time to move on? I mean… Leon has.’

‘Owch.’

‘I’m sorry, Emmy, I’m not trying to be mean. I just really want you to see it like it is. I know you liked him, that’s probably an understatement, but…’

‘But he’s with Anna now. Who is categorically better than me. I know, I have the proof.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I made a pro/con list.’

‘I… You did WHAT?!’

For some reason this made her truly, deeply angry with me. Angrier than she has been with me all summer, angrier than she was when Oberyn’s head got squished on Game of Thrones. She launched into a full on rant,

‘EMMA. A PRO/CON LIST?! Come on!! Where’s your dignity and… sense of self worth?! Where’s your feminism?! You’re not like… objects to be compared!!! You’re both PEOPLE. Leon treating you like this has nothing to do with Anna, or you, and by the way… you completely don’t deserve to be treated like this!!!’

She took my phone and made me delete the pro/con list. Eventually, she calmed down, and started breathing normally again. Before she left I said, ‘I’m not pretending to be Miss Havisham, by the way, I’m channelling her.’

‘Whatever you say.’

posted by MissH 23.18

Ugh. Steph is so, so right!! An Emma/Apple pro/con list??? Is this what I’ve been reduced to?! Measuring myself against another girl? I should never have been left to sit around wondering what I did wrong, and I definitely shouldn’t be sitting around comparing myself with Leon’s new girlfriend!!! Making myself feel bad, or feeling the need to insult her when this is completely not her fault! People are different, and you know what, if he didn’t like me and he liked Bland Face then he should have had the guts to say it to my face. Or at least my direct message inbox.

An Ode To Steph

Oh Steph you make the skies seem blue, which they are in fact and that is true, but without you they might as well be poo, because without you oh what, oh what would I do?

Quite like that. Sent it to her. She said:

You are a freak. Sx 23.14

Friday, 5 September i.e. Day 48 of Despair

posted by MissH 12.46

Ghosting – Is This An Actual Thing?

Got an email from Gracie. It said, ‘I know you don’t want to talk but this might help xx’ and then she linked me to some article about something called ‘ghosting’.

The Urban Dictionary definition of ‘Ghosting’, just in case you were wondering:

The act of suddenly ceasing all communication with someone the subject is dating, but no longer wishes to date. This is done in hopes that the ghostee will just ‘get the hint’ and leave the subject alone, as opposed to the subject simply telling them he/she is no longer interested.

Was this supposed to make me feel better?!?!

posted by MissH 18.28

Spent the last five hours reading horror stories about ghosting. One woman was dating a man for eighteen months, had met his parents and agreed to move in, and one day he was just… gone. She went round to his flat and he’d moved out. She eventually got in touch with his old flatmate and apparently he was living in Scotland with another girl. Even more bizarre, one woman had been married (yes, MARRIED) to a man for twelve years (TWELVE YEARS) and one day they went to the local swimming pool. One moment he was there, doing his lengths nearby, and the next he was gone. Just like that. Did he get up and go in his trunks?? It’s two years later and she’s still technically married to him.

Aghh, I must stop this! YET ANOTHER DAY HAS BEEN WASTED FEELING SORRY FOR MYSELF. I need to focus on something else, anything else!! THE TIME HAS COME. Something good has to come out of this pathetic, miserable summer!! I will forget about Leon and his complete, utter rejection of me that makes me want to do nothing but lie in darkness watching serial killer documentaries on Netflix. I WILL NOT BE LEFT LOST AND CONFUSED IN A SWIMMING POOL.

I deserve so much more than a ‘ghosting’, and so does every other human being on the planet! I always knew it, in a sort of vague way like how you know you should floss, but now I’m really starting to feel it. Ugh. What a JERK. He had me feeling bad about not baking. I HATE BAKING. AND THAT IS FINE. It’s not like he’s so perfect, either… Let’s take a moment to examine Leon’s CONS, why don’t we!!

posted by MissH 18.57

Reasons Why Leon Naylor Is NOT Worth Any Girl’s Time or Virginity

1) He ends relationships by pretending girls no longer exist. Do I need to go on? No, but I will anyway because there’s more. 2) He eats far too many Chewits. There are other foods, you know. 3) He finds fart humour way too funny. Sometimes it is, but there’s a time and a place. 4) Relating to my last point, he is completely juvenile. 5) He’s actually kind of stupid. He’s always getting me to help with his Maths, Physics & Chemistry (he really struggles with anything vaguely numerical). He pretends like he doesn’t care but he tries SO HARD in everything and usually gets bad marks anyway. He once confided in me that he felt like his parents loved his brother more, because he was the smart one and applying to medical schools. I told him it wasn’t true, but it probably is.

Oh, and his brother is better looking than him, too.

I hate him.

posted by MissH 23.48

I’m going to bed consumed with rage. I’m shaking a little bit and my teeth are chattering, I’m so angry. At least, I am for about five minutes and then I feel sad again. And then angry. And then sad. It feels good to finally be angry, I think, but it also feels like my body is too small for everything that’s going on inside me. It’s like a cage. How can everything that I’m feeling be contained in me, in this little room, in this little house? And everyone else’s feelings inside them, in their little rooms, in their little houses? All trapped inside ourselves sitting alongside each other in this big mess? Why hasn’t the world imploded?

I think anger must mean I’m feeling a bit better, anyway.

Saturday, 6 September i.e. Day 1 of Recovery

posted by MissH 10.50

Fuelled by a new outrage that has lasted for over twenty-four hours now, I have decided to take some action in my life. This has seemed a very remote and unreachable possibility all summer, and my reasons for feeling this way now are four-fold:

1. Anger and disbelief that I have been sitting around being this pitiable, for this long, over someone who has yet to even pay me the courtesy of a rude break-up text.

2. Panic that my own mother and best friend will stop talking to me if I don’t stop being so annoying. It’s not like I’m exactly swimming in friends as it is.

3. The realisation that not only have I succeeded in alienating all my friends, I seem to have estranged myself. (When did that happen? When did I become this pathetic person I really, intensely dislike?)

4. A belief (or hope) that there must surely be a better use for the internet than for self-involved moping and stalking my ex-boyfriend.

For these reasons I have started redesigning my blog, which is as pathetic as I am. Goodbye, My Dingy Internet Cave.

posted by MissH 11.01

Should I also throw away my Chewit wrapper collection of all the Chewits Leon ever gave me?

posted by MissH 11.04

Let’s not go too far.

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