Phase

She is a canvas, a blank page for art

Her soft flesh never damaged before

But after years of gradual emotional decay

A raw web is spun from red thread

A glorious mess sculpted from out of

Some strange and surreal dream

And yet she works like an artist

Ignoring her bodies needs

In order to finish her masterpiece

I felt that it was imperative to include the title, as I knew perfectly well when I wrote that poem that it was a phase. It was one more little patch before finding what I really want to be. I've been e-mailing Ben of late. Ben H Ben. And in these e-mails the topic of what makes a person who they are has come up. He told me that in my responses I was being very existiential or however you spell it. And then had the audacity to explain what that meant. It's funny that I say that, in fact, funny that I was offended that he assumed I didn't, because if it hadn't been for Tristan, I wouldn't. But I don't know. Him explaining it still made me feel like he was being patronising.

Anyhow, patronising, that's a point I'm going to get to in a minute, first I want to talk about that poem.

I wrote it, believe it or not, for English. The teacher just told us to write any poem with imagery, and that was what I came up with. I chickened out of using that one though, instead I used one I wrote ages ago. A quite good one, not my usual style. It plays around much more with sound combinations than with the theme itself, but the theme kind of slides into place. But that one, up there, that I actually wrote for it... well... I like the imagery of the canvas, and the red thread, and I like the lines

A glorious mess sculpted from out of

Some strange and surreal dream

But that's rally all the merit that poem has isn't it? Apart from showing exactly what I felt for a few weeks of my life. It isn't as much as you might think. It doesn't really matter. I expect that I will forget about it. But I like a couple of the lines, and it mattered at the time.

Patronising. EVERYONE is patronising towards me. God, I could slap them sometimes. I mean, let's take two people as an example.

Insecure, angsty, fucked up Sibz.

Sensible, mature, content, laid back but slightly arrogant Ben.

You might think that Ben would be the patronising one out of the two, and I've been thinking it over, and thinking it over, and I have come to a conclusion. Neither is more patronising than the other.

Let's say... I have a really bad day and I make my arm look like it's been to Iraq and back.

From Ben I'll get a whole load of condescending bullshit about how much of an idiot I am, and how unnecessary it was, and how I'm crap at dealing with things properly, and how I'm just a stupid immature fucked up angsty teenager who's just desperate to fit in while looking like she's different, and from Sibz, it ain't gonna be much better, because she can do the whole "Oh I've already been there, it's not a good habit Anniekins" cause she's so much worse than me and blah blah blah.

Same with sex. Ben can (Although to be fair, he wouldn't) call me a slut if I give some random guy head at a party, and Sibs can go "Oh I've already done that, don't worry Anniekins, it isn't as bad as it seeeeeeems"

And do you know what infuriates me more? Sibz. At least Ben almost has grounds to be patronising. He's my age for a start. And secondly, he isn't the one being stupid in those circumstances, it's me. So I guess I could forgive him being a little patronising. But a 14 year old trying to act like because you aren't already fucking, and you don't tear your body apart on a regular basis, you're in some way inferior.. it kind of makes you go "Huh?" in a rather big way.

I know she doesn't mean to. I know that her intentions are good, whereas in the Ben scenario, he probably would be trying to be patronising, but still... you know? I don't think I'm ever patronising, even when I have grounds to be. I mean maybe I am and I just don't realise, but usually I take a completely different route (Like insane fury) to get at someone. I almost feel like... a victim of injustice, because I'm in the middle. People can be condescending from both sides of the bridge, but I'm never condescending back.>