However, I received an email on Tuesday that made me think I’d reached a whole new level of crazy and was hallucinating: I got an email offering me a place on Nottingham Trent University’s Creative Writing masters degree.  That’s right: I’m going back to university!  I’m still expecting an email or phone call to say they’ve made a mistake, and actually, they don’t want me.  Or I’ve messed up my application.  After so many rejections, it’s hard to comprehend that someone actually wants you for something.  That they have faith in me.  Especially when I lost faith in myself a long, long time ago (or did I even have it to begin with?).

Nevertheless, I’m trying to be optimistic.  I’m lucky in that my dad has agreed to pay for my masters, and that I’ve been accepted.  It could really open some doors for me, and will give me a whole new bunch of topics, people and experiences to write about.  Now I just have to work out what to do until then.

Before the days of social media, when friends drifted apart, that was it.  But when you have someone on a social networking site, the possibility of rekindling past relationships will always be there unless you–or they–make the move to remove that friendship from cyber space as well as your mind.  Social networking makes it harder to move on, because as soon as you think you’ve begun to, you see a status that that person has posted, and get the urge to contact them, or to just have a quick look at their feed, even though you know it’s the wrong thing to do.  Friends become acquaintances, and eventually strangers, for a reason.  People seldom grow and change at the same pace, and that’s often why relationships fall apart.

Some friends will drift in and out of our lives, others will drift out and never return.  Deep down, we all know which are which.  It might take us a while to admit it to ourselves, but sometimes it’s worth trusting our instincts and knowing the difference between who’s good for us, who’s bad for us, and who’s simply no longer important.

Dogs are like children in that they need our guidance, they pick up on our bad habits, and we have to clean their shit up.  Unlike children, they never grow up, and they’ll never understand a word that comes out of our mouth.  Sure, some are intuitive and will come and snuggle up to you when they can see that you’re upset, and some will know what “treat” or “sit” means, but those words are just sounds that they associate with things through over six thousand repetitions.  That’s how many times you have to say something to a dog for them to truly understand what it means.  Six fucking thousands.  It sounds a lot, but it all adds up if you do five minutes here, five minutes there and intend to keep your dog for the long term.

The trouble with comparing dogs to children is that people treat them like it, too.  They spoil them.  They mollycoddle them.  They hug and squish them and put them in handbags (ok, that’s not something people do with children.  I hope).  They personify them, when they’re not people.  If they were people, they’d be bipedal, they’d speak, and they wouldn’t take two years to go from being born to being a fully grown adult (although how long it really takes will depend on the breed).

As soon as we start to personify our pets, we stop understanding what they’re actually doing.  We all know they sniff each other’s arses and groins to say hello, but dog psychology runs much deeper than that.  Most of us don’t bother taking the time to figure it out, though.  We know all dogs are different, but we don’t take into account that every breed has different requirements, too.  A Husky, for example, is much more reckless than a Golden Retriever, a breed that is also much more loyal.  Cavalier King Charles Spaniels also aren’t great if you want to walk miles and miles and miles, because they’re only little; they’re better as lap dogs.  (Although really, you shouldn’t let any dog on your lap, as you’re telling them that they’re on a higher level than you, and therefore, in charge.)

We need to stop treating our dogs like humans and except that they are a BIG responsibility, particularly if they’re larger dogs.  It’s not about not trusting them, or thinking that they’re constantly going to bite you, it’s about not expecting them to act like a baby, or a child.  They are a different kind of mammal to us, and therefore, different rules apply.  If we sit there saying, “Oh, he just said hello!” we’re personifying them.  What do we expect from them next?  To use the toilet and not the back garden?

The problem with dogs lies with us.  Only we can fix it.  And we can only do that when we admit that actually, most of us know nothing about dogs.  We know that they’re cute, but we know nothing about the requirements of training a boxer compared to a shih tzu.  We shouldn’t buy a dog based on how cute they are, that’s the system we should use to buy teddy bears.  We should buy dogs based on their personalities, and if they are compatible with ours.  And if they’re not, then we should look at another breed – there are hundreds of them out there, so there’s no excuse.  Just because you think something looks cool, it makes a statement, that’s not enough – just because shoes without heels that are six inches off the ground look good on Lady Gaga, that doesn’t mean the rest of us should wear them, and the same applies to buying dogs.  It’s not an easy thing to admit that we’re out of our depth, but until people start doing more research before they buy their dogs and not just judge a book by its cover, we’ll continue to get saddening stories of people being attacked and killed by dogs, because the owners don’t know them as well as they think.

Try as hard as I can,
I can’t escape the demons,
but when I look in your eyes
I realise that there’s a reason
to keep going,
to keep fighting,
to work hard and keep loving.
I want to prove your faith,
your love,
your trust
right.
Because it means more than anything to me.
It’s what helps me to sleep,
and means I can wake up with a smile,
as it won’t be long
until I see you
again.

There’s nothing left
for you to lose,
Nobody who can
make you feel approved.
Why try
when they won’t notice?
How much longer
do I have to cope
with This?

Why do you act like you care?
When you say nothing,
and you’re so seldom there?

Why do I bother with you?
When you’re naive and selfish,
Only doing what you have to.

I’m falling
apart.

Don’t know
where I’m
going.

Got no

direction

The pain
won’t go

away

Running out of

words

to say.
Help me
I can’t ask.

Too fragile

hiding
behind a
mask.

I’m lost

no one to
reach out to.

I’m wandering

aimlessly

through life

Desperate to find
what I once had
who I once was
and what

What?

I’ve therefore decided to delve into the ranks of freelance writing.  It will probably bring me in about ten pence a day here and there, but at least it’s something.  And at least it’s a way for me to get my foot in the door.

Really, I should’ve done it sooner, but when you’re too busy feeling sorry for yourself and too blind to how deep your depression is to snap yourself out of it, that’s not an easy thing to do.

Wish me luck!

Also, you can like my new Facebook page here.

January wasn’t a great start.  For most of January, I disappeared off the face of the internet.  I barely posted on Artificial Sweetener, read the minimum articles I could to keep Heart of Glass going, and spent most of my time reading.  I finished four books in the space of a month – a record for me – particularly over the last few years where I’ve struggled to finish one or two a year (last year I finished two – one was Caitlin Moran’s How to Be A Woman, the other Alice in Wonderland).  It felt good, to be reading again.  Reading again also has serious implications on something else that I do: writing.

Whilst reading the other books, it was like the writing bug bit me all over again and I finally finished a draft of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun!  It’s only been about two years since I last finished one, if not longer.  I’ve been sitting on this novel for the last five years.  Whilst I’m not a huge fan of the title, it’s not meant to be anything more than what it sounds like: fun.  It’s about friendship, love, and, most importantly, escapism, something which the story allows the characters, and a feeling you should always get when reading a good book.

I’m a couple of drafts away from it being just about passable by my insanely high standards, then I just need to work on a front cover to be able to e-publish it.  For that, I’ll need boyfriend’s help – he’s the Photoshop Nerd, and much better at the visual side of things.  Give me words, I can play all day, but with Photoshop I can be a little hit and miss (and right now it’s more the latter).  It doesn’t help that I’m spending all of my creative energy on writing (for the first time in a long time).

I’ve already done more reading and writing (editing for Heart of Glass not included) in the last month than I have since finishing university.  I hope that the momentum is going to be kept up, but I know that whether or not it does is up to me.

At the beginning of the year, I felt no differently than I did in 2012.  I was fed up, disheartened, drained and lost.  I saw the good in nothing and this came across in everything that I was doing, but writing has always been – and will always continue to be – my salvation, and whilst working on the latest draft for Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, I decided to add in a scene where two of the characters bond over having both lost loved ones.  I chose to end the chapter not on an upbeat note like all the others, but on a thought-provoking one:

“I’ve come to realise that it’s important to grieve but that we shouldn’t hold on to things that we can’t change.  Even if everything doesn’t happen for a reason, if there’s no pattern to life, no God out there, we still need to have faith that there’s always something to live for, even if we haven’t figured out what it is yet.”

As I wrote it – then rewrote it a couple of times – I realised how true it was.  What he says at the start is how I was feeling at the beginning of January – I was still holding on to a life that I can never relive, friends that were bad for people and others that have moved on, and trying to be a person that I was, not who I am.  We spend our whole lives changing, but as long as we remember what’s most important to us, and we keep that close to us – we don’t push it away – we will always be able to find a reason to keep going.  Whether it’s someone we love, something we love or simply the desire to find love, each one is a reason to fight through the black hole, come out the other side and be happy.