The Truth of the Matter

"Babes...."
"Yes love?"
"Why are we special though? What makes us so special that we don't have to work when everyone else is?"

The babes used to be ironic. When we both had media jobs, darling, it was a little nod at the ridiculousness of the industry that we felt we were above. Now that we're both unemployed the irony has dissipated slightly, but it's become habit.

The problem with being jobless in the summer is that it starts to feel like a holiday. You're sat in the park with Dick and Nicole Diver, a vanilla latte in one hand and a cinnamon swirl in the the other, a copy of the Guardian sat waiting to be perused and it's hard to remember why, exactly, you need to work anyway. I mean there's always the question of funds, but more often than not there's a parent or a government handout to answer that for you.

My biggest downfall in life is that I have the perfect temperament to be an artist. Living from hand to mouth, working when inspiration hits me and greedily absorbing all other cultural forms on my time off, I don't need structure and security to be content. A writer sat at my antique roll-top desk all day writing a novel that will become the voice of my generation - it's where I've always seen myself.

Although between the endless Twittering and Facebook updates, I'm not so sure my generation needs another voice.

There's just one fly in this fantasy ointment, one hitch on the ladder up to cultural significance - I'm not talented. I never have been. Oh, I'm certainly intelligent, and I have a good eye for other people's work, a certain 'je ne sais quoi' when it comes to writing a witty email; but genuine, unmistakeable artistic talent? Unfortunately not. Which begs the question - what is a middle class girl to do when she realises that she's too flighty to succeed in the corporate world and just too average to succeed in the arts?

I am George Harvey Bone

I watched Requiem for a Dream last night

I felt violated. So dark. Too much given my current state of mind

Great editing though.

I am getting rid of the DVD, don't want to even have it in my possession. It's the Portishead 3rd album all over again.

He leaves on Sunday. For good. It's been an intense week of declarations with ambivalent responses. Can't even talk about it.

Reading a great book at the moment - Hangover Square, Patrick Hamilton. Main character is schizophrenic... obsessively in love with someone who tolerates him with no returned affection... eventually I think he murders her.

The state of mind of Mr Bone is hilariously, painfully, brutally reflective of my own.

First

A warning - there will be no preamble. This is going to start where my thoughts are now, I have no desire to write up the backstory. Love it or leave it, that's the way it's going to be.......

When I was with Him I felt a strange ownership, but only while he was sleeping. When he was asleep I used to watch him and feel strangely territorial - I'd find a freckle, a rogue chest hair, a scar and I'd think - they're mine, for now at least they belong to me. And I'd feel strangely proud, a sense of accomplishment. As if by lying there with him I'd already achieved something. But then just as I could feel my hand creeping out to claim ownership of what I'd already considered mine for the past few years without him even knowing, I'd remember where I was and who I was with ... and I would bring my hand back.

I've never really felt like that with anyone else. I never felt the need to own anybody before - I didn't want to be theirs and I didn't mind that they weren't mine. But with him, there was an almost physical yearning to own him, to keep him, to hold the exclusive rights. Maybe it's the old cliche coming true - I wanted what I couldn't have. But I'm not convinced by that. I don't think having him would have lessened it, it just would have made it easier. And harder too perhaps - I'm not niave enough to have not realised that there was a certain amount of projection happening. That the reality may well have fallen short of the fantasy.

I think that's why I've been so dissatisfied with everyone since. I miss that sense of ownership. For the first time in my life, I want to own and be owned. I want to take possession of someone, every flaw, every mark, every success and I want that sense of pride. I want to belong to someone too. That's what was missing with Him - he didn't want to own me. Next time, I want the ownership to be a two-way street.