Torture

Why do we do things to torture outselves? Why when we know things are wrong, or will hurt us, why do we go ahead and do them anyway?

I left my job on Friday, and I continue to be incapable of grasping major events as really happening. It didn't feel real to me, even when I knew that people were secretly signing a card and gathering in an office to say farewell to me, it still didn't feel like it was any different to normal. Even when I cleared my desk, sent emails saying goodbye, and put on my out of office to tell people I'd gone, it still didn't feel real. I gave in my security pass at the end of the day, because this time I really wouldn't be coming back.

The funny thing is though, I can still login to my company webmail and check for any new emails for me. I logged in yesterday to email accounts about some expenses I am still owed, and I logged in today to check for any misguided and belated declarations of undying love from former colleagues.

What there was in my inbox was an email from HR entitled "Welcome". I know these emails only too well -- when someone new joins the company, they get their photo taken and later in the day an email circulates with the picture and a brief bio on them, instructing us to welcome them to the company. I knew I didn't want to open the email. I knew who it would be welcoming. But of course I opened it anyway. Welcome the new account coordinator, this pretty girl fresh out of university with a degree in business studies. Who today will be sitting at what a week ago was my desk, chatting and laughing with my now former colleagues. It feels like being dumped.

Last night I was talking to San about this boy she's seeing. She's been seeing this guy for months. Of course, to begin with she claimed they were only friends but one thing always leads to another -- talking leads touching, and touching leads to sex -- and now she's complaining to me that's confused because she likes him and she doesn't want to scare him off and why does she always fall for friends. I told her that was absurd reasoning, why shouldn't you fall for someone you like? It's not like they have been platonic friends for years and years. And I kept berating her to just tell him how she feels -- especially as apparently he's been making suggestions of the same thing, about how spending time with her makes him happy. I think I did get through to her, eventually -- made her see that he won't very well and tell her he doesn't like her "in that way" or isn't ready for a relationship if they've been sleeping together for however long. I told her she'd got things in the wrong order, but couldn't criticise because she and I did exactly the same thing. And if he now turns around and says she's alright as a fuck buddy but not a girlfriend, then she shouldn't be with him at all.

But that too feels like being dumped. She seems compeletely oblivious to how I might be feeling in all of this. In the past I have half-jokingly referred to him as my replacement, and that's what it feels like. However many times we may sleep together, or just share a bed, or drink too much and make out it's not me any more, it's him. We've been here before, she and I, and it's obviously a character flaw in me that we keep ending up back here. The whole thing with the over-enthusiastic bunny boiler girl just made me miss San, and want her back, and make me want to tell her I loved her. But you can't go back. Even if she felt the same way, even if I asked her to take me back, I know now she wouldn't. It was a bit like with Fi, I felt like with each successive boyfriend of hers since me I was getting one step further from ever being able to have her back. Perhaps it's good that Fi and I only see each other once every few years. Incidentally, she wants to meet soon -- asked me again today when we could go for a drink. And I still fantasise about winning her back.

It's absurd. Last weekend I was taking an Italian girl to a snowboard show and taking her picture on my phone, thinking how beautiful she looked in the picture. Even now, she's going back for a couple of weeks and I tell her I want to see her and I want a postcard from Italy. But I don't know if I really like her, if I just want to like her, if I just want to be with someone. Part of me says it would be unfair on her to do anything, if I'm still moping after a girl who dumped me two years ago, and part of me says it would be an excellent way to move on.

Thursday night was a haloween party at work. It was messy. Anything that involves a "vodka luge" -- a kind of ice-scuplture ski run they poured vodka down to your waiting mouth at the bottom -- was never going to promote responsible drinking. Most of the night seems hazy to me now -- flashes of memories, here and there. Talking to a woman from a neighbouring design agency, telling her I wasn't a frustrated novelist and her trying to convince me to take part in NaNoWriMo. Or a half-remembered flash of hugging the cute redheaded girl -- how small her waist felt, as I hugged her. She was drunker than I was, hugged me and told me she was so sorry I was leaving.
"I didn't think you knew who I was", I told her. Trying to be cynical, probably just slurring my words.
"Of course I know who you are!" She insisted, "You're Jay [or insert real name here]! Everyone knows you!"

I don't remember much else. There was certainly nothing inappropriate. I remember very vaguely the train home, hiccuping. I remember throwing up on the walk home in someone's bushes. I have a very vague memory of buying Burger King before catching my train, which probably explains why I threw up in a bush.

The next day I can't find my Oyster card -- and I only just put a tenner on the damn thing -- or the photo portion of my travelcard. Mysteriously the ticket portion was in my coat pocket -- I mus have taken it out of the travelcard wallet to get through the barrier. That's a small mercy.

Last week, before I even heard about not getting the job, I cut myself. For months I have mentioned here feeling confronted by sharp objects. Feeling uncomfortable around a stray craft knife left on my desk. I can't be trusted with sharp objects. And eventually it became a self fulfilling prophecy, a scalpel used for cutting pages from magazines eventually was put to good use -- cutting short, sharp lines into my forearm. More of a scratch than anything else, wary of not drawing undue attention to myself -- but all the same I'd look down later to see small trails of blood. Small enough you could wash them off, or keep washing them off until they clotted, and the cuts small enough to hide.

These are the things I self censor.