It took an embarrassingly long amount of time to work out that my love language was actually physical touch and I was just gay. It used to be acts of service but I think that just cos I like men to do stuff for me cos when they’re doing stuff for me it means they can’t be having sex with me. 

Do you know that feeling when you’re talking to a group of people who are all speaking in butterflies and you’re afraid to open your mouth because a big fucking slug is gonna plop out? I’m getting that a lot at the moment because I’m having lots of stressful meetings with work and stuff. Big slugs everywhere when I talk. I don’t know how to get butterflies to come out but based on my research in the industry, I think going to private school might have helped.

Trauma gets passed down through generations, like, the body remembers. I think that’s why people have babies, cos they can’t be arsed to deal with their own trauma so they just pass it on to the next generation to sort it out. Sometimes I wonder if that’s what my mum tried to do with me, but that’s completely backfired and jokes on her cos I’ve been sectioned twice and given the chance would claw my way back inside her to experience a brief moment of respite from this grim life. 

As children me and my sister found it very difficult to relate to the film The Parent Trap because we couldn’t fucking wait for our parents to get divorced. If that was a movie, it would just be me and my sister individually listening to each parent tell us how they wished the other one was dead. Not as heartwarming, but I do think reflects more of the general population’s parental dynamic. I think it would be called Parents trapped and the ending would a big beautiful divorce, my mum running free, nicole kidman style. She throws the divorce bouquet at me, and because I lack a partner and exist as the human embodiment of the avoident attachment style, the sequel is me attempting to divorce my consciousness from my body – the last relationship I am yet to sever. My boss level.

I just had my birthday and I got three electric blankets from separate people. In the middle of April. Says a lot about my friends – either they know I’m perpetually cold, lonely, or they all secretly individually want me to die (apparently electric blankets are very dangerous?). 

Reading that last entry I did, I was in actual hell about that break up. Pathetic now, but looking back at my phone notes I wrote to myself, my god I was dying. I wrote some funny ideas during that relationship and I’ve got enough distance to write about them now, but the one that’s stuck with me most is this concept of saying “I love you” for the first time. 

It’s meant to be unexpected and heartwarming, if movies are anything to believe (and who do we trust if not media?) but for me it was very much a process of trickery. I Truman Showed her. 

When she finally said it, it felt a lot like I had been undercover as a cop infiltrating a drugs gang, and I’d finally befriended one of the drug dealers long enough for him to tell me when the shipment is coming in / fall in love with me. 

Her: “I love you”

Me, into the hidden microphone under my shirt: “boys, we got him.”

You arrive in a new relationship with baggage. They’re arriving with baggage too, and the combined baggage has to weigh under a maximum amount or they will not be letting us on the plane. But you’re both not admitting how much baggage you’ve actually got, and unless you chuck some stuff out you’re gonna be over the limit. 

I think there’s two people in relationships – the ones that get to the airport (relationship), assess the situation and throw all the stuff out of their suitcase and make room for their partner’s shit, and there’s the other person who shows up at the airport with two extra bags and refuses to pay for carry on. I’ve seen enough TikTok videos to understand that neither of these is the correct way to exist, but either way, every single time we’ve both still boarded the plane with too much baggage and that’s why each of my relationships has crashed and burned. 

We’re taught being single is bad so men get away with more. It’s so we lower our standards. This cultural phenomenon of the shame of being single did such a number on me that I assumed everyone else was miserable in their heterosexual relationships too and even that was better than being single. Both, for me, involve not having sex, and one involves having someone in my bed next to me to block out the thoughts of suicide, so the choice was obvious.

I’m queer, it took me a really long time to work it out though because i was plagued with being completely fucking oblivious. And also like a lot of men in my generation, I got confused by pop culture queer coding female love interests as “alternative” and mixed up being queer with being a manic pixie dream girl. It’s hard to tell the difference. One’s not like other girls, one likes other girls. Both like listening to The Smiths, having an interesting haircut and Doc Martens. You can see why that would have been confusing. I spent my 20s pretending to like Belle and Sebastian when in reality, it was pussy.

People say when you come out you often go through second puberty, but it’s in your late 20s and nobody has time for that shit anymore. I think this is definitely true and hopefully explains why my skin is so terrible, not my pathological inability to drink water (sorry but it’s yucky). I’m really hoping my tits come in this time around. Actually I don’t know if this is true…I’m very confused about my gender.

I absolutely love to hate myself but a discovery I’ve had recently is that having sex is the one place that you truly cannot be self deprecating. Cos when you slag yourself off, you’re slagging off both you and your sexual partner’s choice. People do not value being humble when you’re having sex with them. It can actually bring things to an abrupt stop. 

Them: [insert compliment here]

Me: What, this old thing? It’s disgusting, i’m actually ashamed of it. Don’t look at me. You should be ashamed of yourself for fancying that. Gross. Idiot. 

Plastic doesn’t degrade, does it. So that’s got me thinking. Every time I’ve started regularly seeing someone and got them a toothbrush, and then had a break up, well, that toothbrush still exists on the planet. It’s probably in some landfill now, but it still exists. 

That makes me a bit sad but also it’s nice to know it’s not just my problem, it’s also the planet’s now too. Oh, that’s given me a nice warm feeling inside. But maybe that’s just global warming.