Poison and a Meal

Finally (although it may be the penultimate one by the time I actually finish this blog!) I will move onto quite possibly the most confusing yet brilliant last few months of my life.

Around the same time I realised my feelings for the person in my previous blog, I was introduced to a new person. I shall call him Hemlock, as that is the nickname that Yellow Jane gave him, and it is the one I have grown used to. No "Mr" something- they're a bit cheesy and I've grown out of them.

Hemlock- a highly poisonous European plant of the parsley family ... ,used medicinally as a powerful sedative.
It's also a heavy metal band, but I don't think YJ had that in mind.

He said that he came up with the word himself and Diamond Heart said that it was a real thing, then went on to describe it. YJ was shocked but said it fitted still. YJ now claims that he knew all along the meaning of 'hemlock' and that's why he chose it. But that is another story. The point is, that YJ thought 'Hemlock' was a suitable nickname because "he is poisonous to me".


I wasn't quite sure how to take that. Do I take it in the way that once I've taken a bite I will have the taste in my mouth until I die? Or that he will be the breaking of me and I should stay away? Or that he is intoxicating me and I have completely fallen for him? Or all of them?

I don't know.

Having successfully rambled for over three paragraphs, I should probably return to the little story I started that you have probably forgotten in all the time I did spend rambling. So on with the story!

Over the next two months, I never really got the opportunity to talk to him much. We were in the same art class, and he was the only one of a few boys in the class. He didn't really get on with the more popular group of boys, so talked with YJ, another male friend of ours who is in his form, another incredibly annoying "friend" of mine who I am relived that he does not get on with, and me.

At the end of those two months, we had an art activity. In groups. And there are no prizes for who I was in a group with. I don't even need to consult my diary to know what happened, despite it being about 6 months ago. We did well in the presentation. Only after we did ours, we had nothing to do but listen to the other groups' as we were first. He didn't want to turn around (probably because it would take effort) and I was sitting facing the front. If you haven't worked it out, we were sitting opposite each-other. We couldn't help but make eye contact. And I am pretty sure I blushed and looked down each time he did. But we managed to talk when the chance was there. I pretty much ignored the rest of the group in the last hour. We had done all the group work in the first hour, the gaps now would just be conversation opportunities.

We talked a bit more before art lessons then. And a little more during the other lessons I share with him, which is actually a fair few. Doing the maths quickly, I have 60% of my lessons with him. That's quite a lot... But we gradually got more confident, but we still lacked a proper opportunity to just... talk.

And that opportunity presented itself in the month after the group art project. An art trip. 3 days of nothing but supposed to be doing work but really chatting and actually looking around the place. Or avoiding flares as was the case at the Eiffel Tower where a protest was taking place.

But we talked like there was no tomorrow. I actually got told off for talking which isn't exactly something that happens to me very often! We talked on the coach, walking to places, walking around places, whilst drawing and in the restaurants.
What embarrassed me most was the restaurants. To say I am a fussy eater is a bit of an under-statement. So I sat there the first meal time looking at continually at the mashed potato, salad, creme brûlée, beans and tomatoes that were put down and taken away. And I cried at one point. I wanted to eat, but this wasn't home. For one moment the desire that has been with me for over half of my life overcame me. The problem was just staring at me in food form. I wished I could have been normal and have been able to have eaten that food in front of me. I was starving, and I couldn't eat it. It wasn't for trying, but there was only so much I could take.
The fragility of my emotional state from being away from home, in a place where the only bit of the language I knew was "je joue au foot" and being faced with a quite honestly daemonic teacher who came up at the end of each course to check I had eaten, and then having to pretend I was enjoying it, was too much. I broke down.

The next day was a little better. This trip I was actually illness-free (on my previous school trip I had a bug which meant I could eat nothing anyway, which was actually good as I wouldn't have eaten any of the food served to us anyway) and I was feeling seriously hungry. I managed to eat breakfast, but the lunches were too much. They were pretty disgusting even for my able-dieted friends. So I went without lunch too. By dinner, I was praying it was not a repeat of the previous night.

It wasn't. It was pizza- a thing I have recently got into (thank goodness). I wasn't sitting with the boys on this meal, but I did have a friendly face with me. I avoided the mushroom landmines in the first pizza, and said I was fine when the salad-on-a-pizza was offered to me. Dessert was something I hadn't tried before. Chocolate on a pizza. And I tried it. And I actually rather liked it. So I had two pieces of it It was pretty sickening at the same time; it was just sugar in a savoury dish and the two do not really mix.

But I had been provided with some energy, and I felt a lot better because of it.

On the way back, I was given an origami penguin by him, which is named Pingu for some reason. But it became a conversation starter for our mad little conversations.
On the ferry, we exchanged numbers. And it all went from there.
We pretty much texted all the way back. And as we had done on the way there, we had a rave to the music on his iPod. Music was the thing that united us.

I continued to text him over the next few months. We sent several thousand in those months, which required a new phone contract! It was worth it.
He chose to talk to me a lot more voluntarily. We even worked together in lessons when he had the option to go with friends. But most importantly, he started walking out with me. It was only for 5 minutes until he got his lift home, but it was a great chance just to talk one on one.


Have you noticed all this was in the past tense? I most certainly have.

I don't actually know what happened. The texting died down until it stopped completely. I felt like when I talked to him to was less relaxed and flowing. He looked less comfortable around me. And I felt almost stalkerish. I just wanted to talk to him all the time.

I don't know how we got out of that situation. But now we do get on more than in those cursed months. He chooses to talk to me more over his friends. And we started texting again. True, it was very short lived, but it happened. If he didn't have a certain apt for losing his phone it may be a bit more frequent and I may care less about what I write. Now I feel I have to plan what I want to say and then write it. So it's not exactly back to normal. The thing that got me is that we don't put the 'x' on the end of texts any more. I miss it.

I wish I had asked him out when I had the chance. I was being nagged like there was no tomorrow, until there wasn't going to be that chance tomorrow. Now it is the summer holidays, and he appears to have lost his phone. Great.

Apparently he had a crush on a girl and he asked her out last year. She turned him down. She is incredibly popular, and I deeply admire his courage to ask in the first place. I don't know whether that means he could ask me? But I don't want to just put it down to him to ask, however I just can't bring up the question. I'm scared of potentially losing that friendship. I'm worried about what to do if he says yes!


I think I've covered it. For now, anyway. If you've read this far, you are amazing- love ya! :)
If you are wondering why this was put up at about 2am, I meant to start it when I lay down about to go to sleep at 11. I got kinda in the zone and just couldn't stop. Ow my thumbs hurt!

Thank you for reading! :)

The Boy Next Door

And now I am going to move on to my second situation. It's going to be more of a summary of the time over which I fell for him.


I don't simply have crushes. When I fall in love, the rest of the world can dissolve away into nothing for all I care, so long as I'm with them.

But he confused me so badly. I had never met him for three years. Then suddenly I sit next to him in just about every lesson. I get on okay with him for the first few months. We don't talk much, but we can work together. And as we begin to get more confident around each-other, we begin to get to know the other a lot better.

I told him everything about me. My private life. The side I wouldn't want to tell anyone. But I trust him. Even if you only have ten minutes after meeting him, you will trust him. For he is the kindest and most friendly guy I know.
He is physically impossible.
How can somebody be that lovely?
I can think about it as much as I want but he is still there. Still his friendly, rather athletic (*grin*) self.

I don't know when it was I realised. It was not love at first sight, I am certain of that. It was more of a gradual progression of emotions, so that I could have looked back a month and been amazed that I could hold a vaguely normal conversation with him without secretly wishing the next line he said was the one line that every lovesick person wants to hear. Those were the "good old days".

It had been about two months when I was first aware that something had changed. I wasn't sure whether it was me, him or just the atmosphere of the class that day. But the next day I knew it was me.

I thought I stood a chance as I didn't think he was very popular.

Oh how wrong I was. Almost the whole school knows who he is. Everyone is friendly to him, and in return, he is super friendly to them.
Except one girl that just went beyond friendly and stepped into the flirting zone. She said she didn't like him, but I know enough about body language now to tell that she is lying!

The popular girl flirting with the popular boy. Well that doesn't surprise me. School is pretty much a status game.

I got my friend to ask (discretely!) if you liked me about five or six months later. The answer was that I was not his type. I may have broken down at the time, but it was short-lived. It helped me begin to get over him. As usual, I'm still not fully over him, but now I've accepted his opinion, and the alternative love life he could have. And the one I could have...
There was practically no recovery period.