I’m working on myself a lot at the moment. I mean, I don’t think I can go back to any point in my life and describe the person I was as, “shy” or, “quiet” but I’ve been nervous, anxious, eager to please. I’ll listen to what someone has to say and then chatter away at them, I’ll talk a whole lot but it’ll be exactly what they want to hear. I don’t like an argument.

So I’m working on this. I’m swearing a lot more and it’s one of my favourite things to do, it has been for a while, but now I’m not holding back so much; everything is fucking glorious, that cunt on the news should just fucking fuck off, the bastard. I’m telling people if I disagree with them, I’m trying not to soften or wash out my words with, “but that’s your opinion” and, “no, actually I can totally see where you’re coming from”. I’m trying to enjoy the feeling of telling someone they’re wrong, trying think of it as an adrenaline rush and not just the urge to vomit. I’m not sure why I care, why a person I think badly of thinking badly of me should mean so much.

And I’ve been dwelling on this lately because there are things that people say and believe that make my insides burn so much that none of it matters; I could cut a person off and out and ball them up and throw them away for their hateful thoughts made into violent words, I could do that now, but there’s an inbetween sometimes. There’s wrong and there’s technically, entirely wrong but not horrifically wrong. I keep falling into conversations about psychic mediums; these awful human beings who exploit grieving stupid people and claim they can reach the dead like M Night Shyamalan is directing their lives, god forbid. I’ve been told about the shows they put on, the amazing things they do, all the fantastic evidence of their very real power, the private readings where they revealed something they couldn’t possibly have know; the strange incidents that they themselves have witnessed, proving to them that ghosts exist, are real.

And these stories, if they were true, yeah, they would be pretty convincing, would be either “impossible” or an extremely improbable coincidence. “For twelve years after our mother died me and my sister stopped speaking because both of us believed the other had stolen her necklace. Then I went to see this fucking charlatan and he told me it was in the old holiday cottage I never even knew Mum used to visit, under the floorboards, behind the wardrobe, in a metal safety deposit box, the combination to which was “340-34542”. I went and I looked and there it was and now me and my sister are friends again. Just like Mum always wanted.”

When someone tells me something along those lines; that they saw a ghost, that a medium truly made contact with a loved one for them, that an impossible thing happened, I don’t know what to do. I used to smile and nod and say, “Yes ,wow, weird huh? Totally goes to show, the truth is out there and all that, my great aunt saw a ghost once, how creepy.” It was crap, that was crap, that was me before I worked on myself. But is it okay to listen to a person’s incredibly well thought out bullshit and say, “I don’t believe you. I think you’re lying, I think that was a lie you just told. I’ve weighed up the odds in my head and I’ve decided that you either made that up or exaggerated it out of all recognition. Sorry. Except I’m not sorry”

I don’t want to be especially combative, I don’t want to hurt anyone. I want to be strong and happy and as secure in the words I say as the ones I write. I want to tell the truth, whether it’s metaphorically with stories and pretty words or literally with what I believe and how I see the world. I’ve never had a problem with my own truth, when I’m alone, sat, saying things alone. I don’t want the close eyes and breath of another person to always take that away from me. I want something honest and genuine, maybe not universally, but to me. I’m not sure if that’s selfish, I’m not sure what staying silent means, when to let something go, if I should ever concede and lie and let out words that never lived in my brain.