The Romantics...

So I didn't go to bed. Well I did. Just after midnight. But I was lying there like I have done every night for the past week and I didn't feel tired at all. Well, I did. I was shattered. My eyelids were drooping. But my mind was racing and screaming and dancing and shouting and singing and refusing to turn the music down. I got up at about 1am. They say that if you've been lying in bed for over half an hour, unable to fall asleep, you should get up and do something mundane until you feel sleepy. Like read a book.

I went on my laptop.

The sleep didn't come. So I made myself a cup of tea, listened to Ludovico Einaudi and Taylor Swift and other songs from my first year of medicine that brought back some strange memories and worked on my philosophy essay. Like a boss.

It's funny how fast time goes sometimes. I didn't get anywhere with my essay but suddenly it's 3am, then 4am, then 5.30 and I'm starting to feel a little sleepy but if I go to bed now I'll be a grouche when I'm woken up after four hours sleep.

In conclusion, I haven't slept. I'm currently sitting at my window waiting to watch the sun rise over the rooftops and planning breakfast at Starbucks.

I spent some of the night reading the stories I'd written growing up and have saved on my computer. I did this last night too, although, not until dawn. I always find it fascinating reading back on things I've wrote. Half the time I can't remember writing them. I can't imagine that I managed to manipulate the words that way. It doesn't sound like me. Some of it sounds...well, good.

Reading some of it tonight made me realise just how ill I was, even in 6th form, even in my first year of medical school. I didn't write anything last year, nothing fictional. I really wish I had. Because reading some of my stories opened a window on all the emotions I've felt over the years without pulling me back in. It's almost therapeutic.

The sky's turned lilac and grey. I can hear the birds.

Anyway, I found something I had saved as "The Romantics". I don't know if it's because I haven't slept but I found it hilarious. I remember writing it, not where I was or what the weather was like, but the sensation of the words hurtling down my arm so fast my hand couldn't keep up. It's autobiographical. I remember thinking it all. I know exactly which boy I'm talking about. And I thought I would share it with you. I've tweaked it a bit, but otherwise it is how I wrote it on the 20th December 2009 at 00:50.

Enjoy. It's not perfect. Most of it isn't grammatically correct. But it's a tiny insight into the mind of a first year medic with a crush and an obsession with happy ever after.

The Romantics

There’s a problem with liking the Romantics – be it the Victorian Romantics, the Modern ones, the books, the poems, the movies, the songs. Sometimes, all the time, you get a little caught up in them. You daydream. You hum as you walk down the hall. You concoct elaborate story lines in your head and then blink and realise that guy thinks you’ve been staring at him for the entire lecture. And then you realise that it’ll never happen and you have to accept the fact that you are just you. You’re not Jane, not Bridget, not Natalie and the Prime Minister isn’t Hugh Grant, nobody will ever sing to you, be it at your window or at a party or over candles and lobster, you’ll never dance with that one special person at prom, or at your engagement, and that guy who you were inadvertently staring at will never talk to you because he thinks you’re stalking him, when you’re not.

What do you do then? What do you do when you’re not looking for love even though part of you really wants to? How do you advise your friends when he breaks up with them, or upsets them? Do you give advice based on what you’ve seen in the movies or do you tell them to pull themselves together – we’re too young to have found the one, there are plenty more fish in the sea, he’s a bastard and you’re better off without him.

But then there’s that guy. The one who thinks you’re stalking him. It’s not your fault you're both on the same course, in the same halls, both come down to breakfast at exactly the same time. You didn’t time your departure from the Medical School to the second to ensure you would bump into him at that exact corner as he returned from the opposite direction. It was coincidence. Really. Because when you realise you see someone everywhere your brain automatically picks them out. Fact. I suppose it doesn’t help that you go all stiff and awkward when he walks past. How do you deal with that without looking like a total spaz? Especially when you know you can never have him, not just because he’s way out of your league or he isn’t actually the guy you think, he is just the guy you’ve projected this perfect image onto, but because you’re not looking for love. Not because you’ve had too many bad experiences in the past and have decided that the right guy will appear if you stop looking for him, but because you can’t have love till marriage and marriage is definitely not on the table right now.

This could go one of two ways. Either it could be a fairytale and you’ll be swept off your feet in perfect accordance with all the rules and regulations of your religion or, real life could happen -  you never talk because it’s too awkward to start now. You forget about him. And love is made when your parents agree and you marry the other him, even though he isn’t the one, with the hope that he’ll become the one but it ends in divorce, as all marriages do.