14 september

Last weekend I sent an email out to the person in charge of volunteering in Salisbury. She got back to me earlier in the week to tell me that someone from the nursing home who I wanted to volunteer in would get back to me soon. They have today. I can email her back and have it set up for me to go up there and look around, meet the head carers and ask any questions, and then start volunteering. So I can’t wait to do that. I kind of need advice on what exactly to write back, so I'm going to wait until tomorrow so that I can ask my mum or sister, because it’s hard doing all that in college. And I don’t want to mess this up.
I'm wanting to do volunteer work because it is less demanding than an actual job, and with an actual job, I will lose my benefits, and the amount of money I would make at a job wouldn’t cover me for the amount that I need a week. So it’s either quit college ad get a retail job and be stuck with that for the rest of my life, or suffer through college and do some volunteering. In which I hope I can better some of the lives of the forgotten generation.
Plus, volunteering looks good on university applications, and if I can find my tutor and get some advice, I can join an enrichment at college, which will have the same effect, and hopefully take up some of my frees at college because I think I just have too many. Plus, volunteering in a nursing home will hopefully assist my communication skills. Which are actually pretty non-existent. And if I want to succeed in working with autistic children or teenagers later, after a psychology degree, then I really need to be able to speak to people easily. I can do it in my head. I just cant get the words out, and to move past that I need something forcing me to talk to people a lot more often than I already do.
I feel exhausted after a day of socialising and talking at college, because I got so used to not speaking like, at all over the last year.

12 september

Im getting used to being able to use the college computers. Here's the first post I wrote yesterday.

 

There are times when I stop feeling like I can achieve my goals. Now is one of them. I’ve just had art so in theory I should be feeling happy. Especially as I have a friend in that class. I remember her from my secondary school; she’s very nice. But there are always those girls in art classes, the ones who are only good at drawing one thing, and therefore will piss about and moan about everything in the lessons. Instead of just getting on with it and giving it a go. They drive me crazy. Always laughing, and because we were working on easels today, I was near the front because I'm short. Which means their laughing is from behind and I freeze up. So I'm feeling antisocial. Sue me.
It is one of my closest friends’ birthday today, and I haven’t seen him yet. The only free we have together is lunch today, and I'm spending that feeling sorry for myself and writing this.
See, this morning I was fine, felt like I could do this, finish college and start uni. God knows I have had more than enough practise at starting new places. I went to so many secondary schools and this is my second college. But now I don’t think I can even make it to tomorrow.

And here's what I added later(:

However, it’s funny the way things can change from the smallest thing. Instead of going straight home today, I went with my mum to visit my sister. That was alright. I asked about getting internet in my flat, but after some research, I really can’t afford it. She and her husband gave me some good tips on getting volunteer work though. I haven’t put them in action yet. I’ll do that over the weekend.
When I got back from theirs, I picked up my post (my key worker was there, it was late! First time ever! I wasn’t sure if I imagined it when I saw people moving in the office when I got back.) when I go in the first thing she said was that the boy who was sitting in there, said I look like a stick. Translation of that was that I’ve lost weight. This made my day so much better. I’ve really needed to lose what I put on whilst with cuntface, who got me fat by not letting me do anything other than sit and watch tv with him and his family, eating disgusting takeaway or other fatty foods, or sit and watch him play his ps3 and feed him snacks. So I was really happy when someone else noticed that I'm getting healthier, when whenever I look in the mirror all I see is the fat girl that’s always been there. Its still nice though(:

And now it's today and I'm just pissed because they have changed my lessons on Thursdays so i have ICT in the afternoon rather than the morning. and I need that extra two hours of an afternoon off, at home, a week. and the worst part is-- I still havent met my tutor and therefore have no one to ask about this.

11 september

So the staff here are the other reason that it isn’t very supportive. They are extremely infuriating. I’m most pissed off about the mail system at the moment. They don’t have a letter box, so the postman shoves it through the window. When the staffs think to, they’ll put a tick on the grid on the office door next to however has mail. Then you have to check and when they are there have to get them to get it for you and you sign to say you have it now. No, over the summer there was a bank holiday. And I had mail that I couldn’t get to from the end of the week before which I couldn’t get to because there was no one in over the weekend. I go about my business and keep trying to catch someone in the office, but the one time I actually do, I knock on the door. Loudly. Again and again. And I’m busy so I can’t wait about. And she just doesn’t turn around and I'm guessing it is because it is late in the day; she was clearing up, and just didn’t want to have to do anything else that might delay her going home. This is a real piss take because she is the one that only works two days a week in any case. So it is two weeks later that I actually get my mail, along with a letter that they had forgotten was in there, which turned out to be a competition to win £300 or £100. Which I had needed to have sent back by a certain date. And guess which bloody date I actually received the letter. You got it.

As a student, on low income, trying to pay rent and have food in the flat, you can see why I’m pissed off at failing to even have this chance to win some money that I could really do with now, all because the staff are too up themselves to let us have our mail given to us directly. I'm going to bring this up as an issue in my next key worker session.Which is another point. As part of my renter’s agreement, I am supposed to have these sessions every week. This I about my sixth think? And I’ve been there four months now. Maybe instead of her writing that at the bottom of the note she leaves under my door, I should start reminding her that fact.However, these meetings are stupid in any case, because not one good thing has come of them yet. I had an emergency one at the beginning of July when stuff had happened, but it turned out that she just wanted to tell me that I should have come to my last key worker session. Which I had told her I couldn’t make because I would be at college. Seriously, I tell her from the beginning I can’t do sessions before half five on any week day, and the first thing she does I make me one on a weekday at two. It’s not my fault that she can’t be arsed to stay at work until she finishes. Which is supposed to be at six, or half six. But whenever I walk past the office on my way upstairs, there’s never anyone there. So how am I supposed to access the bus pass I have had sent here for me to get to college at the end of the week. I can already tell that I’m going to have to get the college to resend it again because it hasn’t turned up. And the reason it won’t have turned up will be that they couldn’t be bothered to answer the door to sign for it for me, and won’t tell me that I need to go and pick it up.
They are completely ridiculous. And now I am going to go look wistfully at flats in Southampton on the college computer.

09 september

I think the very worst thing about living in supported housing like I do, is that there are so many people around to piss you off, and so very few to go to for help. This is bizarre considering it is called SUPPORTED housing. I have felt very much unsupported the whole four months I have lived here. The staff here are pretty much useless, and the other residents? They are not a particularly nice group of people, to say the least. It may just be that I don’t get on with the residents because I'm not a anything like they are. Take my flatmate for instance. She wears the same clothes that I see on every other person walking down the street. She doesn’t smile, unless she has done something mean (see what I write in a minute; was one of my worst experiences.) and she is a lazy slob who can’t do her washing up, wash her hands after the toilet, or even bother to wipe the seat. She smokes like literally all the other residents, and I'm aware of the drug situation here. She is also one of the loudest people living here; she plays all the chart music like everyone else, at the same deafening level at the same ungodly hours. I have, honest to god, heard someone over the other side of the building play ‘call me maybe’ loudly, just after my flatmate has, who had started playing it just a few seconds after someone else had started it. And I can hear all of this mishmash of already awful music, in my room, whilst trying to study, or draw; read; watch a DVD. It’s crazy.And guess what. Write about the awful music and they’ll start playing it. At ten on a Sunday evening. When I should be asleep. If it weren’t for my flatmate, I would have gone to sleep an hour ago, and had the music wake me up now, in which case I would have been very angry, but not done anything about it other than put earplugs in –which I thank my big sister for giving to me for my birthday because they are often needed and I wouldn’t be able to live without them now.
But remember when I said my flatmate is mean? I'm awake because about a week ago, I gathered up the courage to have a shower here whilst she was out. I don’t like using the shower whilst she is in, because, yes, I am afraid of her, and also, because I don’t like the idea of making the, yes, tiny, walk from my room to the shower and back with just a towel on whilst her pervert boyfriend is there. Over the summer I showered only at my mum’s house or various friends’ when I could. I planned my social life around when I was clean. I'm so glad I wear wigs because it meant no one could easily tell, unless they saw my unshaven pits, that I hadn’t showered in a couple of days by my greasy hair. Thank you body spray and friends who turned nocturnal for the summer.
So, I've waited for my flatmate to leave. Its eleven in the morning, and I make a break for it and have a glorious shower. I rid myself of two days of grime and come out smelling like honey and strawberries (I love Lush). I spend the day writing.When my flatmate comes home later, and and knocks on my door. I groan inwardly because the few times she has ever knocked on my door was to have a go at me for something. But I haven’t turned off any of the lights so I'm presuming I must have done something wrong by having a shower.
And I'm right. She tells me that the reason the shower door had been shut was because there was a giant spider in there and she hadn’t wanted it getting loose. She claimed she had tried to tell me earlier not to open it, but she hadn’t because I had been awake before she had had a shower. So she makes me go check it’s still in there, which it is, and it is ginormous. And it’s under the sink. So we shut the door and she tells me she’ll get her boyfriend to get rid of it.
Now, I'm am scared of a lot of things, the dark, social interactions, flies, wasps, taking my rubbish bags down to the bin, doing my washing in the ‘house machine’ here, that everyone uses. I'm scared of holding babies, (would be THE worst thing if I dropped a baby!) talking to babies in front of other people in case they are silently judging me because I don’t know what to say really. I'm scared of lots of weird things, but I can manage to go about my day without being completely stuck by these things. Well, usually.
Basically, what I'm getting at here, is that the one fear I do have, that does get in the way of my everyday life, that I don’t have an easy solution to, is spiders. Over the past year I have gotten better; I can now spend limited time in a room with a small spider, that is over the other side of the room, and that I can get out of the room in a matter of seconds. Before I walk into a room I religiously check the ceiling, corners and walls of rooms that are likely to have spiders in them, or I have seen a spider in before. And whilst in that room I do constant checks. Only people who know me very well will notice what I'm doing.
So in any case, I stupidly believe her and continue to go out and go over my mums for the weekend. I plan on returning on the Tuesday morning, the day before I start my new college. Before I actually leave I do think about the gaps under my door and the shower door. But I can’t think of a way to cover my gap from the outside, without it being simple for someone to move it and re-expose the gap. So I leave it because I'm running late; my mum has been sat in the car waiting for me and i dont want her to just drive off. Which is something she would do. When I got back on Tuesday I bump into my flatmate who assures me that the spider had been dealt with, and that was the last I thought about it until today.
I've been at my mums overnight to get a TV fill, and she drove me home quite late. So I come in, unpack, and start picking out clothes for college in the morning. Then I start to tidy up a bit because Monday is room inspection day.Notthat that means anything sold. And I find it. And I scream. And then I hear laughter. It is too well-timed to have been coincidence. I back away from the spider, putting my shoes on in the process, and go to my door and stand quietly. After the laughter, I hear my flatmate ask her boyfriend if he thought that meant I had found the spider from the bathroom.
Now, any ordinary person would either pick up the spider on something and throw it out, or kill it and throw it out, and just get on with it. I don’t know what it is with me, but I definitely can’t risk picking it up, killing it is my only option. With no one to turn to I have to kill my second spider ever (the first was while I was living here too, and was an easy enough small one, squish under a piece of paper against the wall with something long, drop in cereal box, throw away) it takes me a few minutes to gather up the courage to do it, and it would easily have procrastinated for a while if it had been smaller, but I couldn’t risk losing this spider (who wasn’t moving but they play dead) and I squish it, with my shoe, until definitely dead. Lift into bin on long piece of paper to ensure it won’t land on me if I mess up and drop it. Tie bin and leave bin alone. (can’t take it out at this time of night) what I’d like to have done was have someone come and throw it alive into her room and terrify her. But that is a simple fantasy and I would never do that to anyone.
So the reason I am awake instead of getting some decent sleep before early start and college in the morning, is because I am sharing my room with a large dead spider in a bin tonight. This scares me only a little less than sharing with a live one.