Insanity, Uncut.

It took me months of hard slog, and stress and tearing my hair out, and overdue deadlines, and oh my god I wanted to quit… but I passed my first module. Unfortunately, I had to quit the second one I started last February.

Funnily enough, full time employment and full time university workload doing a course you hate, while living in a ‘not so great’ atmosphere and feeling like shit a lot = not conducive to passing.

Now, however, I’m undertaking another course, and about to begin two 10 credit courses of two essays each, next month, so I’ll keep you posted.

I happen to have severe issues with feet. I can’t stand them. Not even my own. My socks stay on all the time, with the exception of showering/baths. It took me months to be able to shower with my ex because of it, and I haven’t been able to get over it with my current boyfriend yet.

My old flatmate never saw my feet, nor did the people I used to live with, and my current housemates haven’t either.

It’s so bad that I even have to commit the heinous crime of keeping my socks on during sex. It does make sex kinda strange ‘cause I have to ignore the fact that whoever I’m fucking has their socks off. Swapping positions can often make me cringe if I have to acknowledge it. I don’t even know why I have this horrible aversion to them, but I know I can’t stand it.

The smallest touch will make me shudder and it’s ridiculous. The thing is, I know it’s silly but I can’t seem to change it. There is no logical or rational reason for it, but I can’t seem to shake it.

I don’t seem to mind my family seeing my feet, which is strange as even though I’m closer to my friends I still can’t handle it. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with them; my feet are normal and average, I just get totally grossed out. 

I don’t imagine that my boyfriend having size 14 feet really helps the matter nowadays.

I’m getting better though. Over the summer, I went on holiday and went barefoot for most of the week. Upon returning home I was just as bad, however.

I do need to work on this; I miss shower sex, and I’d love to be able to go on holiday with friends, or the boyfriend this summer.

Hypnotism perhaps?

Anyone else have weird body part phobias?

Again, something I’d been meaning to do for a long time. My life seems to be littered with things I’ve half done. I’ve had every intention of it, but just never got around to it.

Finally, after owning the album for almost a year, I decided it was time to fill it up. Sitting online with facebook, my hard drive and half a dozen websites offering so many free prints if I signed up to them, I painstakingly went through all of my photos and picked out each one with myself and somebody else in. Even if they were almost identical, to prove a point, I got them. 

Now, they are sitting on top of my wardrobe in the beautiful album, waiting to be added to. Unfortunately for it, my social life seems to have run away from home, handkerchief on a stick and all, and until it returns, the photos that reside in the album will continue to wait.

At this precise moment in time, I will be at a local school about to watch 6 of my students get up in from of hundreds of people and speak. I can tell you exactly how I’ll be feeling, as I’ve been doing it for the last couple of years. There will be 4 speeches to watch. Two of them will have two students from my school in the team, and the other two will just have one. I’m nervous, even though I know they’ll be great. How do I know they’ll be great? Because I (co-)trained them.

Me, the person who is terrified of people, who hates talking in front of a crowd or group, training people in the fine art of public speaking? It’d be laughable if I wasn’t somehow freakishly good at it.

I think it’s because I’m so good at English that I know how to analyse things like this. I can analyse a speech to death, pick it to pieces and work out how to improve it. I can pull apart the presentation of something and instruct them on how to make it better. What I can’t do, is do it from scratch. That’s what my partner does. He’s in charge really, and I just do the fun stuff. Take last night for instance. Last night I was sitting writing this after spending a very long time ‘correcting’ someone’s speech for them. She’s worried, you see, so we spent hours going over the speech, discussing it, and working out together, how to edit it.

I find this fun.

I can tell you now, that in around half an hour or so, I’m going to be holding back the tears. Working with a group of children in your own time for weeks on end, and intensively for a couple of weeks can do that to you.

There is nothing quite like the sense of pure pride you get when you see -your- students, from the local “scummy” school, getting up there on stage up against the “posh” schools (the ones that are better than we are) and damn well holding their own. By the time you read this, my girls and boys will be up there. They’ll be delivering their speeches, and I’ll probably be crying. They’ll be looking into the audience knowing that the only people who will be able to tell if they mess up are us, and that we could not care less if they do. They’ll be making eye contact if they get scared, and remembering that we have the utmost faith in them to be successful. I’ll be sitting there with tears falling from my eyes, my heart in my throat, and probably whispering some kind of mantra under my breath, all the while attempting to arrange my face into something resembling ‘serene’ so as not to panic them.

They think they get a high from it (when it’s all over and they can sit down knowing that they probably won’t have to do it again for a year), but what I don’t think they know is.. sometime’s they are the only reason I still work at that bloody school. Knowing that I’ve changed their lives, given them opportunities they wouldn’t have without me, allowed them to see themselves in a different light, make them think in a way they weren’t aware existed, and to prove to others that actually, they just bloody rock.

That is why I do my job. Not for the money (because, there’s hardly any of that) and not to make the “powers that be” happy. Every time I want to quit, I think of my little ‘gang’ of children who often think I’m amazing, and (as well as making me all emotional) I remember I’m actually making a difference.

Not that you can tell, because I deleted my facebook, but I’ve definitely had my photo taken with 20 different people. One day I might sit and count them in my photo album, but for now you’ll have to take my word for it.

It’s strange how pictures are a big deal for me. I don’t have any of me and certain friends, as I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve felt comfortable enough (read: drunk) to allow someone to take my photograph with them.

This needs to change though. Maybe I just need to drink more?