There's something really weird about writing on a blog; you're convinced someone is or is going to read your posts, while you are also sure nobody is reading them. Told you. Weird. But you still write for an audience. It's hard for it to be a diary sort of thing that way. But it still is. But obvs isn't at the same time.

The other funny thing is how you can never really fully understand what is being said. So I can say 'I spent my afternoon drawing out different dress ideas that I will hopefully take to my sewing machine later this week after I go out to buy some new patterns' which sounds like, 'I am such a talented creative who is deeply in touch with current fashion trends but also quirky and unique and hugely productive, and will later go fondle soft silks and talk gently with fabric vendors' when in fact you're a rubbish seamstress and buying fabric includes sweat, persistent haggling, and the smell of cigarettes  and you doodle lots of pretty dresses that you are better off giving to an experienced tailor.

Somehow the second one actually sounds a lot more fun and interesting. Maybe the first is forever a lie but always a dream. Or is it one? I dunno. Just fictional I guess.

Sure we all want to write about dreams of cycling through Europe and chugging down skinny lattes and eating peppermint bark and sleeping over at our childhood friend's house and talking about boys and rocking Mac lipsticks but that's really old now and always was fictional. I feel I need to give the word 'fictional' a new definition now. Fictional as in not real but undeniably beautiful in a way that we wish was real but know cannot be and would rather stayed that way.

Today as I sat trying to figure out how I was going to sew a version of this H&M dress I saw in Pinterest I looked out the window and the corner of the window frame and the drop of the curtains managed to close off the whole landscape and leave me with this little pocket that consisted of a lot of high trees and a roofed house with its facade drenched in the afternoon sunlight. It was cool. I knew that if I had moved the curtain or gotten up to look down I'd have seen the manic roundabout and the bushes wilting and crisping away in the heat and feel the 50 degree flare and the dust and smell the gasoline and the damp and hear the screeching of tires and even the sweat I would begin to feel on my clothes had I been out there. But because I didn't see any of that and only saw one little square of prettiness that was so unlike Kuwait and more similar to a house on a beach in Cornwall or on the. Side of a mountain in rural Germany or something it was so, so beautiful. 

Lists of Things

THINGS THAT MAKE ME UNHAPPY

My weight. I am overweight. Not in a Christina Hendricks or Nigella Lawson kind of way. That is, no hourglass curves or voluptuous hips, or cascading, flowing locks of hair. I look like a store bags of crisps under my top and tuck pillows into the back of my jeans (who would do that?).

My skin. I don't have terrible skin; that needs to be said. But I have definitely not been blessed by the happy-complexion fairy. She decided not to wave that wand over my face for some reason. 

My hair. Curly, frizzy, tangled mess. Mess. Best way to describe it. No Merida locks, no Andie Macdowell face to make up for the hair (see above). 

My teeth. Again, not awful, but not lovely. Not white, not even. Big gap in the middle.

My social life. I think I touched on this in my last post. I had a few good friends but I don't have them anymore. The ones I have seem to be afraid of getting close to people, or maybe just me. So conversations may be frequent but they do not pass beyond the threshold of small-talk. Heart to heart conversations are things I miss.

My mother. She has grown increasingly hyper-sensitive and paranoid over the years. Literally anything I say in passing can trigger a tantrum. Sometimes it includes throwing things. Sometimes only cutting passive aggressive remaks that eventually boil up and lead to throwing things. 

My father. Absent. Physically, emotionally-just in all the ways. 

Boys. Last but not least, I think. In a nary she'll: no boy has ever flirted with me, asked me out, kissed me. I think points two and three and any others that coho slow were unnecessary after point one. 

THINGS THAT MAKE ME HAPPY

After writing the first list I don't feel like writing this one. I will do this later. 

Dear Diary,

Today I went out with an old friend of mine who, although I have known her since I was like 4, very often feels like a stranger. I don't know many people who I feel completely at ease with. I had two very, very good friends, the sort you grow up with. You know what they say about people you grow up with. You are bonded with them in a way you will never be with anyone now, because you were kids together. Anyway, both of them changed and we aren't really friends anymore. The sleepovers, arts and crafts sessions, long nights spent whispering in the dark about serious things, now almost feel like they never even happened. She's in Cairo flirting with boys' feelings, she's in California wearing very small halter tops and shopping with her gay best friend.
Anyway I didn't mean to get into lost childhoods. Actually, I don't know what I meant to get into. I know I want to keep a journal. I want to be very honest about things that happen inside my head and out.
So in September I will be in Sheffield, England, starting my PGCE Primary course. It will last one year. I got a 50% scholarship but I cannot afford anything except the 50% of tuition fees.
I'm uncomfortable asking my parents for money. Today I went to buy myself a new charger for my MacBook. It cost me KD30. That's a lot of money, especially since I don't have that much of it left. I bought it because in Cairo my father asked if he could keep mine. He said I could buy one at home and he would pay me back for it. Anyway, he didn't pay me back for it. Because I didn't ask.
This is already sounding like my last blog; a bit bleak. I don't want this to start that way. I'm trying to be happier. Many years have been unhappy years, and I want the years to come to be happy years, or at least, not unhappy ones.
In September, I will be in Sheffield, and I will have a dorm room, and I will try harder to understand the future.