Boys can be great.
They can make you laugh until you have tears streaming down your cheeks and they can be as simultaneously sweet as that first cup of tea in the morning. They can buy you pints with charming smiles and stick their tongue down your throat in the middle of a bar with no shame. They can give you great advice on how to tackle other guys and they can be the voice of reason in a petty, over-dramatised crisis. They can also pick you up off the floor, dust you off and backhand anyone who has been a nob. I have lots of boys floating about in my life and a good portion of them are a godsend.
Boys, however great, seem to also cause the majority of the negativity which clouds my life. In retrospect, most of my problems do often boil down to boys I have been romantically linked with for however long a period.
Whether it was a drunken kiss and a spontaneous wild night fling, or a long-winded, once-adoring commitment; I have come to the realisation that the correlation between my happiness and whether I have someone on the go is pretty significant.
I’ve had more boy trouble than I have had in actual years recently and my life has actually never been more haywire.
As a result, I haven’t been to uni in weeks; have not touched my blog; have not picked up a book; have not managed to fulfil any of my writing commitments; I am not eating or swimming; my eczema has flared up worse than ever and I find I am not actually doing anything other than going to work and drinking too many pints and ending up on the floor or in a bed. Welcome to the good life. At least it has been fun.
My problem really is that I have never understood when people would say they were “single by choice” or were “working on themselves”. Why would you “concentrate on being alone” when you could be shagging some guy you fancy on your course or going for a coffee? Something didn’t work out? Turns out that boy you liked for a night is a grade A-dickhead? Cool. No hard feelings princess, back in the saddle you go.
I genuinely think my feelings on this subject stem down to me never actually being ‘alone’. I think I have a fear of it. That is why I distract myself. I have actually talked before on how my relationships with males sometimes are predominantly used to validate my own self-esteem before, here.
The thing is, I have always had someone wanting to take me out, or being my ‘friend’ I text on the regular at 5 am or at least someone that likes me a little bit. I suppose I technically have never had the feeling of needing to “work on myself” because I have never actually been totally and inexplicably by myself for a very, very long time. I actually cannot remember the last time I was off the ride really.
However, the cold, hard truth is that I currently have a seriously damaged and a bruised ego this year. Recently, it has been a whirlwind and perhaps this is my wake-up call to stop drinking, stop messing about and actually start to get my life together a bit. It is all fun and games until you find yourself crying into a packet of mini cheddars and a cold coffee at 6 am because your heart hurts so much.
Am I being over-the-top? Probably, I mean it is my speciality. But, it is the truth. I am miserable and it is because I put my stock into boys rather than myself. Take me for a pint and we will have fun, but at the end of the day, it is still me with the niggling problem of not being able to do it by myself.
Is there an answer to this moan? If you fancy me let me know haha. But in all seriousness, perhaps I need to have a swing at that “working on myself” thing after all?
ELLA LOUISE SCOTT 