I'm Back

Unwanted attention

Got back a few days ago from my trip to Italia. Had a great time overall and enjoyed the time away. The scenery was stunning! I visited the Alpine region so got lots of photos of snow-capped mountains to take home. I really like Italy. I like the food, I like the language, I like the history, I like the people...mostly. The only think I'm not a huge fan of is how casual the Italians seem to be regarding sexual comments. It could be just British prudishness, but I find it almost offensive sometimes. There were around 20 girls on the trip and almost every single one of them received unwanted attention from Italian men (often men three times their age). I know it's a different culture and different things are acceptable but sometimes it just seemed a bit too much. The guys got attention too but no where near as often or as aggressive as the girls got.

I even "supposedly" got advances from a 30-something Italian guy in the street. He stared directly at me smiling and shouted "hey boys!". I automatically assumed he was insulting the two girls I was sitting with....haha! but was told by one of the girls (who travels a lot) that Italians will often say the plural when they mean the singular. ie. "hey boy!" No more than 30 seconds after this, a 40-something unattractive man cycled past us very very slowly grinning like a mad man and blurted "ciao bella!" like he was about to burst with excitement. I understand foreigners can be exciting and Italians are generally quite forward, but like I said before...it's a bit much.

"Friends"

Another thing that I didn't enjoy had nothing to do with Italy. My "friends". They were driving me insane. There's a lot of drama going on at the moment which I am doing my utmost to avoid. I just act pleasant to them but never engage when they talk about any specific drama because I have come to realise they cause most of the problems in their lives, just so they have something to amuse themselves with! One of the friends there was Jen (see attention seeking) and she had decided she just had to be a bitch to me for the whole week and sweet as can be to everyone else. She was controlling, manipulative, judgemental, etc. It was really getting on my nerves. Everything I did was scrutinised and I would get the silent treatment, eye-rolls and snide comments constantly. During the trip I just pretended not to notice this and was nice to all of them (I had paid for this trip, why should I let them ruin it?!) but once I was home I snapped and came to a conclusion. They aren't my friends. They used to be, but now they treat me like shit but still want me to do what they say. They don't offer advice, they tell me what to do. I'm so sick of it. I cannot even be bothered discussing it with them as it's been going on for too long and I don't want to fix our friendship. They really aren't nice people. A lot of stuff has happened with this group over the past few months, too much to start blogging about. But basically one of them decided they didn't like me so made up stories about me to get others not to like me either. I didn't do anything in response. I didn't tell people, I didn't bitch about this person because I wasn't about to sink to their level. Overall they were successful - my group of close friends for the past couple years have cut me out so to speak. Not entirely, they still concoct stories about me behind my back and a lot of their "drama for amusement" is about me somehow. I don't really talk to any of them anymore. I don't consider any of them friends. Some of them know this, some of them don't but sooner or later they'll realise. The advantage of this widespread vendetta against me, means people who are my true friends have become clear. Many of them have come to me letting me know they're there for me. Some people who dislike my old friends have even let me know too. My friend group have always been very popular in the year and I believed them to be well liked. But now that I'm out of their inner circle, I'm hearing a lot more negative opinions of them. It's somewhat reassuring, if only in a completely childish way.

Coming out
Now that I'm so much more sure of myself and who I am as a person, I'm getting frustrated with being in the closet. I don't want to announce it to the world tomorrow. But I'm starting to wonder if I'll last till September like I originally planned. I want to tell people. I want to get on with my life. I feel like I'm lying and therefore stuck in a rut because I'm not moving forward with all aspects of my life. There's no way I'll fully come out while I'm still in high school, but I am considering telling my family or the few true friends that stuck by me before. If I do decide to though, I don't know which is best to tell first. I think I would feel more uncomfortable with my family knowing. I can't really escape them if they're negative and even if they are positive I don't think I'm ready to be "the gay one". I would feel far too self conscious, and worried our relationships would somehow change. If I tell a friend, I can get away from them if they are negative and I would probably be okay with them knowing, but I would have to explain why I've been "straight" for so long. And what if they decide to tell someone else? My school is VERY gossipy and news travels fast. I'm not ready for that kind of attention. I don't know what to do. Tell my family and risk awkward home-life for 5 months? Tell my friends and risk rejection and widespread gossiping? Or stick to my original plan and wait frustratedly till I go to university?

Help!?




P.S I have no idea why the last bit is huge...I can't get it to go to normal size :/

Holiday!

I won't be posting for a while as I'm off on a little trip to Italia in 8 hours! Looking forward to it! Not quite excited yet as I never get overly excited anymore until I'm actually on the plane. I think I may have just grown out of being madly excited in the weeks before holidays, Christmas, birthdays etc. I'm also looking forward to the plane journey. I love flying! The thought of being in a big metal can with nothing but thousands of feet of air below you thrills me! I even kinda like turbulence. Its a little adrenaline rush and the fact there's nothing you personally can do to minimise the danger prevents me from panicking. So lets hope there are a few minor storms over Europe tomorrow! :D

See you in 8 days!

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The zoo part II

So I went to the zoo today (see previous post). It was horrible. It made me depressed, it made me angry and just generally put me in a bad mood. When we arrived the first place we were taken was the penguin enclosure. The zoo keeper proudly told the group that there were hundreds of penguins of various species. Why was she proud of this? The enclosure was about 50x10m which is reasonable, but for hundreds of penguins?! It was cruel. I felt cruel sitting there. There was also white streaks everywhere that resulted in an unpleasant smell. I can only assume this was there shit. Lovely. Because of course penguins would walk about on their shit in the wild...

The next area was the big cats. The lions had a relatively small space and just looked bored. It was a depressing sight. The worst by far though was the tiger. There was a fully grown male tiger in the tiniest of enclosures. Literally 4x3m of steep rock face, with meat hanging from a rope in front of the viewing screen so that the tiger would come right up to the front and pull at the meat. I felt sick. All I could think about was how vast their territories would be in the wild. Literally kilometres of land to roam and to hunt. Instead, they were stuck here, in the rain, for the amusement of a few dozen middle-class bastards that stared blankly at them, unimpressed as they weren't as ferocious as the ones they had seen on the high-definition nature documentaries.

I realise I'm rather hypocritical for going but the last time I had gone I was five and had hoped the cruel conditions would have somewhat improved in the past 12 years. They haven't.

The zoo.

Tomorrow I'm going to the zoo with one of the departments at my school. When I was first asked, I just put my name down as it sounded like a nice idea and everyone else was excited. I didn't really think about it. The zoo we are visiting is in a nice city a few hours away so I thought it would be a good opportunity to visit this city. This was a few months ago and now that the trip is imminent...I am concerned I will turn into an animal rights activist and annoy everyone else on the trip.

As the trip tomorrow got nearer I began to think about the last time I went. I haven't been to a zoo in a LONG time. The last time I think was when I was five years old somewhere in a foreign country. All I remember from that visit, was being incredibly saddened by the poor polar bear stuck in a 2x4 metre glass box with water cascading down onto it. I was five and had opinions on animal rights...think how opinionated I'll be now! It is a different zoo and it has been 12 years since I last visited one but I think I may end up hating it even more now that I'm older and able to understand things fully.

The whole concept of a zoo is ridiculous anyway! Locking up wild animals in the middle of a polluted, cramped city so that lots of bored humans can go and gawk at the pretty creatures for a few hours. It's revolting! It's one of those things I believe will be abolished in the future and people will look back with disgust at how selfish and cruel we once were. I understand that some zoo's do great work for animal conservation, but when the animals are stuck in this miserable existence sometimes you wonder if it would be more humane to just let them die.

I'm really not looking forward to this trip...

p.s. I'm all for safari's and national parks that protect endangered animals. I just think zoo's merely use this kind of bullshit to persuade people they're not completely pointless.

Attention-seeking.

I have a very close friend called...Jen. So Jen and I have been friends for years, have a huge amount of history and stories. We have always enjoyed each other's company and agree on most things which has allowed us to create a strong bond. One of the things I love(d) most about her is her ability to laugh at herself. In my eyes that's a very attractive quality. Recently however, she has started to get on my nerves and takes herself far too seriously.

We're both very high achievers and are going to be studying the same course at university. Up until recently, I was very excited by this and even hoped that we would end up going to the same university so that we would have many more years together. In the past month we have received offers from several of the same universities. Instantly Jen decided she wanted to go to a medium sized university around 4 hours away. I was less certain and so considered the idea for several weeks. For some reason Jen decided that I should be offered no advice with this and instead she would repeatedly inform me that she "is definitely going to university X and so there's no point in discussing the universities with me." I respected this view but quietly felt it was unnecessarily narrow minded.

During this period, Jen also decided that every single person she knew HAD to be informed of her decision to go to university X and her acceptance there. She received continual congratulations and all eyes were on her for around a fortnight. By the end of these weeks, I had decided I wanted to go to a different university, university Y. University Y was in a bigger, more vibrant city, was nearer to other large cities and had excellent prospects after graduation. Upon hearing of my decision (and once people had stopped congratulating her), Jen decided that in fact she no longer wanted to go to university X and she may go to university Y. She expresses this change of heart by wailing about it all day long and informing everyone of how hard her decision is while practicing her amateur dramatics (hiding her face while resting her head on her desk, talking in an exasperated, panicked tone CONSTANTLY). Now, she is one of my best friends. But seriously, WHY must people cause such an issue over things! Yes it is an important decision but 90% of my year group have had to make a similar choice in the past few months yet for some reason, Jen believes hers to be 10 times more important. Her problem becomes EVERYONES problem. I can only conclude she loves the attention.

This little episode has made me think back over all the other times she has behaved in this way and I have humoured her. There are more than I would have thought:

• We were both given awards for being highest attaining male and female in our school. I was honoured and happy to accept the award. Jen cried, informed everyone, received gifts from numerous people and was congratulated continually. Despite the fact it's a joint award Jen received around 90% of the attention for it. This did not bother me at the time as I don't like being showered with compliments but now that I look back, Jen was a little too keen to inform everyone of her success.
• When Jen had to make a presentation to a collection of staff at our school she spent the entire 48 hours beforehand informing most people she knew how nervous she was. She continually looked to me for reassurance and would discuss, at great length, about how she's not capable to do this. What is frustrating is six other people (myself included) had to do similar presentations to the same staff on different days and did so without so much as a peep. Yes we were nervous, but we did not feel the need to have everyone fawn over us and tell us how great we are to overcome this. Of course, Jen performed the presentation perfectly and it was received very well...
• For as long as I can remember Jen has come out of exams telling me (and everyone else) that she has failed the exam, her life is over, she won't get into uni and she can't believe how badly she has done. A few months later the results are released and she will consistently be in the top three of every exam she takes. I have grown to take her exam worries with a pinch of salt but others who are used to only just passing exams are not so forgiving.
• When telling me about arguments with her parents, Jen will often speak of how her mum or dad asked her to clear something up or do them a favour. This was apparently ludicrous and Jen would respond by shouting and bawling her eyes out about how stressful her life is. Her parents would then be shocked and comfort her. Before, I would sympathise with her believing she was in fact very stressed. But I have realised she does no more than I do, is expected of much less than I am and still complains much, much more than I do. Nevermind the fact that breaking down and shouting is a ridiculous response to someone asking you to do a basic task for them.

I think Jen is just very immature. She only has one older brother and is much more successful academically then he ever was. She is also more successful in her studies than her parents have been. This causes her parents to spoil her when she does well and also give her a great amount of leniency when she throws a tantrum about how stressful everything is for her. They did not reach the same level she has and so take her word for it when she claims it is incredibly difficult, giving her special treatment to accommodate this. She has learnt she can get away with attention-seeking behaviour.

On the other hand, I am the youngest of four very high achievers and my parents both went to university. This means my family are aware of the stresses and, while they are accommodating, they do not put up with childish tantrums. I think my change in attitude over the past few months has shortened my patience for this kind of behaviour but in all honesty, it is incredibly selfish and I am surprised I am only noticing it now. I really hope Jen decides to stick to her original university choice as I think we are more likely to remain friends in that situation. If she does go to my university, there is no chance I will put up with five more years of “The Jen Show”.