Let me start by blowing away the dust.
Well, here it is, the inevitable sequel of Squashland! Please insert the dramatic drumroll here. So, what the hell is a Squashland you ask? If you don't know and care enough to find out, my former blog was Squashland, found on the Squashy Links to the right. A new season deserves a new blog, so here's the new site! Tada!

Well, enough of that. So where am I now? Well, seeing as I don't have anything really current going on, I think I'll fill this page with a story: How I got here.

When I stopped my former blog, I was at loose ends, I didn't know what to do with myself. High school had finished, but university hadn't started yet, my social circle was crashing around me in a disasterous social armegeddon, my love life was non-existant and I honestly had nothing worth writing about. Which is actually why I stopped writing. So what changed afterwards?

Of course this story, like nearly every single other one, started with a girl. Ele, Eleanor, she was mentioned rarely in my former blog, originally when I was making alegations towards her relationship with Arran, and again during my great Thanksgiving special where I circumcised my finger - she came over with Arran and Lachlan to have dinner. Well not too long after I finished my blog, things started changing. Arran was planning to move across the country to go to university, so Arran, Lachlan, Ele and I started to do a regular dvd watching festival. It was right after high school finished, so why not? For a few weeks at least twice a week everyone would come to my house and we'd watch dvds. Of course these were mostly overnight watchings, and usually the movies were followed by several hours lying on the roof of the building, talking peacefully.

Of course that's when something started to grow between me and Ele, a story which is far too long for this entry, and I may tell with Ele's permission, on a rainy day. Eventually we found ourselves together, in probably the most comfortable relationship I've ever been in. But something was wrong. She didn't want to tell anyone else about it, I was aprehensive, but hey, it was her choice. For the first week things were great, fiery, passionate, just us two, as if we were separate from the world some how. But after that first week, she started to grow distant. I'd see her less, and when I did see her, we weren't as close, something was wrong. I tried to remedy this as much as I could, trying to do everything I could think of, but she wouldn't let me in, I couldn't understand it. Then one day I called her, set something up for the next day, she would come to my place around mid-day. I made sure my dad was out, cooked up some of my famous burgers (by famous, I mean, I think they SHOULD be famous), and waiting, turned on the TV at around 11. Of course not long after that I got a call from Ele, cancelling. You see, Arran was over at her place, so she couldn't stop by. I called again the next day, but there Arran was. A few days later I stopped by her place again to, I was nearby and thought I'd stop in, there, lo' and behold, was Arran, something was a'miss. I won't make alegations, or spit theories, but for whatever reasons, it wasn't working out, and alot of it had to do with Arran. Not long after I gave her the choice to break it off, and she agreed to, so it was done. It was all in all 2 weeks, but it changed everything for me.

If you recall from my previous blog, Arran was my absolute best friend, we talked to each other about everything, and I know he wouldn't intentionally hurt me, but something was happening, I felt like for the first time he and I were on different sides of a fence, but I refused to believe it. So rather than to look at Arran in this different light, and rather than to think of Ele as unfaithful, I simply fell away from it all, tried to put it behind me. It became easier when Arran left, many months ago now.

That's when a new problem emerged, I got my grade 12 results back. In Australian high schools, grades are put on a ranking scale out of 100, to get into the university course I wanted, I needed a score of 60, what I got was 58.6. Talk about a slap in the face. It was actually a very bad year for the grade 12 graduating class. Hedley didn't get a high enough score either, and Lizzi chose to do the course over two years, so both of them decided to remain in high school for another year. Kieran didn't get a high enough entrance score either, and was left thinking about options, meanwhile I had a choice to make. I could go back to high school, take a lighter workload and leave with what would probably be a higher score to get into my university course the next year - or I could do what I perceived as the way of shame. A 5 week bridging course. It was a course established by the University for people who didn't get a high enough entrance score, it is basically high school in 5 weeks, in the end if you get the equivelent entrance score of what you needed to get into your course, you're in, if not, back to high school. Of course to add to what I thought was shame, the course was during the break between school years, it would cut my holidays in half. But I had no real option. And so, I swallowed my pride, and took the course. It was one of the smartest things I ever did.

Between classes, all of the students would accumulate in the student common room. Most of them were high schoolers like myself who didn't get a high enough score. There were a few foreigners who didn't have the educational equivelent to get into their university course, and surprisingly, single mothers formed 5 of the 30 students there.

Of the people there, there were a few I could really talk to, one was named Hao, pronounced "How", a Chinese born, Aussie raised 17 year old, he was everything I wasn't. Athletic, a clubber, he came into class wearing the newest clothes and humming the newest songs. He was a break dancer. Infact, if you remember from my previous blog, I mentioned there were breakdancers at my formal - he was one of them! As well as him was Jacinta, a girl from my former English class, who I never talked to much at first. She was what I thought was the perfect example of a barbie doll character. Prissy, concerned with how she looked to a compulsive level, she worked part time as a dancer at a local nightclub. Sylvia, an Aussie/Greek legal studies student, who was impulsive and assured in personality. They were my only real friends in the course, and they were all totally different than me, and totally different from each other. But we had something in common, something so distinct that nobody could deny it. We didn't want to be there. We were all embarised about being in the bridging course, we didn't want to be there, and many people kept it from their friends. But like soldiers in a war, it brought us together in a way I didn't think possible by people so different. That's when I realized, deep down we're all the same.

Of course my past up until now isn't all revelations and learning experiences. Sometimes life just knows how to surprise you. Hedley and Lizzi got back together - third time's lucky. But the bad thing about this is that it's really changed them.

During the holidays Hedley and I were decent friends again, all the bickering was put behind us, but now that he's back together with Lizzi, it's just become incredibly uncomfortable, and I think he knows that. They've become a public couple, cuddling and kissing in groups, exhibitionists, to an extreme. After they started this, I asked Sylvia out, this being a good 6 weeks after the Ele affair. No go. But for some reason, after I asked, I was no different, not broken up, not really caring either way, I think I really needed the proverbial slap in the face, and I think deep down I knew it.

When Ele and I broke up, I couldn't shake the feeling it was because she simply liked Arran better, whether he returned the feelings or not is another matter, but it's pretty clear in my mind she liked him, and that's why it didn't work out with us. Seeing her is a reminder that Arran was better than me, he beat me, I'm a gamer, admiting someone beat me is hard. But when Hedley and Lizzi became a public couple, this hit me in the same way. Not because I liked Lizzi, which I didn't, but just because, all those months ago, in the ages before my first blog, I asked her out, and she said know, but when Hedley asked her out, she said yes. He beat me. Asking Sylvia out, it wasn't out of romance, or even lust, it was just to know that somehow I hadn't given up.

The bridging course ended, and I got more than high enough scores to start my course, which I did. The weeks passed quickly, and in these weeks, I felt more alone than ever before. I've felt bad about myself before, and I've felt upset about the way things are going, but this time I felt alone, not just in a relationship sense. The usual gang was still in high school, I rarely saw Lachlan, we had conflicting schedules, the second we hit University my bridging course friends dispersed, falling back into their original social standings, so I tried to fall back into mine. The problem was, I didn't have one, I left my social group back in high school, and we didn't hang out half as often as we used to now.

But then I coped. I moved on, and challenged it. I decided that the world can go to hell and started to turn my loneliness into anger. And my anger I pumped into my essays, my writtings, every essay I've done this year was a night-before job, with no research beyond websites, but I am yet to get below a B. I started writting with a passion I never knew I had, and I started exploring my true positions, my true ideas, feelings. I was always critical of society, but what did I truely believe in? What did I want? All of these thoughts I put into my works, hitting everything from an equal economic, political, and sociological perspective. Once I was accused of plaguerism simply because none of my sources back up the opinions in my essays, but they were my opinions, they came from nowhere else and they started to really show through. I was no longer lost, I found myself in my writtings.

This post is easily long enough, I'll leave it at that, I'll most likely put in the second installment of how I got here tomorrow. Ciao!