I managed to get Dreamweaver and Flash for over £400 cheaper than the normal price by getting a student licence.

You’d think I’d be thrilled, right?

Wrong

I’m doing a web design course…

Well technically I’ve been doing it for about 3 years. It’s one of those home study courses, but now I’ve had a few weeks of feeling a little more with the living, I’ve decided to take it up again.

Naturally the trial edition of the software it came with ran out a long time ago, so I’m kind of stuck for how to do the course…

Or at least I was.

That was when I found a company on ebay and discovered macromedia do a student edition of their software.

So I saved a fortune, especially since the company didn’t require the usual paperwork to prove I was a student, which I’m pleased about, since I don’t have access to any confirmation paperwork.

I had the same bother when I was at college a few years back trying to get some student software. The college had some shady deal with a local distributor, and refused to give any paperwork out, if you wanted the software you had to get it through the college…

And pay close to double the price you could get it online.

Still, it’s ordered, paid for and, whilst I don’t get a full activation code without sending them student ID etc, I do get an unlock code, so fully working software, but no perks from registering.

I can live with that.

But then I find out that the Macromedia website says I should not only be in full time education, but I should be doing a degree course, or at an educational facility that offers degree courses…

I’m neither.

Not that I can quite see why it matters whether or not it’s a degree course, not to mention whether or not the collage/university offers degree courses.

But I now feel guilty, since I technically don’t actually qualify for the student licence, even though I am a student, and am (or will be continuing) studying web design.

Oh well not much I can do about it now I guess, since the software is already in the mail and the unlock code is sitting in my mailbox.

I guess I’ll get over the guilt eventually :-/

When you do it just gets depressing.

Things like remembering that I haven’t been able to leave the house in almost 5 months. Like the fact that I like to get my hair cut every 8 weeks. Only this time it’s been 8 months

And my personal favourite, realising that this time next year, I’ll have been suffering from CFS for a third of my life :-((

Oh, while I remember, if you hear a high pitched screaming sound… That’s the sound of a flock of tapeworms discovering that they’re going on a diet!

Yep, after a depressing start, I’ve decided that things have got to change.

For one thing I have to go out in 3 weeks time, which means I have to go be able to leave the house next week to get my waist length braided hair cut to a manageable shoulder bob :-p and I need to collect my contact lenses so I can look slightly less like a reject from the 80′s.

But to do that I need to get back on my health eating diet… Hence the screaming tapeworms…

They’ll not know what to do with themselves.

They’re used to excessive food consumption. Take tonight for example. Three biscuit bars while I cook my garlic mince, half a pound of turkey mince, a bulb of garlic, and an entire packet of pasta that’s supposed to serve four people (:rollseyes:) and even then I had another three biscuit bars and twenty minutes later was foraging through the kitchen cupboards looking for insects and young rodents to consume… Couldn’t find any though :-((

So, not only can you see how I have reached my current small heffalump proportions (I swear I’m just big boned…!) but you can also understand the terror, fear and horror of the little fleet of tape worms I have to be playing host to with that amount of food… Should I mention today’s been a pretty slow day for food consumption? Just two days ago I was at 24 biscuit bars in less than 20 minutes! *coughs*

I should have noticed the warning signs though, the bathroom scales have been whimpering every time I get on them for the past couple of weeks, then asking if I would consider weighing each limb independently then just adding the totals together…

But no more… At least not if I ever want to be capable of leaving the house ever again… Although you’d think I’d have learnt by now, since I already know that eating those things makes my condition worse… But when I can’t manage to make anything, I have to eat something during the day!

I’m probably clutching at straws, but my aim is to have lost at least half a stone by next Tuesday (the day I’m most likely to be trying to get a hair cut… Oh the exciting life I lead…!) but I’m also expecting my skin to clear up, my joints to loosen up and to have enough energy to both leave the house, and make it all the way back again without having to call for a taxi, ambulance or hearse in the process.

*pre-books all three just to play it safe*

And tomorrow I start my yoga again…

Funny thing about CFS, or at least the way it affects me… My joints are sore and stiff all the time, yet I’m still almost as flexible as I ever was… :shrugs:

Go figure…

I also had big plans about getting more structure to my day, looking into starting up my own business to let me earn some money from home, writing those 8 novels I started and never managed to finish due to my health…

All these plans…

Then I get an email to tell me the computer game I ordered has been sent and will probably arrive tomorrow…

Guess that means all those plans about structure, work and writing will have to be thought out again… :wiggle:

I could be slightly busy for a while…

Where else can you flirt with people of all sexes, discuss the sexual abuse of vegetables, the merits of the turkey baster as an alternative impregnation tool, verbally abuse people smaller than you are, sexually abuse people bigger than you, threaten to tell the world about a persons love affair with their car (brings a whole new meaning to the term auto-eroticism), and sexual encounter with a stuffed toy… And all that before breakfast…

Nowhere else can you dress up in a Miss Piggy costume, passion pink latex rubber catsuit with matching corset and lace trim and dance around to music nobody else can hear without spending a fortune and being carted off and diagnosed as clinically insane, in fact some people think that is quite normal and the rest mostly just take it in their stride…

Not to mention, where else can you get away with doing a naked fraggle pole dance for a guy, the dance of the seven scantily-clad smurfs for a girl and the purple, flat-footed dinosaur belly-dance for anyone whole stand still long enough to watch? :veil:

You know I just don’t know how I ever managed to survive outside of an asylum before I got the internet! :asbestos:

I’ve just been watching a programme on TV about what people hate about christmas, the stress, the endless shopping, the cooking and cleaning, the guests, the mess, the wrapping, the party games… I’m sure there were more that I’ve forgotten, but you get the idea.

Now as most of you know, I just don’t do christmas, I haven’t for a long time… But the funny thing is, all the reasons that the people hated it… That’s why I used to love it!

Well, most of them, anyway.

I didn’t like the shopping part, simply because you couldn’t move whether you were trying to get a stamp, or the latest toy. You go into the shop and what should have taken 4 minutes turns into over half an hour.

Same with the presents.

Now don’t get me wrong, I used to love getting presents, I actually liked getting them more then than I do now.

It was the presents that I ended up with.

My mother would ask me to start deciding what I wanted in August, so by the time November came I’d have something resembling War and Peace of things that I liked the look of.

Yet every year without fail I’d end up looking like a spoilt brat!

I’d get up and have a stocking on the end of the bed about ready to split open with goodies.

Then I’d rush downstairs and half the front room would be full of colourful parcels and packets.

And this is where I start to sound like a brat…

It always ended up that the anticipation was far better than the result.

I’d be there ripping open all these things, look at it, and wonder “What the heck is that?” :confuzzled:

Then my mother would get annoyed because I was “An ungrateful, spoilt brat, and she should just take them all off me and not bother getting me anything ever again.”

Which kind of spoilt the festive spirit for me… Every year…!

Now I know what you’re thinking… There I was, a room full of gifts and the first thing I do is moan.

But the problem was, my mother has this annoying habit of only buying things that she likes. Now, I know I won’t buy anybody anything that I think is horrible, no matter how much the like it, I just can’t. But my mother takes that to the extreme, it’s only if she likes it that she’d get it.

Which meant that every year, I’d have this stack of opened gifts that I didn’t want, and a small number that I’d actually said I would like.

Hence my reaction.

Then hers.

Followed by me having to hide my disappointment and try to pretend that I was thrilled with them… For the next several years :rollseyes:

And who says being a child is easy?

Don’t get me wrong, occasionally I’d get things that I hadn’t asked for that I thought were great, but the problem was she never took into consideration what I did and didn’t like, it was always what she thought I should like…

But then she does the same thing with my clothes. It took until about 3 years ago before she would finally stop buying something that she had passed in a shop that she thought was lovely and then proceeded to complain when I took one look at it and refused point blank to even be buried in it.

I mean, she knows what I wear… Yet you should have seen some of the monstrosities that she would come home with… :shudder:

But I digress…

I always remember, on the christmas day my fathers parents would come over for lunch, then we would sit and watch the Star Wars/Indiana Jones/James Bond film that was on, although after my grandmother died, (and television got worse), I would go and help my mother in the kitchen, then have a high tea (extra large home made buffet, involving at least six times more food than necessary for the number of people). Afterwards we’d play board games followed by cards, and both my grandfather and father would complain bitterly and throw a tantrum (my grandfather less then my father) if anyone won but them… And don’t get me started on the card counting and strategy lectures I had to listen to…!

Then on boxing day, we would go to my mothers parents house for dinner (another high tea), along with my cousins, then we would spend the night playing party games (and my cousins and I would go and beat each other up) then back home to collapse in bed.

I used to love it. The games, the food, the get-togethers.

Maybe it’s because I have a pretty dysfunctional family on both sides (and being an only child) that I loved it so much. It was usually the only time I ever saw my cousins.

But then things change I guess. My grandmother died, my mothers parents died… Now it’s just another day with bad television.

I have to admit, the only part I miss is the get-togethers with the party games…

In one way I like this time of year, because no matter how I feel about the festivities, the songs, the commercialisation and the insincere well wishes, there is a magic at this time of year, something you can’t put your finger on…

Maybe it’s festive spirit… Maybe it’s just a unity of everyone all getting ready for the same event at the same time…

Whatever it is… There is something… Special… about this time of year.

But if any of you dare tell anyone I said that… :bang:

Of course the other thing that I do hate about this time of year, is the christmas themed movies.

It’s a sadomasochistic hate, it has to be said.

I dislike them because they always have people coming together, missing family members finding their way home, people putting aside their differences, everyone’s family and friends getting together for a big party… And it just reminds me that I never had that, not having a big family, and that I don’t have it at all now, not having seen one set of aunts/uncles/cousins for about 10 years and the other for about 6… Yet still I watch them…

Some kind of twisted mental self-mutilation…

:shrug:

Whatever it is, it does remind me how much I would love to have a large, close-knit family where we had big gatherings, with the food, the music, the daft hats and stupid party games…

Of course in an ideal world there’d be karaoke too… But that’s another story

I had a couple of entries all planned out to write… But I decided to spend five minutes catching up with some journal reading first… I now almost wish I hadn’t.

The journal I’ve just read was a very short entry, I didn’t even realise it had been updated, since I hadn’t had a notification email.

Now I’m sitting here in floods of tears, trying to type without getting the keyboard wet… It’s a good thing I’m getting better at touch typing, since I can’t actually see the keyboard!

:sigh: Self-pity is an annoying thing isn’t it?

I wrote this entry five times yesterday, but it wasn’t right. I posted it twice, and then took it off again both times.

It’s now the day after, and I feel more able to write about it… That and I had an epiphany in the night!

The entry I was reading yesterday was about someone moving away and all their friends saying goodbye, and how there would never be any other friends like that in their life.

I wasn’t expecting that entry to hit me as hard as it did, I just wasn’t prepared for it, I guess… Plus being trapped in a house, away from people for so long… It tends to warp your perceptions of things, not to mention making you more than a little inclined towards rampant self-pity, moaning and moping…

But on top of that, the entry just made me realise how alone I’ve been feeling lately. They say you find out who your real friends are when you have any kind of trial or tribulation in your life… Since taking ill, I can count the number of times I’ve heard from any of my “friends” on one hand, which says rather a lot about them, since I need two hands for the number of years I’ve been ill!

Of course, the fact that I last heard from any of them in January 2003… Well that pretty much says even more! Now I know what they mean by the phrase “Silence speaks volumes!”

Anyway, before I get sidetracked and start wallowing… My epiphany in the night… Well this is the result of it:

I’m sitting here in silence,
Filled with doubt and fear.
All this indecision began with a single tear.

As I sit in silence,
I watch these feelings grow
All the pain and memories
Trickle down the years.

The pain it grows,
The fear expands,
I’m feeling all alone.
I don’t think I can handle this,
Won’t somebody take my hand.

All I need is three little words,
To turn my world around.
The only words I want to hear right now,
Are, I

Love

You.

I sit and wait for the part,
Where my life begins to start.
I wait, I wonder, I hope, I pray,
For when there will be a day,
When someone walks into my life and takes my breath away
I’ll love them like no other,
I’ll know them as a friend,
I’ll know they’ll be my rock,
And I’ll ask them not to bend.

I’ll put them on a pedestal,
And ask them not to fall.
I’ll welcome them into my life,
And pray they’ll never go.

I’ll know it’s true, when I can say,
“You had me at hello!”

Since it’s a little after 3 in the morning, it’s a safe bet I’m still not sleeping well, and right now I’m in the mood to write something. So lets see if I can get the emotions out, and then maybe get some sleep…

Oh, and before anyone asks, no, this is not me, it’s the emotions I’m trying to get out, and after just watching a film along these same lines, it inspired me somewhat. That and it just seemed to work better from a female point of view.

She sat alone in the dark, waiting by the phone. But then she always seemed to be doing that these days. Why didn’t he call?

She checked her watch for the umpteenth time. It was 4:08am. He would be up now. Why hadn’t he called?

She moved over to her computer, no email. But then she never seemed to get any email any more. She checked to see if he was online. He was.

She absently chewed on a nail, debating whether to message him or not. She didn’t understand. After she first met him, he called her every day. They would talk for hours about anything and everything. She found herself staying up late, just so she could be there when he got home from the hospital and went online. So they could talk before she went to bed.

That was her routine for a few months now. Not a day would go by that they didn’t speak or chat through the computer.

But now it had all changed. His mother had recovered and he had gone home. Then, slowly at first, things changed. He wouldn’t call as often through the day. She understood that, he was back home, back at work; he wouldn’t have the time to call. He still called when he got home, and she loved it. Then he would only call every other day, then every couple of days, until pretty soon it was every couple of weeks.

After that, she would see him on the computer, but he wouldn’t message her. She would send him a message, but he often wouldn’t reply, or would wait until she had gone before he left a message.

She felt cheated. She felt betrayed. She felt… dirty.

He had used her, just as others had in the past.

She had promised herself that she would never give her heart to anyone ever again, she would never be hurt like that again… But still she sat, in the dark, waiting for the phone to ring. She had thought he was better than this. He would never use her as a convenience while he was in a strange town, to be picked up when there was nobody better around, and dropped when he got back to familiar ground.

He was better than that… Wasn’t he?

She couldn’t have been that foolish again… Could she?

Yet there she sat. Night after night, all alone in the dark by the phone…

Waiting for a call, the she knew would never come.

Waiting for a dream that she knew would never be.

Hoping for the love that she knew had already died.

So while I’m still in the right frame of mind, I guess I should spend some more time on the subject and get it out of my system.

My parents don’t love me… Boo-hoo… How will I ever recover?

I’ve known that for a long time, I’ve dealt with it… The only thing I still have a problem with is having to rely on them so much. I dislike having to rely on people at the best of times, but it’s infinitely worse when it’s people who don’t even want you.

I can accept that I’m a disappointment to them, as far as I’m concerned, they are disappointed… Tough!

I’m not going to loose any sleep over it, that’s for sure!

What I have the biggest problem understanding is who tells their ten-year-old child that they were an accident, they weren’t wanted, and that they were the only reason the parents hadn’t got divorced?

Ok, so maybe I’d better start at the beginning and work through all of these thoughts flying through my head in order…

I don’t know what kind of relationship my parents had when they first got married, my mother doesn’t really talk about it much, and my father doesn’t talk about it at all. What I do know is that my father wanted someone to cook his meals and clean the house while he went to work and carried on living his life as he always had. My mother on the other hand had a very tough childhood, and was desperately searching for someone or something to make her life feel complete.

The year before I was born, my mother had an ectopic pregnancy and almost died. At a guess I’d say that they didn’t expect her to be able to have a child after that, but about 11 months later, I was born.

For those that don?t know, an ectopic pregnancy is when the foetus doesn?t reach the womb but starts to grow in the fallopian tubes, until the tube ruptures. So had the embryo had a better sense of direction, I either wouldn?t have been here at all, and all this would have been someone else?s problem, or I would have had an older brother to torment?

I have very little memory before the age of 10. Occasionally I’ll get flashes of memory, triggered by a sound or a smell, but that’s all. It’s almost as though I am blocking everything that happened before that time, but I have no clue why. Maybe I tried to forget once I found that everything up to that point had been a lie, maybe the only way to deal with the news was to start a new life from that point, maybe I jsut have a bad memory, or maybe everything up until that time was so mundane and monotonous that there really wasn’t anything worth remembering… I doubt I’ll ever know exactly what happened and why I have no memories of that time, but I’m not entirely sure that it really matters. It’s what came after that had an impact, My life ended that day, and a new one began.

For as long as I can remember, my father kept away from anything that involved emotions, whilst my mother would get emotional at the drop of a hat. You could never have an argument with my father, because he would just switch off and let you drone on in the background, and as anyone knows, it’s almost impossible to have a one sided argument. My mother on the other hand would argue over anything and everything, and no matter what it was, I was always wrong, and she was always right, even down to what I was thinking or feeling at any given time.

The longer the argument would continue, the more annoyed she would become and the less she would think about what she was saying.

It was during one of these arguments that she broke the news. To this day I can’t even remember what the argument was about… I think it was her wanting me to come straight hoe and do my homework, and me wanting to watch my cartoons first and then do my homework so as not to miss them (this was before VCR’s). I don’t remember how the topic changed, but whatever the argument was about, it changed into what a worthless parasite I was, and that if they had known what I would be like, they would never have had a child. I was then told that the only reason I had been born was that I wasn’t expected and that they didn’t really want children.

At that point I was sent to my room for irritating her, and told to do my homework.

It was a couple of days later, during yet another argument that she would have been divorced by then if I hadn’t been born, but that she didn’t feel it would be right for them to get divorced with a child.

This is one of the reasons that I get so annoyed when people have an argument and then later apologise for saying things that “they didn’t mean”. Of course they meant it… Whilst they may have made a point of saying it in the argument to hurt the other person, the fact remains that it’s still what they really think deep down.

Things plodded along as usual after that. I could never do anything right, my mother could never do anything wrong and my father just never did anything.

Looking back over everything I have seen and heard, it’s blatantly obvious that they should never have got married in the first place.

My father didn’t want a wife; he wanted a servant. All he wants out of marriage is someone to do the housework, make his meals and tidy up behind him. He doesn’t want to have to alter his plans or his life in any way to accommodate another person. I guess he wanted a second mother to look after him while he goes to work and goes out to play. Not really good marriage material!

My mother… Well after her childhood and upbringing, my mother just wanted someone to give her life meaning, as far as I can tell. She just wanted to feel loved and be cared for by another person. Unfortunately that desperation clouded her judgement more than a little and she ended up marrying the worst possible person for her, someone who couldn’t or wouldn’t deal with or even admit their own emotions, never mind show any emotion to anyone else.

The funny thing is, when people have a bad childhood, they always want to do it differently with their own children; they want to make sure their children don’t have the problems that they did.

When you look at my father?s family, his father was one of 13 children, and his mother was one of 9. All of them are cold, distant and emotionless. I don’t even know most of his side of the family, because at any given time over 3 quarters of them aren’t speaking to each other.

My mother’s side of the family, well, I don’t really know any of them except her mother and her half sister (and family) not that I ever see any of them. I do know that my grandmother didn’t want my mother and resented her for ruining her life…

It does raise the question, does the past come back to haunt you, or is it simply that we are doomed to repeat our own past, no matter what we try to do to change it?

The funny thing is, I get really irritated when anyone compares me to either of my parents, yet in truth I am very like them… I can be quite cold and distant like my father, but at the same time I am struggling to understand my feelings, just like my mother. And I suppose in my own way, I am desperately searching for a connection with another person. Love, friendship, companionship… I’m not sure which it is… Maybe it’s none of those things, maybe it’s just the ability to form a real relationship with another living being. Not like the Internet where so many people just “love” everybody they come into contact with… But a real person, someone who cares, someone to care about, a person who makes me feel better, and alive just by knowing them…. I guess some would call that a Soul Mate… I don’t know what I’d call it.

*slams doors shut, locks windows, puts up the ram raid bollards and activates the security alarm*

But until then… Time to settle back into my emotional fortress…

*looks around in amazement*

It’s a big ol? world out there… I’m not sure I’m ready to face it for too long at once…

But I think I do feel better for having ventured out into it this time…

Will I make the same mistakes as the past, I don?t know? But I do know that I have no intentions of letting it control me? This is my life, my rules, I won?t let it control me!

I know this is cryptic and won’t make much sense to anyone but me, but I’ve been thinking about this since a conversation I had with someone a couple of days ago.

There’s something I should be dealing with; I should be facing it… But I can’t bring myself to do it… It’s one of the few things that makes me feel completely out of control, and that scares me more than I usually like to admit.

Now I can find the words… But I don’t know if I have the strength to face it… I know I should face my demons, and that I’ll be stronger for doing it… But I don’t know if I have the strength or the desire to go through it…

I guess time will tell.

I will normally write about anything in this journal. I prefer it when the words flow without me having to think about them, it feels natural. Yet here I am, for the first time fighting the flow, trying to hold back the words, censor myself, keep myself away from what I think I need to write…

It feels so un-natural… Yet in a twisted way, it still feels like the right thing to do…

I don’t know… I don’t want to start something I can’t stop, especially when I’m not sure I even want to go down this path… But a little voice inside me keeps telling me that want it or not, eventually I will need to face this…

*bursts into tears*

Perhaps I should explain…

I’m a sucker for happy endings. I am actually more likely to burst into tears at a happy ending than a sad one. The happy ever after endings reduce me to a blubbering wreck faster than anything else.

The happy ending that’s got to me this time… That would be “The O.C.” which was on earlier.

For anyone who watches it, today was episode 3, the one where they find Ryan’s mother, and she realises that he is better off where he is so she leaves, presumably never to see him again.

That kind of thing is Guaranteed to reduce me to tears in less than 10 seconds…

Of course it also makes me curious where all this child and family swapping takes place.

The Australian soaps are the worst… Every time you turn around, one of the families has found a stray person and taken them into their family and their home… Does that ever happen in real life? I’ve certainly never heard of it… And even less likely when the person was busy robbing you blind at the time… But in an Australian soap… Well it’s ok, there they are just misunderstood and have got in with the wrong crowd. Give them 2 maybe 3 episodes and they have changed their evil ways and become an upstanding (and repentant) member of the community.

Maybe it’s just that I like the idea of an instant family…

*checks instructions…*

“Instant family, just add water and stand back…”

Let me tell you a story, about a little girl named Miranda…

Miranda was a quite girl; quite plain by normal standards, and yet quite pretty in her own way, with her big green eyes, and her long auburn hair…

Growing up, she lived in a small village. A peaceful, quiet place. One of those typical villages from the postcards, the kind that everybody wants to move to, and as soon as they get there, want to move away from because it was just too quiet and peaceful.

She grew up in the same small cottage she had been born in while those around her came and went. She would go to school in the nearest town, and then come home to the small cottage in that quiet postcard village.

Many would say Miranda lived a lonely life, she could make friends easily enough, but none of them stayed around long enough for the friendship to develop. But if you were to ask her, Miranda would look at you with amazement. How could she be lonely? She had her cat, Snuffles, and her dolls, and between them she could entertain herself for hours at a time. She preferred her own company, without the responsibility of other people…

It was many years before she began to feel an emptiness inside herself, and for the first time, she craved company, companionship and a friend. She looked at the world around her; she went to school and saw her classmates playing together and laughing at private jokes, catching up with each other?s lives… And for the first time in her life, she felt completely alone. This way of life was alien to her and she just couldn?t understand it.

So she watched, and tried to learn.

And so the next few years were spent watching, but still not understanding. She finished school and went off to college, and always returning home to the little cottage in the quiet little village.

Then she met Jessica.

Tall, slim, beautiful, outgoing, sporty, popular… Jessica was everything that Miranda wasn’t. This was the type of girl that used to bully her at school. They got talking and Jessica explained that she had just moved into the area and was living in the same little village as Miranda.

Despite all their differences, they were drawn to each other. Maybe it was those differences; maybe it was that each of them had what the other needed… Whatever the reason, over the next few months they became very close friends.

She couldn’t believe it was happening to her, she had not only found a friend, but someone who made her feel better just by knowing her. It couldn’t be real… could it?

As time wore on she began imagining all the different ways that their friendship could all fall apart, so she would be ready for it when it happened.

But it didn’t…

At least not then.

But eventually the inevitable happened. Just like she had always known it would, the friendship came to an end.

She wanted to think it hadn’t ended badly or that they had just drifted apart… But she couldn?t.

She had been used. Used until something better came along, and now it had.

The last she saw of Jessica was on the day of their graduation from college when she and the other girls stood to one side making fun of Miranda.

Had she really thought they would remain friends? That’s what Jessica had asked her. Was she truly that naive? And what would she be willing to do to hang out with her… Would she be willing to do anything?

She walked away from her, from the other girls and from the college with a heavy heart.

What would she do to be Jessica’s friend? Nothing! She had learnt enough to know that friendship could not be bought and sold, it just was.

What would she do for her friend? Anything that was in her power.

How does the story end?

It hasn’t ended yet. She is still finding her feet; she has a lot of ground to catch up on. But she’s getting there, slowly but surely.

But I can tell you that whenever she sees the rain, she remembers that song, throws her head back and lets the rain wash over her, bringing back memories of the good times.

What can we learn from Miranda?

The same things she has learnt.

Friendship takes work, it takes effort and it takes both people working at it to make last. But even then, some things just can’t last forever no matter how much you want them to.

She also learnt that in any relationship, you need to remember the good times, but learn from the bad times and be willing to accept and learn from your mistakes.

There are two kinds of people when it comes to relationships of any kind. There are the Jessica’s of the world, who take on any relationship with a “What can I get out of this, what’s in it for me?” attitude, and then there are the Miranda’s, who look for what they can bring to the relationship, who put the other person ahead of themselves and, despite their faults, try their hardest to make it work.

So maybe we should be asking ourselves, which are we, are we Jessica or are we Miranda?