The daffodils (in a glass on the bookcase) have opened this morning.

I have an essay to write today, also I need to clean the flat (Friday routine).

First day with the citalopram, I almost fainted in Tesco.

(also, thankyou so much to all of you who wrote such lovely messages of support- they meant a lot to me)

So I went to the doctor today- my doctor back home, I'm not registered up here- to seek treatment for depression.

And it was simple.

I left school two and half years ago- so long ago. And since, one and off, for those two and half years I've been wading in and out of patches of depression, of varying severity.

When I was 18 (when it started) my mother insisted I see a doctor, but I never followed up on the treatment because it was too embarrassing and I hated the idea of it and felt I didn't deserve to get help since there was nothing really wrong with me.

So like, where other than here, could you go to record for posterity that you had a sex dream about Nelson Mandela?

God it was weird. You just wake up feeling... a bit dirty.

Because the course of the dream sort of segued from a fairly normal dream about someone who didn't look like- but clearly represented in the way that dreams can- a girl I know, into a dream about someone who very much looked like- and clearly was- venerable nonagenarian Nelson Mandela.

Slam (KD), Cram (AC) came over and we (me and Mal aka in old times CA) cooked moules mariniere. We had them with big chunks of French bread and asparagus roasted, with a bit of lemon juice, pepper and olive oil.

Because it is Valentines the asparagus was buy one get one free, so my budget extended to bunches of thick green fingers of it. We also had a bit of rocket.

We drank cheap prosecco, and some white wine (also used to cook the mussels in) and then more wine Slam brought along.

Awake in my bed (it's morning), sitting against the radiator, with a second cup of tea and reading a book on social theory. My mug of tea is balanced on a poetry anthology, which I think I might prefer to be reading.

I know I write about this maybe every second journal, but like the elephant sitting on my chest right, this is the thing that takes up half my life. How can I live and still feel this lonely?

I have drifted out of my teenage angst years, and drifted into fucking spinstersdom.

I can laugh at myself (you can't when you're younger). I can live by myself (you don't when you're younger). But this, this is going to kill me.

So, technhically I was skiving off my reading. I'd gone to Kenninsgton with the perfectly good intention of visiting the V and A, to contextualise my visual and material cultures module.

A flutter of snow (just now) left the sky and the the street and the tops of the cars looking silver. Before that, when the snow started- just as I opened the currtains- the sky was electric blue.
When the world is so beautiful, even on an ordinary street, it's like someone is pouring water into my ribcage and I think I'll burst from its pressure. It's not exactly nice.

Work last night- had to help on the steak and oyster bar, which was fine because it was quiet and I don't mind it too much if it's not busy.

I'm in my room, in my bed, under the duvet with my back against the radiator. It's lovely.

I've had a lovely day.

Let's start backwards. Mal isn't in tonight, so I have the flat to myself. This means I don't look mad when I talk to David Dimbleby on the telly (if no-one sees it you can't look mad...). The reason I'm talking to him- he hasn't noticed; he's busy narrating a programme about art in the Middle Ages- is because I'm eating dinner and the wine went straight to my head.

Mum came up today, to see the flat. She really likes it, which does validate the place in my mind (my sister Clap likes it too).

I made tomato and red pepper soup for lunch and she bought me a hoover.

Had to work this evening, because I swapped my Tuesday shift so I could go home for my birthday.
I'm sitting in front of rubbish television, with a glass of wine feeling quite tired and not looking forward to work again tomorrow- but it can't be helped, can it?

It's my birthday; I'm totally sloshed and yet I spent it with my family. Oh dear.

For my birthday I got a netbook (wow- I knew it what was what I was getting, but wow, it's great and so tiny)

I also got membership to the Tate

A garnet necklace from my gran

A bit of cash, a top, another necklace. Super lovely.

This time last year, right, I was stood in the snow in the street outside my parents' house. It was just before I moved in to the last place. Snow flakes were thick as flies. I went out into the garden and out of the gate and stood in the street, in the middle of the road, watching snow fall and fall and fall.

This year it's as cold. I'm in my flat eating a bowl of vegetably pasta and the kettle has just clicked off to say the water's boiled so I'll have a cup of tea and I've just got back from a comedy night at the SU and I'm 21.

(nb- this isn't an interesting entry, this is just me organising my thoughts on my body image/ food problems into a chronology)

I'm sure a lot of people on here have experiences similar.

It's funny- not really in a laugh riot way- that considering the mental energy and anguish I've bloody invested in a perilous relationship with food over the years that
a) I'm neither really, really fat
b) nor thin
c) that I've never really had a proper eating disorder

Because I think unfortunately it's normal.

There's been an incident, I suppose, at the end of my street. A police van, an ambulance and someone on the ground, someone else holding and either frost or broken glass on the pavement.

My borough is one of the worst in London for knifecrime, but I don't know what that was about. You can't look too much- can't gawp- because it's impolite...

It's a cold night. Last night was also cold. The frost is forming in a elipse on the windscreens of cars.

A man speaking heavily accented English chatted me up at the bus stop last night, on the way back from a friend's house last night.