It feels so strange to be doing this again. To be getting into a relationship, to be staring down at my phone going...should I call? Should I leave it? Will he be busy? But I love it. I've been so scared, so afraid, for so long...yet maybe what I've been praying for, been yearning for, has been in my phone book for a month. Who knows? But I'm not letting accusations of desperation deter me - after all, I refuse to believe that giving someone who asked for my phone number and made me smile is desperation. I don't believe that reading a text he sent me is desperation. And I don't believe that you're worried about me at all - I think it's something else. Just because you've been hurt, doesn't mean I will be. Just because I got in too deep with one guy, doesn't mean that I will do it again. So yeah. This probably doesn't make a lot of sense to a lot of people. But, for me, I think friendship is about supporting one another. It's about saying...look, I don't think you should do this, this is why, but it's your life - I'll be there if you fall, no matter what. That's what I love about my friendship with Sandra. I remember telling her something, and she said 'Well, this isn't what you want to hear, but this is what I think...' And she wasn't tearing me down - she was actually being honest in a non-judgemental sort of way, and I respected that. Sure, it took me a week to reply to her email because I was a little pissed off, but she understood that, and I gave her my opinion, and we got on with our lives. I can take advice, but I have to make my own mistakes.

I still don't believe I'm desperate. Desperate would be going up to a guy and batting my eyelashes and giving him a nice view of my chest. Talking to a guy who talks to you is not desperation, and exchanging numbers to talk again is not desperation.

Why are we as women so determined to tear one another down? I know I do it, I know my friends do it to me, I've seen it happen. And it's so freaking pointless. Why can't we just be there for one another? I was talking to a friend on Thursday, as we happened to both be going into the city, and she said something about the so-called "plastic" or "bitchy" group at our school - they backed each other up. There was no undercurrents of resentment - it was all out in the open. I know my group at school is nothing like that. We're divided into two, maybe even three, distinct groups, and it's awful. I love these girls, but hell, we have issues. And because we've all graduated, they're never going to be sorted out, purely because they're not going to be brought up, and that kills me. They'll just lay dormant, and these will be the reasons why, within a year, we won't be in contact. Not all of us, anyway. I don't believe in having regrets, but I wish I had have spoken my mind more, put girls in their place when they deserved it, and not allowed the bitchiness to happen. maybe we should have just confronted it instead of bitching about it afterwards. Instead of exchanging awkward glances and ranting in the common room. Maybe our foundations would have been stronger if that had have happened.

And there'll be people that read this and interpret as a direct aim against them. Sigh. Surprisingly enough, it's not. It's a general thing, and I don't think that I'm the only one that feels this way. There are good memories, but the bad memories force you to reconsider what they mean and what the motivation for all the happy times was. I know I haven't been honest this year, and probably a little too caught up in my own affairs to be the friend that I should have been, but I'm not taking all the blame this time. I think that the majority of us within the group as a whole have contributed to this, and I think, when we fall out of contact, none of us deserve to ask why.

Wow. How did I get onto that topic?

God Bless.

lovelove, Jess xxxx