"This is no declaration, I just thought I'd let you know goodbye..."

"...Said the hero in the story"

Hello Easter Monday! 

You join me on my bed in my pyjamas, hair scraped back, surrounded by chocolates (and choco wrappers) with a treasured cup of tea (containing the last of the milk). Perfect setting to do some Facebook Culling. (Please accept the use of 'unfriend' and 'defriend' as actually words for this bloglet. Also the word 'bloglet'.) 

*Dips tiny chocolate egg in tea*

I have just unfriended about 20 people. These people are (mostly) lovely, but I asked myself two questions:
1. Would I want to meet up for a cup of coffee with this person? (I would meet for a cup of tea with almost anyone so we have to specify coffee here)
2. If I saw this person on the street/on a train, would I go up and say hello, or would I keep my head down and hope they don't see me? 

*Slurps tea*

If NO to #1, I seriously consider whether I want to actively share my digital life with them. Sometimes this is a clear cut decision but sometimes it's a little more complicated. Say they were someone I used to know, or worked with, who I really liked but haven't seen in a year or so. Therefore no to coffee but not necessary a removal. 

*Unwraps and nibbles egg*

Move on to question #2. If this is AVOID, I unfriend them. Why am I classing myself as a digital friend to someone I wouldn't want to acknowledge in public? Sometimes this is awkward. Sometimes it's the friend of someone you like, or someone you used to be close with but just don't have need for in your life anymore. Sometimes you get a message from them days later asking how they are and saying how weird it is that you're not Facebook friends when they "swear we used to be! LOL!"

Though it's nice they're trying to resurrect the friendship, I find it creepy when someone I don't speak to often notices when I unfriend - I don't post a lot so if you notice we're not friends it means you are Facebook Stalking me. Reinforces the decision to defriend. Sorted. 

*Checks empty mug for more tea*

*Sadface*

If someone defriended me (and I actually noticed) I might be hurt (depending on who they were) but I would ask myself the last time we actually had any contact more than a 'like' on a status or something. If I want to keep people in my life I need to make the effort to keep them, and I hope that my Facebook friends do the same. 

If not, next time I'm too lazy to get dressed and go out they'll be for the chop - mwahahahaha! 


*Quote from Belle & Sebastian 

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead..."

"...I lift my lids and all is born again."

Today on the way to work I finished “Mad Girl’s Love Song”, a biography of Sylvia Plath.

I loved it; I found it very insightful, very gripping and very thought provoking. However, as it ended with her meeting Ted Hughes (as the latter part of her life has been well documented elsewhere) I have been left hungry for more.

It feels very odd to be hungry for a person. I wish to devour them, mind and soul. I want her letters, her words, her thoughts inside me, in my stomach to churn and digest.

I’ve always loved Sylvia Plath, and the more I read of her work and about the woman herself the more I feel an affinity to the ill-fated poet. She looked for doubles and I see her as mine. In the grip of a depression her words resonate with me, in exhilaration only mania brings I see her fevered soul in my eyes.

Is this dangerous? To identify so closely to a woman who took her own life, who indeed seemed destined to do so? My Mother once told me she foresaw and dreaded the day I would abscond from my life, disappear without a goodbye, unable to continue to try and solve the problems I saw with living. Well, she didn’t say it anywhere near as prosaically or as pretentiously as that, but you catch my meaning.

I don’t want to give up on life, but I don’t want to bury that side of me; sometimes at my most broken I feel like my most authentic self. How twisted is that?


*Quote from Sylvia Plath