Apart from my new Wii obsession (we bought one this week – my arms hurt!!), I have been playing a lot of ‘The Sims 2’, the University and the Open Business edition. Besides staying up very late working at getting my Sims on track to discovering their true potential, I couldn’t help but wish that it really was just that simple. Click > Do Assignment, Click > Study Mechanical, Click > Write term paper. >> Fast forward >> Done. Que Announcement – Your Sim has passed their exam and has achieved a grade of A+. Time for a party. Blah Blah. You get the general idea. Only, in real life it really isn’t that easy to juggle your commitments alongside cooking for yourself, cleaning, going out, paying your bills.. your taxes.. your council tax.. your water rates… the list is endless and most of us spend two-thirds of the day in work sat at our desks wishing that we could go home, even though we realise that if we did go home it would probably be to take care of the rising pile of ironing that would be by now taking over the bedroom.

I also wish that I could have fast forwarded my University days. I had this notion before I moved away that University would be the best days of my life.. a journey of discovery about myself and of life, a lot of hard work sure but at the same time a hell of a lot of fun. Much to my disappointment I didn’t find any of those to be true. I remember very clearly my first day. I had been shown by enthusiastic “fresher helpers” to my small, concrete room which contained nothing but a bed, a small cramped wooden desk with graffiti all over it and a window which peered out into some other poor sods miserable room. Sitting on my bed, which I’m not even sure you could call a ‘single’, I opened my ‘fresher pack’; a collection of leaflets about all the pop-fueled ‘get me laid’ events that the union was offering. Oh and a bible. I disposed of the bible (in the bin, if you must ask) and lay on my bed wondering what I should do next. In true movie-esq. fashion (you know those really bad American teen films where the socially retarded geek goes to college) I decided to venture out and knock on the three doors beside mine. Perhaps God had cursed me after I’d un-ashamedly thrown out his ‘good book’ because my neighbours were one air-headed blonde, one non-English speaking French man and one non-English speaking German man. Ha. That night I attended the union for the freshers week events and met a curly haired guy from Carlisle who proceeded to try his luck with me, even after I repeatedly stated that I was in fact a lesbian.

Needless to say, I never went back. Perhaps that was rather defeatist of me, but the pop music gave me a headache and the atmosphere wasn’t much better than a high-school party full of teenagers trying desperately to (a) sip Wkd’s (with a straw) and get as pissed as they physically could in the least time and, (b) pull, whoever they possibly could. I just didn’t fit in. Salvation came in an un-likely place when I started dating a closeted English girl from Loughborough Uni. Victoria and I (my long-term g’f of almost seven years) had split after three years of an extremely strained, almost manipulative, online relationship. I did what any good lesbian does after a break up; I found a new girlfriend with whom I could heal my growing feelings of neglect and social abandonment.

What a mistake that was. Not only did I ostracize myself from my class mates but I was spending every other week with my new girlfriend in gay-friendly Loughborough and therefore missing a hell of a lot of classes. Worse still, I met a 4th year student at my Uni a couple of months later and quickly realised that I wasn’t attracted to my girlfriend at all. I had craved the safety that she had offered me – I was her first and she lived miles away. Close enough though that I could travel there whenever I wanted and instantly have friends – her friends. She was a sweet intelligent girl, but there was no spark there for me. This however had made me feel secure – I was detached, I could walk away at any point un-scathed. That wasn’t something that I had felt before, Victoria had always been able to push my buttons and our breakup had left me heart-broken even if I wasn’t ready to admit it, even to myself.

A couple of months later and I had moved myself from one hell straight into another. I hadn’t the guts to break it off with Loughborough girl and as I spent less and less time down there with her, escaping Uni life (my Uni life), I started spending more and more time with the 4th year student – a metal head from Camden London. She was the president of an alternative music society that ran gigs at the union, playing anything from metal to techno. I quickly became the vice president and we used that as an excuse to go out almost every night. It was the start of an extremely destructive and dangerous relationship. We would use or take anything that we could get our hands on – huge amounts of weed and alcohol, ecstasy, speed and magic mushrooms.. sometimes all of these in one night. It was all the same; it numbed me. It made life colour-less and safe.

Only a few weeks had gone by and I couldn’t sleep without her with me and without a fix of something. I had stopped visiting Loughborough girl and she really had no clue what was going on, even though I really wanted her to find out and finish things with me. I even told her one night, “I’m sleeping with someone else and I have been for some time”. Instead of freeing herself from the one-sided relationship, she forgave me. She came up to Edinburgh the following weekend and instead of spending time with her, I spent it with Camden girl. I was addicted – addicted to how she made feel, addicted to the security that she made me feel because she was older and mentally stronger, addicted to the things we did when we were together. The sex was destructive, angry, passionate and full of hurt on both sides. We had both struggled with our abusive childhoods and I had felt that she understood me. I returned from her house one evening to find my girlfriend packing. I had asked her what was going on (as if I didn’t already know) and no reply came. She left without saying a word. A few weeks later I heard from a mutual friend that she had hurt herself, badly. She had taken a kitchen knife to her arm and had been admitted to the psychiatric ward, where she would be staying for the foreseeable future. I tried to contact her but her friends blew me off (.. I don’t blame them really) and I never heard from her again.

My first year of University was over and I had attended, apparently, all off three classes. Somehow I managed to scrape through with all of my exams and had consequently passed the year, but I wasn’t happy. I didn’t even know if I knew how to be happy. January came and I had started to speak to Victoria again. Camden girl knew the situation, she knew our history and she had never been anything but understanding and supportive about it. My discontentment grew with the relationship and even though she claimed she loved me, we both knew different. It had served a purpose; our upbringings, our past, had finally come to the surface. We had destroyed ourselves in search for freedom from pain, yet all we had done was hurt ourselves and each other. I had been self-harming for months, but it all came to a climax on the night that I took a piece of telephone cable, made it into a noose and tied it to the top of a metal pipe that ran up my wall. Now let’s not get dramatic. It was nothing more than a cry for help. I had tried, twice, but I couldn’t do it. I had also known that Camden girl (I’m getting really sick of calling her that) was going to be round within the hour. I knew that if I was going to do it, I would need to do it soon, before she arrived, but I couldn’t. Pain withstanding, I knew I wasn’t a quitter. I knew that I couldn’t do that to my family and I knew that despite the pain, it would get better, eventually.

True salvation came after I had a long conversation with Victoria on the phone that night (no I didn’t retrieve the bible from the bin). I poured my heart out to her. I sobbed. I questioned my strengths and my weaknesses and I decided to make a fresh start. That fresh start saw me boarding a plane to Wales to go visit Victoria. Camden girl had agreed that it was for the best; that I needed to do it and that if it didn’t work out that she would still be there for me. I anxiously boarded the plane – it was the biggest day of my life. You’ve got to understand that Toria and I had dated for three years, but only online. We were young, naive and completely in the closet at that time. We had been too scared what our parents would say. We had been scared that it would really be ‘real’, and that the safety and security of an online relationship, safe from real rejection and disappointment would be gone. You get rejected in ‘The Sims’ and you feel sad for a nano second, shake your head, say something that sounds remarkably like Dutch to me, then you go shoot some pool and you’re happy again. If only, I hear you mutter.

I stayed at her folks for a week, all the time sharing a single bed. It felt right between us from the second I laid my eyes on her. I knew instantly that those three years that we had spent online, saving ourselves for each other, wasn’t in vain. I knew it meant something. I knew it meant everything and I knew that we had a very long future ahead of us. If I remember rightly we lay in bed together that first night and watched ‘The Secretary’– the story of a dysfunctional cutter who is released from hospital and enters a sadistic relationship with her boss who likes to spank her when she makes typing errors. The perfect romantic film I hear you say… oh yes… Actually it’s a really lovely and touching film, you should rent it… Anyway; we fell in love.. again. She moved to Edinburgh three years ago and we have been living together ever since. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that she saved me – she certainly saved me from myself. I hate to think where I could be in life if it wasn’t for her, if it wasn’t for that complete turn-around. She makes me feel happy and healthy and loved. I don’t need to escape anymore.

I dropped out of University last year, after only completing half my ‘Applied Psychology’ degree. It just wasn’t for me. Heh, it works for some people and not others right? It wasn’t productive for me. I felt lost and I’d rather focus on my life with Victoria anyway. My long-term plans include finishing my degree at home, in my spare time with the ‘Open University’.. Oh and, being happy.