I can't get no sleep.

I can't breathe. I feel trapped, like I'm getting crushed from the inside out. It hits me rarely but when it does I want to give in to life. I want to scream and cry and push it away and run as fast and as far as I can so that it's not even a distant memory. I love him. I still fucking love him and it's all his fault. I hate him for doing this to me. For chewing me up and spitting me out when I never wanted any of this in the first place. HE wanted me. How the fuck did this happen? I lie awake terrified that I'm not going to have that feeling and I'm never going to let this go. I hear people talk about life regrets and all I can taste is the fear of standing at the alter with another man wishing that it was him. I'm 20 years old, this is normal, right? Is this first love, because I was with my ex-boyfriend for 3 years and never felt this. He's the one I fantasise about. The life we would lead. Make it stop. It isn't romantic, it's pathetic and tiring, I hate myself and I hate him for making me hate myself. I miss him but I never want to see him again. There is only so much you can hear from your friends, when they think that you're over it so feel that they can tell you, that they knew he was in love with me. I can't hear that he was in love with me. I can't hear about how he looked at me, how he speaks about me when I'm not around. Because I'm not ok. I can't keep comparing everyone in my life to him, and every experience to one we shared. It's boring. Please, let me let this go.

...today was a day just like any other.

So...I think I'm ready for a change. This worries me. I've been through a constant change for the past 10 months. I moved to Greece for 3 months, then I came back and moved to Manchester, alone, for 4 years. I've been there 7 months now, love every single part of it, but I'm lieing in bed now, terrified that this is it, for the next few years. Why can't I feel any sort of content anymore? The last time I did I remember...I was in Greece, about 3 days before I left, it was about 6pm and I was sitting with friends around the pool, it was that time of evening when the sun was going in but it was still so warm. One of my boys brought me over a beer, like he always did at that time. I remember looking around at these people who had been strangers to me a mere 10 weeks before, but who I trusted with my life every single day I was there. I remember that we didn't have work that night, we were all gonna go back to our little row of apartments, take a nap and hang out. Then we were gonna get dressed up and go and get drunk for one of the last times together. That feeling of order, safety, love in a place so random and once, so recently, unknown was unfathomable. I miss it, to the point I ache when I think about it, my heart quickens and I just lie awake thinking about it all the time. My best friend was with me, I know she had the time of her life, the greatest time any one could have, but I know I hold something completely different for it. I was so broken when I went there, vulnerable and fragile and one wrong move would have been detrimental. These people, these amazing people who I met, just seemed to glue me back together. Not only that, they seemed to find pieces that I didn't even know were missing. I can't explain the love I feel for them, even after months of not seeing some of them. I will always remember that summer, when I was young and broken and scared and carefree and stupid and loud and confident. The summer I laughed and loved and danced and sang and made a fool out of myself and became lustful and wanted. That is the best I have ever been. I learned from that place that you are always the best version of yourself when you are irrevocably happy. So, that is what I'm looking for now. That happiness.

I have the greatest friends a girl could ever want, this I know for 100% fact. I have a family who is supportive and hilarious yet still shadowed and troubled, we are a team, nothing can hold us down for long. I have my own home, with 3 flat mates who I adore. I am getting to the point now where I want to fall in love. With someone who will not let it pass them by. I need my heart to race like it did before, like it sometimes still does. I need that as a constant in my life. I strive when I feel the pressure of lust. I need someone to fight for me for once, because I don't think anyone really has before...I need to let someone in, I need to allow it. I feel like someone is going to come into my life soon but I don't know where or when. Many say my biggest assett is that I don't care what any one thinks of me, I am completely my own person and people actually always like me. I agree with that, not in an arrogant, dick head way, people do like me. I make an effort with everyone I meet. Conversation is easy for me and I think I have a way of making anyone feel comfortable. One of my best boy friends told me the other day that I was the girl who he goes home and tells his friends about, that I'm the one he'd compare a girl to, that I am the example that he and his friends hold as a pillar of the way they want their girl to be. I think that is one of the biggest compliments I could receive from him, the biggest player in Manchester, other than what followed that "You're the girl I've told my mum about as one of my best friends here."

I began writing this as a kind of 'let-off-steam-about-wanting-a-man', but I guess it kind of all comes down to yourself in the end. How you feel about yourself, how you see yourself. I see myself as a mess, but others seem to think I've got it figured out. What does that say about anything?

Here's trouble now.

I turn to writing when I'm not sure how to feel. For the first time in months I don't know. I am happy, I genuinely am. Content in a way that I have always wanted. I have new friends that feel like have been there for many years. I am besotted by them, they bring me out of myself, we talk about everything, and I mean everything.

I had the summer of my life, a summer I couldn't even begin to describe to anyone, where I have met some of the most important people in my world. They fixed me, put me back together.

...And then I moved to Manchester, and built a real life for myself, a home and friends. It has been phenomenal.

Now though, I feel a bit lost, finally in a place where I can breathe and over-look everything that has happened over the past few months.

But I miss him. A dull ache to a once physical pain. But he is back in my life, in some ways stronger than ever. He told me he loved me recently. A drunk night that turned into a long 3am phone-call. I know the love he means because I feel it too, not the kind of love that we'll promise to make it work no matter the distance that i now permanently between us, but in a way that will over ride it all really. That his face still softens whenever I see him. That the smile still comes, that he holds on that little bit longer whenever he hugs me, that he still calls me 'trouble' but not in the way he once did, now it's as if he is reliving everything, a cheeky grin when he says it. I love him, so much. I think about him again every single day and it pisses me off more than ever. But I don't hate him for it anymore, love him for making an effort with me, calling me surprisingly some mornings, that's always my favourite.

A few month ago I wanted to come and write how I was over him, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I'm not gonna get over it, I know that, I really do. But I'm not clinging to some hopeless dream state. "You never know what is going to happen in the future" he said to me. I see that he is right now. I don't want to know either. Ignorance is bliss for me, for him, for us.