"Friendship is action; it's not just words and it never was." *

**This is a quote by the late Audrey Hepburn, and it's something I truly believe in, not only in terms of friendship but in life in general.


Well, today hasn't been a great day, to be honest. Was feeling not-too-bad but then I got a text message which kind of made me feel a bit bummed, just one from my mum reminding me about having to pay the bank on Monday. This is the thing I hate about text messages: you can't tell the 'tone' of them and you can read too much into them! In that message I felt like my mum was being a bit mean or something, and I felt hurt and got a bit too into-my-head, ad felt really depressed for a while - but then I texted my mum back and got a really nice one back from her. So it was obviously me projecting my own feelings onto my mum, which is unfair!

And even when I was feeling shit today, I kept telling myself that 'actions, not words, are what matter' - this is kind of my motto in life, and it usually implies a negative thing: people can talk all they want, but if they don't follow through and ACT then it's all worthless. But today was the first time that it uto me that it goes both ways: even if it had turned out my mum had been unkind in her message to me, nevertheless this last week (and, in fact, ever since I first came out to Spain) she's been nothing but supportive of me, and she's helped me a lot, practically and emotionally. And that is what truly matters, and that's what I need to hold onto.

My mum and I didn't have a great relationship when I was growing up, and we're still not all that close about a lot of things, but I'm really starting to leave that behind and accept her for the person she is, and the way she is, and why. I understand why she did things she did when I was younger, and looking back I guess I wasn't always the easiest daughter either, but she has been so kind and understanding and caring for me this last year, and I really appreciate her for everything she's done and for all the times she's had to worry about me.

Anyway, I'm really feeling like I'm in a bit of a dark patch now, and I'm trying my best to work through it. Things are only being made worse bytthe fraught relationship with my flatmate, the Poison Dwarf as she's known nhere, and amoung my closest friends. Today I really dreaded coming home again, and I realised I almost feel like I'm being bullied by her. Obviously she's never physically harmed me, or threatened to, but the way she can be so nasty and the way she is, and constantly makes me feel uncomfortable and talks down to be as if she were giving me into trouble! It makes me feel crap and it's really knocked my self-esteem, which is something that I took a long time in building up from my school days, and I was finally at a stage where I was really happy and confident within myself, and I'd moved on from my shyness and managed to be more open, and I feel now like I'm sliding backwards, and she's the one gave me the push over the edge.

So I've made a decision: even if she turns round and tells me I have to move out the flat, well, it would be a lot of hassle but other than that, so what? I'm going to stop tiptoeing around her, stop feeling nervous in my own home, and more than anything, stop letting her negative self-image and bitterness affect me. Recently I've been thinking about her all the time and even imaging horrible things happening to her, or me saying horroble things to her. I really hate doing this, so I've tried hard to stop and any time I think of her, I just take a deep breath and let the tension in my tummy seep away, and I think about something happy.

I am not a person who usually deals in negative emotion: I'm very optimistic and I believe in love and acceptance rather than hate. I also firmly believe that people who have so much hate and anger and bitterness inside them eat themselves up from the inside out, and are miserable. So much negativity is abhorent to me, and I won't let myself become the kind of person who feels that way about anyone, no matter how they treat me. In the end, and this does, admittedly, sound slightly clichéd, I'll be the one who's better off (even if I am unceremoniously evicted) because I'll move on and won't let this bad experience cling onto me, whereas PD will let it fester, and will repeat the same things over and over, being nasty, mean and selfish, and cultivating her bitterness until it consumes her.

That will never be me.