"Update"

I am, I think, happier than I can remember being for a long, long time. I don't want to gloat so as to cause anyone upset, but - I really feel like things have turned a corner for me.

At the end of March I am moving out to California to go and live with XXX. She is just extraordinary - constantly surprising and challenging and with eerie emotional and mental synchronies and I am very, very much in love with her. I will stay until my tourist visa runs out, just before my birthday in June.I applied to grad schools again - fifteen of them! - and I have heard back from UCLA, who rejected me, and Duke, who want to admit me with a full tuition waiver, a $19kpa stipend for 6 years and a 4 year Uniersity-wide fellowship, the James B. Duke fellowship. When I got the email I cried like a baby and called up the next day to check they hadn't made a mistake. They hadn't. At least, not an administrative one! I'm still waiting on Stanford, Berkeley (and those two are my top two choices for obvious reasons), Columbia, NYU, Penn, Harvard, Yale, UVa, JHU, WashU STL, UChicago, UMich and Rutgers. Come what may, though, it's finally going to happen, whereever it happens - I'm going to graduate school! I just can't believe it.

At the end of last june - on my birthday, in fact - I went to the doctor, which was something I had been putting off for some years, and told him that I had been told that had symptoms of anxiety and depression. He diagnosed me as severe and gave me a prescription and we argued about it - he gave me something like 6 hours in four days - and I told him I felt like he'd pathologised my personality and then medicated it, and he countered that that was because I'd confused my feelings with my personality and that that was something that he wanted to stop. Since starting to take them I have stopped hitting irrational rages and thumping walls, stopped systematically alienating people who try to help me, stopped having that horrible, horrible ballooning terror and dread of everything all the time, the crippling social anxiety, the reflexive spite and bile and meanness - gone. I don't feel chemical, or artificial, or messed-with, or like I'm living through felt. I feel - fine. (I just get drunk really, really quickly.)

My job is fine. I got another pay rise and handed in my notice at the same time, which was gratifying. I am advertising my room, and starting to pack up my things. Living in London is difficult and has driven me to tears of frustration every now and then, but on balance I am so glad to have had this six months working in Westminster, learning about politics. I've put in to do a freelance political research job while I'm in CA, which will be great - hoping it comes through!I've been too coy with this blog for too long. I'm going to try to be a bit more honest and have a bit less silly over-determined angst. We'll see how it goes. I hope that you are all doing ok. Much love and a happy valentine's day to you all-