I've been back at home a while now...

... and I've realised something. While I was away at university, there was a gap here at home. A Lali-shaped gap.

And my mum and my brother have successfully filled the majority of it in without me.

You see, even before I left I was changing a bit. For years (and years) I never dared voice any of my opinions on anything because I didn't want to get into arguments (that got me into a lot of trouble at school, actually. I was constantly being told I had to have opinions - I did, I just wasn't vocal about them). I used to never really dare to go anywhere or do anything on my own. I very rarely made decisions for myself - if there was someone else around who had a strong idea what the group should do, then fine, let's do that... But Sixth Form and the summer afterwards (Dragon*Con!) kind of changed that a bit. I became a little more independent and so on.

And at uni that kept going. Much to shadowbyrd's dismay, I'm sure, I took over a little bit in the flat and so on. We went places and did stuff and I cooked and cleaned and whatever, and whatever I did was my choice. Great. Fantastic. I can cope! I can pack a bag for an overnight trip or a few days or a week and I can find the trains and ask directions and all that jazz. Egad. I'm practically living my own life...

And now uni's over for the year and I'm back at home, and the only space available for me is the one that fit when I was sixteen or so.

Everything's falling back into the old, old routines. Mondays and Fridays mean archery again. Wednesdays mean Guides. I'll meet people in town, or go round the corner to ranamag's house. Just like I used to.

And therein lies the problem. It's all very much as it used to be.

You see, back at the flat, at uni, Fridays meant Writer In A Drawer deadline.

Here, they don't.

So uh... Weekend just gone, I did the one thing I swore to high heaven and back that I would never, ever do. I defaulted. I dropped out of writerinadrawer with not a bang but... well, silence, actually. I didn't remember about the deadline until... um... ten to eleven that night.

Great. Believe me, I feel very idiotic about that.

It doesn't help that I'm still not feeling entirely back to myself. I think I'd really prefer not to be sixteen again.

Particularly since my brother's doing his best to shove me back to that. I really must remember that next time he asks me what I think about something, he doesn't actually want to know. He wants me to agree with him, simply and plainly. Otherwise I'm opinionated, right? And if he asks me what a word means, or a detail about ancient history or weaponry or anything else that by pure chance I happen to know, if I actually tell him the answer then that's me showing off how much I think I'm an expert on everything.

Clearly.

Prat.



On a side note, I took an interesting little online test the other day. Would you make a good 1930s husband or wife (according to your gender, naturally)?

Out of a hundred, I scored 39 for the wife test. Poor, apparently. Well, duh.

Then, for the heck of it, I took the husband test. 95. I'm practically the perfect 1930s man, it seems. With just one problem... ^_^'