i'm a competitive person - always have been and probably aways will be. i've always prided myself at being the best at what i do. now i don't do very much - mainly drink, eat & get my own way. but i'm fucking awesome at it.  

so why, all of a sudden, have i found myself in over my head? oh wait, now i remember. i'm not good at being a 'we'. 

1 month and 21 days ago a boy came over for a drink. and basically hasn't left. now all of a sudden I'M a we - and we're doing dinners, we're doing drinks, and the standard 'yeah, i'll be there to get drunk and talk smack into the wee hours of the morning' text has turned into 'we'll be there'. eek. 

after many too many failed encounters with absolute wankers i marched my single and fed up arse down the the supermarket and bought the entire store out of AA batteries.  but isn't it funny how as soon as you resign yourself to a fate life just comes along and shits all over everything. two months ago i was planning adventures for just me, making dinners for one. without any thought, forewarning or big flashing illuminated signs saying 'turn right to become everything you despise' i've gone from a me to an us. i'm meeting the friends and all the drunken nights out lately have taken me into bed with the same person.

i suck at relationships. its a tried and tested fact. i spend so long crafting my art as being the ultimate single that i have literally forgotten how to be a couple.

now i've gone and made it sound negative - its not. and as much as it sickens me it totally adorable. its mainly me just freaking the fuck out. someone hand me a paper bag to panic attack into - soon it might be facebook official - the REAL kind of official. and that leads me to the point of this blog. i've faded other love interests. he has his side of the bed. i have sent eric off to live out his golden years in the land of forgotten vibrators and haven't faked it in forever. i have a stupid pet name for him. my friends adore him. 

so where to from here - or more importantly when does a boy friend become a boyfriend? what does having a boyfriend entail? is it ok for him to leave a toothbrush at my house? pick my toe nails on the couch? mine for nose gold in front of him? do i have to report back to base at regular intervals throughout the day? can i still go out with the girls? flirt with boys? drink straight vodka and party spew? turn my phone off, close the blinds and stay in bed all day reading a book?

i guess i'm just going to have to wing it. because google sure as hell isn't giving me straight answer. i'm going to be 100% me when i'm sober and 85% when i'm not so much (we wouldn't want to scare him would we now). i'm still going to eat in bed and vacuum the sheets when i'm done. i'm going to be immature and craft witty swear sentences like 'your mum sucks a fuck sack' out of letter magnets on my fridge. and i guess if he doesn't like it then he can go suck a fuck sack. because as much as it totally rocks rolling over to kisses and sex on demand five mornings a week by a boy who thinks i'm beautiful in no make up i'm definitely more accustomed to the single lifestyle. 

but i could really get used to being a we. 

why the long face? if you have food in the fridge, clothes on your back and a roof over your head you are richer than 75% of the world. if you have money in the bank, your wallet and some spare change you are among the top 8% of the worlds wealthy. if you woke up this morning with more health than illness (hangovers don't count) you are more blessed than a million people who will not survive this week. if you have never experienced the danger of battle, the agony of imprisonment or torture or the horrible pangs of starvation - you are luckier than 500 million people alive today and suffering. and if you can read this passage then you are luckier than more that 3 billion people in the people who cannot read at all.

i don't believe in depression. i understand that this is going to be a very controversial blog but to put it into perspective i'm going to tell you a story;

on a recent trip to indonesia i met a lovely boy from bali who took me out to lunch. this boy earns $70 AUD a month. $40 of which goes to rent for an 'apartment' (a room about as big as the lino in my kitchen in a unit barely big enough to sneeze in) with a mattress i wouldn't have let my cat sleep on let alone a human being and not much else. he was one of the happiest people i've ever met. after a few (too many) long island iced teas over a breathtaking kuta sunset i finally built up the courage to ask him why he was so happy. he replied 'love is everything. without love i have nothing. and i have love. therefore i have everything'. now he may have just have been saying that to (unsuccessfully) get in my pants. but it kinda hit home for me.

here i am living what i thought was a pretty fucking average existence. but put in the presence of such a wonderfully positive being who truly believed that he had everything a person could ever wish for, i felt like an absolute douche - i come home everyday with more than enough means to feed my cat steak. i can pour a glass of water out of the tap and not get sick. and when i do get sick i can book into a doctor to get a prescription to make me feel better. i have the freedom to walk outside alone and not fear being raped. when the weather is cold outside i can turn on my reverse cycle air conditioner and get warm. i have a full time job that pays me enough money to get comfortably by, a bed to sleep in every night and the unconditional love of my family and my friends. 

a few months ago i had a teary because i couldn't find anything to wear. i constantly stressed about where i was meant to be in life - but i do have money. just some weeks i don't have enough cash to buy pretty house things or eat out at expensive restaurants. everything else is trivial and i'm sure will work out exactly the way its meant to *hang my head in shame*

granted, this is the life that we have become accustomed to. but before people going around claiming some sort of disability pension for being sad about shit take a fucking step back idiot. do you have a friend? a roof over your head? and just a stab in the dark here but i'm guessing if you're reading this you've got a computer too. count your blessings. a situation is what you make it, and if you're not happy then do something about it. or at least think yourself lucky you're not living in some far off war torn country and just watched the house next door get blow up by gun fire and petrol bombs. at least your neighbours are still alive. 

when we put it like that, life isn't as hard as you thought huh?

uh-hoh. its happening again. that overwhelming sense of dread, anxiety sweats, laying awake until all hours staring at the ceiling watching the fan go around. and around. and around. and around. this time im not going to able to hide under the covers with a bottle of red, a death cab album, some xanax and ride it out. oh no. this time its a biggun.

panic stations everyone, this is not a drill.

i get up, go to work, come home, eat, watch tv. lather rinse and repeat. day after day after fucking day, the cycle occasionally broken up by a hangover that could kick chuck norris’ arse and a thirsty bank account.

a LOT of self analysis happens in the midnight hours. am i fat? do i underachieve? is this REALLY the life i have carved out for myself? am i going to plod along and purely exist forever? i concluded my complete reluctance to grow up and embrace even the littlest smudge of maturity can be put down to the fact that i feel like im not going anywhere. i’ve hit the pause button on life and lost the remote the the couch cushions. if the whole world is moving in fast forward and im curled up in fetal position rocking myself back and forth in this nice comfortable rut i’ve carved out for myself, then why should i grow up? 

im craving adventure, anonymity and the unknown. no plans, no places to be, no responsibly. i’ve been so close to running away from everything - then sensible bianca steps in. you have bills. you have a steady job. you have a video store memberships with late fees and cafe loyalty cards. god dammit you’re just another 4 large double shot lattes away from a free 97% fat free muffin. fuck.

i could walk out of the door tomorrow, get hit by a bus and bleed out on the pavement. and what will they say at my funeral? i can just imagine it. ‘she never achieved what she set out to, and she died unsatisfied and unfulfilled’. fantastic - glad i wont be around for that thrilling eulogy. 

in this mundane existence im leading at the moment i feel like a robot with the emotion chip installed. i know i belong somewhere, but my love affair with the place i call home is like the classic relationship fade - we don’t return texts anymore, we only catch up for sex and i’ve started looking elsewhere for my thrills. if home is where the heart is, and my heart belongs somewhere else - in a destination unknown - then where the fuck DO i belong?

i want to grow old, my face thick with laugh lines, and a youth full of adventure under my belt. i want to my whole life to feel as satisfying as my body does after a big bowl of pasta and a bottle of wine. i want to be able to walk outside and see the night sky littered with stars. i want to be able to fit all my wordy possessions in a suitcase, sit in the sun and wonder where tomorrow is going to take me.

life is fleeting. im taking the bull by the horns. and if i start making plans while my sensible is out to lunch (god i hate that slut) then maybe when she gets back in, it’ll be too late to back out and the bags will be packed, set by the front door. i’ll probably give her ‘its not you, its me / i need some space to think about things / we moved too fast’ speech’.  and then i’ll have no choice but to throw caution to the wind and just do it.

so the words 'turning 26 this year' have been thrown around ALOT lately. im not sure how much longer im going to be able to get away with being only as old as the boy im shagging. and im starting to freak out. so much so that i have started reluctantly planning my farewell to childhood party at the end of the year - jelly wrestling, goon of fortune, kegs and fairy bread. and i've been feeling good about it - i mean, im gonna have to grow up one day. and in some aspects, sure, im an adult. i go grocery shopping on a weekly basis and buy things like toilet paper and dishwashing liquid and fresh produce - as opposed to tinned spaghetti and frozen dinners. im (slowly but surely) learning my rights from wrongs. 

right - having to work tomorrow and only having a few glasses of wine. i do not need to finish the entire bottle. 

wrong - writing my name in a cab with a permanent marker. it meant we couldn't call cabs to our house anymore.

theres a lot of grey area still - is it still ok to have a pickle fight at 2am in maccas? is it still ok to eat ice cream for dinner? i guess knowing those answers will only come with (more) age. ugh. can i just not grow up? 

im in limbo land at the moment, still young enough to get away with most things, getting old enough to be able to pull off lot more. quiet weekends? no drama - in fact, its no longer frowned upon within my social circle. its almost encouraged. why go out, drink your way through the entire drinks list at a nighclub with music so loud you cant hear the boy you're about to take home tell you his name for the 15th time that night (its the excuse i often run with when i update dirt list with things like random swedish or brad?), wake up with a raging hangover not even a double dose of xanax can cure and a dude who doesn't even speak english in your bed when you can spend a day doing things so wholesome it puts good christian folk to shame? like going for a bushwalk? or spending the day at the park? *shudders and starts clawing the walls*

at what age does my behaviour get weird? at what age does my reluctance to get my shit together and start doing grown up things subside? at what age does it become unacceptable to do things like put on some grunge music, drink beer and fuck? or buy barbie dolls? or laugh about thinks like shitting yourself and boners? im waiting for the day when my parents sit me down and have the 'so, what exactly are you doing with your life' chat.

does adulthood just kinda happen, or is it something that i have to consciously and proactively do every day for the rest of my life until i die? because if its something that just happens then i guess there isn't a lot i can do to change it. i can pretty much sit on the couch watching cartoons until a wave of maturity washes over me. then i could have one of those lightbulb moments and be all 'wait, i don't want to watch cartoons anymore. i want to buy a house.' and that'd be pretty sweet. but if its something i have to consciously do, then fuck that. my room smells slightly of sex and beer. its 5pm and i've been in my pyjamas since 1, im full on chocolate the easter bunny bought me, and theres a pretty pimp lego car the 23 year old boy i shagged last night made before he left this morning. i don't know if any of those are rights or wrongs. im glad these actions fall in the grey area of maturity. it means im not that old. just yet anyway…

ever looked at someone and wondered where you knew them from? well sometimes it happens to me. although unlike most of you a secondary thought crosses my mind - oh fuck, did we have sex? its shit huh.  gone are the days of being fuckloose and fancy free. mainly because in my semi old age and what can only be described as my pending alcoholism, i generally still have the means to pick up boys - i just drink myself into a drunken stupor and fall asleep before any of the fun stuff goes down. hell, it makes for a less awkward morning right. 

im literally at a cross roads in my life - my sensible is staring me in the face demandingly telling me 'you're 25. get a career. find a nice boy. settle down. buy a house. start decorating the nursery'. whereas my inner child has my sensible in a headlock, telling me 'you're happy. keep getting drunk on school nights. go on random push bike adventures. spend all your money on stupid shit'. i like my inner child better. 

sometimes i get stuck inside my own head and at times it can be as bad an an acid trip gone horribly wrong, mainly due to the fact that i spent the most part of my adolescence cramming as many illicit substances i could get my grubby little hands on into my system. other times it can be the most amazing thing in the whole world. most of the time its just a brain - over analytical and junk.  i dont know at what point my head took over and kicked my heart to the curb, but im starting to look at life, and the whole boy meets girl situations, a lot more logically. it feels like a whole 'nother realm of puberty - only instead of being 12 and waking up a hormonal 13 year old with pubes and tiny chest mounds that grew into tiny boobs, it almost feels like i went to sleep being an awkward 15 year old and woke up - probably hungover - being a very secure mid 20's human being. dont get me wrong - im pretty chuffed at the way i turned out considering all the wrong paths i could have taken, but 25 is just so. damn. urgh.

every move i make now is played like a strategic game of chess - my logic teamed with my years of playing the field have taught me almost everything there is to know about boys. and its boring the hell out of me. im always two well thought out steps in front of any boy - i know exactly what to expect from the very first meeting. and you can generally place boys in any of the three following groups:

1) the boy who just wants to be with you for the time being - like a prolonged party pash

2) the boy who just wants to fuck

&

3) the boy who wants to get married, introduce you to his friends and live happily ever after

and to be honest, im not down for any of it. im not a romantic kind of person, i dont have the stamina to get out of bed at ungodly hours to go and shag, and i sure as hell dont have the capacity to deal with another person invading my space 5 nights a week. i like sleeping starfish on my kind size bed. i like eating ham and beetroot with ranch dressing for dinner. i like cooking breakfasts for one and sitting in my underwear no shame styles reading the newspaper. fuck my sensible, she can go to hell. because after my sunday breakfast for one, im going to march my logical arse onto a push bike with a 6 pack of hahns finest in the basket wedged on the hangers, spend some money on shit i dont need, and end up at the pub. i told you i liked my inner child better.

you know those silly little 'if we're not married by the time we're 30 we'll get together' kind of pacts? well, i never made one. and im starting to think i should have. im kind of old school like that. my mum and dad married young. really young. i came along after just a few months after my mum walked up to my dad in a nightclub at the ripe old age of 22 and said 'im going to make you breakfast'. best pickup line ever. i've tried it once (or twice). but they're still going strong. they still shag on the couch on a sunday afternoon (just ask my sister who got an awful shock - though my mum will still deny it to the death) and are still so madly in love it makes me sick.

i got another wedding invite the other day. well not so much a wedding invite, twas a hens night invite. now dont get me wrong, i love a good hens party. too much penis paraphernalia to even attempt to poke a proverbial stick at. but another year and another hens party and a few weddings later and im still here doing my thing - renting a house, being a crazy (young, but almost teetering on) old cat lady, no responsibilities, getting drunk on school nights and turning up in the morning to my dead end job. 

although i've decided not to have children, i can still feel my proverbial clock ticking. dont try and talk me out of the no kids thing - too many people have tried and failed dismally with the whole 'oh, its just a thing you'll grow out of' or 'you'll want them one day'. i wont - never have wanted them and never will. i dont have the normal maternal instincts. its strange though - i HAVE planned out my perfect not so white wedding (in vegas no less) - from the walk down to aisle to ben gibbards acoustic rendition of brand new colony right down to here comes your man by the pixies as our first dance. dont get me wrong, i do like kids - i'd pretty much walk in front of a bus for any child. and i'll gladly babysit (people ACTUALLY trust me with their kids - unsupervised and everything). but its never been in my agenda to settle down and have a brood of little people running around. settle down - eventually, yes. play the happy house wife and cook dinner and iron and clean -  hell yes. where do i locate the sign up sheet? i've spent way too many hours ironing pointless things and cooking roasts and cleaning and playing martha fucking stewart pouring though cookbooks and choosing a meal thats going to make my man satisfied to turn back now. its pretty safe to say i have almost done the hundred hours learner licence thing in the housewife world. its about time i settled down and made my happy little 'paisley curtains with matching couch covers, 5pm dinners and interior designer ikea trips on a sunday morning' life with the man of my dreams. 

but as soon as i meet the perfect boy (there have been a few in my years - been and gone. some though my doing, some through no fault of my own) i start picking them to pieces - and then i talk myself into thinking the grass is always greener. ugh - the grass is never greener. it doesn't matter what side of that electrified barbed wire fence you're sitting on, you'll always want to be on the other side. but as soon as you're there, you're all sitting there wondering what the fuck happened. now i can sugar coat it all i want, but some people i've walked away from because they're douches. plain and simple - douchebags who took me and my wicked cool housekeeping skills for granted. and then theres the boys where you sit back and wonder what if i didnt push them away? 

ever since i was a little girl not making pacts with boys about being shacked up by the time we're over the hill, i've always believed life takes me where i need to be. and as silly as it sounds im convinced that if i didnt let that happen and follow my gut instincts then maybe i'd be knocked up with a guy i didnt love with 3 little rugrats running around named accident, mistake and regret.

it's important to listen to the people who know me best, and at this 'coming of age' stage in my life, its me. and while i have a handful of different me's - deep and philosophical wine bianca, cocaine cut with god only knows lets fuck whats your name bianca, down and out on life bianca and  happy go lucky throw caution to the wind bianca, at the end of the day, its still bianca. and while i may be freaking out because another friend is set to walk down the aisle and i cant even commit to where i'll be next saturday, happy go lucky bianca is telling me to look at the positives - at least i still have the option to take home a groomsman. 

since when did the gold coast become so. darn. superficial? 

i've spent my whole entire life living here, the longest stretch ive ever spent away from my beloved stomping ground is 4 months. i moved to broome for work mid way through last year - for those of you who know nothing about the place, its basically a tropical paradise in the middle of nowhere. but its the kind of a place where everyone is their own person. theres no judgement. i rocked the pants optional every other day of the week and walked around most of the time with bikinis and a t-shirt on. and not much else - there was no judgement. because even though it was probably offensive to most people, no one cared. no one judged. it was pretty much awesome. while it was fun and enlightening and i learnt more about who i am as a person in the little while i spent there than i had in the last 4 years spent living my life on the gold coast, it was great to come home. to my wonderful friends, my mental family and my soulmate in the form of a furry baby i call lola. but shit, the it really did open my eyes as to how truly fake this part of the world is. 

every other person is a photographer, a designer, an aspiring scene kid, whatever. kids who i often see around the hood from time to time have turned into douches. and to be completely honest, it makes me a little sad. do people honestly believe that they need to change who they are just to conform, to be one of the cool kids? there are people out there who create this image of themselves, then ditch it as soon as the fad changes. the kind of people who were listening to commercial music no less than 18 moths ago. theyre now the exact same people wearing jeans so skinny im all 'where the fuck is your penis dude? do you tuck or tape?' and walking around with vintage cameras around their neck taking obscure pictures of shit like dead leaves on a pavement - trying to be individual. you dress and behave exactly the same as 98% of the rest of the population. there is nothing individual about this whole 'look' you have going on. 

who decides the fad of the season? is there some kind of coolest of the cool kids sitting in his or her cool kid throne who hands out the orders for gold coast style. i imagine this person to be sitting above the crowd on a vintage op shop chair at a gig in a warehouse somewhere, bellowing at the crowd - this season, cool kids, we shall wear 60's wallpaper inspired attire. the music of the season is german trance. we shall all get addicted to herion, but be prepared cool kids. you'll have to kick the junk as soon as i decide pills are cool again. and i've heard its not easy. we must all drink gin. and only gin. and tattoos aren't cool anymore. so for those of you who went out and got sleeves and neck tattoos -  sucks to be you. you're out of the club.

i am who i am - be my friend. or dont be. its no skin off my nose. im the same person i always have been. give or take a few major milestones. a few major fuck ups. a few major mistakes. and a few major achievements. but i am me. and while im still paving my way through life learning about who i am and what this world is all about, im not reinventing myself at every corner just to impress people i dont know. and to be brutally honest, i wouldn't have it any other way.