This weekend has been... hardcore. Emotionally.

I guess the highlight was meeting my grandparents (paternal) and .. in hindsight, the gift they gave me. My granddad gave me a blank disc, and when I put it into my computer this evening I found two dozen photos of my long deceased relatives. There are photos of my great-grandparents, of my granddad's first wife who died about ten years ago.

My great-granddad fought in WWI. Which makes me SO proud.

After I had lunch with my grandparents, I went to meet my dad for coffee. The last time we met up was at Christmas time, and it did not go well. At all. I'd just found out I'd passed my degree and he was completely dismissive. He didn't know, of course, how much that bothered me. Our relationship exists in the things that we DON'T say to each other. Or it did, until last Saturday. We met in Starbucks and he told me that his wife of (seven?) years has moved out. He was still wearing his wedding ring though. He was talking about her children: 'When she was out, if they did something wrong then I'd try to discipline them. And then she'd have a go at me. So I stopped trying. I wasn't a very good Dad to them. But you know that from experience. That I'm not a good Dad.'

This statement is HUGE. Over ten years of emotional neglect and disinterest and FINALLY he admits to the damage he's caused. To me it was as good as an apology.

All this happened on Friday. The rest of the weekend was a whiskey-induced stupor. A blur. I was kind of glad to be on the train back to London, despite all that has happened in recent weeks. Because my brother is currently living at home, I had to spend two nights sharing a bed with my Mum, which was weird to say the least. And she snores. It was like sleeping on the edge of a cliff.

And now I find myself at the beginning of another busy week. I work part-time (can't remember if I mentioned that) and on Thursday my partner has a friend of his, her husband and their son visiting. Thursday until Saturday sometime. I'm not looking forward to that. I have study I need to do (and though I've budgeted tomorrow evening and most of Thursday to it) I could do without the aggrevation of having guests in the house. I miss my personal space. Sometimes I feel like I have none.

I sometimes feel that I don't write enough either, or maybe I'm saying the wrong things. Or perhaps I hit it just right, that I am saying the right thing. I re-read my old entries here, and at the site I used to use and I see I'm not missed. My words just float around in cyber-land, and these days I wished I touched people. I didn't used to care, I used to write for myself. But I feel so disconnected. I feel I'm reaching out and I never really find anyone. Not anyone like me. The one person I did find, I pushed away. I can't win. I cry because I'm lonely, I cry because I can't really be with anyone. I can't allow myself to really need or love anyone. I know what happens when I do.

One of these days I'm going to have to properly talk about her, rather than just how I feel now I don't have her any more.

Augusten