New here. British writing from the heart of it.

Hey. I'm new here, so I thought the best way was to dive right in and post something of mine. Anyway, don't really know what to say, but honesty is the best policy so tell me what you think alright.

Side note: I appologise about the ?'s everywhere. My Microsoft word is balls. I've tried to change them all on here, but if I have missed some I am sorry.

Hey, I haven't lost my morals completely. I'm still the same person I was before, but you've got to change your perspective as you grow up. That fairy tale they tell you when you're young doesn't exist anymore, and you have to accept that it's a dog eat dog world out there. No one marries their high school sweetheart, if you can call that pathetic two week relationship in which all you actually did was share a few bad snogs at one of Sharon's house parties when her parents were away, even though it went around the school twice that you had been at it like rabbits months before that party was even arranged. You've also got to realise that you can't base the morals for the rest of your life around the ideals you had when you were twelve.

Sure, everyone still has pictures from year seven tucked away in a drawer somewhere of you and your best friend sitting in the English classroom, smiling prettily for the camera. Now look at the photos of last weeks piss up at whichever pub you stumbled into; I bet that that best friend, the one you promised to be friend's forever with, (and you even had the cheap joining necklaces) is nowhere to be seen. The only place that happens is small towns with one church, two pubs, and a corner shop, and guess what... I don't think we're in Kansas anymore Toto.

Anyway, as I said, it's not as if I've lost my morals completely. It's not like I tossed them in the bin along with that hideous pink and yellow shirt I wore practically every day before I discovered fashion sense and colour coordination. It's just that sometimes they have to be compromised. You can't not date that gorgeous guy who came up to you last week because Lisa, Myra's friend you met once a few weeks ago slept with him once in a drunken stupor, which she claims to be over anyway. You can't take the high ground when Jennifer is bitching about Sarah behind her back when just last week you saw them on a shopping trip together, because as much as you may want to, you have to remember that despite the fact you have bitched rather extremely about Sarah's power trips on more than one occasion, she is a laugh to go out with and she has extremely good taste when it comes to new season's fashions.

Luckily, I have different groups of friends, so if someone is pissing me off, I can go and see someone I know isn't friends with them so I can avoid them for a while. I suppose that is why close-knit groups usually break apart after a while. People start getting annoyed with other people's habits and it gets worse and worse until they finally decide they've had enough and don't talk to them again. That is, until they bump into them on the street and they have that awkward moment everyone hates because you don't want to ignore them and act like a super bitch, but you don't want to say hi and seem like you're being really false. It's probably why I kept groups of friends separate and don?t integrate them. Well, that is, before Pen and Dillon got together.

Penelope Craig is one of those used to be popular girls who discovered her brain around the age of seventeen, which of course, we all hate her for. Ok, so we don't hate her, but we all envy the fact she dated Brian Fletcher and was best friends with Katia Hudson. We don't actually envy the fact she was best friends with Katia, because when Katia made the big mistake two years ago of trying to sleep with Pen's boyfriend of the time Michael, Pen decided she didn't care who knew what, and told us everything embarrassing that had ever happened to Katia in her life! Of course, we were all mortified with ourselves for finding the information so funny, but Katia spread numerous rumours about all of us during our high school days, so we got over our guilt pretty quickly.

Anyway, so around eighteen months ago, probably nearing eighteen months to the day round about now, I went to this big party Pen was throwing as her parents had gone off for the weekend to Aspen. (Penelope's parents are rather loaded, though you wouldn't know it if you saw Pen now.) So, I knew that all my friend's would bring someone, so I took Dillon along, knowing he'd jump at the opportunity to go to someone else's house, drink someone else's beer, and stare at hot girls as they all walked around on a warming spring night. So Dillon came along with me, dressed in a baggy shirt and ripped jeans although I said to dress smart as everyone would be all dressed up for the party. For example, I was in my best red and black dress that my mum bought me from Gemini, that is how dressed up Pen's parties were. I was, of course, fuming that he had let me down, but Pen didn?t care. She said it was nice that someone felt they could be themselves around people they had just met. That they "didn't feel the need to put on a mask" or "pretend to be something they're not". Truth was, Dillon didn't own a pair of nice trousers or a smart shirt, but he smiled, put his arm around Pen and told her he only ever wanted to be himself around her, and that he'd like to spend as much time around her as possible. It was the corniest line I had ever heard. It didn't even have any mention of sex, but Pen fell for it and they've been inseparable ever since.

So, Pen and Dillon are links between two of my groups of friends, which blows in one way because it means that I can't vent my anger about anyone to someone in the other group, because through the link of Pen and Dillon dating, it will get back to that person. Like in October, I got really annoyed at Sarah for going on another one of her power trips and acting like we were all her minions, ordering us all around all the time and getting stroppy if people didn't do what she wanted, so I told Kaine, one of Dillon's friends about it. That Saturday, Dillon and Pen invited Kaine and I for a few drinks in Yates. So, Kaine and Dillon drink a bit too much, and Kaine mentioned about my bitching about Sarah in front of Pen.

I almost cried with frustration. As much as Pen said she wouldn't say anything and she knew exactly how I felt, I knew what was coming. Within days I had Sarah coming to me asking why I had been bitching behind her back. I explained to her that I had only spoken to Kaine because I didn't want to explode at her. Luckily she said she understood, and that whenever someone pissed her off, she went to her older sister Gillian because she could get advice and she knew it would never get back to who ever she was talking about. Anyway, the point is that I can no longer talk to anyone in that whole super group now, and only have a few people to bitch to if I get pissed off, even though everyone is always bitching behind other people's backs. It's natural.

Of course, friends do rate higher than each other on the friends scale. Anyone who says, "I like you all equally" is bullshitting. Even if you get on better with some people for some things and other people for others, some friends come as higher priority; like Beth. It doesn't matter how much I see Beth. At the moment, it seems like we only see each other once in a blue moon because I am always out with Pen, Jenny and Sarah and she has her own friends, who yeah, I'm friends with too, but she is really close knit with them, and I'm not so much, but that doesn't matter, because when we call each other and we meet up for a drink and a chat, we are still so close it's funny. She's always the first person I ask advice of and she knows I'm always here if she needs me. So, it doesn't matter how little I see Beth, she will always be the first person on my list. She'll always be my maid of honour if you get my drift.

It's not so obvious with the people you see all the time, but out of my girl friends, Pen and I are probably closest. You never know, she may see Sarah as a better friend and I may come last, I could never know, but I will always see Pen as being closer. Maybe it's because she's with Dillon so she's linked to my other friends like Kaine and Huntley.

Joshua Huntley, ex-boyfriend. Lovely guy. Always a complete sweetheart, it just didn't work between us. He wanted a girl who would be around all the time, and I wanted a guy who I could call for a laugh. I wasn't ready to be serious and he was. We still talk, even though those first few months after we split we couldn't even look at each other without there being an argument. In the time we were going out though, I became friends with his friends, including Kaine who I get on with like a house on fire. Huntley never really liked the fact I was such good friends with Kaine and Dillon, but I don't know what he expected seeing as I met him through Dillon. Dillon and I have known each other for what seems like forever. Our parents met through this Geography or geology or something like that course, and I got dragged over to their house to have afternoon tea. Anyway, Dillon and I were introduced and when our parents began the boring rock talk, we decided to go up to his bedroom and play on his Playstation. When I whipped his ass at Street Fighter and he knew I wasn't a complete girly girl, and he decided we would be friends for a very long time.

Before you ask, yes, Dillon and I nearly got together once. No one can be friends with someone as cute as Dillon and not nearly go there, but that kiss, that one kiss let me know it was wrong. We were too nervous of each other in that way. We bumped heads, he bit my lip, I started laughing into his mouth and we decided never to go there again. Lucky for Pen I suppose because she said everything was so natural that she didn't even have to worry about anything like that with Dillon, it just happened and it was perfect. Because Dillon went to the Grammar school a few miles away, I never really met any of his friends, and he never met mine. It was only after I took Dillon to that party of Pen's that I started meeting his friends as Pen was always trying to set me up with one of them.

"Oh, but Chelsea, Jason is so cute, he has the most gorgeous washboard stomach you have ever seen. Just meet him."

I'm serious. Every week it was a new one of Dillon's friends. It was only when I met Joshua that I actually agreed with her. Joshua was sweet, sexy, and I was immediately into him. He was one of those guys who, it didn't matter if you had just woken up and you looked like a complete mess because you hadn't straightened your hair, he still thought you were a goddess and I loved it. Maybe I loved the fact he doted on me more than I loved him but it still made me want to be around him all the time. That was, until it became too much. When the phone calls were twice a day, even if he had absolutely nothing to say to me. Some might find it endearing; I found it annoying. Sure I wanted to be in a relationship, but not with a puppy that followed me around. Then it got worse. I couldn?t even talk to a guy while waiting for a drink at the bar without him going into the Spanish bloody inquisition.

"Who was that? How do you know him? You think he's sexy don't you?"

It was a forty-year-old weirdo who wanted to know what time the place closed you insufferable git! Seriously, he was that bad, but because he had all his sweet points, it didn't bug me as much as the fact I put up with it does now. It was only when he accused me of having an 'affair' with Dillon that I finally snapped. Dillon introduced us and Pen is one of my best friends. Firstly, I could never do that to her, and as I've already said... NO! That wouldn't work! We got into a blazing row about it in the car and when I got out at my house, he jumped out and ran after me. For the first time I was scared of Joshua. I wrestled my way away from him and went into the house. We didn't speak for two weeks, I told all my friends it was over. I suppose he got the message after I didn?t reply his zillionth text. He returned my stuff that Thursday.

For the next month or so it was rather awkward. Pen would always want Dillon to come along on our nights out and because he didn?t want to be the only testosterone in a group of girls, he'd bring along mates, which usually meant Joshua. We didn't talk to each other much, just the sly nod of the head to say hello and that was it, plus the fact I had spent weeks telling my friends everything, they were all rather cold to him as well, which meant Pen either spent time with us, or Dillon. That was, until Joshua called me one day, completely out of the blue and rather shockingly, to me at least.

"Hey Chel, how are you?" He asked as I picked up the phone, wrapping my hair quickly in a towel.

"Who is this?" I asked, tucking the towel into the back until it looked like I had a rather unsightly pink growth from the top of my head.

"It's Josh. Who did you think it was?"

"Oh, sorry, didn't recognise you for a minute."

"S'alright." Awkward pause for effect. "So, um, how have you been?"

"I'm alright." I replied, leaving an equal awkward pause, thinking of something to say while I screamed to myself 'what the **** do you want?' "You?"

"I'm good, I'm good." Yeah, yeah, like I need to hear it twice. "Got a new girlfriend, Ellie. Really great girl."

Oh, so it's one of those phone calls. I'm over you and I'm going to rub it in your face until you get a horrible rash.

"That's great. Good for you." Bad for her, but I'm not going to be the bitch here.

"Yeah, it is. Um, anyway, I was just wondering? well, hoping more like, that we can be friends."

Bullshit can we.

"I don't want to feel like a prize A twat every time we are in a room together."

Tough **** you interfering pillock.

"Chel?"

"Yeah. Sure. That's fine."

No it isn't.

"Really?"

No.

"Yes."

Bollocks.

"Great! Look, you're a great girl Chel, and I really want you to be happy, like I am."

I'm getting red; the rash will start itching soon. Actually, no it won't. I don't care.

"I'm sure I will be."

"Are you out on Wednesday?"

"Yeah, doing the usual, you know."

"Going down Kilmans?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I know Dillon's going. Might see you there."

Not if I blind myself first.

"Brilliant, sounds good."

"Cool. Look, I'll catch you later."

"See you, Joshua."

"Catch you later."

Click. Thank god!



As I said, tell me what you think.