THE HUMAN MIND IS NOT A DELICATE PLANT, I THOUGHT; ON THE CONTRARY, IT WILL SURVIVE ALMOST ANYTHING...

So, 2009 will for all intents and purposes be over and done with in about 11 hours. It was a weird year, a year where I felt I didn't know myself half of the time and felt I knew myself too well half of the time (deep, profound thoughts eh?). I've always been one for summing up the year gone by (past?), and I've decided to do it here, but in a new way (i.e. not just describing it like "In January I moved to Gothenburg..."). Instead, I will do it in book quotes and provide some background information as to what was going on in my life at that point and blah blah blah, you'll get it when you read it. It's very play-by-play. Be prepared for (or beware of) a lot of Drabble.

JANUARY, FEBRUARY, MARCH
"Our lives are one endless stretch of misery punctuated by processed fast foods and the occasional crisis or amusing curiosity."
- Running with scissors, Augusten Burroughs

"I had been crouching inside the walls of my consciousness terrified to move too far or too violently in case they collapsed and left me looking at wild beasts."
- A summer bird-cage, Margaret Drabble

"I felt my existence was tainted, in some subtle but essential way."
- The secret history, Donna Tartt

Background: Moved to Gothenburg for three months, was absolutely miserable.

APRIL
"I remember saying things, but I have no idea what was said. It was generally a friendly conversation."
- Sex, drugs and cocoa puffs, Chuck Klosterman

"Just as we cannot think of spatial objects at all apart from space, or temporal objects apart from time, so we cannot think of any objects apart from the possibility of its connexion with other things."
- Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein

Background: I met a boy.

MAY
"It wasn't that he suddenly changed, or anything like that, it was just that I saw too much of him and too little of anyone else. It was being abroad that did it, because all the people we ever saw were his friends (...) and I had to spend hour after hour, meal after meal being civil to people in order to get them to do obscure things for him."
- A summer bird-cage, Margaret Drabble

"She kept teetering on the brink of love with him, and even spent blissful hours in the zone of extreme fondness. But all it took was one flabby joke, a botched illusion, a moment of strained sincerity, and she felt a leaden seal forming in her gut, cutting her off from the suddenly former object of her affection as swiftly as a pair of scissors severing two sausage links. Back to square one."
- The private lives of Pippa Lee, Rebecca Miller

Background: Yeah, it didn't work out.

JUNE
""You have a lot of friends," she says.
"Not a lot", he says. "You don't need many if there's no rotten apples.""
- The blind assassin, Margaret Atwood

"The most poetic of endings to love affairs isn't apology, excuse, extensive investigation into What Went Wrong - the St. Bernard of options, droopy-eyed and slobbery - but stately silence."
- Special topics in calamity physics, Marisha Pessl

Background: I went out a lot with my friends. I love them. I was a bit sad on my own, had some accidents etc.

JULY
"I suddenly thought that perhaps I could take it and survive. I had thought this before when drunk but never when sober; up till that moment I had been inwardly convinced that too much worry would rot my nature beyond any hope of fruit or even of flower. But then, however fleetingly, I felt that I could take what I had been given to take. (...) I knew now something of the quality of life, and anything in the way of happiness that I should hereafter recieve would be based on fact and not on hope."
- The millstone, Margaret Drabble

Background: I came to my senses.

AUGUST, SEPTEMBER, OCTOBER
"She enjoyed this removal from her surroundings even as she was immersed in them. She felt mute and contented, loaded with potential, yet entirely unproductive."
- The privates lives of Pippa Lee, Rebecca Miller

Background: I moved to Cambridge.

NOVEMBER
"Ghosts? Sure.
I know all about ghosts."
- The green mile, Stephen King

Background: The boy turned up again, but only for a day. I enjoyed seeing him though, to an extent. He does do a lovely impression of a boy called Josh. who literally talked like Mickey Mouse (you know, like "Steamboat Willie!" and "Gosh darnit!"). However, this has led to me being unable to play Mickey Mouse on my Playstation because man, all I see in front of me is Josh haha. Whatever, it's a boring game anyway.

DECEMBER
"I can't help worrying," I said. "It's my nature. There's nothing I can do about my nature, is there?"
"No", said George, his hand upon the door. "No, nothing."
- The millstone, Margaret Drabble

Background: My nature will remain unchanged. It doesn't matter what year it is, what day or month it is. Won't change, will always be like this, forever and ever. In a way, it's nice.