Things are really hard at the moment so I needed somewhere to vent. Returning to this website is like returning to my adolescence, which feels like a long time ago now. I used to be so care free and not even realise it; I used to have so much time to sit and relax and I used to think it was so hard. School was easy and I used to hate it. Life at home was easy and I used to moan about it. Life now is much more tricky and I'm yearning for the simplicity of being fourteen again.

I'm stretching myself too far with work and uni at the same time. My granny died and I feel like a part of me has been torn away. I have no grandparents left. My family is shrinking and I really hate it. I want us to be happy and healthy again like we were when I was little. I don't want to have to be worried about my mum like this; I want everything to be fine.

I have an essay due in a week on Monday and what with the weekend being hectic and next week being hectic I don't know how I'm going to get it done really. I am meant to be handing in some kind of special circumstances form but I don't really know what the procedure is and whether my circumstances are special enough. I don't know how I'm going to handle the funeral. I nearly lost it when I told my lecturer about her dying earlier today. I haven't really properly cried yet because it doesn't exactly seem real. I don't really know what to do with myself.

I'm also a bit worried about how things stand at work. At the Christmas do on Monday there was some weirdness between me and someone else. Basically Polly was giving me a really hard time about not drinking enough, not getting drunk, basically caring about my degree and I was getting upset about it. Then he was being really flirty. I don't really understand where all this has come from - I never even considered the fact that he might like me in that way, to be honest I still think everyone secretly hates me and I don't think I'm at all attractive to the people at work but presumably I was wrong. I told Yong about Polly being mean to me and he said that Polly has a soft spot for me and is harsh on me because I have Jak and he knows he can't express it - so it comes out as being mean. It didn't seem to make much sense until he started dancing with me - and then later Stucky was talking some gibberish about it because he was drunk and I think maybe quite a few other people at work have known for a while and just not mentioned it.

The thing is, I know he was only being flirty because he was drunk and we were dancing and it's easy to slip from dancing as friends do to flirty dancing. I get it. It wasn't that weird, it certainly wasn't creepy, it was just odd. I don't really know what to think about it. I love Jak to bits but I would be lying if I said I haven't been feeling a little restless with us recently. I don't want to spend the rest of my life with him if things aren't going to get better. And it's not that I think Polly is unattractive, it's just that I would never think of him that way - and although I love his personality as a friend, I don't think it would ever work if we got together. So I don't know why I can't just dismiss this as random fate. Maybe because no one has fancied me for a long time and if I stay with Jak probably no one else will ever fancy me again. It's hard to give up the possibility of ever going on dates, having fun being single and stuff. I don't know. Maybe we should go on a break - but I don't know if I could do that to him.

And sometimes I don't think there's even a problem. A lot of the time I think everything's fine and I want us to be together. Just maybe a break would do us good. We spend so much time together and have done for so long that I think I've forgotten why we're together in the first place. It's a sad thought but I'm scared that I will build my life with him and find out that I'm with the wrong person. I think the main reason the stuff with Polly has affected me so much is that it's brought back to mind that there are other men out in the world who exist - I've shut myself off from that for a long time.

It's just impossible for me to work through this stuff with Jak when we live together, because he's always there. If we have an argument or something there is nothing I can do but aim to resolve it as quickly as possible and there's no way of seeing if a few days apart will do any good because we live together.

Maybe it's just the general upheaval in my life at the moment that's making me doubt our relationship. Maybe it's just that someone has reminded me that I could be wanted by more than one person and that's pandering to my low self esteem.

I don't know what to do.