This post is going to be of a different structure from previous ones. Rather than just talking all about the amazingness of my life for the past few days, I'm instead going to focus on one topic: boys.

It's very frustrating to not know whether or not you are attractive. Of course, everybody complains that they're ugly and that they hate their *insert body part here*, but I'm equally sure that beautiful people know that they're beautiful and hideous people know that they're hideous. Nevertheless for those of us in the middle, knowing which side of the line we lie is something more of a mystery. I've got a fairly good figure - the only thing I really hate is my thighs. I think my eyes are nice - they're greeny-bluey-grey and a normal shape. My nose leaves something to be desired, I think, as the top is a bit wide. And sometimes when I smile, my mouth goes very lopsided and not in a nice way. But I don't think I'm a monster. There have been some very nice photographs taken of me, and if I'm dressed- and made-up, I think I look quite pretty.

However, other peoples' opinions vary. Like most other girls, I have on occasion been approached by a 20-odd year old man on the bus, who has asked me my name, where I'm studying, how old I am, etc (standard answer: Alex, Golders Green, 14). I don't, of course, think that these men have approached me because I am the most beautiful creature they have ever seen, rather because I am the only female in a skirt under the age of 40 on the bus. Nevertheless, I'm sure they wouldn't approach someone covered in spots, several stone overweight and wearing a floor-length dungaree dress. I must be doing something right.

Although, when out with a group of friends, it never seems to be me who gets a kiss, drunken or otherwise. Forget a kiss, even a boy talking to me, flirting with me - it's never happened. On New Year's Eve, a girl who (and this might just be my opinion, but still) wasn't the prettiest flower in the window-box had a random boy come up to her and attach himself to her face. Not that I want that, exactly, but...being 17 and having never kissed a boy is a bit of a downer.

Now last summer, I went on camp for a week and met a boy, B. I didn't like him in that way, but he was a nice guy. Throughout the week, we would have playful arguments - whenever we were wearing helmets, he would lean over and whack his head into mine; when we went canoeing he kept hitting me with his oar; we laughed ourselves silly winding up another girl; etc. I don't know if I'm wrong, but I must be, because I thought that, with younger kids anyway, when you fight with someone it means you actually fancy them. I felt this was a sort of extension of that, in a way, because it was sort of...bonding. But on the last day, B seemed very distant and didn't appear to want to talk or anything. So you see, I must have been wrong. The one time I thought I had a chance, it turned into nothing.

But, I sent a horrific photo of myself to the foreign exchange student who's coming to stay with me next month because I was a bit late handing in the form so just stuck on the first picture I found. Imagine how mortified I was when I found out my exchange student was a guy, and thus would have been devastated upon seeing his hideous partner. So I wrote to him, N, on Facebook, saying "sorry for the bad picture, I don't look that awful usually!" and he replied saying "I thought your picture was beautiful". I mean, I'm pretty sure he was just saying that to be polite, but something like that puts thoughts in your head!

With my current status friend-wise (ie. I don't really have any), it's been making me worry that there's something about my personality which simply repels people, because people who are just, in the least big-headed way possible, not as attractive as me have, and have had many, boyfriends and I haven't. It's just that simple. Coming to a girls' school in year 7 was clearly a very big mistake, because it's taken me out of a situation with a pool of guys who could know me. I don't have that many guy friends because, let's face it, I'm a drama geek. There are two boys in my class, and the boys I see with my out-of-school friends...

I don't see all the boys I know as potential boyfriend material, of course I don't. But still, you want people to think you look nice, so I make an effort when I see those out-of-school boys (D, S and B). But nonetheless, on Facebook this week I received an alert: "B has answered a question about you". I clicked the link to find out what it was. He answered "Yes" to the question "Do you think this person is ugly?". Wow. Great. For me, calling someone ugly is more of an insult than calling them beautiful is a compliment, and even so, what kind of person does that? Who answers that question truthfully?! Either answer "no", or else just skip the question!

So, that's my short history of all things Y-chromosome. My life looks pretty bleak on both the friend and love fronts.

Happy New Year. It's one of my resolutions, to try to be positive, so there we are. I've started on a positive note.

And now it's over. I'm being negative again BECAUSE I CAN.

New Year's was fun, but not entirely satisfying. It was B's birthday, and so my friends and I met up in the morning for coffee. Fine, it was really nice. But my so-called friends, three of them, organised a present for B together, and didn't think to include me. I honestly can't understand why that would be, because I'm friends with her! What kind of friends would so blatently leave someone out like that? I think part of the problem is that I expect people to be like me, to have the same morals as me and think that things are wrong when I think they're wrong, but I guess I'm going to have to face the fact that some people are less considerate, or simply considerate in a different way.

Then, B asked T what time the boys, S, D and B (uh-oh, another B...this can be Boy B), were going to arrive at her house. T replied "4". Now this, dear readers, I found somewhat strange, as I had previously asked T what time we were all arriving at hers and she had told me "7". So I checked with her, discreetly, saying "wait, what time are we getting to yours?" and got the same answer I had had previously. I was really confused by this point, so asked her why she had just said the boys were getting there at 4. She replied that because they were leaving early, they were all going to get together earlier before the boys had to go somewhere else. And that was that. No invite to come earlier, nothing. And these are not their boyfriends, no, they are simply guys that we hang out with. I know them, it's not like it would be weird for me to be in the same room as them. So I said I would come a bit earlier, at six, to see the boys, and would they save me a bit of pink champagne. I received an absent-minded agreement.

It's all me. Everything that happens comes from me. I have to invite myself everywhere, constantly remind them that I exist, or else I never leave my house. And the problem is that it's exhausting for me to always sort things out and never get any response, it's happened to me before and I hate it.

Anyway, when I arrived at 6, they were all already drunk, they had not saved me anything to drink and they pretty much ignored me the entire night. Even sitting next to T on the bus, she had her back to me and was talking to someone else, until she physically got out of her seat and went to sit somewhere else, leaving me alone. When I arrived at her house, incidentally, the girls all said to me, sounding very surprised, "you look really pretty!". I don't quite get why that was such a shock to them, but whatever. Minor detail. On a more major note, I spent most of the night talking to a girl I had only met once before. When we were on the South Bank, talking to people we had met, I felt as though they formed huddles and I wasn't allowed into them. I tried linking arms with T so I could be part of a huddle, but she literally pulled away form me.

After the fireworks, only a few of us weren't extravagantly drunk, so we tried to sort out how to get home. T shouted, bitched, moaned and yelled at us, refused to realise that she was wrong and thus started the new year in an argument. In the end, I travelled home with two girls I had never really spoken to before and haven't seen my 'friends' since.

Last night, I texted them all at around 4, and at 5 I received a call from B. She said, and I quote, "L, H, T and I are going for a meal at around 6, do you want to come?". In the background, I could hear the other three. I made my excuses and hung up. In my opinion, if they don't want me there for the whole evening, they don't want me there at all. I have never been called by one of them and been asked if I want to do something, just the two of us, or been the first person called in the group. I'm just a last-minute addition to the group, whereas last year I was a major part of it.

In other news, it's my birthday today. Update on that later, methinks.

I am very happy with my stash. It's good. A couple DVDs, a book, soap...nice stuff, don't get me wrong. But there seems to be something of a lack of variety in the origins of said presents. Other than my Gran, my parents and my sister (the expected gift-givers) the only person who got me something this year was Y, who picked me in the obligatory whole-class Secret Santa. I got a box of chocolates and a pair of Christmas earrings (very stylish) which I, of course, wore this morning when we went on our traditional London walk. And while I'm not denying that chocolate is an extremely welcome gift, especially when combined with novelty seasonal jewellery, you would have thought that one of my other friends would have got me something. Even a card (of which I only got two this year, incidentally).

I also discovered yesterday that all of my out-of-school friends all planned to go and see Twilight without me. And when I say all, I mean everyone who isn't on holiday, and then all of their girl/boyfriends were obviously included. And equally obviously, I was not even a passing thought when it came to who to invite. I found this all out when I logged onto MSN and tried to have a chat with B. I typed 'hi' and got no response for 5 minutes. So I closed the conversation and opened one with L. I asked her if she knew whether B was mad at me, as that was the only explanation I could come up with for her ignoring me completely. L utterly denied this. As she is, or at least was for a very long time, my best friend, I tried to explain that I felt I was being cut out of the group. She, of course, said that was ludicrous and then proceeded to invite me to a showing of Twilight at 4 o'clock. We were having this conversation at 2:30. It was clearly not a spur-of-the-moment "hey, I wanna go see Twilight and I know just who to invite!" plan.

All the signs point to the gradual construction of a brick wall around me. Every time someone "forgets" to invite me somewhere or "thinks" I won't want to be inolved, it's equivalent to them paying a quid for a brick and a bit of mortar and slapping it in front of me. This would have been fine at any other time in my life, of course, and I could have just walked in another direction, but right now everyone's running for the bargain. A quid a brick - the credit crunch is even getting through to social life. It's a tower they're building. I'm going to end up like Rapunzel, only without the hair. Or the prince. Just the damn tower. Fun for me...

Merry Christmas.

I've discovered that those things which sort of annoyed me about people a couple of years ago are way more important now. Before I could sort of say to myself "oh, X will grow out of it" because, you know, we were kids, but we're not kids any more. We're going away to university in less than two years, so it's crunch time now. The personalities we develop for ourselves now are the ones we're going to have to live with forever. And I'm getting sick and tired of people being unreliable, and I'm sick and tired of people being fake, and I'm sick and tired (most of all) of not having someone to talk to when I need it.

Last year it was easier - we were in the same class we'd been in for the last five years, so we all knew each other really well and we were all sort of...there. You could walk into the form room at lunch or break and it would be a sea of familiar faces and everyone knew where to sit. There was an unofficial seating plan and that was great. It allowed security, superficial or not, and as a person I need security. I need confirmation that nobody hates me and I'm not alone in the world. When I think about the way we talk about people (girls will be girls) and the way I know they think we see them, it's...I can't imagine being those people and I'm terrified that I am.

I walk into the loft (our common room) and I don't know who to go to. I don't have that same group of friends I had last year and I don't know why. They all seem to be together, but I'm out of the loop. I don't get invited places by them, I don't even know when they're going places so I can't invite myself along! If I go sit with them, they'll either be talking about something I've never heard about before, so I'll just sit there in silence and have no idea, or else they'll just close up and I know, I know, it's because of me. And with the former, of course I could just ask "hey, who do you mean?" but it's not that easy. I've done that before and been literally ignored. Shunned. Back turned and everything.

I've tried to make new friends, sure, but I know I'll never be a real part of their group. Again, they don't invite me places, and even if I invited myself along I would have a rubbish time. I would sit there like a total fish the entire night, and I think it's worse to be out but not wanted than to just stay at home. It's not even that I'm an afterthought for these people - I'm not a thought at all. Inviting me places would never even cross their minds because, I guess, they don't understand that they're my friends now. They're my new 'crew', but they think I'm still with the old crowd.

To top it all off, my friends from out of school are not much better. I thought, for a while, that they were the real friends, the ones to rely upon, but apparently that's not true. They also go out without me, just off the cuff, and I'll only find out the next day when they put their pictures up unashamedly on Facebook for all to see. Their excuse is always the same - "oh, we didn't think you'd want to come", but surely that's not the point? Surely they should at least check, just in case? They know I'm having troubles with my school friends, and they seemed to be sympathetic, but last week I found out they'd done a Secret Santa without me. And either it was just because I wasn't there at the time, which to be honest isn't a good enough excuse, or else (as T told me) L and B, again, thought I just wouldn't want to be involved. Despite the fact I'd been asking whether we were going to do it or not for a week.

Honestly, I wrote a message to B asking if it was going to happen and she blatantly ignored it. Then I asked T about it that night, because I sort of knew they were doing it with other people, and she said that L and B had just said "oh, I don't really think we should include her, she probably won't want to do it with some of the people who are involved". And that was that.

So that's the background (very long, I know, but c'est la vie). The lovely pile of nothing that is my social life and friends at the moment. And this is going to be where I talk about developments, whether bad or good. And hopefully, it will all get figured out, but there's no way to know unless I keep on living this life, and you keep on reading about it.