I think everyone who reads this knows of my past love affair with a certain red haired musician, that waned over time as the blinkers came off and free thinking was once again allowed. Every so often my thoughts wander back there, thinking what if, and where I would be now if certain events hadn't unfolded. Still a faithful sheep?

I'd like to think not. I'd like to think that I would of found my freedom from her eventually, like waking from a dream where suddenly things make sense between the red hair, the desires for tea and love for Victorian madmen. Perhaps our separation wouldn't of been quite so abrupt, so damaging to me. I know her heart did not break when losing another sheep, I was simply lost to her. My heart was broken.

I have, however, moved on. I have embraced other aspects of my life and I've found a voice that I'm not sure I knew I had when I was hers. Ask me about something I'm sure to have an opinion, and I will happily voice it while listening to your views before agreeing to disagree and carrying on with whatever. I've been told that this is confidence. Me? Confident? Not a word I would ever have used with myself, not within the live beyond these HTML pages anyway. I hate asking at the counter for fish and chips, I always get someone else to do it instead. I don't like taking things back to shops, well, there's ebay for that anyway. I guess I think I'm the shy retiring type. But am I?

Over the last year or so I feel I have grown as a person. I have done so many new things and hope to achieve many more this coming year. Not to mention getting married, that must require some form of confidence and strength. But through my campaigning, my charity work and my own self development I have changed. I do not think for a moment that I would of achieved any of this while being her sheep. I like to think that in the nearly 2 years I have separated from her I have become what I would define as an individual.

What do I class as an individual? Someone with opinions. Someone who has developed their own sense of style. Someone who has developed their own sense of self. Someone who does things for their own interest, for what they believe, for their own personal development, to make them happy. I know there are a lot of stereotypes out there, and people believe they are sheep but within these subcultures are individuals. People with a unique view on things, with a unique opinion. Which makes them different from the person next to them.

Those in the fold (to carry on the sheep analogy) lack individuality. Which I think it somewhat ironic as followers of someone who promotes (along with hatred of men) individuality. All in uniform, following a set of almost commandments. Slowly becoming not just sheep, but clones.

A lot of these people are girls, and girls of a certain age where I feel self expression is highly important for becoming who you are going to be later in life. It's the time for discovering individuality and I feel this is being hampered. How can one seek ones individuality when they are being preached to by a broken record?

I guess this is why I am still angry. She is nothing more than a money making scheme, with sheep holding on to every word she so much as whispers, waiting (how ever long they have been waiting) for this fabled next album, the next shows, the next appearance, idea, however washed up. Blind to the fact they are being robbed in the most subtlest of ways, blind to the fact they are no longer themselves, no individual thought within.

Even for those who do escape. It's hard. The sense of loneliness and  feeling of loss. I admit, there is still a void left by the lives that have passed though, who I have laughed with, cried with, sought support with and loved. A few I still talk to, some are fading even now.

I still feel I am on my own path to being a "true" individual. I don't know how long it's going to take, but I'll let you know when I think I've got there.