(Scroll me!) Hi! This is my first entry here, so I am going to introduce myself and why I am making this website. My name is Frances Roquentin (not my real name lol). Frances is my confirmation name and I stole the Roquentin from the protagonist of Sartre's Nausea. I took it because it sounds nice, very much in a Tom Verlaine way haha, but I read that book when I was 14-ish and I remember it being one of the first books in my secondary school years that pierced my heart and it was like all my thoughts on despair and angst and self-loathing were spilled out on those pages. I might do my next entry on some of these books to save me going on a tangent here. If u never read it, its about this guy, Antoine Roquentin, who has become completely isolated and is grappling with his existence and melancholy in an existential way. Those contents of the book were why I chose this pseudonym for this blog too.

Since primary school, I have struggled with selective mutism, and I completely freeze up every time I have to speak. I have always been very isolated and unable to connect with other people because of this, and it never got addressed until a couple of months ago, shortly before my 18th birthday, so it never went away. When I was in secondary school, I was badly bullied because not talking in a working class comprehensive is very odd, so it got a hell of a lot worse and it completely messed with my head. I became agoraphobic, and I only leave the house for sixth form and to go to the cinema. I am going to university in a couple of months, so am working to recover and finally got a diagnosis a couple months back. I am working with a counsellor and doing exposure therapy, but I have to learn to be more vulnerable and open with people, and not just be able to bob to the shops lol. That is why I am making this blog, to be open about my thoughts and document my recovery process.

This website will not all be doom and gloom though, I'll probably talk a lot about my general interests and myself as a person beyond that. As a general overview of myself, I'm from Oldham (its basically Manchester), I'm also autistic and I'm hoping to study philosophy at uni. I'm a huge huge fan of David Lynch, especially Twin Peaks which is my biggest special interest. I'm big on the Beats and that period of mid 60s to mid 80s counterculture. My favourite book of all time is probably the Catcher in the Rye (sorry). The book I say to everybody though is Berlin Alexanderplatz because it is my favourite from a literature perspective rather than emotional. My favourite album of all time is Horses by Patti Smith. My favourite film is either Dog Day Afternoon or Wild at Heart. I am also really interested in spirituality both in a Catholic way w/ Teresa d'Avila and that stuff and also in a Jung way. I think that does me quite well.

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