Tuesday 27 August 2013

The Cooncash Delusion

This summer has been a lot of fun at times. Most of it has been drunken fun, however, and that means I've completely failed at the one thing I set out to do. Nothing new there. I'm not quitting drinking, that was a lie. I miss my little friday morning therapy sessions. Talking about myself for an hour was great. I miss having that balance of pressure and support. I have to help myself but it helps to have someone remind you to go in the right direction. I could be about to fall again.

I'm feeling sick and empty and hungover and restless and weak. Thoughts are gushing around inside my mind so fast I don't have time to catch hold of even one. I am starting to hope this life is a practice round for the real thing because I've got nothing right so far.

Whatever the front I show to the outside world is, it is not really me. Not what i should be or what I could have been. An interactive relationship between potential and depression feeds the depression more than it nurtures the potential. My whole persona is an act I'm not even in control of. And it's a different one for just about every person I'm in contact with. It's a strange feeling knowing you are acting a different person in each scenario you are in but not being able to change.

The person sat hear writing this doesn't want to be the person everyone seems to think he is. I wish I could take little bits of other people's personalities and make them my own. I can't. I am this. I have some sense of the man I want everyone to perceive in me but I do not have the balls to do it. I should be a superstar. Should be capable of having everything I want. Could have been remembered. Now I will probably be forgotten.

Or do I mean to say that I'm simply too lazy or disaffected to change? I'm listening to The Pixies song 'where is my mind?' and I have absolutely no fucking idea. I can't hold on to a thought long enough to follow through on anything. All day I consider everything I'm going to do and see. How cool I am. Then I don't care if I'm a dork. I'll have aggression coursing through my veins before purest apathy sets in and I've no feelings at all. Do I play the guitar or smash it against the wall like Pete Townsend on coke? Exhausted doing nothing. Sleeping when I'm not tired and tired of sleeping all the time. I can fall in love with somebody new every week just because I feel a bit lonely and then find myself not even hating them, but having no interest at all.

Pretending to be doing things is all well and good until the moment you realise it is all nothing. When you see all the day to day shit you are doing is worthless then your life is worthless, pointless, boring.

But I am just one of many people feeling this way. I received some reminders of that this week from friends who never complain or cry about the shit in their lives. They have worse problems than me but handle it all better. They aren't sitting around feeling sorry for themselves or sinking into bed loving depression. If I am helping them in some tiny way then at least that is something worthwhile. I don't have the fight in me for myself right now.


Thursday 15 August 2013

Don't ever pay full price

I may have mentioned before that I was on a stag weekend in Edinburgh a few weeks back. Up until now I haven't really illuminated upon any of the details. Partly because I didn't want to share other people's secrets and partly because I had other considerations in the meantime. Anyway, this one is about me in the main so I suppose I'm free to divulge.

I'll start in a nightclub we were all in called Opal Lounge. It was a little pretensious but when the drinks in who really gives a shit? At some point in the evening that Kanye West tune Gold digger came on. That lit a bit of a fuse in me. Suddenly I grew in stature, chest was out and I'm dancing like Travolta. Or so I thought. Giving myself some credit, I did dance my way into a little babes mouth although I was denied any further access this time. At this point I've shimmied over to a corner seat with this girl and I'm there for maybe an hour without seeing ant one of the lads. This is when I start getting a few oblique texts telling me where a couple of the lads are.

For the purposes of anonymity lets just call them Rod and Todd. So Rod texts me telling me that himself and Todd have left and are now in a strip club. Now, I'm with a pretty fit girl here but I'm on a stag and want to be where the craic is.

Rod's texts are telling me that the name of the place is Sunin Palace. Sounds like the name of a chinese restaurant, right? Anyway, first thing I did on leaving Opal Lounge was ask a taxi driver to take me to sunin palace. The man had absolutely no fucking idea what I was talking about. Luckily there were a few rickshaw drivers there too. I got talking to this one who told me the only lap dancing club with palace in the name was Fantasy Palace. Well it's in Edinburgh and it's got tits. Of course I said Fuck It, lead on!

Imagine the scene. Here I am on this rickshaw shouting 'Ya!' and doing the whip sound like I'm riding a roman chariot through the streets. I also had to throw in the obligatory 'Bus wankers' insult at a few people who were just walking down the road at the time. King of the World!

I've found my way to fantasy palace. Pay a tenner to get inside without even knowing if the flanders boys are even here. By the way I had lost my bank card earlier in the day so after spending that ten getting in I was pretty much down to change. Inside I take a walk around keeping my eyes open for the lads. No sign. Taking a seat in the corner I am trying to look inconspicuous because I don't even want to look at a dancer when I don't have the dollars for a show.

While I'm sitting there minding my own business this one stripper comes over to solicit poor little innocent me. I pleaded with her 'I've no money' but the silly goose persevered and asked exactly how much I had. I took out a five pound note and emptied the rest of the change onto the table. I think it came to something like £13.47. You know what? she takes my hand and says, 'follow me'. To be honest, I was thinking to myself what is going to happen in here. I mean what does £13.47 get you? Am I just going to watch her take her coat off or untie her shoe laces? I have to give the girl credit though, she put on quite a cabaret for the discounted price.

Oh yes, the reason I was there at all, to find Rod and Todd. Here I'll just change the point of view of the tale for a moment. The two boys were in the same club as me but at this point they had no idea. The two horny little rascals come strutting up through the back room of the strip club after yet another dance. At full price too! Just then Todd looks up and sees my head peering out from behind a big pair of polish tits. From what I've been told I just turned round and quietly mouthed my trademark elongated 'boooiiiiii'. Immediately I went back to my evenings entertainment.

This girl must have seen something in me. Maybe she thought I had money somewhere. She gave me her number and I was texting her the next day. You just know I went back there the next night...



To this day I still have no clue as to why Rod text me telling me the name of that place was Sunin Palce. The lad is deranged!

Saturday 3 August 2013

Saturday Night

How are you all? I hope you're feeling good. Saturday night! Are you feeling in a bit of a party mood tonight? I hope you are. Going out and having a drink and a dance. I think that's what they invented these weekends for. Out tonight girls? Yeah I know, I can see you've got the legs out. Now, don't be blaming them lads when they are chasing you later. It's all good tonight. You say you are all feeling good? Feeling like tonight's the night and all that. Good I'm glad. I hope you're all in a party mood tonight!

I'm not in a party mood. No I am not. Not going anywhere tonight. That's just how I want it tonight because I just don't have it in me to do the saturday night out thing this time. Oh if you had seen me one week ago you might think there would never be a day I wouldn't want to be out. I was pretending to be happy then. But that was then and this is now and I'm not really pretending anymore.

I am tired. No, tired doesn't quite do it. I'm exhausted. Totally drained of energy like I've been on a crash diet for a month. I can't get out of bed in the morning, can't sleep at night. In between making a cup of tea is about as productive as I've been this week. At the moment I'm still dreaming big but I can't follow through. I want to, I really do but I feel weak like a cancer patient. If they gave out prizes for all the things I'm going to do...

It's entirely my own fault. There is no self pity here this time. I did this. What this is, is the physical symptoms of depression leading from the front and dragging all the other stuff willingly along for the ride. No sympathy this time because I new it would return. Perhaps I even encouraged a backlash as I taunted myself with more and more booze. I'm not going to lie and say the last month or so drinking on the weekends hasn't been fun. It has, sometimes even too much fun. But it was fun I knew I would have to pay the price for somewhere down the line.

I don't regret it, even if I probably should have rested a week or too early. Not regretting it means it will happen again. Continually. And with that comes this feeling of wanting to put my head through a mincing machine. So, I can't feel sorry for myself and neither should anyone else. I was in control of this thing and I relinquished it in the name of drinking and fun. And when I'm back in charge of myself I'll do it all again.

There is more to putting and end to the self-pity though. My life is not really that bad and my problems aren't shit. Nothing that bad has ever happened to me so I can't sit hear feeling sorry for myself. Not when I can see the sadness in other peoples eyes 100 million times worse than in my own. Something happened last week that makes me very sad. But it give me a little perspective on myself. I'll tell you a bit...

You don't ever want to see a coffin being carried by one man. Chances are he is carrying his own child. His own little baby.

She was stillborn on Tuesday. Blessed and buried on Wednesday. Loved everyday before and since. There she was in her mummy's arms, a little bundle of human perfection that doesn't get the chance to be anything but perfect. I've never had a child, not sure that I ever will. I can only imagine the heady euphoria of it all. Couldn't even begin to explore the crushing devastation of losing a child.

I catch myself glancing at photographs of Aine and Grace lying together in their hospital bed. I take glances because I can't properly focus on the scene. It's too much reality for me. It makes me feel a little ill.

In the church two scenes compete to attract my eyes. One is the tiny white coffin with a baby inside. The other is her tearful parents consoling each other. I'm a little teary eyed but I'm holding. I don't want to cry here. Watching Neil and my Dad lowering the coffin into the ground I feel a little detached from it all. Like I'm watching television with the sound off. When the prayers are finished I line up to hug my sister like everyone else. I guess I done my duty but it felt completely inadequate. If being there was all I could do was I really doing anything at all.

That was a humbling experience. My problems aren't nothing. They are very real and maybe even potentially fatal. But how can I ever feel sorry for myself again when that little baby didn't get the chances I have?

Even more humbling than any of that though, was this one text message I received from a woman who had just buried her little baby girl barely an hour before. If the other stuff couldn't force the tears from my eyes this would. Aine wrote:

" Hey lil bro, r u ok? Sorry didn't get chance to talk to you at the grave.. but if you find things hard to deal with and need some1 to talk to im always here for u..ok, don't be getting too down, I know it's easier said than done! xx "
 That one doesn't get deleted.