Sorry, Helen

How do you spell deja vu?

Christmas was a bastard.  I don't know how three months escaped my sense of time, but there they went, and other things too, and suddenly it was March and nothing had really improved.  My partner left me.  I took such measures to avoid giving them away, but I suppose now it doesn't matter and her name was Helen.

Helen's a soldier and as such has sexual health checks every six months or so.  This time one came back positive and as she hadn't been with anyone else it must've been me.  Therefore, understandably, she left me.  I know I deserved it.  I do know and I don't need anyone else to tell me.  I get scared and I can't say no and I never want to do it but I don't know what else to do and I'm so, so sorry, Helen.  I only cared about you.  They just frightened me and you know how badly that can go.

Thank you for the care and the patience and the love.  You kept me going.  I don't know if I could regret anything more, and I hope you can forgive me one day.

You are the wonder that's keeping
The bright stars apart
My muse
And my marvel
And half of my heart.

Sorry, darling.

Dickhead

I took your death out on another kid who had your look.  His teeth were less crooked but his smile was yours and I didn't want anyone to have that.  They never did it quite as well as you did anyway.

I'm sorry I forgot your birthday.  In years past and when I hadn't found your grave, I left flowers for another boy who died your age in the hope that somehow they'd be known.  I found your place in June, and the headstone looked so new I half-believed they must've buried you last week.  That birthday you got roses, and irises and lilies and all the things we never would have got you years before.  But somehow now they're all I think to buy.

I forgot because it's changed somewhere.  Not a day went by I didn't used to think of you, and if I hadn't slept than I'd have said it's not an hour.  But it's been a long, long time since then, and I can go whole days without remembering that I miss you.  I'm sorry for it, and I'm sorry that I'm glad about it too.  I'm sorry that I'm tired of being sad for you.

When you drank yourself to death alone that Friday night, I don't know where I was.  I don't know why I wasn't there that time, when every other week I'd been beside you.  And still today I wonder how intentional it was, your missing letter never able to confirm it either way.  I knew that you weren't happy all the time but then who is?  You laughed too much to die.

I still see your face as clearly as I ever could, the smile, the gap between your teeth.  I might not think about you every day but there's yet to be a week.  And still it brings the same old sting, and anger that you couldn't stick around.  I wish I'd had the chance to hate you, even more the chance to die before you.  I wish I didn't know you, ever, or just never knew you'd gone for good.  I wish I didn't miss you like I do.

Good show, sir

On certain days of the week, my work takes me to a learning centre for young adults with disabilities.  This can range from autism and cerebral palsy to severe anxiety and rare genetic disorders.

These are some of my favourite days, as the students are lovely and they don't send out the same waves of negative judgement towards me that the other pupils do, like last Thursday when I heard one mutter to another that my hair was sporting a 'shit dye job' when my hair colour is entirely natural, bizarre as it may be.  There is no collaboration between it and my eyebrows.  It's like they're born of different parents.

Today, after a very enjoyable maths lesson - the first time I have enjoyed maths since the age of sixteen when I was forced out of the AS class due to sheer incompetence - I was approached by one of my colleagues on the way out.

'I thought you did wonderfully today,' she said.  'The way you worked with her was just perfect.  If you can make her laugh and get her to do her work at the same time then it's really something special.'

Now I spend a good deal of my time working myself up into a hysterical lather that I am about to be fired, so this was music to my ears.

Too much music.  I burst into tears.

'What's wrong?' she said.  'I thought you'd be happy.'

'I am,' I told her between sobs.  'I'm very happy.  I just wasn't sure.'

'Wasn't sure of what?'

'If I was doing ok.'

This lady is around my mother's age, and proceeded to coo over me in much the same manner, which I very much appreciated even if the show of such genuine affection did make me cry even harder.

'I'm sorry,' I said eventually, once the gift of coherent speech had been returned to me.

'Don't you worry,' she said.  'You're doing a very good job.'

And off I went.  And I haven't had anything to drink tonight.  Apparently that's what feeling good can do to you.  I can't believe I'd forgotten.

Tea-drinking instead.  Fewer episodes of crippling depression, more of insomnia.

Old MacDonald had a murderous grudge

I wasn't slaughtered the other night but the situation has hardly improved.  The whole affair has sent me into a state of perpetual tension, and I keep swinging between hysterical excitement and a morbid fear for my life.

The stalker's car has not reappeared, nor any corporeal sign of him, but today there was a noise in the hall.  It was about five seconds of a nursery rhyme, I can't remember which one exactly because I was so taken aback, but I think it might've been Old MacDonald Had a Farm.  The noise was reminiscent of a doorbell, but I would not be caught dead with such a ridiculous doorbell and there was nobody on the step who could've rung it anyway.  I am positive it came from inside the house, but I searched high and low and failed to find any device that could possibly have made such a sound.  I didn't even find an intruder lurking with a machete in the larder primed and ready to cleave my head from my shoulders.

Needless to say, I am a nervous wreck.  I can hardly leave the window, and every passing shadow makes my heart go spasming around my ribcage.  The gin has had to come out, and my quivering hands keep shaking it out over the carpet.  Even going into the back garden for a cigarette has become a mammoth task of infinite courage, but it is the only thing providing any comfort now.  I feel certain someone is toying with me, and if it is their plan to bring me to the brink of insanity then they are doing a stirling job.

The only other possible explanation is that the house is haunted.  This does not make me feel any better.  Every time I get sleep paralysis I convince myself that a demon is about to pop out of the wardrobe, and while I have not yet been spirited away to the Netherworld, I fear it may only be a matter of time.

I don't want to be dragged to Hell.  I'm Catholic.  I've earned Purgatory at worst.

With a stab-stab here and a stab-stab there.
Here a stab.
There a stab.
Everywhere a stab-stab.

No hangover, all pride

This is the second day in a row I have not had a drink.

And there is a full bottle of wine in the room.

So fucking proud.

Dickhead - Alcohol Awareness Week, Day VII

Hey, kiddo.

I wanted to write something for you but the words haven't come so easy recently.  

Maybe I could've finished it tonight, if I'd put some real effort in, but that was never us and I'm not about to change things now.

This is a promise that it's coming.  That I'm working on it.  That I want it to be perfect for you.

Your name is wonder

awaking in a fucking summer dawn

and youth

that dying

taught my lips to mourn.

Miss you, kiddo.

The munch, the murderer, and the Marquis (de Sade) - Alcohol Awareness Week, Day VI

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To the lady - Alcohol Awareness Week, Day V

To the lady who told me to sort myself out.  Who said just stop drinking.

To the man who told me I should cheer up.  Who said it might never happen when it already had.

To my father, who told me how quick I would forget our fight as though he didn't know it would keep me up for weeks.

I answered politely at the time but afterwards I almost wished I hadn't.  I didn't thank you for your honesty, or believe you really did just 'try to help.'  I don't think that there was any real care in you, just a morbid curiosity and certainty that you were right and I was wrong.

I should've told you what I thought.  I should've said you haven't got a clue and if I could change myself like I change my fucking socks I would.  I let you go on thinking I was something broken you could 'fix' with your shitty little comments and condescending look.  And you kept me up that night wondering if you were right.

God forbid you say the same to someone less reserved than me.

The money issue - Alcohol Awareness Week, Day IV

My mother has always been the first to say that I am not especially good with money.  Frankly I think she is prone to exaggeration, and seems unable to forget the incident at Ascot many years ago when I, at approximately aged five, exclaimed that I had brought my 'paper money' to the races.  My parents, in their naivety, assumed I meant Monopoly money or chocolate coins, until I drew it from my tiny pocket and revealed that I had mysteriously acquired thirty pounds.  Rather than ascribing this to my youthful innocence, Mother appears to believe it was early evidence of a frivolous nature and poor financial acumen.

But I have never been one to spend more than I have, and to this day I refuse the use of a credit card lest I go mad with the power of it.  Indeed, up until recently, I had for many years been surviving off an overdraft, and while that meant I was never truly 'out of the red,' I was beginning to pay it back and it was fairly easily managed.

But devastation struck just a few months ago, when the fateful combination of alcohol and anxiety and overdraft collided and then collapsed in on itself like a neutron star of despair.

I'd gone for a night out in Reading with my 'new friend,' and was close to, but not too close too, my overdraft limit.  There was some horrible dancing and I had a small tussle with the DJ when he refused to play Come On Eileen on the grounds that it was 'too old,' but I survived the night and that puts me in good spirits.  When the morning came, and I woke with my mouth feeling much like the inside of a teapot, I carried out my usual tradition of searching for every item I took out with me, lest I was mugged but was just too arseholed to recall.  When the debit card failed to appear, I commenced an increasingly panic-stricken search until I was forced to accept its loss and call the bank to cancel it.

Unbeknownst to me, some cunt had cleared me out the night before and taken me over my limit.  So with each passing day my account was bleeding fivers to HS-fucking-BC, until it got to such a state that they cancelled my overdraft and finally deigned to get in touch.  Now I have a quite morbid aversion to phone calls and I only make them if it is an absolute necessity.  I also have a morbid aversion to serious banking and the combination of the two left me paralysed with fear.  So, instead of doing the reasonable thing and contacting them to untangle the mess, I pretended the problem did not exist and went about my business.  Two further letters they sent me went straight to the back of the drawer, unopened.

And then one day, after over a month of scraping together the last of a building society fund I had previously squirreled away, I received the most ominous-looking letter I have ever had the misfortune to lay my eyes on.  I tried for a good half hour to peer through the envelope for clues using a torch, but when I failed to glean any legible information, I consigned myself to death and tore it open.  There, I was greeted with the imminent threat of bailiffs coming to take all my shitty goods if I failed to pay back the full £2000, forthwith.  Which of course, I could not do.

The anxiety by this time had grown stupendous, and I had about one hour's sleep and six panic attacks over the next few days.  I was given half a day off work after vomiting in the car park.  I had to dash out of the classroom after inexplicably bursting into a fit of hysterical laughter.  I was surviving off a diet of whiskey, and the only fruit and vegetables I got was the dry ginger mixer and slice of lime.

I eventually realised that I was never going to be able to make the phone call, so my options were limited to either launching myself in front of the Reading to Waterloo South West train service, or going to the branch in person.  I certainly gave the former serious consideration, because £2000 is a lot of money when you don't have it and there was little question of me asking my family for help.  But the train pulls in quite slowly, and I did fear I may just be dragged along the track for a while, and left maimed but alive and in devastating pain.  So I chain-smoked a good ten cigarettes, and turned up to the bank.

They were lovely.  It took half an hour with the staff and then a charming lady on the phone over in India, and it was sorted.  I set a doable payment plan and the bailiffs were called off and everything was fixed so quickly and simply I couldn't believe I hadn't done it before.  I imagine the stress of that period has taken a good year off my life, and it was sorted in one, easy morning.  While I cannot blame the episode entirely on alcohol, it certainly served to demonstrate what a terrible companion it can make with mental illness.  I might not have stopped drinking, but I have at least starting opening my letters from the bank.

I'm all about the paper money.

I'm sorry if I ruined your life - Alcohol Awareness Week, Day III

I was a student, maybe twenty years old, living in London and still acceptably getting pissed every night without cause for concern.

She was a little older, and I met her in a pub not far from where I lived.  She wasn't local, as local as anyone gets in London anyway; was on some work trip that would keep her here a week.  There wasn't much space in the pub, so we sat at their table, my friend and I, and I heard her northern accent above the others.  I usually wouldn't have struck up conversation with a stranger, but she was very pretty, and I was very drunk.

We hit it off.  We went to another bar and we danced, and I invited her back to mine and she came.

We had another drink when we got there, and sat on the bed for a while, just talking.  She said we should do this again sometime, while she was still here.

'Give me your phone,' I said to her.  'I'll put my number in.'

She had one of those phones with a photo for the background, and I'm not that old but it wasn't so common at that time.  But she picked it up as I said it, and turned it conspicuously away from me, and said, 'No, just tell me it.  I'll put it in.'

Something about the action struck me as strange, and being drunk gave me the confidence to ask about it.  'Is it the photo?' I said.  'You don't want me to see it, do you?'  She gave me an unusual sort of smile and everything seemed to click.  'You've got a boyfriend,' I said.  She repeated the smile, and for a moment I thought she wasn't going to answer.  Could've just pretended.  Then she shrugged.  'I'm engaged,' she said.  'I've got a little boy.'

I might not always have been the most faithful person myself, but I always hated myself for it and I've made a point to never get mixed up the other way.  But I liked her, and I'd had a few too many for morality to really take effect.

She had painted nails, I remember, red, and they were chipped by now, and I took her hand and asked if she was happy.  She shrugged again.

'We have a child together.  What can I do?'

I think I told her it was important to be happy.  It was bollocks too, in hindsight, but I suppose at that age I wasn't so disillusioned with the idea of happiness and I still had another six months before my own would start to go.  Being a student is a selfish time, and I hadn't realised yet that sometimes you can't do what makes you happy.  I hadn't thought about her child enough.

We slept together.  And I felt awful next day, but she said we should do it again sometime.  I didn't really want to, but I told her I might be around again in a few days' time, wondering if she might be gone by then.

I woke next morning to twenty eight missed calls from a number I didn't recognise.  It went again even as I looked at it, and I answered to a man with her accent.  I put it down.

He text me.  What's happened, I've seen the messages, I know you've been with her, I just want to know what you've done.  Fuck knows how he knew, but he did.  I replied saying yes, I'd been with her but nothing happened.  I'm sorry, I didn't know.  He said that's ok.  It's not your fault if you didn't know.  I wasn't protecting her so much; more myself, for fear of what he'd say.  She rang later to ask me what I'd said, asked if we could meet.  I knew I shouldn't have but I told myself it might be best to sort this out.

She apologised for the trouble.  We had such a lovely time I almost forgot to feel bad.  She sent a message later double-checking what I'd told him, and thanking me again for not giving her away.  I said it was fine, I'd just tried to play it down.  And then she left.  I forget where she was from exactly, not too far from Manchester I think, and she'd gone and we didn't speak again and it was like she'd never been here.

Then, over a month later, I woke one day inundated with texts from this man.  Play it down? he said.  I'm going to have you fucking killed.  You're not going to pull anyone with your face smashed in.  I'm going to fucking kill you, you lying piece of shit.

I spoke to him and all I could say was I'm sorry, I was scared, I didn't want to cause any problems.  So much time had passed I'd met somebody else, and we were at the start of what would eventually become a long-term thing.  I told him that, I told him I'm seeing someone, I haven't spoken to her since, nothing's going to happen.  He said he hoped my partner knew what a lying cunt I was.  And I couldn't really say anything.

I know it takes two and all that, but I played my part and I never would've done it if I'd been in my right mind.  I don't know how much misery it caused but I doubt their family went undamaged.  And I'm going to regret that for a very, very long time.

And I am so, so sorry.

Say cheese and wine - Alcohol Awareness Week, Day II

Alcohol Awareness Week comes but once a year, a bit like Christmas or a fun trip to church, and so I am continuing the festivities here.  In a second fit of self-realisation that I need to come to terms with my drinking habits before I end up one liver down, I earlier took a set of photos, chronicling the various bottles and cans concealed about my room.

Now, to look at these photos, it may not appear that there is a great deal to worry about.  The amounts of alcohol are not gargantuan, and the items have been acquired over a certain amount of time, not all in one night.  The problem is, however, that they have been hidden.  I live alone.  I have hidden them, from myself.  In desperate shame, I have actually concealed the evidence of what has previously occurred as though I can somehow blot it from my psyche.

As though I wouldn't find them in my sock drawer.  Christ on a bike, Cecil.  

Apologies for the poor quality pictures.  At the moment the only camera I own appears to be on a Nintendo.

Here is an empty bottle of red wine nestled snugly in my sock drawer.  And I have noticed the Hunter label at the back, but this was neither some poor attempt at product placement nor a boast that I own Hunter welly socks.
If you hadn't noticed, however, I own Hunter welly socks.

This bottle of whiskey was attempting to hide behind a copy of Graham Greene's 'Travels with my Aunt.'  But just because you hide behind a giant of twentieth century literature does not mean you are any less disreputable.

Innocent can of Pringles?  Look again.

Convenient hiding spot for various mixers!  1 tonic = 1 G&T.  1 dry ginger = 1 whiskey.

In this photo I tripped and accidentally hit the button.  Why I decided to leave it, I don't know, but here we are.
This is a passing shot of my floor.  You might notice it is laminated.  On the other hand, you might not.

Top drawer.  I also found about eighty paracetamol packs, a statue of Jesus, and a very small lady.

This is a glass of whiskey with a mat on top.  In case the alcohol tries to escape,  I suppose.   My reasoning was sound at the time.
And look, below.  Another one of my lady's razors makes an appearance.

And last but not least.  These were wrapped in various flamboyant scarves that I am quite pleased to have use of once again.

There we have it.  The hidden contents of the boudoir.  I do wish it could be something a little bit more glamorous than old cans of lager.

(In case you were wondering, I did throw all this away after I uncovered it.)

I suppose the pallid attempts at humour are some pitiable defence mechanism that makes it all seem a little less serious.  Isn't it fucking tragic?

Happy Alcohol Awareness Week - Day I

In the spirit of the sober festivities that make up Alcohol Awareness Week, I am taking the opportunity to write about my appalling relationship with drink in the hope that I wake myself up and do something about it.

I've made it no secret - on here, at least - that I drink too much.  And while I wouldn't call myself an alcoholic, it does affect me to the extent that I frequently turn up to work hungover, riddled with all sorts of regret and hollow promises that I shan't do so again.

It wasn't noticeable during university, where it was perfectly permissible to get rat-arsed any day of the week and have to dash out of your lecture next morning to vomit, or more frequently, to simply not turn up to your lecture at all.  Post-university, the effects became more troublingly apparent, when age made the hangovers more difficult to recover from, and the friends I'd gone out with dropped off the radar and into reputable employment and long-term relationships.  I went through over a year of joblessness, and the lack of purpose and apparent futility of hundreds of applications meant that the nights of lonely, consolation drinking became far more frequent, and far more depressing.  It didn't matter if I sat on my bed getting shitfaced until 4am, because there was nothing to get up for, and no repercussions outside of myself if I were to lie there vomiting until the next evening, when the whole sorry cycle would begin again.

When I eventually found a job, things changed.  The new purpose to my day, the need to get up early, the desire to look like I was doing a good job, all reflected in my mentality and the drinking just about stopped, except on weekends.  I still wasn't happy, but I felt better in myself, and I hoped this heralded a positive change that would only continue.  But as I settled into the job, and the need to come over well diminished, the drinking started up again.  I wouldn't stay up until 4am anymore, but I would start earlier so I could be finished by midnight, and hopefully half-recover by the morning.

Fast-forward to today.  I am in a new job as a teaching assistant, and history has repeated itself.  I rarely drank during the week in the first few months, but after growing used to it I fell back into the same old routine.  Some nights I go to the pub, where the presence of other people somehow gives my own presence a sort of validation.  Sometimes I stay at home and have a bottle of wine or a few G&Ts by myself.  I am never incapable of work the following day, but I often feel unwell and it is a source of constant worry.

I do not dislike my job by any means, but I am aware that I am not especially good at it.  I have little experience talking to children, I am not a natural at it, and I am in a constant state of anxiety in the classroom, particularly where the students are less well-behaved.  The only sort of comfort I ever feel is with the special needs children, who don't judge me for my evident awkwardness and lack of teaching ability.  It is not a career which I would entirely like to continue, though the lack of alternatives make me reluctant to abandon it.  Besides, the thought of being out-of-work again is frightening, as I know things would inevitably degenerate into nightly, lonesome piss-ups.

For someone diagnosed with depression and anxiety, one would assume that the choice would be clear.  Alcohol is a depressant, and I know it only makes me feel worse in the long run.  But often, it seems as though the few hours of happiness I get from being drunk is the only bit of happiness I get at all, and it might not be real but it feels it at the at time.  I'm sure I would be better off if I stopped, but it isn't that easy, just as it isn't as easy to 'cheer up' when someone tells me I look miserable.  I do hope, however, that fully admitting it to myself is one step closer to being able to stop it.

Me after a sesh.

Sorry, Paris

I woke late yesterday, my skull feeling much like someone had been dancing a violent jig upon it for the better part of the night.  As is tradition after an evening with the bottle, my mouth was feeling dry as a rat's arse and about as tasty as one too.  Hauling myself out of bed, I staggered downstairs to retrieve a glass of water, and switched on the radio for company.

You can always tell something serious has happened when the news is on at the wrong time.  It was about twenty past the hour, but there it was, something I last recall from when I woke up similarly hungover on the afternoon of 11th September, 2001.  For the next ten minutes I stood still, glass in hand, listening to new reports coming in on the Paris attacks, the gunfire and the explosions, the 129 dead.  And what I was struck by was an overwhelming sense of guilt, and disgust at myself.

Here I am bemoaning my self-induced nausea that is almost entirely due to a lack of self-control and a cowardly inability to face an evening alone without getting absolutely wankered.  I intentionally drank far too much to avoid the reality of an inexplicable unhappiness that follows me around as closely as my own shadow, for reasons that I fail to understand.  My life is fine, and I should be fine too, and I fear it can only be due to weakness and to selfishness that I am not.  And as I drink myself to oblivion because of problems that live entirely within my own head, 129 people have been killed and hundreds injured and I don't have a clue.

I am sorry for my selfishness, and my cowardice.  I am sorry that even now I focus more on my own guilt than the people who have been affected.  I am sorry for those who have suffered.  I am sorry that I am sorry for myself when I don't deserve it, and that I don't know what to do about it.

Sorry, Paris.

Another Saturday lost

The skin cancer continues to plague me.  I had a horrific headache today too, which throbbed and pulsated about my cranium like some hideous life form invading my very being, and which I can only assume must be a tumour, buried in that bit that controls thought and malignant.

I have also been stricken with a crippling hangover, though I understand from last night's musings that I alone am entirely to blame for that.  I remember dancing.  I never said that, but I remember it, and I remember my shadow under the lamppost.

I have recovered enough to drink again though, which is both a blessing and a curse I suppose.  I don't especially want to, but I might as well go on now.

GOTTA HAVE MY BOWL, GOTTA HAVE CEREAL

Partying, partying, YEAH.

It's acceptable to drink on a Friday evening, however much you might have had during the week, that's a given.  It's a fucking given and even my mother said I should go out on a Friday and her word is fucking law.

I went to the pub and sat with the old chap and I can't remember what we talked about but I remember having a nice time.  I sat with some girls after and they were lovely but I felt so fucking old it was unreal.  I'm not old.  I don't think I'm old yet.  I just have to limit myself to a certain number of pints otherwise I wake up vomiting in the middle of the night and that is a grim outcome for everyone.  Sick all over the cunting bed, and it's only me in there.

Some of the girls were my age, they went to my school, ages ago now.  I shouldn't be calling them girls, they're ladies.  They said, 'what are you doing now?'  I said I'm a teaching assistant.  They said, 'oh, but you were so clever.'  Somehow I've even managed to disappoint people I hardly know.

I'm so tired.  I'm so cold.  What a fucking waste of time every evening is.  I don't know why I bother anymore.

Testing, testing

I have made a gross error in judgement.  I was supposed to be going to see the doctor after work today, to finally start sorting all this tiresome shit about medication or therapy or whatever the fuck is going on, which I have continually put off since diagnosis but thought I had eventually summoned up the courage to face.  I rang today to cancel it because I'm 'covering a lesson in the afternoon.'

But I'm not covering a lesson in the afternoon.  That is a bare-faced, bare-arsed fucking lie.  I don't have anything in the afternoon except an appointment with a whiskey and a withering sense of self-loathing.  I got scared.  I didn't want to go and I haven't even bothered rearranging, I've just said I'll contact them soon.

What I'm scared of, I've no idea.  Dr Watson is perfectly pleasant and I don't anticipate her being anything other than the pinnacle of professionalism she has been thus far.  She isn't going to make me whip of my undies and perform the cough test or whisk me away for sectioning.  This was supposed to be to start making this better, and for reasons unbeknownst I am epically scuppering that.

Unfortunately, the abject disappointment in myself too often manifests itself in over-consumption of alcohol and an inevitable spiral into further despair.  And while I think that shows a remarkable level of self-awareness, it's hardly of help when I'm not doing anything to prevent it.  But I do want to prevent it, and in that vein, I'm going to do a little test, to prove my resolve.  I'm putting this piece up now, and I'm going to come back in a few hours, and if I'm not drunk by then then something's gone right.  I'm going to see if I can stop myself.

So it's all good fun.

- - -

Later

It could've gone better, the whole 'not drinking' thing.  It could've gone better but it was fucked from the start really, I knew I was going to the pub even before I finished the fucking first bit, I don't know why I even bothered.

It was one of those moods, one of those manic moods when I feel like laughing or crying or screaming and I don't know which one but none of them would really be appropriate so I just don't say anything and I get a beer at the pub and sit on my own in the empty garden and look at the foxes passing outside the gate.  I felt happy earlier, for a bit, but whenever I feel that happy without good reason it always turns into this.  It makes me scared to be happy.  I wish I hadn't gone but if I keep drinking and I keep smoking then I don't have to think about laughing or crying or screaming.  I can wait to calm down.  I'm still waiting.

If I didn't have work in the morning I could just drink until I fell asleep, but I'll regret that even more than I regret this.  I don't know what the fuck I'm doing right now.  I might just carry on but I know I'm only making it worse for later.  I don't know what I'm doing.

It'll be funny later.  Tomorrow, maybe.

Drugs

So I'm having a bottle of wine again.  I shouted at my computer and then cried because the internet was being slow and I was trying to email work.  I feel ridiculous and therefore I am having a bottle of wine.

But one thing I can say in my mental health favour is that I no longer take drugs.  

That is, no longer.  I used to, primarily in the heady days of university and then for a good few years following it.  And as it was in grades, so it was in drugs: only class A.

No, that's a lie.  I got a 2:1.  Or a B.

I've never been hugely into weed.  I'm paranoid enough as it is and that green, pungent bastard only serves to tip me screaming over the edge.  Last time was in Amsterdam, and while the best part of the evening was lovely and I laughed about those tiny bananas until my face hurt, it ended, as ever, in tears.  I darkly recall lying in my lumpy hostel bed with my arms in the air, mouthing nonsensical words to myself to convince my unbalanced cranium that I was not, in fact, suffering a stroke.  I also once had sex after weed and it was a languid and disheartening affair that confirmed to me I am not well receptive to its charms.

Perhaps magic mushrooms would have been more appealing, if I had not ill-advisedly taken them directly before an international flight and spent three hours shivering at the airport, foaming at the mouth with tic-tacs and vomiting fluorescent-yellow bile that I self-induced with three fingers down my throat.  As it is, I have declined to partake since.

Ketamine was a one-off affair.  Having learnt from the mushroom venture, I took it at home with a friend, with no flights to catch and no high balconies in the vicinity, and we watched the news.  We took ketamine and we watched the fucking news.  I don't know what the hell we were thinking but I should've guessed from the absurdity of the idea that it was all going to end hip-deep in bollocks.  The Queen was on.  I fail to remember what the report was about, because I became rather distracted when she crawled out of the television.  Much like The Ring she hauled herself, nightmarishly, out of the set and, being only about two foot high, dashed about the back of the sofa and concealed herself there.  I searched in vain for many hours; she was nowhere to be found, and I could only assume that she had hidden herself in the larder, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

As it is, I have failed to discover her spot and am forced to accept that this Miniature Queen is still loose and biding her time in some dark corner, two foot tall and full of malice.

Cocaine was the only thing I took regularly, due mainly to being friends with a dealer when I was a mere slip of seventeen, and therefore on the 'mates rates' that sounded so delightfully cheap.  It appeared a bargain and I am a sucker for a bargain.  That's why I just bought ten ladies' shavers from Lidl.  They were half-price and I assume they work on a face like they work on legs.  But in all my time taking cocaine I only had one truly horrific experience, when I snorted about a gram one night in freshers' week and woke up at seven am the following day with numb nostrils and my heart at 200 beats per minute and I sat in the shower crying for an hour wondering whether to call an ambulance and suffer the disownment of my parents or simply give myself over to death and miss out the telling off.

Since then I have had no further brushes with the Reaper because of it, and only a couple with the law that resulted in me being escorted from the premises and ejected onto the street without arrest.  So my decision to stop was not the direct result of bad experience, or tears, nor a sense of moral obligation nor even, alas, the acquisition of a level of maturity that has thus far eluded me.  Once again, it was due to a fear for my health, though not, this time, entirely irrational.

Anxiety gives me frequent bouts of tachycardia and heart palpitations, which is a grossly unpleasant sensation and has more than once sent me weeping to A&E.  So, science.  Cocaine contains a naturally-occurring  psychoactive chemical called benzoylmethylecgonine that produces the high, and while benzoylkdsfoiwenflasdn isn't especially dangerous on its own, the powder you buy on the streets can be mixed with anything from amphetamines to caffeine to baking powder to arsenic.  Without getting too deep in the science, because I've already given up on spelling benzoyelfaksjdfo;n, some of these ingredients can have adverse effects on the heart and on one's mental state.  So you combine all this with an inclination towards anxiety and tachycardia and suddenly you have a heart going Super Saiyan, and I don't know if hearts can literally explode but if anything is going to make it happen, it is that.

There was a time when I believed the drugs might have caused the problem.  I would go to the doctor and inevitably one of their questions would be 'do you take any illegal drugs, particularly cocaine or amphetamines?'  To which I would answer 'no.'  Clearly this was an outrageous lie and one that could possibly have caused serious detriment to my health.  But I was still promised to the army at that stage, and if my medical record had showed 'cocaine user' then I would've been out on my arse before I got the chance to say 'but I don't really want to join the army anyway.'

So I stopped taking it because it coincided with, or possibly contributed to, the mental side of things.  I have since been told that there is no damage to my heart, which is a relief, but serves to reinforce the fact that the symptoms are psychosomatic.  So I'm not physically ill, but nor am I well.  Hip, hip, hooray.

That said, I also get tachycardia from cigarettes, but that has yet to stop me.  Excuse me while I go and light up.

She waits.

The hangover

Well I woke up after last night's five gins feeling like absolute fucking poo.  I haven't felt so atrocious since Halloween, and that was as horrific as the holiday suggests.  The alarm came blaring on at 6am and the first thing I felt was a headache the size of a steak lying flat across my brain.  The second thing was Regret.  The whole room span.

I'm not entirely sure how I made it to work alive, but I did and then forced down half a cup of coffee that did not sit at all well on my sensitive innards.  It almost escaped back out of my mouth during the lesson, but I managed to retain it and then reconsume it, all the while keeping an impressively expressionless face.  By some stroke of incredible luck, that was the only lesson today as for one reason or another the rest didn't require my frankly unnecessary presence.  So I gleefully, albeit slowly and quite hunched, returned to the train station, where I came across the most unfortunate sight.

I think it was chicken.  It could've been that some poor soul had been recently disemboweled, but I think it was chicken.  It was lying on the grass in a pink heap, glistening and raw, flies buzzing about it and an especially swift slug already slithering into the mix.  Thin white strings hung over a few of the chunks, and it was without a doubt one of the most rancid things I have ever had the misfortune to lay my eyes on.

In my weakened state I was unable to cope with it, and I gagged three times in quick succession.  Nothing, blessedly, came up, but my stomach was in a sorry state and I forced my gaze away, fixing it on a gentleman walking ahead of me lest it be dragged back to the chunks.  For a few seconds I was successful.  But then suddenly, the image came hurtling back into my mind in high-resolution, pink and wet and devastating and I was unable to contain myself.  I gagged and I could already sense I was doomed this time.  It was on its way.  I gagged again, and the man ahead turned just in time to catch the main event.  With a terrible retching sound, I vomited into my hand and it began seeping through the gaps between my fingers and dripping onto the floor.  I was so mortified that I couldn't stop walking.  He did, and stared at me with a look torn between concern and disgust, but I just carried on, and walked straight past him at speed with a handful of sick as though I was merely taking it home as a souvenir.

I put it on the floor as I rounded a corner and wiped my hand on the wall, which I know is unpleasant but it was either that or my trousers.  I was eager to return home and collapse onto the floor, but then fate conspired against me once again.  Due to some inconsiderate shit wandering across the tracks, I was forced off the train at Wokingham and left stranded.  To make matters worse, a man was then arrested and a woman hit by a lorry, so the police closed the roads and I couldn't find a bus and I didn't even have any fucking change for the bus and it was just the Worst Thing in the World, or at least a close second to that woman under the lorry.  When I did finally return home after the most inordinately expensive bus journey I have ever been on, I was soaked through with rain and sweat and was beginning to become aware of the faintest hint of sick upon my person.

Then I retrieved a bottle of wine and secreted it in a gap between my bookshelf and my bed.  Bearing in mind I am on my own, this seems a disturbing action to take.  I seem to have attempted to hide it from myself.  No doubt in shame.

And of course the skin cancer has also chosen this day to be particularly malicious.  I'm getting the occasional stabbing pain and the nerves there don't seem to be working so well.  I doubt I have more than a week to live.

It looked a bit like this but far less appetising and with more white strings.  And on the floor outside.

Booze blues

For the past eighteen months or so, I have begun to be overcome by the sneaking suspicion that I drink too much alcohol.

I wouldn't call myself an alcoholic, not just because the term terrifies me with its severity, but also because it's not affecting me to an extent that seems to warrant it.  I can happily go through a day at work without a drink and on some evenings, when I am otherwise occupied, I might not even think about it.  I never drink on mornings - except once, but that was because I'd spent a night being refused sex in the Most Terrifying House in England, which was home to a Whomping Willow and was almost certainly rented by Slenderman, and I was then forced to have a single glass of Shiraz to steady my nerves.

But I do drink most weeknights and it occasionally leaves me feeling a little more than grotty when I get up for work the next morning.  On weekends I go a bit more hardcore, and while it's somehow acceptable on weekends I do inevitably feel like a heap of decaying shit for the better part of the following day, until I perk up in the evening and the whole sorry thing begins again.  As of now, it's nearly eight pm and I'm only on the second G&T of the evening, which isn't so bad, but I am alone and I'm not really enjoying it.  It's not an issue that is significantly affecting the quality of my life, such as it is, but on many of these long, lonely nights I don't even particularly want to drink, and I regret it even while I do it.  But nevertheless, here we are again, with glass in hand and growing sense of sorrow.  Essentially, I do want to stop, but am so far epically failing to do so.

I once brought this up with an ex-doctor-friend of mine.  Ex-friend that is, not ex-doctor, because we slept together one night and it was an incredibly disappointing experience for all parties and next morning it was so excruciatingly awkward that it was easier to never speak again.  I blame the fact that it was unsatisfying and sad.  But I brought the issue up one day, under that unconvincing guise of 'my friend wants to know this...' and my sub-par lover likened it to self-harm.  As in, drinking oneself to oblivion has similarities to cutting oneself.  I can't agree definitively with this comparison simply because I can't speak for the mindset behind self-harm.  I have only done it once and, like Marmite or The Mighty Boosh, it was not for me.  But the alignment doesn't strike me as inaccurate.

I am well-aware that I use alcohol as a coping mechanism.  I know that sometimes I drink because I'm bored, or lonely, or I know that in a few hours time I'm going to have to do something that's going to make me inconsolably anxious and I want to relax.  And it's all very well knowing this, but it's of little use when I so consistently fail to find a viable alternative.  I did wonder if it might be something worth bringing up at the doctor's next week, but it is only the first appointment and I don't want to overwhelm poor Watson with my tales of woe.

Watson: So what's the problem?

Cecil: I have anxiety.  And depression.  I think I might have a borderline alcohol problem.  Also skin cancer.

Watson: I see.

Cecil: I'd like you to check for all the cancers, actually.

Watson: (sighs) We have told you before, Mr Cavender.  One problem at a time.

Cecil: For every cancer?  I'll be coming back for years.

Watson: I'm sure you will, yes.

But the appointment is not imminent and I've no idea if I'll even have the courage to mention it.  My medical record is ridiculous enough without potential alcoholic being added to the tome, and I fear they'll think I'm imagining it like every other case of Incoming Death I've arrived with.

So by the time of finishing this I'm on my fourth G&T and frankly, I don't think anything's going to change before the fifth.

I didn't see him, but then I suppose if I had, I wouldn't be here.