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.

Happy Christmas

Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

Especially to my little one.

I don't think it was ever bias that you were mine.  You are the most beautiful thing I ever saw.

For you, for ever.

Sleep tight.

Christmas Wrapping

I sat, crossed-legged on the cold, faux laminate floor today, wrapping presents.  Each one had a different variant of Christmas-themed paper, one holly, one ivy, one fairy, one some sort of terrible garish tartan that the only thing deserving of being wrapped in it would be a set of bagpipes.  Because the only person I would ever dream of giving bagpipes to would be that man at the station who called me a twat.  I might be a twat, sir, but you, sir, you, sir, are a Cunt.

I like Christmas, in its way, but like my birthday, it reminds me incessantly of the slow march towards death.  It inevitably recalls the lost magic of my youth, and the ever-growing tragedy of another year I've done fuck-all with.  Every year the pile of Christmas cards grows smaller, like it has The Shrinks, and neighbours die, and the round robin letter those most loathed people send becomes a tally of divorce and demise and little Sophie got AIDs this year and apart from her crippling heroin addiction we can't think how.

I do really like Christmas.  I just don't like mine.

It could've been worse; at least I didn't do the song.

CALMzone

Those of you based in the Thames Valley area might be interested to know that a new CALMzone has recently been established there.  CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably) is a registered charity that exists to prevent male suicide in the UK, which is the single biggest cause of death in men aged 20-45.  They offer a free, confidential and anonymous phoneline and web chat service between the hours of 5pm and midnight, every day of the year.

The Thames Valley branch is the third in the UK, the others being in Merseyside and London - probably because they're all such depressing places to live (sorry) - and will allow more men in the Berks/Bucks/Ox area to access local support.  So if you, like me, frequently find yourself roaming the Thames Valley landscape like Cathy across the moorland, pining for Heathcliff or your sadly misplaced mental health, do keep them in mind.

Find them on their website at https://www.thecalmzone.net/, or phone them on:
0800 58 58 58 (Nationwide inc. Merseyside and Thames Valley)
0808 802 58 58 (London)

In other news, this week I'll be curating the Twitter account for Mental Health Voices over at @MH_Voices.  If you have any topics on the... topic of mental health that you think should be discussed, drop me a line here or there.

Happy International Tea Day.

Every day is tea day for me.

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.

PropranoLOL

Today marks two weeks since I have started taking these accursed pink tablets, and while I have not yet suffered any rectal bleeding, scaly skin or complete stoppage of the heart, the side-effects are beginning to make themselves known in the most unnerving of ways.  I keep getting incomparably dizzy every time I rise from a sitting position, and invariably go wheeling away in the wrong direction before I collide with a wall or a small child and am sent back on the right course.  Today, on getting out of bed, my legs took me a full eight feet across the room until I managed to pinball my head off a shelf and collapsed into the door.

That is not to say they have been entirely ineffective.  The heart palpitations have on the whole receded, apart from when I was being hunted by the stalker, but I remain hopeful that his current absence from the shrubbery in my front garden will continue.  Unfortunately, the debilitating dizziness is making me wonder if I am in fact suffering from another brain tumor, and rather than a side-effect it is instead a hint at my impending doom.  Time will tell, I suppose.  I'll likely be dead by Christmas.

I don't find it very funny.  I think they were poorly named.

Apparently this man suffered from terribly scaly skin but just sort of went with the flow.

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.

Marks and Spencer is changing its name to Gethsemane

Yesterday brought little relief from the imminent threat of death by stalker.

In fact the whole day was interminable.  Work brought two hours of psychology, where my entirely redundant presence requires me to sit and listen to lessons on unethical psychological experiments.  It is all very interesting, but I left the class, once again, with my soul in turmoil at the terrifying fragility of the human condition and the precarious hold by which society maintains its stability.

After work, I thought it might be nice to go to Marks and Spencer, because I am in mortal need of new headphones.  My current pair are on the cusp of explosion, and I really do require headphones so I can't hear the horrible things the students are probably saying about me on the train.  I was rather disappointed to discover, however, that not only is the biggest M&S in the fucking south entirely barren of headphones, but they provide a very misleading pair of earmuffs that really got my hopes up for a moment.  I then got lost trying to find the toilets, and ended up wandering around the labyrinthine children's section for ten minutes like a paedophile overwhelmed by the sheer amount of choice.

When I eventually located the elusive bathroom, I found myself unable to use a urinal as there was a gentleman there with his underage son, and I had already made myself look illegal enough so I was forced to go darting into a cubicle.  Rather unpleasantly, the toilet I elected to take refuge in had a poo floating in it, and in locking the door I thereby became responsible for the poo.  Even though I had not put it there, to exit the cubicle and leave it languishing to be discovered by another would have left me feeling humiliated and ashamed.  So after I completed my wee I flushed it away, and it went without a fight, which makes me wonder why the horrendous fucker who dropped it from his rectum didn't deign to do the same.

I made it home without being arrested as a child-snatcher, but as soon as I had the temerity to relax, fate swooped in to snatch the calm away.  The phone rang.  I answered it.  'Hello?' I said.  But nobody said hello back.  Nobody said anything at all.  I waited about ten seconds until I realised it must be the killer continuing his vendetta against my already fragile psyche, and slammed it back into the receiver, my calm shattered for the night.  The whole affair is taking a dreadful toll on my health, and last night I found myself unable to sleep due to a crippling bout of heart palpitations that left me lying wide-eyed in the darkness convinced I was teetering on the brink of mortality.  And then, when they eventually stopped, it was so unnervingly sudden that I thought my heart must there and then have ceased to beat, and I had already begun to plunge headlong into the dark inevitability of death.

And now I've washed myself with some new-fangled mint-scented shower gel, and it's just too fucking minty.  My balls are burning with freshness.

The only thing that could top this off would be bombing Syria.

The balance of humanity hangs on a thread.  The propensity for evil is in all of us.

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.

Sexually Transmitted Despair

My genitals feel unusual.

Usually my morbid fear of diseases would tell me this must definitely be cancer of the cock, but alas, I fear this current discomfort may instead be due to the fact that I haven't used it in fucking forever.

It could be an STD of course, but the tragic lack of action lately makes me disinclined to believe it's so.  Besides, the one and only time I've had an STD it was chlamydia and therefore blessedly, deceitfully symptomless.

I only had chlamydia for a week or so, when I was eighteen, after I slept with some fiend I met at the pub.  I say 'slept with.'  It was up against a tree in Vauxhall Park which is notoriously shit and it was 5am.  I was picking bark out of my arse for a week after.  Anyway I was afterwards informed that said fiend was not at the pinnacle of genital cleanliness, and advised to get myself checked out.  I followed this advice and it took me to the local clinic, where an extremely disapproving nurse broke the news to me.  Thankfully the disease was cleared up by a couple of antibiotics and my penis hadn't fallen off and the worst bit by far was listening to the nurse lecture me on the importance of contraception and maintaining good sexual health.  Of course I knew it all already, but I had been drunk and all sense and judgement and the thousands of pounds spent on my education fly off to all four corners of fuck when I'm drunk.

I have since managed to avoid contracting anymore sexually transmitted diseases, which might not be something to shout about exactly, but with my general lack of regard for sexual safety over the years it makes me feel really quite fortunate to have only come out with one bout of the clam.  Still, I do wonder if I should get it checked out just in case.  The prospect of infertility is a galling one, because I would quite like to father children one day even if at the moment it is a terrifying thought and my biological clock is ticking like a horrible, spermy, average-sized timebomb.

Ahem.

I simply couldn't bear to listen to the nurse again, though.  If I haven't learnt by this age, it's a lost cause.

It won't be an STD.  Would that there had been any recent opportunity to contract one...

It is important to distinguish between clams and the clam because only one of them should be eaten.

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.

Elementary, my dear Watson

I went.  I did it.  I managed to make it to the cunting doctor and it was absolutely fucking fine and now I wonder why I was so absurdly frightened of it.

I didn't go into too much depth, because I didn't want to overwhelm Watson with my staggering amount of maladies.  I didn't even mention the skin cancer, although it's going to have to come up eventually, being as it's still latched to my back like a deadly limpet and I am starting to get shooting pains like it is burrowing into my spine.  So we stuck to general anxiety and depression, and I even managed to restrain myself from weeping, which is a considerable feat for me under far more minor circumstances.

One of the prescribed narcotics is a month's worth of propranolol, which she said should keep my heartrate beneath an explosive level and with luck reduce the inordinate amount of panic attacks.  At least it should help me get through a day at work without having to curl up in the bathroom and hug the toilet roll until I've summoned up the strength the face the children.  Once the month is up, I'm to go back and let her know how I'm getting on with them.  She also suggested looking into this mindfulness shenanigans, which seems to keep cropping up but I know little about it.  I believe I may have acquired a copy of it though, as I recall my sister sent it over after receiving it during some medical trial she was participating in.  Unfortunately, it resides upon my old laptop, which has voided half its screen.  But there is definitely something on there called 'ulness,' and I can't think what else might precede that apart from 'mindf,' unless it was 'balefulness' or 'frightfulness,' both of which I suppose I might be apt to say even if I can't think for the life of me why I would have saved a document as that on Microsoft Word...

After receiving the prescription I immediately went to sample the goods, and immediately after that I made the somewhat poor decision to sample the side-effects.  I had queried Watson about them and she had mentioned the usual; nausea, headaches, dizziness particularly, but on perusing the propranolol pamphlet I noted a number of exceedingly disturbing symptoms that she had failed to alert me to.  Namely, rectal bleeding, scaly skin, and complete stoppage of the heart.  As it is, a number of hours have passed since taking them, and while my heart still beats, I am burdened by the constant knowledge that each next beat could be my last.

That, however, is not an uncommon fear and I am growing quite used to the notion of my own mortality.  As long as I do not linger on it for too long it no longer overwhelms me with incomprehensible terror at the idea of an eternity in darkness.  Now it merely gives me a sudden surge of horror that is roundly quashed by that delightful part of my psyche that tries so hard to keep me sane.

I suppose they can't be all that bad.  They're pink and they end in 'lol.'

The rectal bleeding has yet to put in an appearance.

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.

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.