Heads or tails?

What if I could prove without contest that it really would be better for everyone if I just did it? Who could deny me then? Surely it would be okay if I could show you all that the short-term trauma would make things easier in the end. Easier for you, easier for me.

Maybe it is a moral issue. Maybe it is just plain wrong. I didn't ask to be born but I sincerely hold it as privilege, if not always a pleasure, that I was. I know all the things I have that should make me happy. Would it be viciously disrespectful to do it in the face of those things other people might die to experience once? But then I'm not one for top ten lists and besides I am well aware of all that good stuff I have. I'm depressed even with that. Not sure I want to stick around to face losing it.

I'm not expecting to go anywhere after leaving here. This is it and when it finally isn't any more then my one chance will have expired. There is nothing more for us after. Maybe this will disappoint some people and I can sympathise if it does. However, I have this curious sensation that it's this one conviction that is keeping me here. If I thought I was moving on to something better then maybe I'd be gone already. But is nothing better or worse than this?

Do you think it's fair to leave everyone who cares? Everyone who would be devastated by your absence. The domino effect could be more staggering than is possible to predict. You might not be taking only yourself off. Can you justify bringing them down to where you are? Seems to me this is not how you have lived thus far, Ciaran. But of course you know how much that need to help fix other people is another symptom of what's got you here. Perhaps this ultimate act of selfishness is merely selfishness long overdue.

This soliloquising like Hamlet is my daily bread at the moment. Often the only interlocutor in my discussions is myself so it's important I try to look at things as objectively as possible. Not an easy task but I must continue. If the cataclysmic finale is ever too occur prematurely I'd like everyone to know that I can see all the things I'd be leaving behind. All the people I love infinitely more than I will ever love myself. The beautiful sensations on earth that only humans are lucky enough ever to comprehend. The hopes for a time when things may seem better for me. All of this and more I couldn't bare to live without. But living with them can be a difficult task too. I don't want anyone to think I didn't realise how lucky I am. I won the lottery when I was born. The problem is that even with that being said I'm still not happy. I might never be. I think I am just a sad person.

Isolation

I am not the only one here. Lets just be clear on that. Your brother might be depressed. Your mother or son or best friend might be in unimaginable turmoil. Most people refuse to talk about it or stick to sweeping generalities on the topic. It's a little awkward to talk about, is it not? I understand it with crushing clarity and often I find it hard to talk about. 

I tell more people than most that I am depressed. People I've just met, even when I can't tell people I've known forever. Acquaintances and friends, family and colleagues get the mundane privilege of hearing about the essence of my wilful self-destruction almost on a daily basis. I know some people think I talk about it too much. I know that there are some people who simply do not want to know any more. I can understand it if they think at times I do it for shocks and attention. I wouldn't even attempt to deny the charge. Sometimes I crave attention, even the bad kinds. But the reasons for talking about it so openly are precisely because of the contrast with many people in the same boat. People die because they can't talk about it. Because they think nobody will listen or care. People suffer pain in silence for years because this isn't something we talk about. 

There is a generally accepted opinion that the stigma around this thing has largely disappeared. No doubt it has but nowhere near enough. I hear all the things people talk about all day every day. All the food and the clothes, the quantity of alcohol consumed and the xfactor. These aren't bad things. All I'm saying is that in the middle of all this if you ever get the feeling that someone around you isn't feeling good, even when it doesn't look like they want to talk, please make an effort to speak to them. I know myself how difficult it is to talk to me on my worst days. That I don't respond or engage is typical. But it's not that I don't want to talk to people it's often that I physically can't. I apologise for that but I'm not really sure I should.

The stigma still persists. Not in me or in many people I know but still it's a hushed conversation with many. There is no reason it should be anymore. This is why I'm happy to talk about. It might help somebody else talk too. Someone forty years my senior recently asked for my advice on depression. It's only because I am open to it that I can help. It isn't something that should be pushed into the background only spoken about in whispered conversations. Ask me about it any time. 

The quest to de-stigmatize depression is undoubtedly a current personal crusade. You see I had an episode a week ago. Perhaps feeling no worse than I have at times before it became a crisis because I allowed the symptoms to manifest themselves in the physical dimension more than I ever have before in public. I'm glad people saw it. They need to because like I said, I'm not the only one here. Now I'm not allowed to work because people had to confront what has always been there and what will remain there when I do go back. Isolation seems a bizarre treatment for an illness often directly caused by it. Out of sight out of mind I guess. Up to a point I understand the policy of getting me out of there and keeping it reasonably quiet. Then I thought again. It doesn't really encourage anyone who saw me that day to open up about their problems. Better to keep sitting on them until they're fatal because this type of thing clearly isn't acceptable. I'd be scared to talk about it too if I thought that would be a typical reaction.

It's easy to think I was always so open about the illness but I most certainly was not. Years I spent hiding it, denying it, putting it down to a bad day or tiredness. This, unfortunately had a profoundly negative effect. Over time the depression became the general perception of my personality and so how could anyone see it for real. I left it too long to get help. I won't ever see a definite end. It is part of me now. I was convinced the doctors thought I would be lying to them when I first went. Perhaps I had contrived the whole thing and they would be able to see through it. Most people I have spoken to are quite receptive however. I only wish more people would be willing to speak up.

One million people a year die from suicide. That's more than through war and murder combined. I'm not shocked by that at all. It's under reported because it's still a taboo subject. There is no way all of these could have been prevented. Unfortunately some people are beyond help. But I know a lot of these could have been prevented if people felt more confident about talking or seeking help. Even in a few cases if one person had made the effort to offer some help. People with broken arms don't pretend they are fine although people with cancer do. Imagine how well that works out. I suppose we could just continue to brush it under to save that awkward conversation. It'd be worth a million or so lives.

Behind the Fossette

It was by mere chance that I was born this way. There was no divine plan, no omnipotent overseer of my fate. It seems to me to be a ludicrous pretension that any heavenly king would have the remotest interest in any one of us. But that's just me. The odds of my existence at all are severely negligible. The combination of factors leading to my appearance on earth, from the cosmos exploding into life to the chance moment of conception, are so unlikely to have lined up with such definite perfection that I might be forgiven for believing my life was not only an accident. Perhaps even some part of me wants to believe I am here for a reason (everybody likes to be needed). But it's clear to me that there never was any plan for me being here, even if there are any number of reasons for me to stick around. It was nothing but an accident, and in my present state of mind I see it as a rather unhappy one.

Strangely, my implacable godlessness has in my happier moments had the effect of stirring something like true wonder and awe inside me. The world is a beautiful place, what does it matter to put a label on a maker when we can't ever possibly know? I don't need false piety to exert twisted morals on me so that I know the right thing to do. I'm still a good person. I know what is right without having to be told. I try to look out for friends even when it takes more from me than I can really afford to give. The most enduring effect of my Roman Catholic upbringing was undeniably a poisonous lie. The feeling of guilt so intertwined with all christian theology has left a lasting impression on my personality. I am predisposed to self-doubt and self-loathing among many other personal failings but throwing an unnecessary weight of guilt onto my shoulders for things I don't even believe are wrong is a sin I find unforgivable.

For about a month or more I have been holding back a leaky tap that disguises a waterfall of existential dread behind the fossette. Incrementally, my words are drying up as my days spent in bed become more frequent. God can't help me. No-one can. Not that I am contemplating suicide at this moment. Maybe if I had the conviction that I really had nothing I wanted to stick around for or wasn't grasping at something I can't grip. Maybe then I might have gone ahead and done the job already. On that point however, the knowledge that when I am dead and gone means just that, and not an eternal sleepover at a celestial retirement village fills me up with excited certainty that life needs to be lived all the more intensely now.

All I really feel I know now is how much I dislike this improbable collection of genes and protein cells. I'm not sure what it is I wanted to be but it is not this. It occurred to me today that one of the most evil long-term effects of depression on me has been the absolute and final destruction of any shred of true inner confidence I might have had. The outward show is only an act. As it happens, put on more for myself rather than anyone else. If I decline further inwards then I return to a useless waste. I will cease to improve but regress. I won't be a good friend, although I am beginning to feel like I give more than I get anyway. My brain will turn to mush and I will return to the days of crying at soap plot-lines hiding in my bedroom. It's already started.

It was suggested to me that I don't want help. Implying my depression is contrived, I assume to exude pathos. It seems an unfair criticism to someone who has spent his entire life considering how to be at least contented. I have lost count of the number of doctors waiting rooms, anti-depressants and therapy sessions I have had. The number of self-help books I've been through to find the treasure map to confidence. You may laugh but I've even gone to the bible for answers (there weren't any). If I were in complete denial I might claim there was no truth to the charge, but we both know better.

It is a shame that we only experience the world from inside our own bodies cage. Perhaps if I could interchange the senses of others with my own I might find myself not thinking as I do. Maybe in a far off evolution. As it is I am stuck with myself. On the flip-side we should be grateful that no-one else is.

Anyway, I guess I have spilled over enough for one evening. It is approaching quarter past two in the morning and I want a cigarette.

I should finish by crediting Christopher Hitchens with helping to put a lot of these ideas in my head. Unfortunately his effect on me was posthumous but nonetheless impressive for it

2013

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness. I have to thank Mr Charles Dickens for the succinct clarity of the opening sentence because it sums up 2013 in the life of Ciaran Cooney better than I ever could. However, allow me to elucidate this often strange and often sad epoch of mine in some of my own words even if they fall short of said master of language above.

I began writing my thoughts down on here in late spring as a reaction to finding it an excruciating torment to say any of those things aloud. At that point I had back-slid so far into my depression that I'd had to step up my medication to it's maximum and go to a weekly therapy session. I could barely speak to my friends any more, was convinced I would never  be able to look at another woman again let alone talk to one and figured the odds of making it to twenty-seven were reducing exponentially on me. You can probably guess that this was during the worst of times.

The year had started relatively well too. Apart from the traditional post-Christmas blues I was thriving on the sense of a new start that January brings. I was motivated in a way I have almost never been before. I had my first semester exams and I studied hard for those. Meanwhile, I breezed though seven books in the time I wasn't studying. For a month I was probably more dedicated to exercise than I had ever been and by the time of my decline I was as fit as I had been in years. I was socialising without drinking. I was enjoying my life. Maybe that is part of the reason that the fall that was to follow felt particularly hard this time. Or maybe it is just that I've grown exhausted of trying to dig myself out of that hole.

Oddly enough I can pinpoint exactly where I was when this malignant hopelessness began to settle in. I was in a Chinese restaurant on a Saturday night in February. The 9th of February to be more precise. Enjoying a meal and a drink with colleagues and friends it suddenly struck me that I wasn't like anyone else there. I felt an obscure distance from the rest and my mind fell vacant so that I was almost unable to speak. I knew what was coming. The following day the pain in my body was such that I wanted to die. I would have died, if I had dared to.

A few days later I fell victim to a flu virus that was doing the rounds and together this and the depression sewed the seeds for seemingly terminal pain. The first two weeks of being sick where, to the best of my memory, the worst I have ever experienced. The physical torture combined with the mental decline at that moment was something I could scarcely survive twice.

It went on like this for a few months. Finally I was convinced to get help. This would mean more pills and a first crack at therapy. Sitting in the waiting room of a mental health clinic for the first appointment had, in my case at least, the pleasant effect of making me feel comparatively okay. I was sure I didn't need this the way the people beside me did. Looking back now though, I know I needed it. I needed to stop myself getting lost.

Strange as it may sound, I consider this submission to another for my mental well-being as a minor victory. It was something I had always laughed off before but in 2013 I finally did it because I had to. It was good for me. I needed to hear from someone with a clue that if I kept on the same track that the probability of suicide attempts was constantly increasing and that the day was getting quite close.

Scratching my way through to passing my first full year of college was a big win, even if I hated virtually every moment of that second semester. By rights I probably should have failed. I felt myself pitching and rolling and maybe on the verge of capsizing. This mature student thing wasn't nearly as much fun as I thought it was going to be. It appears fairly obvious to me now that I made a mistake when I decided on electronic engineering as the vehicle for my return to formal education. But I'm here now so I best just get on with it and keep those credits ticking over. Anyway, deciding on the wrong thing is often better than not deciding at all.

Summer, summer, summer-time! Last day in a mental health clinic (with a little luck, ever) coincided, somewhat serendipitously, with an afternoon flight to Edinburgh for my mates stag. Not going to romanticise it as  turning point but it was a kind of happy release because now I was free to enjoy myself for a few months and for the most part that is just what I did. I guess there is no point in boring anyone with the details, especially as I've already written most of the stupid shit I got up to. From getting twerked in Rome (perhaps due to me wearing suit and sunglasses at night) to trying to leverage £80 from a mate so I could shag a stripper it was mainly just good craic. The year most definitely peaked in Rome. The wedding of my two friends was perfect. The weather was perfect. The food occasionally a little disappointing but the craic ninety-one. The hangover was interminable.

I've had to settle back down to reality the last couple of months. I am finding myself reasonably dedicated to the course I'm doing even if I lack any aptitude for engineering at all. There is nowhere I have ever felt more stupid than in those classrooms. I will take some comfort knowing that Aristotle thought knowing ones own ignorance was a sign of intelligence. Feeling exhausted seems to be my default state at the moment. I find myself doing more hours at work than I did last year. It's all good though. I don't like being a poor student and there are so many things I like to spend money on. A return to Amsterdam is top of that list. Maybe January 2013.

Apparently it seems I am living the life I missed out on when I was 18 or 19. I've been told by different people recently that I am a sleazy, cheesy, flirt. A metro-sexual (fair enough), bisexual (I'm not), macklemore look-alike. I can see where most of that comes from. I was super-depressed when I was younger. I could hardly talk to anyone, definitely not the girls I fancied back then, so don't blame me for trying to have the fun I missed out on now. So what if I want to be a bit of a slut now, that doesn't make me bad. And anyway I'm nowhere near as big a slut as I'd like to be. Still, it's all just a bit of banter at the minute.

It's not that I'm cured. I still have the days when I can't talk, can't do anything. Days when I remember what it was like to want to die. I mean even today I'm here lying in bed because I really don't want to go out, although I might make another excuse. I went seven days without taking any fluoxetine, when I should be taking three a day. Proof if needed that self-destructive behaviour still lingers ominously. It just that now I know for certain that I'm not nearly done with life. There is too much to be had to stay in bed, like I have done for years and am doing today. So, I won't be doing it tomorrow or again any time soon.

I know some people who's version of life scares the shit out of me. It's not that there unhappy. More that they don't seem to care about anything that are the really good experiences. They seem satisfied to work, eat, sleep, stay in the same town forever and never see the world. Not interested in sex and never going to have children. In some way scared to live. That is my biggest nightmare. I'd rather die than grow older and old like that. It's not even the action that is important but the attitude, I need to know that there might be something more exciting out there for me.

With all that in mind I am actually looking forward to next year for the first time in my life. I used to look at it as the depressing passing of time that is impossible to hold back. Almost like, ' we're ll going to die anyway, why bother?' But now I think I can see that the real pleasure in starting a new year is all the possibility for improvement and hopefully some fucking excellent moments. Everyone should see it that way. If I can bounce, anyone can.

I suppose the moral of the 2013 story is that I'm not finished with life yet even when I know some days I hate it. Nobody should be. It's all out there waiting for you. You just need to decide what you want and then go get it. It is hard but it can be fun too.

2014...GO!!!

Untitled

I read this passage in a book tonight and then I did something I never ever do. I read it again. And I mean I never re-read sections. I'm usually in a furious rush to finish each book that sometimes I miss the point somewhere along the way. That one is an extremely modern trait of mine. But this one got me instantly and I found myself anticipating the words before they were illuminated in my retina. I read it, read it again, tried to digest it before reading again.

So, what was it about this particular few lines that caught my attention? Well, to be honest I'm not entirely sure. The passage is about a child, a young girl, who is very sick and it seems fairly certain she will die soon. An exceptionally beautiful girl, angelic, and imbued with a wisdom frighteningly mature for a child. The author is trying to say that perhaps we should be happy to let such perfection go to God, that they were only ever here to briefly enlighten our lives and maybe if they are taken at their best that they will remain that way forever. Undiminished, while the rest of us decay.

I know why I liked this so much. I always wished I had been that child. A bright flame, extinguished before it lost its glow. When I was younger I'm sure I thought I was. Man, I thought for sure that I was the second coming. I even wanted to die young. Leave some exceptional impression and exit stage left. To be remembered, almost in reverence and never replaced. Alas, it wasn't to be. I wasn't that wise, didn't amount to anything impressive and lie here enclosed in sorrow for the degeneration.

Then again, perhaps some fatherly instincts have been awakened within me and I just didn't recognise them. In this case I really don't think so. I love kids, it's just I have too much selfishness in looking after my own life to give so much to another. The old cliche applies; I'm not ready to have a child, I'm still a child myself.

The truth is though, that the passage I read a little earlier simply served to remind me of someone I never got to see enough of. I wish her brief sojourn on earth could have been a little longer but it's not to be. Her name even pops up in the text just to give me a little nudge to remind me.

Don't expect too much of your children. Be happy you've got them...

"Has there ever been a child like Eva? Yes, there have been; but their names are always on gravestones, and their sweet smiles, their heavenly eyes, their singular words and ways, are among the buried treasures of yearning hearts. In how many families do you hear the legend that all the goodness and graces of the living are nothing to the peculiar charms of on who is not! It is as if heaven has an especial band of angels, whose office it was to sojourn for a season here, and endear to them the wayward human heart, that they might bear it upward with them in their homeward flight. When you see that deep spiritual light in the eye - when the little soul reveals itself in words sweeter and wiser than the ordinary words of children - hope not to retain that child; for the seal of heaven is on it, and the light of immortality looks out from its eyes"

Harriet Beecher Stowe

I'd read it again

sixty-nine being nothing but a number

Bend over and twerk me, force me down and hurt me. Straddle me, get on your knees for me. Stimulate or tease me. Stammer out the words s,s,s,s,sixty-nine? if you resist it will be the only time. Degrade yourself to please me. In the moment you belong to me.

That is what I want.

I trust you were happy to allow to me to park all of my trademark sensitivity for a moment. It's still here of course but right now it is being steamrollered into submission by my selfish sexual appetite, animal noises and filthy fantasies.

All men have secrets and here is mine, so let it be known. I want to rut with her. I want to lay with that girl. I think I even want to make love to some of them. I'm telling you I don't want sex with one person, I want sex with literally millions of people. Why should I limit myself? I'm not sure I've got the stamina to reach the full seven figures but when there are men so old that they need scaffolding to maintain their erections still having sex, I'm happy that at least time is on my side.

For any women readers out there who might pretend to think I'm crazy when I talk about the scale of the male sex drive I will try to illuminate my point a little. Every single day I'm faced with new people coming into contact with me or cutting across my eye-line. I am always going to have an initial instinctive reaction like, 'what are they doing here?' or 'what can they do for me?'. Now here is the controversial bit. With every single one of those people my first instinct is to ask a question: 'Can I fuck it?'. Assuming an affirmative answer, a second, and potentially more important question is posed: 'Would I fuck it?'. You might be surprised how often the second question returns a yes.

It's in our nature, all of us, to want sex. To want good sex, with the people we're attracted to. Even at inappropriate times and places. Unfortunately, at some point this fact seems to have gotten perverted to the point where it is dangerous to admit the truth. We all get horny sometimes!

It's degenerated to the stage now were a man can claim an addiction to sex for compelling him to cheat on his wife. It's not Tiger's fault, he has a medical condition. It was the same for Michael Douglas. He didn't want to have sex with all of those beautiful and willing ladies. It was simply a case of a relentless addiction taken hold. My opinion on all of this is a little different to the conventional. If these guys are sex addicts because they wanted to have sex with a seemingly endless line of women the I'm sorry to say that almost all men are sex addicts. I'm a sex addict. My friends are sex addicts. Your boyfriend is a sex addict. The difference between men like Tiger Woods and an average Joe is availability and risk assessment. Be realistic guys, if you had drunken women throwing themselves at you like you were a premiership footballer do you think you wouldn't try to have your cake. Most normal guys also have to consider whether it's worth the risk to lose out on the regular sex in exchange for the possibility of some extra sex.

Girls! Girls! listen to me. Your virtue doesn't lie between your legs. It lies in the better part of you. The bits that make up the person you really are. So, take this as a call to arms because I'm not going to judge you. Girls! If you feel like you want to have sex then why don't you just go ahead and do. Do it as often as you like. Ya wee skitter!

The truth is, it's the constant search for all the sex I can find that's really been holding me back all this time. Here I am blaming it all on drinking and depression when perhaps the problem is that I drink to give me the confidence to go chasing ass and then get super depressed with everything when it doesn't happen.

If I were truly in love with someone. Then maybe things would be different.

23/10/2013

Bring me Miley's wrecking ball. I would like something to smash through my scull right now and it seems like the implement of choice at the moment.

So, shall I go ahead and pour out the melodrama? Once again I feel like letting the whole production crash down around me. Drink myself into oblivion, fuck the college shit into the bin, push my stupid head through a cattle grill and sink into self indulgent madness.

Man, I have issues. Big, ugly, inflammatory, elephant sized issues. If I step back for a second I can see them there in all there suffocating glory, squeezing the oxygen from my lust for life. I suppose they make me what I am. A needy, neurotic loser. A shit scared bottler that takes one risk a decade and lies awake at night questioning why he hasn't made it yet. A stuck in the friend zone motherfucker with an habitual fondness for choosing the wrong one.

If I'm correct, self pity is a very attractive trait. But of course I am wrong (Perhaps that's why the Jews have never been considered a particularly attractive race). Luckily I don't want to play that card today. I could and in the past I most certainly would have. Maybe I would have crawled into bed for a month and refused to talk to anyone, grow a beard and loose a stone. I've snapped out of it before I settled into it.

If I could focus for any longer than the length of a 10 minute porn video I think I could probably have worked myself into someone quite smart or successful by now. Instead I move from one interest to the next before the had work begins because I don't want to run the risks that success may bring. Feeling unloved and overlooked, I've been looking for ways to confirm that theory. Unsurprisingly, it ain't in no way hard to find them! At least when everything crashes I can say I got what I really, really was looking for...A chance to build a tree house of self loathing and climb inside.

Anyway, the here and now. I'm a fuck up. I'm so fucking angry and depressed with no effective outlet that my brain is hurting inside my head. I'm rejected, again. I'm feeling old, getting older. Running out of time already! All that shit isn't good, but it really isn't so horribly bad either. I mean, I have managed to get this far without disintegrating completely. It's like this, I just can't be bothered with the wasted time anymore. Yes, today I feel shit but I don't want to feel sorry for myself feeling shit.

Fuck sake! What are we doing with these emotions? It would be nice not to get the bad ones but then I guess we wouldn't ever get the good ones.

P.s. Actually not bothered by what I've done this time to put me here. It wasn't a mistake.

Commitment issues?

Okay, it's friday night and I've work in the morning so try to keep up because I would like to make this post a quick one. Otherwise I don't sleep enough, i get cranky and I'll be a complete cunt to everyone tomorrow.

This whole thing started with me vowing to try quitting drinking. I haven't done. I'm not even pretending to try anymore. Not yet at least. But now that I'm here and I have your attention I suppose I can leave the structure of the blog behind and just stick down what is on my mind.

I'm looking at myself and seeing a guy who doesn't want to commit himself to anything. Or more specifically anyone. It's really dawned on me recently because of some of the comical circumstances of my life recently, and I'm going to get to those, but it's been there all along. Fuck it, I can't even commit to myself with any conviction, I'm not committing to another.

This shit I'm going to tell you is all true. It's all nonsense, I admit but nevertheless it is true. I'm trying to describe why I feel like I have serious issues with committment. I supposes I'll start with the most recent and take it from there, however it come. Some of this is highly embarrassing stuff so I'm going to whistle through this like machine-gun fire and let the reader be the judge.

As recently as today I have been texting a lovely girl I kissed recently. But here comes the nonsense. I met this girl briefly while on holidays in Rome. She lives in Rome? maybe not the best girl to be texting. That's not even it. I met her in Rome, she lives in Vienna and is from Mumbai in India. I'd still rather text her than any of the girls in Newry.

That is only exhibit A

Then there was another holiday romance. This time a 37 year old Roman lady with breasts like Lola Ferrari(remember her? if not, use google). She were right good fun but didn't quite speak my language. Literally, she only had about twenty words of English. Using google translate on a mates phone to pick-up was a challenge but who doesn't enjoy a challenge like this. In the end the only thing I understand was, "you want the sex?" Yes, Yes I do. Alas it did not happen. Her friend cockblocked me. Wouldn't let us have sex in the back of her car!!! Bitch!!!

Over the years there has been many a daft crush. I was certain I was in love with a beautiful blonde haired Polish princess. This one could have been the one. Shame she was moving to London not long after we met and from there travelling the world. I think she lives in Stockholm now. Of course she does.

There was the one I was friends with but only decided to fall for when she was pregnant. Obviously at the time this was a no go in reality. Obviously at the time this is what really attracted me.

What about the girl i thought I quite liked in Ollies but then got into my head that she was sweet sixteen. Yes that would be joyous when she takes me home to meet her parents and I realise that I went to school with her father. Maybe that was the one that could have worked out.

Boyfriends seem to be a very attractive quality in a girl. An almost endless stream of average and stunning looking girls alike I've convinced myself were my only desire. All of them with boyfriends. It's funny though because it never took much to cure me of this sickness. They break up, she's single and I don't want her now. Second hand? Fuck no!

I've had a good go at trying to make things really awkward between myself and one of my best friends. She'll cringe at this but the blog was your idea, eh? This is a girl who would have said I was her brother. Nothing will ever happen between us. I knew this, so the pattern dictates I had to declare my love. Starting to think I enjoy this type of drama. Or I'm addicted to it.

Oh yes, how could I forget about my eastern european lap dancer. Clara, oh Clara. Bet that's not even her real name. Met her at work and thought, 'yeah this girl just can't get enough of me', I took her number and met her the next night, again at work and I mean her work if you didn't guess. This could be the future bride i'm sure. All she wanted was £80 for sex in a squalid Edinburgh apartment. Marriage material. Anyway it never worked out even when I text for a bit. It was the whole long distance thing again. Apart from that she was perfect.

I met a girl a little while back. We got on pretty well immediately and are on the same wavelenght on so many things. I wondered to myself what it was that made me approach her. But obviously by now I've developed a sixth sense for this sort of thing. A week or two later she tells me She might have to move back to Brazil very soon. That's when it all clicked into place.

In the summer I kissed a girl who lives on this island. WOW! The point is this girls fit, smart, good craic and fun too. For some reason these things don't seem to tick my boxes. I would much prefer to be texting random strangers from half the world away.

Ah fuck it, I'm bored now with this shit. Leave it by saying there are plenty more were that came from. I think I need a team of trained physchologists to analyize every single thought I have. Maybe they could find out what's wrong with me. Or everyone else It wouldn't matter, I'd still .be bull-shitting them.

Don't get me wrong though. It's all alot of fun and silly games. Keeps things interesting. I can't settle. No, I won't settle. Not yet anyways

Where am I?

Whoa, Whoa, Whoa!!! Back up a second, let me catch my breath. Where am I? For a moment there I thought I'd gone right back to May 2013. Back to smoking on balconies, thinking about testing my body's aerodynamics, back to being on the cusp of Carlingford Lough's treacherous whitecaps. That was when I thought a neo-classical bust had more chance of striking up a conversation with a member of the opposite sex than I ever would. May 2013, when I was being told if I carry on like I have been that I'm pretty much on the way out already. It was looking fairly likely that I might not make it past the infamous year of 27 like Hendrix, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse. I had finished exams but I could care less about engineering. I figured I'd fallen head over heals in love with my best friend and that there lay the beginning and end of all my happiness. Of course, in May 2013 this meant the end. I was stupid, I was sick, I was damn fucking depressed! I was finished...

" I know you want it"

I can hear something. The memory is hazy now. I've heard it before but it's only just started to click. HEY, HEY, HEY! HEY, HEY HEY! My body is starting to rock a little now. Back and forth. Slowly at first but faster and more loose with each passing bar of pop gold. Where have I been all this time? Locked inside my own personal prison. The crowd of people, that before I heard it, made me feel like the loneliest man in the milky way, were now all my disciples. I was the son of God and that night God was Robin Thicke. Now that I've woken up everything is good. Life is there for the taking and I am going to grasp more than my fair share. I can't dance but I can own it when I'm doing it so hilariously bad. I'm shy but now I'm talking to them all. I'm not that good looking but I'm Ciaran Cooney so go ahead...beat that! All of a sudden I didn't feel sick anymore. I was released. Hold onto this feeling and I'm golden. Summer started at last. Did RT just save my life?

And so it went on like this for a couple of months. Singing and dancing. Drinking and smoking. Sleazing and slutting my way across the British Isles and continental Europe. I don't have to think about stupid electricity or the future. Freedom is exuding from me for the first time in years and I can start to live a little more than i did before. I have gone all Chris Tucker in Rush Hour 2. I want you, you, you and you. I want it all. I just want to have some fun.

The thing is though, even in the height of that summer fun I knew it was all a dream. A waterfall of delirious fantasy that was blocking the reality from making it's print on my retina. The reality being that almost all the fun was alcohol induced. All the confidence and sharpness. The reality is that it will always come to a crashing, crushing halt when I stretch the elastic just a little too far.

And that is kind of where I am today. Last night I could feel the clenched fist squeezing me and today it began to asphyxiate me. Once again I am the idiot. I am the child unable to care for himself. I spent eight days drinking in Italy tracking women and chasing adventures. Neglecting all the things I know I have to do to keep me relatively placid. Make no mistake, I enjoyed every minute of it and the some of the memories are tattooed on my hard drive but I swear it has the potential to drive a wrecking ball through the rest of my year because right now I feel like throwing it all into the nearest skip I can find.

Perhaps I won't let it this time. Maybe I'll accept it as it comes for a few days without succombing to it's devastating intentions. I've been here enough times to recognise that I will find my way out of the darkness sooner or later so There isn't much of a point to wallow in really. I can't see it today but I know there are good things for me to grab hold of and that I'll do them all. I guess that is the difference in me now. Back in the old days when I felt like I do today I never ever believed that it was going to get any better. Back then the conviction that I would die young was a relief rather than a fear. But yeah, that's right...where am I? I know now. It ain't May no more baby, you're almost striking October now. You've had your fun. Now is the time to start turning the gears towards the next part.

Thinking makes it

" There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so"

So William Shakespeare tells me anyway. I must admit that I can't totally agree with him that there is nothing good or bad, it seems plainly obvious that there is, but still the man makes a good point. Perception of reality is not necessarily the reality. In fact it is, almost by necessity, never the whole reality. It is first person, 2-D, hand held video camera, emotionally biased hubris that makes us think we can look at a situation and perceive the whole story. Basically, what he is saying is that you can think yourself into almost any state of mind. You can think about something in any way you choose. I'm not saying that anyone can choose their emotions but they can choose how to think about them and by extension they can choose how to think about other peoples'. You may think you know what the people in your life are thinking or why they are doing what they are doing. But do you really really know? No, you just think you do.

Let me indulge myself by taking a sidebar for a second. If anyone is interested in English language etymology you might take some geekish pleasure in noticing how I can finish a question and begin it's answer with words that have two different meanings, two different spellings but exactly the same phonetic pronunciation. But then if I think about it really, I'm not so sure that anyone other than me would be even slightly interested in that.

Today I've been feeling a little like the crumpled wreckage of the Challenger space shuttle. I was flying high! On my way to the stars! Then BOOM! and I exploded into a million fragmented pieces of trash. Pieces that when held together seemed to be doing something right. So, when I perceive this metaphorical explosion it seems like my whole life is carnage. What was everything yesterday is nothing today and a life with nothing is no life at all. Feel free to interchange the challenger analogy with Humpty Dumpty if it helps. Either works!

A good friend pointed out to me today that thoughts are malleable. They can be changed and reconstructed. Molded and coloured. Based on reality or on a fantasy that suits you best at any particular time. He made me think about myself two years ago. If I could show myself then all the things I have done in that time to make my life better wouldn't my younger self be a little happy with what he has seen? The conversation imbued me with the sense that I have done some good things in that time. I've achieved goals that two years ago I would have thought were impossible. There's that thinking getting in the way again. I have achieved things within the past week that would have made the younger me certain that I was lying. Yet here I am again, allowing myself to think that my life is so worthless that a skydive without a parachute didn't seem like such a bad idea.

Now I am trying to my life the way it really is by widening the boundaries of perception to allow for the possibility that my first look was wrong and things really aren't that bad. You should too.

All the kings horses and all the kings men couldn't put Humpty together again but Sean had a good crack at Ciaran with some superglue and sense.                                     

fatal addiction

I am definitely addicted to sadness in the way Gotye say in that song. Things have been going good for me the last few months by any measurement but how long can that ever last. There is no middle ground for me. It's euphoria or depression. Live or die. When you leave one of your best friends house, having not seen her for months, feeling like crying then you know it is going to be difficult not to slip. I had forgotten what it was like to really want to die. Today I'm starting to remember a little.

But like I say, I'm addicted to sadness. I go looking for things to make me feel that way. There is something in me that needs it constantly. If I'm not sad, I'm delusional. Which is better? Last night I went looking for it, knowing I would find it. Knowing that I wasn't likely to hear what i thought I wanted to hear. Should have left when things were going good. Shouldn't  ever be allowed to use my phone after midnight.

It's not always that i want what i can't have. Sometimes it's simply that i cant have what i really really want.

And now it looks like I've got to do something I don't ever want to do because it seems like the only option. I'm unbelievably upset about it but I guess that is what i went looking for.

I have been waiting in the van my whole life. Procrastinating, formulating, dissecting and projecting my emotions onto others who don't need it. Oscillating, prozac taking, smile faking and hospital waiting rooms that only seem to help for a little while. Down one road or another it always leads back to my lonely room and feeling like i'm not ever happy because I don't want myself to be. I've put so much conscious effort into being happy that now I'm just exhausted and need to be myself for a while.

Here I am, back to being my own interlocutor in almost all of my conversations. Some people might thing I am quiet and I am. The thing is though, I think I'm talking more than anyone, it's  just that I'm only talking to myself.

I bring about sadness in people around me. There is something in me that teases out the real heartaches in my friends lives. I don't know why but it feels like that stuff just orbits around me. The rest are having fun talking and laughing and having the craic but when it's me with someone I find a way of directing the traffic to the bad things that don't get talked about so often.

My name is Ciaran and I am an addict...

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.

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 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. 

Imagine my face in the first 5 seconds of a bungee jump

I want to do things. Somethings and nothings. Good things and bad things. Important things and damn stupid things. Everything really. So why is that I'm sitting here feeling like I've done absolutely nothing at all. Procrastination has become a lifetime habit I'm going to attempt to assail.

Today I have that massively overused quote in my head. The one that says life is what happens when you're busy making plans. Actually, I think it's time somebody came up with a new quotation to get the point across. Anyway, it does sound a lot like the title of my autobiography. But then everybody does it. Nobody more than me. I love to dream. All the extraordinary things I am going to do when...

Allow me to wander through a small sample of the things I've always said I would like to do. Learn a second language. Alternately Spanish, Polish and Italian. Start a band. Visit every country in Europe. Travel the the rest of the world(except Australia). Become a genuine PUA. Reach my peak fitness. Start speaking my mind, regardless. Finish reading every single word on my bookshelf. Bungee jump or skydive. Start volunteering some place where I can at least try to help other people.

That last paragraph is less than a drop in the ocean. Sure I have made attempts to start some of the things I want to do. Have a few European countries ticked off and even began learning some languages. The problem is the amount of time I have spent trying to make these things happen is nothing in comparison to the time spent talking about it, thinking about it or imagining it. It's obvious that I spend too much time thinking and reflecting on things. That is a big part of it but not the whole story. It's the sheer lack of action that is really hurting. If you don't go for the things you want you just end up with what falls your way. So don't complain when it's not what you thought it might be.

Thinking about all the things holding me back I wonder if they're not all excuses. I feel like I have always struggled under the burden of being the youngest child. People who aren't the baby of the family won't get this. Carrying around this guilt that if I leave the house for good I would be signalling the beginning of the end for my parents. I left the house. I came back. I felt guilty for leading my own life. But really, was that not an excuse so I could slip back to my comfort zone with no pressure to do things for myself. It seems likely to me now.

Money or lack of it could be used as a reason not to have done some of the things I wanted to. Travelling costs money. Looking at that and being honest though, I would say I could easily find the money if I tried to save properly and stopped spending on random nonsense like a book on how to save that turned out to be another terrific waste of money. Another excuse.

I use my family, my depression, my romantic interests and fear of disapointment to retreat from endeavor. Why try anything when I have all these other things to deal with? Wouldn't it be better to wait until my life is absolutely perfect before I start shooting for the stars?

You may have guessed that the above was a rhetorical question. Or you may not. Anyway, it is pretty clear to me right now that waiting for the right time is absolutely the wrong thing to do. I need to go out and really struggle for the things I want. Otherwise I'm just wasting time and not really having fun wasting it. Sometimes I think about using depression as a catalyst. What I mean is I know I'm going to sink into a severe depression once more in the future. It's odds on. I'm looking at that and telling myself that it is all the more reason to do the things that I want to now, when I have the capability.

When it comes to those last few days when I can write the school report on this lifetime it  would be nice if I could say I at least tried to do all the things I wanted to. Regret the things you haven't done, not the the things you wish you hadn't. Up until now almost all my regrets are for the things I haven't done. Oh well, can't go back now but maybe I can start doing the things instead of just thinking about things.

The foot in my ass needs to be my own

I woke up this morning like everyone else in Ireland. With the sun illuminating my bedroom, stirring up a heatwave that we all long for eleven months of the year. I can do anything I want today. Anything!

The thing is though, I just want to close the blinds, crawl under the sheets and disappear from it all. Depression has washed over my entire body. I feel sick to the stomach. Helpless. Hopeless. Not in depair yet but it is going to take work to hold it back. Where has this come from? It's been maybe the worst year of my life but I've been pretty happy for the last month or so. Even if I didn't believe that myself, there are enough other people telling me I'm my old self again to make it true. It was good while it lasted.

I'm lying there in bed with two choices. Retreat or attack. Surrender or fight. One means doing what I've always done and let the depression own me again. It means giving myself an excuse to fail. A reason to stay in bed and avoid reality. A chance to imagine what I could do instead of having a go. To be honest, that's what I want to do. Reach for the cigarettes, sleep and sad songs.

The second option is a little harder to define. Obviously if I'm to stay and fight It's going to take some constructive action on my part. Trying to figure out what that is makes staying in bed today seem like the only realistic way to proceed. But I'm trying to change that negative pattern of thinking. I've been going to see a mental health nurse for the past two months because I was so under the influence of depression it was making me climb dangerously close to the ledge and jumping. I'm not there today. She's been trying to put it into my head that when I wake  up feeling like I do today that I just have to do something. Anything that isn't what I've always done. It will probably be painful but it's the only way to keep me from getting back up on that ledge.

Today doing something or anything means I dragged myself out of bed. Had breakfast. Took my bike out for a cycle. Avoiding going to the shop for cigarettes. Getting on here to write this. I'll go to work later and talk to people and laugh. I am going to finish a book I've been reading. I know it doesn't seem like much but when one day in bed can turn into two months of avoidance and desperation it could be a small step to saving my life.
I'm always clinically depressed, even when I'm laughing and joking. Even when I'm focused and determined. Even when I'm so outwardly confident that picking up girls in nightclubs is the easiest thing in the world again. I'm only a mishap away from falling back again. You can forget how bad the depression can get. Like today, most people would find it difficult to remember just how cold it can get in Ireland in winter. With me in good spirits, it's very hard to look back and feel empathy with the way I felt when all I could think about was dying. I have to keep reminding myself to remind myself to be careful.

I was writing something the other day about needing someones foot in my ass to keep me moving in the right direction. It's true. I do. I went for three days at the weekend without feeding any of my prescribed anti-depressants into my body while I absolutely saturated it with alcohol, a depressant. So, I really can't crawl around in bed all day wallowing in self pity anymore. It was my own choice. It seems the foot in my ass really needs to be my own.

Todays been good

Dug out this old thing I wrote down a few months ago. I don't feel like this today at all, but It's important to remember where I've been so I can focus on not going back there.To be honest I'm having a good day. Cycled this morning, did some reading and worked on some other stuff I had to do. Actually started looking into some charities to volunteer for too because someones gone and put the idea into my head. I even had time to write a love song. Okay, that last one was obviously a big lie. Not that I haven't done that before.

Here it is. Probably with spelling mistakes and bad grammar. I don't care.

Do I have an affection for depression? I always looked on it as something edgy and cool. Marlon  Brando behind a cigarette, like it was the depression that might get me the girls. Up until now I thought for the most part it was a chemical problem. But it's not. There are some deep rooted anxieties lying within me. I'm not living, I'm breathing. That is the difference.

I sympathize with some of the character traits of my depressed self. I take some morbid joy in the way it makes me feel about people. Usually love interests. I project myself as the dark hero in a story of unrequited love or passion. But it's not the way things are. That's a transcendental perception of my illness. It doesn't stem from a spiritual desire to monopolize pain to spare others. It's a fatalistic outlook. A way of viewing life as starving me of essential nourishment.

People say you control your own destiny but that is not entirely right. We are what we are when we're born, not a blank canvas to be painted in the fashion of our desires. We all have basic functional abilities that get developed unconciously through young life. So to say I can be whatever I want doesn't work for me. The best way I can attempt to emphasize the point is to say I can't be you, I can only be me.

Of course there are many threads interwoven together to make up the complete picture. I'd take up on such a thread as my childhood. We grow up reading about people reminiscing about happy childhood memories. Christmas, birthdays or summers. But for me I don't remember ever being a happy child. In fact, I don't have that many memories of my youth and any that I do, tend to have negative connotations. I have read that people with strong memories of their childhood tend to be those with positive and happy memories. For instance, I remember when I was around 10 years old that I cried because I didn't want to get older. Already frightened by the future without really understanding why.

Another factor in my story, although a few puberty affected years later, is my absolute certainty that I was clinically depressed by my mid teens. The first thing I did after school was to sleep for hours on end. I was always smart but really an underachiever. I got into mild trouble. Spending hours walking in biblical rainstorms was another favourite of mine. Never went to discos. Played golf with the men instead of the boys my own age. I look back on that time with a huge amount of regret that it wasn't detected then. How was I to know? I thought I was just of a sullen disposition. I needed help then but never recieved the succour I craved.

I shouldn't blame others for that though. I would have tried to hide it, I'm sure. But a large part of the pain is the time wasted between then and now. I really am no further on. It's said that the most long lasting and vivid memories elderly people hold onto are of the time of their late teens and early twenties. I'm not sure I have any that can withstand the passage of time. Would I have been happier if I had never been born? All I can say for sure is that I would have preferred to have never been born than to have to kill myself. But who's to say what that even means. I don't know what, if anything, lies beyond the borders of that first and last breath.

Prozac with a sprinkling of tequila

Maybe I need someone's foot in my ass. Or somebody to shake the shit out of me. Obviously there's potential rumbling around inside me creating thunderstorms but so far I just haven't been able to convert it. I'm acutely aware that it's down to me now. I get that in a philosophical way. But in a practical sense I have no real idea what I want to do. Where do I take myself and all my potential?  Apparently sitting around waiting for something perfect to come up and slap me in the face is a long odds game.

I'm a week away from what we hope will be my last ever appointment at a mental health clinic. A big part of me is going to miss it because over the weeks as comfort has built up I found myself more and more able to say what I really want to. I could keep going there forever and shooting the breeze but as I said, It's up to me now. The sole protector of my own destiny and happiness.

Helps to have someone to tell you your shit stinks without them having any preconceived ideas of who you are and what you're supposed to act like. She can tell me to stop putting some people up on a pedestal because I think they're so much better than I am. She tells me that I'm really quite a normal person but that I let a small part of my personality, i.e. depression, become the dominant factor in my whole movie show. That I give no credit to anything that I've ever been able to do is pretty obvious so when I'm forced to slightly change my perspective it I can sort of see that I'm not completely useless. J told me one thing on friday that I already knew. When I allow myself to drink like I always have done and find myself staring at a pavement wanting to crash into it from height, I have to stop taking the easy option to feel sorry for myself by blaming it all on the depression. In those worst cases there is only one thing to blame. Alcohol makes me want to die sometimes.

So why do I still do it? I drink for fun, amongst other things. So, although I am trying to reduce my alcohol intake, I have been crying out for some fun. So last week I went on a two day binge drinking bender with absolute conviction that I was going to have fun. After all I had managed a month since my last episode.

Three prozac, cocktails, beer and shots shouldn't sound like a good mix for any normal person.  Especially to a man trying to stop his propensity for depression being submerged by a tide of tequila. But it does sound like a good mix to me and last weekend it certainly certainly was. Four lads, away from home, off the leash and all on tip-top form is a michelin star recipe for a cracking weekend. And it was. Whether it was taking over the stage playing wonderwall with a random older woman from Derby. Falling in love with a nurse, whose name it transpired later, you didn't even know. Trying to learn a mixture of Spanish and Italian from the babe in the smoking room. Going home with a girl to a house in the middle of Belfast and wanting to cry because you left the ten pack of condoms in the car. Dolling that 40 year old woman just because you can. Or, in my case, almost being eaten by her mate kissing me like a pterodactyl. Being cockblocked by the campest of camp hotel receptionists. Chatting to a lovely looking maths teacher and deciding that the best course of action was to tell her that you too were a maths teacher. Primary five maths co-ordinator in fact. Deciding you didn't want to text a girl amymore because she spelt the word nothing wrong. Threatening to call the police on the hotel receptionist because you think he is holding your bags hostage.

Funny thing is, that's not even half of it. Just imagine the bits we can't remember...

I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to the alcohol. Just this once, mind you. But you definitely had a big part in making a good weekend happen. Do me one last favour? Lets all have a big performance in Edinburgh next weekend so I can come home with some stories for on here.

Back to the original point though, because it's so easy to overlook how things could have gone the other way. The path where I find myself staring into the Lagan, weighing up my options again. Because that's just it. Things can so easily flip for me that I need to be really careful. I need to be properly looking after myself from now on. It's no good falling back on the old excuses anymore. If I want to put an end to the real sucidal danger, then at some point I am going to have to accept that I will have to drop the alcohol levels much closer to zero. Shame though, because I know I'm not nearly ready yet. I think that's why I might need that foot in my ass.

I've never dedicated anything to anyone before but it seems like a good place to start. My sister is going through a really hard time. I wish I could take it all on me, but I can't. That's probably one of the few admirable qualities of my depression, that I want to take everyone elses pain onto me. I hope things get better for you soon kid. I'm sorry I'm not as much help as I should be but I am here. This one, whatever it is, is for you princess.

Change a habit

Disregard the soliloquy in the paragragh below. I think it is mainly for myself.

 What are you waiting for? Real change isn't going to come along and shake you from the outside while you've been making no effort to do it for yourself. I hope you're not sitting back with your arms folded, content to see it through to your own version of the afterlife without giving it your best shot. If you are, stop and think for a minute. Please. Really there isn't any evidence that there is any eternal existence. It is okay to go with the facts and use logic to your advantage. This is it. This is your five minutes. You're taking to the stage on Broadway for one night only so give it everything you've got to make it worthwhile.

People think I'm comparatively intelligent but I'm convinced that we are all quite similarly gifted it's just that we all have different interests and are engaged in habits we don't even realize are controlling us.. I've read some of the classics. Books on history and every possible area of self-help too. Taught myself some instruments and at least tried to learn a few languages. Minor achievements I must concede but the point is that anyone can do these things and more if they could just allow themselves to believe they can. I'm not saying that everybody can do anything and everything. Clearly that is not true. In my minds eye I want to complete the Tour de France one day when I can't even convince myself to do a 10km cycle because it is too cold. So I wouldn't say anything is possible. But I know that absolutely anyone can excel. Anyone can focus on some things they really want to do, believe they can do it and convert that belief into hard work. It's all you. Just you.

 For the most part I think it is habit that holds most people back. We program our brains to do the same thing day in day out and it takes a significant effort to make changes but it can be done. For myself, my biggest habit is depression. All it takes is a few small cues to set me off and I lay down and let it wash over me. And that is what I need to work on. Understanding what those cues are and changing my reactions to them and I hope to eventually form new habits, positive ones. For instance, a cue for me might be someone walking within five meters of me. Presently my habit is probably to go into a bit of a shell, close my body off and avoid eye contact. My little self-improvement project for this week is to recognize the cues and use them to start making eye contact and convert that into a habit.

If I'm hearing myself right I'm attempting to inspire everyone to grasp the things that are likely to make them happy now, instead of waiting for them to hit you. It's so clear in my mind right now that we are all capable of doing so many things but not that many of us really believe we can. So try and change one habit this week if you think it's resulting in a negative behavior or try to do something you've always wanted but where too afraid to try. Change is only good. Oh yeah and if anyone is judging you for doing what you need to do just remember that you aren't even remotely doing it for them. Your happiness has to be internal. I write that without having read any books on Eastern Philosophy recently. Just got drunk and had fun. I'm aware this blog was begun by me stating my desire to change my habit of quitting alcohol but I don't quite believe in that one just yet.

 If it's going to make you happy, DO IT. And do it with conviction.

I'm just fucking waffling now

Twenty-five. The number of days since I last allowed myself to have a drink. Jesus, I make myself sound like a park bench alcoholic on the run from years of special brew and cheap cider. I'm not by the way but I'm nowhere near ready to finish just yet.

I hate to admit it, but it is fair to say that those days added together see me in a better place than I was before. Not that they were twenty-five consecutive steps to where I am either. I've been riding on a high frequency sine wave of moods in that time and it only feels as if it's starting to flatline now.

There are definitely some serious benefits to this not drinking carry-on. I suppose most people would assume the obvious benefit would be improved physical fitness. Especially for a pints drinker. But for me up to this been point I haven't noticed significant gains. Then again I have been smoking quit a lot recently as a part of a coping mechanism but that's just a passing phase for me. Anyway the cigarettes are primarily used as an accessory for my leather jacket.

Been reading more in the last month. I love to read when I can so it's been a real positive to get back into it. It might be a little hard to see a correlation between drinking and not reading but with me a hangover means not being able to read for a week or more. Even if it's just a newspaper article, not that I read those at all anymore. If you get a chance read some of Richard Dawkins' books. I've just read The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion. Both excellent.
I would never have been the most faithful believer but the argument against a God and religion in The God Delusion is too compelling to ignore. Makes me angry some of the disgusting things done under the banner of religion. It is difficult for me to understand how humanity is so blinded by it all.

Whoa! I'm really leading myself off on a tangent there. It's like the group conversations I have with the boys. Somebody begins telling a story but half an hour later we've gone off in so many directions that we never got anywhere near the end of the original story.

Oh Yeah, so i have not touched a drop of the good stuff in twenty-five days. Now comes the revelation. I'm making a comeback this Friday. In Belfast. Returning to the scene of the crime so to speak. And it cannot come quick enough. I'm going to enjoy this one...

Say it. Whatever it is

Today I've been reading a book entitled fuck it: the ultimate spiritual way. It speaks to me right now as the kind of attitude I would like to embrace. The fuck it in the title isn't fuck it I've had enough I want out or fuck it things aren't working for me why should I bother trying anymore. It is the kind of fuck it that says I'm going to start looking after me. The kind where you can see what really matters and just as important seeing the things that really don't matter at all.

You know what? It's time to be selfish. Time to begin doing things for my own reasons and not just to placate others. Time to just not give a fuck what the rest think because in the end you've just got to be yourself or you'll never be happy. Time to just say what I feel because that's the way I feel.

People are not going to hate me for it. Even if they do it would be well worth it if I could stop hating myself. If you've ever once left a situation seething because you decided against saying what you really needed to say, then you have to understand that speaking your mind in the long run has to have a positive effect on overall self-esteem. And maybe that is it. Self-Esteem. If your not going to love yourself then how can you ever really be happy to be alive. Furthermore, how can you ever expect someone to really love you when you're not showing them who you truly are.

People like me, we get caught up in this thing pick-up artists call one-itis. Basically one-itis means we can't see past this one girl. Everything about the target at this point seems perfect. Really, no other woman will do. I am a sucker for it. I'm a sucker. I used to think that it was the PUA's who were missing the point when they would say things like forget about her, look around, there are literally millions of women out there for you. Now I see how right they are. When I think about it now I wonder how I could ever have tied all my emotions up in one person who probably won't give a shit about me anyway. There are always better looking girls out there, funnier ones too. More interesting girls and looser girls too. What did you say? None of them are her? Good, that's just what I'm looking for. Fuck it, I'm getting mine now.

Why is it that we all seem to worry so much about what other people think of us? Sure, we don't want our friends to think we're murder's or Jimmy Saville. Or worst of all, boring. But realistically most of us really are not that bad. In fact I would say most of us are damn good people. Think of the worst thing you have ever done and I'm guessing it wasn't really all that bad. Anyway, what I'm trying to get at via that serpentine introduction, is that we have to stop giving a fuck about what other people think about what we say or do. Look at yourself and be who you are, not just getting as close to that person as you think people are willing to accept. Saying what you want is the most liberating thing you'll ever do. I started doing it recently and it felt great. It doesn't mean that everything you say is going to be joyfully accepted by everyone but I guarentee you will feel alot better for doing it. Listen to John C. Parkin

"So I said fuck it to trying to be anything other than I am. In this moment I stopped judging myself. And shit, what a relief that was. What a relief that is"

And while we are trying to stop judging ourselves why don't we give evryone else a break and stop judging them. I think from now on the only people I want to pass judgement on are those who just love to judge others. I absolutely fucking hate narrow-mindedness. I mean really we have no reason to be bothered by what other people are doing if we can just be happy in what we are doing ourselves. What's wrong with live and let live. It doesn't mean I have to like everything on earth but it does mean accepting that someone else might enjoy something I don't and letting them have at it.

So go for it this week. If you fancy someone, let them know.( by the way girls this includes you. What guy doesn't want to hear that). If you want a tattoo or a piercing, now is the time. Take a sick day without remorse. Say no to someone. Finish work friday night and take a flight to Amsterdam for the weekend. Who's stopping you. Get a fake tan. Eat an entire packet of biscuits with one cup of tea and say fuck it to everyone's diet talk and bootcamps. Smoke without feeling guilty. Admit that you really don't care about any religion. Have some impure thoughts.

Do what you want...

Today I've got sun

There are always good things in your life. Sometimes it is harder to see them and sometimes you just can't see them at all. But they are always there. Things worth being alive for. Amazing things, fucking class things!!!

I'm quite smart. I'm not ugly. Yeah I wish I was a ten but most of the time I think I can make do with what I got. Mad hair but great hair. I've got money, a nice place to live and a job that isn't killing me. Finally completed a year at college. Two nephews and a niece that I love to bits even if they do my head in most of the time. Some good memories.

Couple of good things coming up too. A mates wedding in Rome. Can't wait. Stag in Edinburgh in four weeks. really can't wait. I have abilities. I am capable of doing so much if I give myself the chance. Can't sing though. That really bothers me!

What is the best thing? Friends...

 I've got this one friend who is always up for the rip and ready for the banter. I love it because sometimes I need to be dragged.

There's another who is the biggest babe I know. definitely my go to girl for fashion advice. Also for pics of random facial expressions

The there is the one I used to live with. Miss those days. He  might be on the edge of crazy sometimes but it always stays on the fun side. Keeps things interesting.

I've one who is the most caring person in the world but wouldn't want everyone to know that. You're all front kid. Maybe one of the funniest people I know too.

Then there's the pure clumsy flirt. Clumsy because I've never known anyone to walk into things or just fall as often as she does. Flirt only because she can't help it. And why should she?

I've a friend who acts as my events planner and diary keeper. There is something I really need. It's so important to have good things to look forward to. Always up for the rip too. Going to be some good times coming up.

One of my friends is kind of a Mr Sensible if you didn't know him that well. I do. There is plenty of madness in there you just keep it better hidden than the rest. Poland drinking champion. Soon to be destroyed in Edinburgh.

Another friend is maybe one of the happiest people I have ever met in my life. I mean the kind of happy that is so infectious it makes everyone else happy too. Sometimes she might have her work cut out with me.

Another friend I have is my intellectual sounding board. Someone I can actually talk to about books I've read. That's just one thing. This guy fits in everywhere for me. Holidays, pints, ladies and the craic.

There is a friend I have who I almost feel the need to be like an older brother to. He's much more successful than me in most things but there is still something there that needs protecting.

A friend who is a milf. Shame is I just wish I was able to help her as much as she has helped me but I can't. Probably saved my life once and doesn't even know. Some people you like before you even know them. It was like that for me with you.

One of my friends is almost like my little baby sister. I'll look out for her and she looks out for me. This is the friend that know the things about me that nobody else in the world does. It is special having someone like that. She is making me want to find my best. x

Should mention my lost best friend. Lost to a relationship and swallowed by the big city. No bad thing. I'm happy to be honest. Just missing the old craic sometimes.

I have this one friend in work who can make me smile even on the worst days. Most genuinely lovely person I know. It's good too because we can have some laughs exchanging all the gossip we shouldn't even know.

It's all these people that see all the good in me. It's for them that feel gutted when I'm not myself. when I'm being a dickhead.

Oh and I've got sunglasses and today I've got sun.

a glimpse from 7th June 2013

I've never thought about killing myself the way I have this year. Never visualised it like this before. What it would really mean or how it would affect other people. Sometimes, like today, it becomes so real it scares me. The kind of scared that leaves a sick feeling in your stomach.

At times today the thoughts were more violent than I could ever say. Waterfalls of blood. Horror movie stuff. Then you move on to the more conventional bottle of vodka and 10 ambien. It must be frustrating to watch me when I am thinking like this. People can see me struggling with it but there is nothing they can do. I guess that is another reason to be thinking like this.

On the way home from work today I decided to take an old country road. I wanted to scare myself. Hurtling at 60mph down a narrow bumpy road in a car that could barely handle that speed on a motorway. Maybe kind of hoping that bad brakes and a lamp post might get the job done for me.

Some people believe it is the ultimate act of selfishness. I disagree. Yes there can be certain aspects of suicide that could be judged selfish. I mean things like doing it on christmas day when you have a young family, ruining christmas forever. But the act itself? No. It's my life. I'm the one who has to live with it and maybe I can't do it anymore. It's too hard for me. Be happy for me if I ever do it, it might be the one truely selfish thing you'll ever see me do.

I love my friends. Probably even more than my family(hurts to admit this). Especially the girls. I've always had a soft spot there. I think I'd spend all my time with the girls if I could. All my little princesses and I would do anything for them. They have no idea the lengths I would go to for them. For my two sisters and all the girls I call friends I think I could live like this forever if I thought it would really help you.

Don't worry lads I feel the same way about you lot too. It's just a different kind of love. Wouldn't swap any one of my mates. I would like to see more of them sometimes though.

This thing with me, it makes me a bad friend. Today, I can't even look at people I love. Can't open my mouth to say a few words. When friends can't even talk to you because they don't know what to say or because it's all been said a million times, the pain is tremendous. But that is all on me. I create the scene by being so sad. I'm not good for people. Not good with people. Lately I've been considering pulling away from my friends. It can't be good for them to have this in their lives.

I'm tired of writing this shit down by now. There's a million other things going round my head but I don't want to give them anymore oxygen today.

I have imagined my own funeral. Seeing who is there and what's being said. It's fucked up.

Liquid confidence

Look at me there. Having fun being drunk. Making cocktails and breaking hearts. Damn I wish I could have that three drinks buzz all day every day. Then I'd be having fun all the time. Then I'd be a witty bastard. Then I'd be confident.

I'm leading with a little bit of a lie to be honest. It isn't all the drink that can make me feel that way. I have days were I can do it all on my own. I can reach the dizzy heights of extreme confidence just from realising how good it is to be alive. And it is good to be alive. I should be the happiest person in the world. It is so good to be alive and I feel like I can do anything.

Predictably though, that feeling just doesn't last very long. Hours if I'm lucky. I think that is why I drink the way i do. To make myself believe I can do anything. The trouble, of course, with doing things for the wrong reasons is that you can wind up being bitten by the undesired consequences. The dreaded downer.

I don't know whether or not my downers are that much worse than others' are. What I do know is that my very worst downers don't last for hours or days. They last for months. Months and months. At their peak I really don't see any reason why I would ever want to be alive. I guess that is difficult to understand. I still have good things in my life it's just that they're not worth living for at that moment because they mean nothing to me.

I mentioned in a previous post a story I had been telling friends about contemplating suicide that made them laugh hysterically. I'll try and give a brief idea of what that story was about. So here goes. It's my mates birthday and we are all in carlingford drinking to celebrate. Somewhere along the line the drinking hits me in the wrong way and I'm now in a sorry state. Really bad. How can I feel like this? How can I keep going?

Now it is 3am and I am sitting on a wall while I stare out into the sea. I consider what it would be to throw myself in. Might be easier in the long run. Anyway the funny part of the story was that as I sat on the wall considering what to do I decided against it. You see the tide was out. It would have been a half mile walk before i would hit the water. Who needs that? Not only that but it was wet sand and I didn't think it was proper etiquette to leave footprints in the sand. Maybe it's just the way I tell it but that one's got alot of laughs.

It's been some day in Ireland today. If it were like this everyday maybe the problems I see wouldn't seem half as big.........

Just the weekend

I've got nothing. Seriously cannot think of one interesting thing to write about from my weekend. Maybe that is just because I didn't drink. More likely not. Sitting in front of a computer screen with still fingers when all I have to do is stick down a few events and lessons learned. It's daft, but right now my memory doesn't appear to be working correctly. My brain is fried. Tonight is a night for tv and nothing else. I'm not fit to read never mind write.

Fuck it. Three things from the weekend to talk about. anything. Yeah I got it. Pick three things, say something about each, make it seem emotional and interesteing. Tidy it up, check the spelling(apparently i'm good at that), hit post and there you have a blog that looks like at least some substantial effort was put in. But remember Cooncash, don't let anyone know how lazy you've been this time

Friday
Appointment with my therapist or whatever it is they're called. I honestly don't know. This wasn't fun. Being told that if I continue to live as I have up until this point that theres the very real possibility that I may cross the line you can't come back from. I wasn't loling this time. The thing is, it seems the booze is putting me in a position of danger where I may not be able to control myself. Don't I sound edgy and dark. Moviestar cool.

Saturday
Worked. Went for coffee with two mates this evening. Saturday nights ain't what the used to be. Of the two lads one I'm always happy to see, the other I could probably have avoided for another month. Sad to say, but true. Some babes in grounded tonight too. I wondered could I pull in a coffeeshop and thought probably not in Newry. When I relayed this to someone else they told me they couldn't even walk up to a girl without being drunk. Sounds good to me.

Sunday
Worked. So blame work for this shitty post. You know what? blame work for everything. I was born to be an hereditory playboy but never recieved my yacht. Oh well, back to work. Laughing today at how I am the most unscroupulous gossip in history. I can't hold my piss. It's hilarious though because I keep getting told all the dirty little secrets. Even more amusing when I tell everyone else what I know. Yes I am a gossip whore. Could have been the Max Clifford of that place. Now I'm just a 3am girl.


No drink. Whoop. But really not that bad a weekend overall to be honest. Strenghtened some friendships. That'll keep me happy. A comment wouldn't be missed either but I know how hard it is thinking of something to write