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.

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!

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.

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.

Wasn't all bad

Arctic Monkeys lyric from back in the day:

"Anticipation has a habit to set you up for disappointment in evening entertainment but tonight there'll be some love. tonight there'll be a rawkas yeah, regardless of whats gone before"

There is something in that I think. The anticipation building inside before a big night out, but like a rubber band, the greater the energy of the anticipation the more violent the returning force becomes. It's kind of how I feel about going out now. If I am really excited for it I want to drink. If I drink there is a good chance of the night leading to disappointment and depression.

Reflecting that I might have gone off course a little with the last couple of posts I thought this time I might try to stay on point. So where was I? Ah yes, attempting to drastically reduce my alcohol consumption, hoping that it might stop me feeling like I want to throw myself into carlingford bay.
       Last friday, hungover and on a massive downer, I stood there in Belfast considering whether or not I really do want to live. Like with most of my problems I am aware that the alcohol is a major factor in bringing out these thoughts but just knowing that ain't ever going to be enough to stop them.
       So now, a week later, somewhat refreshed and thinking with more clarity you might think I am certain to never drink again when I know the effects it can have on me. How could I ever want to feel that way again? I don't. Of course I don't. But that's not the reason I drink. When I think of drinking now it is only the good things that come to mind. Intoxication, laughs, confidence. Pure fun. The excitement rising to a crescendo as I enter the nightclub. Legs, breasts and ass. Fake tan and bleached blondes. Shots and cigarettes. Jesus, I'm getting pulling pants on just thinking about it.
       How could anyone not want to feel like that? I could go on feeling like that forever. I just can't continue to withstand the downers and depression and thoughts that I might just end it one day. I've had to grow up a bit I guess. Realise that if I was serious about getting help that I was going to have to put in the work myself. Can't keep doing what you've been doing Ciaran. Well you can but it is not going to be getting any better.
       I'm not angry with myself for drinking last week in the way that I was the next day. If anything it has helped me see once again that I can't keep overdoing it. Look on the bright side. So far I have had three nights out since starting this and I stayed sober twice. Nice one.
       Can't imagine myself ever not wanting to drink. Too many good memories to ignore. A personal favourite of mine was a friday evening pub crawl in Galway  with some of my best friends. I don't know how, but we found ourselves in the backroom of one of the pubs playing a very drunken game of djenga. I'd never played before but on this day that game was the most important thing in the world and it was epic! Following that diversion,Cooney(me), found my way over to a strip club with the help of my friend Barry. Yes, a strip club in Galway, Ireland. Needless to say with a lapdance costing over 100 euros neither of us had enough cash on us for anything like that. That is when the devil climbed up onto my shoulder to remind me of the debit card resting in my pocket. No stopping me now.
       Waking up to find a receipt from a gentlemans club with 120 euro on your bank card isn't as unpleasant as it sounds. Quite funny really. The others had a good chuckle anyways. So did I when I found the jeans I had been wearing the night before were as good as ruined because now they were covered in...fake tan. #WINNING

I think what I am saying is that I wouldn't change any of the stupid drunken things I have done in the past. Most of them were fun. Some are why I am friends with people. Now it's up to me to make some new stories in a different way if I can. Just won't ever forget what went before.