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.