Fahckmylife's Blog
Crap adult, OK human.

I sat in the A & E with my mother the other day for 4 hours and a terrible thought occurred to me.  Well, it wasn’t that this thought had never occurred to me  before but I could completely articulate it.  People are soooo selfish and self absorbed with their super important problems.  It was probably when a lady on a lot of cocaine and ecstasy was coming down screaming in a room off the side of where I was with my mother and other very sick people that I really could put words to it.  This lady was obviously still somewhat out of her face, and was one of several people on drugs who kicked off while up to ten other very ill and worried people listened to her shout and kick chairs around demanding to be seen in a completely understaffed hospital.  Why did she think she could get to the top of the queue?  Why did she think that her needs superseded the needs of the others in the waiting room, who had all been waiting for several hours (some up to 36 hours) to be seen by a doctor?  Why?  I asked myself this over and over again.  You know why?  Because she and the others after her who threw spoiled brat fits believed that their problems were the most important in the world and that they are entitled to whatever they see fit.

Let’s face it – most people are selfish.  Whether we know it or not we all are – obviously to varying degrees.  What this boils down to, I think anyway, is a lack of empathy.  The inability of most people to acknowledge , either willingly or unwillingly, the feelings or impact of their actions on others.  Just because you do something unwittingly it does not mean that you are free from blame either.  In fact, it shows an even more inherent sense of self-centredness where others do not even factor into your plans.  In fact, deliberately lacking empathy seems to me a much more respectable route to go.  Being a deliberate asshole is much better than not realising how self-interested you are.  To argue that you did not realise what your actions (or inaction) would have negative  consequences for people other than yourself indicates a high level of self absorption.  When you never consider others you run the risk of becoming an out and out prick who only assesses things in terms of how you relate to them.  This is probably a central reason for my anger.

Whether these actions are conscious or subconscious I think that people need to know a few facts to themselves.  Now, I’m not saying that I’m an authority on this but these are things that I think people need to consider.  Obviously I don’t think everyone is a complete bastard and that we should all become completely altruistic individuals (who the fuck wants to do that?) but these are important things to note when contemplating the results of your actions on a wider scale.

You are not the centre of the universe (You do not automatically deserve to be at the top of a queue, etc.).

Everything is a two way street (There is give and take with everything).

People will not clean up your mess, or at least shouldn’t have to (this is both literal and figurative).

Being drunk is not an adequate excuse for 95% of things.  Being drunk makes you more likely to do things you want to sober but would be too scared to.

You are just another person and no matter what you may think about you or your time are not worth any more than anyone else’s.

Things cannot always be your way.  You cannot and should not try to control everything.

You are not entitled to anything.  You cannot operate under the assumption that you deserve anything more than what you have. 

Some of the things that I have noticed that people do are tiny BUT I totally believe that they are indicative of a larger sense of egotism.  Take for example the old woman that skips you in the queue for a bus that you actually waited in line for.  She might be old but she is a bitch with no consideration for anyone but herself.  Also the person who parks across two parking spaces.  The person in the shop who shouts at staff and screams demands at staff.  The person who lets a door slam in your face when you’re carrying coffees.  The person who doesn’t clean up after themselves in your work canteen.  That guy who doesn’t wash his hands after using the bathroom.  Or that girl that takes your seat even though your stuff is on it and you just went to get a glass of water and doesn’t offer to give it back to you on your return.  The woman on a packed bus who has her stuff on the seat beside her.  The skangers playing music on their phones.  All these people, whether they know it or not, are selfish dicks.  I can nearly guarantee you that in other real life situations on a larger scale that these people are mean and lack empathy for others.  Maybe not completely, but they definitely are incapable of, or have difficulty, recognising the needs of others.  In a slightly hypocritical way, which I mean goes against the entire point of this blog, I wish I had a shotgun to undertake some kind of maverick justice on all their asses, but that would mean I think I’m better than them.

There are loads of other things that I can add to that list but I think these are some good fundamental rules of interaction.  You see when we lose sight of our empathy we lose sight of other people’s humanity.  They cease to be real or human, at least if our selfishness is subconscious.  If it is deliberate, you are simply a mean person.  You have already decided that people aren’t worth it unless they are useful to you for a time and then instantly disposable. You have somehow managed to kill something inside yourself that holds any optimism for the future.  This makes you a sociopath or (best case scenario) a very cold person.  I know we should look out for ourselves first, a rule that I have only really employed in the last few years, but purposefully lacking empathy, or supressing it and acting like a dick, does not make for a good person.  It’s not only destructive to others but also to yourself and could possibly lead to a very flat two dimensional life.

I know I give out about the impending decline of humanity but if more people thought about others in terms of how they feel I probably wouldn’t be so angry.  The world would be a better place with contempt reserved for politicians, serial killers and the police.   If people considered each other with respect and as equals there would be no war, or social injustice, or poverty.  Obviously that’s on a grander scale but if empathy is something that we can employ in our everyday lives I firmly believe that it will gradually bleed out into things on a grander scale.  And if that isn’t true, or not going to happen, well then we might as well just all kill ourselves now.  So maybe that’s another possibility for a use of a gun right there.

 Sigh…

For no reason here is an arty picture of my face.

Thought I’d be super lazy and just put up a bit of a story I’ve been working on instead of doing my thesis.  Guess what happens….

Milk

Jane had been in the room for a solid week when the noises started.  The screaming and the drilling and the groaning resonated throughout the wood floor apartment.  Sometimes pounding, sometimes the noise of a sanding belt.  Occasionally we could hear the patter of her feral sounding feet manically running around her small room but when we knocked she never answered.

It was hard to pinpoint the exact moment when things had started to go sour for her.  It had been such a gradual thing.  The three of us had lived together for three years now and were pretty close but something unknown had edged Jane away from us.  She had changed from a happy person to a stranger over a matter of six months.  Nothing was ever said but we could see it happen before it did.  Perhaps, it was her dropping out of college, perhaps it was her losing her job or perhaps it was her breaking up with her boyfriend that pushed her over into another plane.  Maybe it was a combination of that list of unfortunate events that changed her ability to deal with those around her.

‘What should we do?’

Lainey was worried.  You could see it in her face.  Her eyes wide and shiny, dark circles slowly starting to form underneath, but it took her days to say anything to me.  We both looked solemnly at each other constantly never knowing what to say, never knowing exactly what awaited us behind the door of Jane’s room.

I started to worry when we could hear porn constantly blaring from her room.  The over exaggerated exclamations of a woman paid to act that getting it in the ass from three men was the best thing since sliced bread.  The painful sounding pleas of women asking men to ejaculate on their faces or shit on them.  The grunts of men calling women sluts.  To be honest, it wasn’t really the content that bothered me… it was more the volume and the way that it was on all the time.  I wondered what she was doing in there.  Surely she could not be masturbating 24 hours a day?  What was she up to…?

At this point she was still coming out of her room and seemed coherent enough, albeit most of the time wearing her pyjamas.  She would come out and watch TV with us, make a microwave meal and crack an odd joke, all the while the distorted moans echoing out of her room.

‘What are you doing in there?’ Lainey asked cocking an eyebrow. ‘Trying to figure out some new things?’

‘I’m watching porn’ Jane smirked.  ‘I was just wondering what people get off on.’

‘Are you not sore?’ I joked.

Jane didn’t smile.

‘Why would I be?’ she asked completely innocently.  ‘I’m just wondering before I get back on the horse.’

We all nodded acknowledgement at this. 

‘Can you do us a favour though?’ I ask cocking my head slightly and smiling.

‘What?’

‘Can you lower it down a bit?  We probably sound like we have a brothel up here…’

I think that this was the last time that we all laughed together.

Eventually myself and Lainey had reached an unspoken agreement to barge in and pull her out.  It had reached that point.  The neighbours were starting to complain about the drilling and we were worried.  We stood at the door together both eyeing the other nervously.  Neither of us had slept in days, particularly when we heard the barricade go up.

‘Jane?!!’ I ask banging on the door  ‘Open the door!  Open this door now.  This crap has gone on long enough!’

I try to push on the door.  There is a tiny amount of give but I can feel that she has nailed things across the frame.  I roll my eyes and throw my shoulder into it.

‘Please Jane’ Lainey implores. ‘We’re worried.  What the fuck are you doing in there?’

‘GO AWAY!’ Jane shouts suddenly.

‘But the neighbours…’ Lainey begs.

‘Fuck the neighbours!’ her muffled shout retorts.

After the pornography conversation Jane began to leave the house again.  She would leave in the evening, all dressed up, her big boobs on show and not be seen again until lunch time the next day.  We suspect that she was bringing men home, men that she wouldn’t allow us to see, but it was hard to tell what was porn playing or what was really happening.  At some point there definitely were men in her room.  Lainey told me that she heard a very loud noise come from Jane’s room that could only have been made by a man giving it some gusto to a girl.

One night I found Jane in the kitchen standing in front of the open fridge.  Her hair was mangled and her cheeks streaked with mascara but she wasn’t crying.  She was just staring emptily into the fridge.

I touch her shoulder and she doesn’t move.

‘I started wearing a bra when I was ten’ she mumbled not looking at me.  ‘I always had big boobs.  They never stopped growing.  When the boobs came so did the boys I guess.  Not that that was really important to me.  I used to get groped all the time in school and attacked by the other girls who were jealous.  I didn’t want them….’

She reached into the fridge and pulled out a carton of milk.  She opened it and drank from it.

A strange dry laugh flitted out of her throat for a second.

‘My mother used to always say ‘why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free.’’

She plodded off to her room carrying the carton.

I heard some muffled voices from her room and the door slammed shut.

I knew we had trouble right then and there.

A picture of my boot on grass…. well just because….

An incident from the last few years:

Soft.  Fuzzy.  Warm.  Electricity running through every capillary.  Dark orange lighting.  Music.  Muted speaking.

‘We should get breakfast in the morning’ he garbles at her.

Her mouth is moving but she doesn’t know what she’s saying.  She knows that she’s swaying.  She can’t take it back now.  She feels amazing and terrified at the same time.

‘Like….stuff…me…confusion’ she rants.  Is she using any verbs?  She doesn’t know.

She feels like she’s watching herself now.  She’s not making any sense.

He stares back at her blankly and blinks.  It lasts for ages.

She can see him mouth words and she knows that she should be hurt but instead she starts to dance. Maybe normally she would be but she can’t feel it now. She doesn’t know what else to do.  She feels so numb.  A weird sense of heightened numbness.

I could literally (and I mean literally, not figuratively) write for hours about this but have decided to pick a few areas that I consider key and annoying when considering interaction and the language that we use. Words are such odd things.  A distinctive sound used to describe a thing that is relatively recognisable as the same thing by a multitude of people.  I mean, obviously this open to interpretation and everyone has their own little slant on their meanings but overall the English language is pretty universally understandable.  Strange as well that they are such powerful things and things that you cling to. Words are such transient temporary things.  They change their minds just like fickle people.  They change to mean new things or cease to mean what they used to completely.

Take for example my prime example of the misappropriation of the use of the word ‘rape’.  This is my key example for the misuse of a word.  There really is only one meaning to the word – non-consensual sex – that’s it!  The tax man did not rape you.  You aren’t raped by Microsoft with the price of the new Xbox.  Downloading is not raping the music industry.  You have not actually been raped by someone using your Facebook to say that you shit yourself.  Very rarely have I heard it used in a proper sexual/violent terms, but I’m sure it has been, probably even by people I like.  Either way the only real context for the word ‘rape’ is an actual rape, a violent crime and each of these newly coined terms are fully aware of the existence of the real meaning of the word.  I assume that it is only used for shock value, or to demonstrate how horrible each of these things are, but to conflate a Facebook issue to being assaulted denigrates the entire issue of rape full stop.  It bothers me so much that people are unwilling to question or use the phrase without thinking the implications of what they are saying through.  At least I’m willing to give people the benefit of the doubt here and assume that they haven’t thought the use of the word through properly.  Maybe they have and that is a thought which scares me.  Anyway, if you are one of those people that hasn’t thought it through consider this; 1 in 4 women have been through this and Jebus knows how many men.  Consider the fact that they may not want to talk about it, that you may not be aware of what has happened to them and then consider them listening to you talking about how you were ‘raped’ in your local with the new prices of pints.  Imagine you were them.  Would you use the word then?

You know that stupid phrase ‘sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never hurt me’?  Well that is just pure crap.  As an overly analytical person I can sit awake all night considering the implications of phrasing on one single text.  Words are powerful as fuck (such a wordsmith me).  The start of this blog kind of describes a snippet of an incident that happened a while ago.  I have very little memory of that night other than I was promised breakfast. I never got it but that was fine.  I mean why did I remember that?  Out of the whole night why did I remember that?  The rest of the night was a bit of a blur for a number of reasons, non-sobriety being one of them.  Why did those words stick? You know the way that one sentence, no matter how irrelevant somebody says might stick with you for the rest of your life.  Somebody could tell you they love you every day for ten years (ha…not really unless you count Oscar) and you’d still remember this other sentence about someone offering to get you breakfast.  Choose your words carefully my friends, particularly with me, I’m like a sponge for remembering stuff.  I will remember anything shit you’ve ever said to me and store it up in my brain for use in a fight 12 years later.  Sometimes, it’s good stuff too and they are the horrible things I cling to and remember when things turn to shit.

Even when language is very straight forward and unambiguous it can still change.  Once words are said they can stop meaning what they were originally intended to mean.  The second a sentence is said it can stop having its original meaning.  Minds can change.  Context and situations can alter.  That’s why promises are all bollox.  People say things they don’t mean all the time, or sugar coat language making it lose the nuance that gives it the full impact of its meaning.  I hate words when I think about this.  I hate it when words don’t match up with people’s actions too.  So which do you trust?  Well, technically you can’t trust either but if you had to go with one I’d always go with actions, no matter how strong the words are.  Also because these words can be transmitted in several different ways, like  email, text, Facebook , phone, letters and fax something is diluted.   I would never say things out loud that I say in texts.  Is it safer?  I can be more open in written words than I can using  my voice.  Does that actually make it more honest?  Is my interaction physically  more awkward because of it?  I’m much more eloquent and way less ‘common’ writing anyway so does it give me more of a voice?  I still think certain things should be hard to say, and saying them through, for example text, doesn’t quite cut it and makes the whole thing even  more reductive than it already is. 

Anyway I only give myself 45 minutes each time to write this blog so I had better wrap up.  Essentially I think words are meaningless in the context of anything other than in the moment.  Language and words change.  I hate that there are no real fixed meanings to anything anybody ever says.  People and language change all the time.  Meanings change.  Actions can change too but are a better gauge of how to read people.   Stupid things people have said or promises that they have made stick in your head.  Talking often makes you go around in circles, particularly with no actual interaction.  Is this ironic considering how much I like writing?  I have no idea.  The whole thing is just a frustrating ball of frustration.  In the words of Depeche Mode ‘words are meaningless and forgettable’ and I think unless someone ever shows me what they mean I won’t actually know.

I have been thinking the last while about what I enjoy and what makes me happy in order to maintain some type of positivity.  Bucket lists are lame, there’s no denying that really BUT there are a load of things that I would like to do before I die.  LOADS of them and if I die before doing them, depending on how quickly I die (and knowing my luck it will be a really slow painful death) I will be pretty pissed off if I don’t do these things. At least they theoretically give me something to look forward to, or some ambition and drive. So here are some of the things that I would like to do.  Some are quite odd though so don’t judge me.

Stop smoking

Even though I love it this cannot continue.  Enough said.

Get something fictional published.

Well this is done or will be.  Unless I read that email wrong or they change their minds.  Which could happen.  Even still just having one thing published isn’t really enough.  I want more!!!  I want to live a proper Bohemian lifestyle, which excuses bad behaviour, chain smoking and excessive drinking, and get paid for it.

Laugh so much that I urinate myself. 

Seriously how funny would something have to be for you to actually do that?  I mean it would probably happen if I was pregnant again (but as that is not going to happen) the likelihood of this occurring is very low.  If you made me do this and were still interested after I pissed my pants I would possibly consider marrying you.

Do a cover of a proper song but do it well.

I want to do Wicked Game by Chris Isaac (in the style of My Bloody Valentine) and even though I can’t sing one day I will.  I also want to do Fuck and Run by Liz Phair and that may even happen.  There are many covers I want to do.  I even have a fake band in my head called Ladyboner.  Our first album will be called Marla Singer’s Knickers.

Go somewhere outside of Europe

This makes me feel mega lame but I’ve never left Europe (although I have been in a good few European places).  Man I’d love to do that.  I’d love to go to America, Canada, Japan or Russia.  Any of those places. For a few weeks.  I don’t care that much about travelling so I don’t do it that much but the next time I go away I want it to be somewhere mega epic.  That won’t be for ages though.  Someone get me a holiday!!!!

Do a well-choreographed dance spontaneously out of nowhere.

That would just be cool and better when nobody was expecting it.  Even better because I cannot dance and usually make horrible faces.

Not have another child

I love my child but I don’t want another one.  At least I don’t think I do.  I don’t want to be one of those people that says they don’t want another child but end up having one.  I don’t want to backtrack.  That’s not to say that if I had one I wouldn’t like it.  I probably would.  I just don’t want one… especially when the other one is half done at this point.

Learn to rap

I know this is lame.  I secretly do it on my own though.  I guess it’s not a secret anymore now.  Imagine how impressive it would be to be able to rap along with a song or spontaneously come up with lyrics.  Wow…just wow… and if the junkies can do it on Henry Street I’m sure I can too.

Scare someone so much that they urinate themselves

Watch your wardrobes people because I may be hiding in them.  I don’t care if you have a heart condition.

Try to do stand up

This is probably the least likely thing that I will ever try.  Being funny is about delivery and I’m not sure I can deliver.  I can speak in front of large groups of people and be slightly amusing when there are no expectations but I don’t think I would have the proverbial balls to do it.  Terrifying, but if it worked out it could truly be amazing.

Stay in a log cabin

I would like to rough it for a while and catch my food and stuff.  I have no problem killing things and gutting them.  I would like to stay somewhere where there was no electricity in the middle of nowhere and have to wash in a river.  Somehow I think that would be very refreshing being cut off from everything.  I haven’t decided whether I’d like to do this on my own or with someone else but if you think you’d be interested let me know.

Do a really good job at something and get recognised for it

This has yet to happen.  I don’t even know what for because I don’t feel particularly good at anything.  It would just be nice to get a little recognition once in a while.

Win something

I have no control over this but it would be pretty cool.  I never win anything.  It would be a nice surprise.

Get to use a bit of dialogue from a film in an apt real setting:

Like using this part of Fight Club on a plane without it seeming completely contrived:

‘Oxygen gets you high. In a catastrophic emergency, you’re taking giant panicked breaths. Suddenly you become euphoric, docile. You accept your fate. It’s all right here. Emergency water landing – 600 miles an hour. Blank faces, calm as Hindu cows’

And last but not least….

On my deathbed I want to say, no matter what my cause of death is, ‘AVENNNNNGEEEE ME.’ 

Also my funeral will involve a Mexican wave and when my coffin goes behind the curtain to be cremated the music from Countdown will be played.

I should probably clarify that this is quite personal and maybe self absorbed but still something I think I will share…. Well just cos…..  I was going to write about how I’d like a nemesis but the other night I experienced an inappropriate level of anger and thought I would write about that instead.  I’m not going to get into why exactly or what spurned it on but let’s just say it doesn’t involve any one individual and is symptomatic of a series of events piling up on me.  It got me to thinking that my responses aren’t ever just based on one thing – it’s like every time I experience anything, any feeling, it’s based on every time I’ve recently felt it.  So to get crazy personal (this is cathartic after all) this year has probably been a really weird year for me and even saying weird is probably a bit of an understatement.  In fact, year is probably a bit of an understatement too.  In reality it has probably been more like the last two years.

Two years ago I was completely numb to everything.  I sat at home and studied loads, living with someone I barely spoke to and who had social skills that not even Rainman would have been envious of.  The only way I can actually believe that I had spent the previous three years in the same situation with this person leads me to believe that I must have been drunk most of the time.  When I think back now it just didn’t make sense, considering all the ‘red flags’ that would have appeared to a normal person.   I mean when we actually went out in public together I barely interacted with them and when I did apparently my contempt for them was very thinly masked indeed. I was so unfeeling during this time I was really productive but quite unhappy and never knew why.  I don’t think I even knew that I didn’t like them anymore.

Just cos…

So really a year ago when things ended it wasn’t really a surprise.  I knew it was going to but just not the way that it did and to be honest that hurt.  Not because I wanted them any more but just because of the overall lack of respect and because of the amount of changes that I had made in my already very complicated life to accommodate them.  I mean I wanted to be friends with them but that couldn’t happen and it just made things worse and now if I saw them I’d probably clam up and have a panic attack.  Not because I care about them still, because I don’t, but because of all the shit that they represent.  Anyway to cut a long story short after 30 years of always living with people I moved out on my own and have had to try to deal with everything as much as possible on my own.  I don’t like change.  I don’t like it one bit but when I think about it I pretty much have been on my own for the last two years anyway.

So what have I learned this year?  I could just sigh and say ‘nothing’.  This makes it sound like nothing good happened.  Some good stuff has, but it makes the bad stuff seem worse by comparison, despite the temporary feelings of elation that accompany them.  I have become productive enough again in terms of college and writing (hence this self indulgent blog) and trying to keep myself entertained.  I like my own company more than anyone else’s anyway.  I kinda had a crisis about my identity and pretentious stuff like that but I couldn’t remember who I was.  It wasn’t like being in a relationship stopped those things, but being single has definitely taken its toll on my self esteem and ideas of what defines me as a person.  These are a few of the things that I have learned over the last year, some of which I am still trying to apply to real life:

1. Declutter your life.  Remove things that make you unhappy as much as you can.  This includes people, work or ugly dresses.
2. Keep away from emotional vampires.  You know those people that wear you down and never give anything in return? (I really hope I’m not one of those) The people that offload on you, don’t listen to what you say and then walk away feeling better whilst they’ve sapped all of your energy.  Your purpose on this earth is not to make them feel better about themselves or listen to their crap.  FUCK THEM OUT!
3. Get out of your jammies.  If you stay in your pjs all day as you will become sad.  The same applies to staying in bed.
4. Be very aware that everybody, no matter how nice, is selfish and most people do not do anything in a purely selfless way.  There are hidden motivations for nearly everything that a person does.  Especially if they MIGHT want to have sex with you.
5. Stop giving out about things and doing nothing about your situation.  Try to change it and then moan when it fails.
6. I have to recognise that I cannot fix or change people.  People are who they are.  They do not change and you cannot convince them otherwise unless they want to do it themselves.  This will make you tired.
7. Stop making crazy impulsive decisions… well at least when drinking.
8. Significantly younger men are stupid.  This goes for all younger people really but specifically in a naked way.
9. Do not expect anything from anyone.  If someone wants to do stuff for you or be in your life they will without having to be asked.  They will actively take part in whatever it is that you have going on because they want to of their own accord.
10. Do not offload on people you care about.  It makes them tired.  Everyone has their own shit.  If I have done this to you over the last year I’m really sorry.  In saying that I am lucky to have a good biggish group of close friends so I can talk to a few people about things instead of just one. 
11. Remember people have indirect ways of saying things that you might not want to hear.  Ideally people would just tell you straight what they mean but a lot of people won’t so bear that in mind.
12. Fantasy is not reality.  No matter how close you imagine things will be to your fantasy they never will be.
13. Even if someone says something lovely and nice to you they can change their mind at any point.
14. If you are looking for reasons that something is working, then it isn’t.
15. Do not sit up all night chain smoking and watching porn. 
16. Try to leave the house every day.
17. If you feel negative roll with it – don’t try and suppress it.  Cry if you want to cry.  Smash a glass at a wall.  Urinate in someone’s milk.  Do whatever makes you feel better.
18. Do not drink Buckfast.
19. You cannot delete people out of your iPhone.  That’s just annoying.  If you know how to do this let me know.
20. Shut down your libido as much as possible.  It just gets you into trouble.
21. Expect disappointment… that way everything else is just gravy.
22. If the things you want were easy then they wouldn’t be worth it.  I think college, people and life are hard work and if they are worth it they should be.
23. I have high standards when it comes to people.  Who wants to know shit people?
24. Do not allow people to take advantage.  Speak up for yourself.  Stop being such a submissive dumbass.
25. Do not have an argument by text.  It might not even be an argument.
26. You are not a victim. If you believe that you really will only ever be one.

Despite all this I do feel better than I have in a long time.  I feel awake and ready.  I even mopped my flat today.  Honestly I want to be happy and I think I am getting there as much as I can.  The changes that I have gone through over the last while what with a relationship ending, moving out to an expensive place on my own, college stress and generally just feeling overwhelmed and alone have somewhat subsided.  I have realised what makes me happy and the people that are important to me.  I don’t know how open I am to meeting new people.  In fact, I am not sure I could be bothered with the effort, but needless to say if you are here now then you’re probably OK in my book.  If you’ve been around for me over the last while, and you know who you are, thanks! 

There often comes a point between the seventh and ninth drink when you find yourself staring in your friend’s bathroom mirror.  You’ve probably been standing there a while  – how long exactly you don’t know – staring at your red cheeks and slightly messed hair.  You might even be checking out your pit stains and cursing the fact that you sweat profusely. At some point though you make eye contact with yourself and any number of things can happen in that split second.  It doesn’t matter if you’ve been having a fantastic night but this one moment can change everything.  Now, sometime s I personally find myself laughing at the state that I’m in or at least curse myself for looking stupid.  Others I make intense eye contact with my reflection and it is like I can see right inside myself in my inebriated state.  It’s like the combination of alcohol, a brightly lit bathroom and this eye contact all synch into this weird moment that generates this mottled epiphany.  I often hate these moments.  It’s like your brain just decided to tell you really important things that you didn’t know or want to know.  Why tell me now brain?  Why?!

Why does this happen?  It is because suddenly you’re alone and the mask comes down?  The alcohol has most certainly weakened your ability to keep up a front.  It’s like your mind decides to make a list of things that you’ve suppressed and throws them at you with gusto.  Then all of a sudden you’re open and vulnerable, even though it is only you that can see it, but your reflection and that intense eye contact forces you to face those things (albeit in an exaggerated form) that you wish you didn’t have to. 

Examples of this include, but may not be limited to:

‘I really shouldn’t be this drunk.  Why am I this drunk?’

‘I am a profusely sad person.’

‘Nothing is going to work out for me ever.’

‘I really don’t love [insert significant other’s name here] and probably never have.  What the fuck am I doing?’

‘Why would anybody bother being friends with me?’

‘What is the point in anything?’

‘Why did that happen? How can I stop that from happening again?’

‘How can I change me to make me better?’

Now, these are all negative, as is generally the case but the thing is once you return to your friends the feeling disappears pretty quickly.  It’s like it never happened, which, annoys me even more.  You adjust yourself back into your comfort zone.  You go back in and paint your smile back on and let these realisations slip away back into your subconscious.  You forget but they happened.  These thoughts flick on and off like a light switch thanks to the mind altering power of alcohol.  I firmly believe  that the majority of people who consume alcohol use it like this as a coping method for life.  A skill that I myself have embraced and accept and have attempted to use productively. 

See, this is why I like drinking on my own sometimes.  I can sit there and just soak it all in.  All the emotional intensity and wallow in my own moroseness and store it all up in the dark deep recesses of my brain.  You never reach a conclusion anyway but feeling shit makes feeling good a lot better.  Forcing yourself to realise your own pain is a good thing, even through the mumbled tones of gargle.  Being sad and facing your weaknesses, be it a need for validation, loneliness, low self-esteem or just generally being a dick is a good thing.   It helps me compartmentalise my already overly cluttered life, forget about it and move on, yet still experience a wide spectrum of emotion.  Without this I don’t think I could write (badly) or know exactly what I want (which, finally, at this point in my life I actually totally do).

I would just like to point out that this is not a frequent occurrence for me but it does happen more than I probably should admit.  Although these fleeting moments may pass many of us by, remember these are a coping method for life, because as most of us should know by now, life is shit.   I don’t think I would be as self-aware if I did not embrace alcohol.  I probably wouldn’t be half as interesting either (not that I’m super interesting in the first place) or have any fun stories to tell.  The point that I am trying to make here is that facing these weird drunken moments as what they are, an exaggerated view of reality, is a great way to sort through your own head.  Instead of fighting them we should let them be what they are, pull your tights up and walk out of that bathroom like nothing happened, never to return to that thought again.

Despite my actual cheery countenance I am actually a deeply resentful, angry and bored person.  I realised recently that my fixations on things that bother me probably only serve to deflect my own critical self analysis, which if I actually took the time to do, would  probably send  me spiralling into a state of comatose depression.  So my catharsis is essentially venting about singularly insignificant things that indicate that humanity is going down the jacks.  It really is though. 

The real problem that I have noticed myself, and maybe some of you have too, is the stupid equation that I’ve mentioned above.  We have limited time, that we fill up with crap that we shouldn’t have to do, we’re told that there is some big pay in life and then we are only left with disappointment.  This isn’t only coming at life as a critique of capitalism, although that is a massive aspect that can’t be ignored, but also from the people that we include in our lives.  Think of all the time that we have.  A full 24 hours a day.  Now, I know I’m different in the sense that I have actively attempted to filter out crap that I don’t want to do but probably should, and that the majority of what I do these days are nearly all things I enjoy (study, hang out with my dwindling number of friends, write, drink, read…) but I still have to do a lot of shit to pay rent so I can sit in my knickers chain smoking drinking wine while writing a story.  Even with the way I have worked out all the time that I have I still have to do washing, deal with banks and get the bus.  I’m not even talking about the blank time here – you know that time you should be doing stuff but you end up watching Jeremy Kyle or staring into space.  It’s a sad day when you get home from working hard all day and you experience in an inappropriate level of excitement about putting on your pjs and going onto Facebook.  You have to ask yourself if this is seriously the height of fucking enlightenment?

There is no way around disappointment.  There is no pay off for the all the mediocrity that we endure.  I DON’T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT CORONATION STREET!  If we satisfy ourselves with stupid little things like this then maybe we could maintain some kind of emotional balance but where’s the fun in that?  We’re supposed to constantly try and better ourselves.  That’s supposed to make us happy too, right?  What if you never get any recognition for all the effort?  What was the point then?  So in trying to better ourselves or improve our lives, intelligence and relationships are we setting ourselves up for disappointment?  Most definitely.  Without question.  But what’s the alternative?  Have a few stimulating moments dotted throughout the mediocrity?  In terms of writing, and being creative (or at least attempting to be) I’d much rather be depressed and frustrated than oblivious and content with the banal.  Even these moments of complete enjoyment, stimulation or just plain fun are bitter sweet though.  They never last.  Is the memory of it enough to keep you pushing on through the crap?  Even when I am genuinely happy I have to ruin it by ruminating over all the details of it and can never just accept it as it is at face value.  It’s like it confuses me because I am waiting for something shit to happen. 

I’m going to be super pretentious here and demonstrate how I feel with an extract of the Smashing Pumpkins’ song Hummer:

Shame my tongue
Fat with promise all along
But when I woke up from that sleep
I was happier than I’d ever been

When you decide
That your life is a prize
Renew and revive
It’s alright honey
It’s alright, yeah

Happiness will make you wonder
Will I feel OK?
It scares the disenchanted
Far away

Ughhhh I just made myself feel ill but the lyrics of that song are fantastic and anyway that’s what I’m listening to now so I thought that I would just work it in somehow.

Perhaps, I get really annoyed but I am a creature of impulse.  More often than not I make bad decisions because of this impulsive streak.  I’ve found it has waned over the years though with commitments such as a child and the like.  I suppose if I didn’t have those I’d be dead in a ditch somewhere years ago…. But how bright that light would’ve burned, eh?  I’d be the stuff of legend.  I don’t like being restrained by anything or anyone and I am generally pissed off when I can’t do what I want.  I don’t like compromising but I have done, mainly for other people, and that has not worked in my favour. We are told to compromise but as people are intrisically selfish when we compromise we’re just leaving ourselves open to be fucked over, or for lack of a better word disappointed.  We are told though that waiting shit out, waiting for that pay off, will work out for us. But what if you spend your ehole life doing that?

You know that marshmallow experiments with the kids being told they’d get more marshmallows if they waited 5 minutes (google the shit out of it if you don’t it’s really interesting)?  Apparently the children that waited did better in life.  That explains a lot about me then, but anytime I’ve waited and worked hard there has been no pay off.  LIVE IN THE NOW!!!

That’s not to say take what you can get.  That’s also not to say don’t work hard.  Really I don’t know what this whole entry is saying.  I’m talking myself around in circles.  It took me half an hour to write this so just roll with it.  I think what I’m trying to say is that if you want to be happy live a boring life,  if you want to be critically aware you’re gonna have a bad time and if you can work it so that you have less boring shit to deal with, or use your time more efficiently, maybe the good stuff will seem better.  I really don’t know what the point of this was actually.  Apparently this is a thing I do for ‘fun’, yet I’ve succeeded in not only making myself confused but even angrier.  I’m going to eat loads of jellybeans now..

It bothers me that I have loads of fears, both rational and irrational, that hold me back.  They may not even be fears as such but these could take the form of things I simply will not do.  While I know that not doing some of these things prevents me from leading a ‘richer life’ (scoff) I have no intention of changing them. I know I’ll probably never get over them, mostly because I’m too lazy to try. Also I didn’t put up pictures of these things because I hate them so much.

Here are a few of the things that I won’t do or am scared of:

1 Eyeballs:

The touching of eyes freaks the crap out of me.  I’m supposed to wear glasses but I constantly lose them but no way would I put in contacts.  The idea of touching what seems like a fragile, easily scraped and grossly textured organ makes me want to vomit.  Aside from not putting contacts in there are other drawbacks to this phobia.  For one, I can’t put eye drops in.  Another is that I can’t take shit out of people’s eyes.  A good friend of mine got an insect stuck in her eye before and was screaming in agony at the side of a busy road for me to help her.  Know what I did?  I ran away crying hysterically.  I left my best friend in pain at the side of the road shouting like some feral beast.  If I wasn’t scared of eyes I could have been of some use to her and looking back now at that strangely comic but upsetting image of her (she looked a bit like Rain Man) I wish I had been able to help her.

2 Pooping:

I don’t like people knowing that I’m going to have a dump in my own house, let alone in a public toilet.  I’d rather hold it in for days.  I know that it is a very unhealthy thing to do but I can’t make myself do it.  Take, for example, a festival where the toilets are manky, I would rather take Immodium for a whole week than use the filth ridden facilities.  The result is often uncomfortable to say the least, with minimal silent farts to relieve the building pressure.  Honestly there are three toilets that I  can use; my own and two of my friend’s.  I can’t even use the jacks in my parent’s house because my Dad always makes a big deal out of it.  My biggest fears include finding that there is no toilet roll, that someone is hanging around outside waiting to use it after me or that the toilet becomes blocked with the amount of tissue that I use so nobody can hear what I’m doing.  Total neuroses overload.

3 Birds

I think owls are pretty cool but I still wouldn’t touch one.  Honestly from pigeons to ostriches I’m terrified of all of them.  They have beady eyes and scrapey looking claws and because they have no facial expressions you can’t tell what they’d do.  Will they get tangled in your hair?  Will they pick out your eyes with their beaks or talons?  Will they shriek at you?  There’s something really untrustworthy about birds.  Bastards.

4 Water:

Ok this does not mean that I do not wash.  Obviously I do.  I can’t swim though and I never want to learn.  If I drown I want to embrace my impending death.  Not only does this mean that I can avoid looking like a bag of shit in an ill-fitting swimsuit but it also means that I wouldn’t fight drowning.  When I was ten I nearly drowned (or so I thought at the time) when I came off a water slide at a very high speed and skimmed out to the deep end.  I sank and didn’t move until my mam swam out and got me.  In fairness if I’d died then (and yes I do have a flair for the dramatic) it would’ve been a lot more peaceful than fighting in a hopeless situation.  The chances of me drowning are slim anyway – I hate the sea with the unseen things brushing against your legs and I only ever sit in swimming pools in the shallow end.  I can’t even put my head underwater in the bath.

5 Mushrooms:

They’re just gross.  I can’t eat them or anything that has touched them.  The underneath of them is disgusting looking. It’s a fucking fungus.

6 Airports:

Now I like flying and everything but I hate everything up until that point.  I have waiting in lines, taking off your shoes, beeping going through security, getting patted down because the underwiring in your bra went off and standing behind some fucking unprepared moron who had ages to sort everything out.   Oh you want my passport?  Oh I can’t have liquids in my bag?!  Seriously, other people stress me out to a ridiculous point.  Why am I, who has organised everything meticulously and arrived two hours early, stuck behind some fool who has clearly never read a single sign in the airport before.  The gobshite who walks through the metal detector with their keys in their pockets.   I hate dealing with the ineptitude of others.  It makes me angsty.

7 The Transition between Life and Death:

Ok so this is a bit heavier than the others.  This sometimes keeps me awake at night.  I don’t even know if it’s even a fear as opposed to a fixation but it is something that has alternated between terrifying and intriguing me.  I remember when I was about seven that I came to terms with the concept of mortality and sat awake for three days contemplating the implications of death:

I will not always be here.

What will it feel like?

Do I just become nothingness?

Will everything just turn black?

The thing that really bugged me and still does is the fact that there is no way to get a quantifiable concrete answer to what it will feel like.  Obviously there is nobody to get a definite answer from.  I don’t like not knowing what lies ahead.

The nearest answer I can get to what I imagine it feels like happened to me during the night a few years ago.  My body was falling asleep until my mind suddenly recognised what was happening.  Instead of doing that weird jumpy twitch fall thing you do when this happens nothing came.  My body kept going asleep while my mind tried to control it.  It was fucking terrifying.  I felt like I was being sucked down a drain hole, like my mind and body were becoming completely detached.

8 Pulling the Curtains on a Really Dark Night

What if a face appeared when you were pulling the curtains?  Seriously what the fuck would you do?

I embrace these.  They won’t change.  I won’t change.  I hate that all these things exist but screw it.  If they didn’t I’d just find something else to give out about.