Detox

I’m all happy(ish) now because despite Audiogalaxy being shut down, Kazaa is up and running so more free mp3s. Clubbed To Death is now pride of place in my collection.

I haven’t been happy since the donkey balls entry. I haven’t spoken to Emer since that night, haven’t texted, wrote to her, nothing. At first it was embarrassment. I was in the Q Bar with her and her brothers and friends and feeling like the veritable spare prick/tyre an insecure insincere fuckwit like me tends to get like after trying not to drink. One Red Bull later and I began drinking, trying to cheer up. Then Cormac, the old college friend who came out recently, texts me saying the local paedo at home was being friendly and how should he take this? I told him to tell the prick to fuck off (I can be terribly blunt at times) but this sealed my fate for the night, I was now immune to the effects of alcohol. I was last like this the night I went to a college social and drunk a naggin of vodka like water. I can’t explain it, it’s almost like your body rejects alcohol and refuses to be swayed. So rather than waste my money, I said my (crap) goodbyes, explained I was tired and wanted to try and catch the 2am bus home and walked up O’Connell Street to Aihua and typed up a wee entry amongst the smoke and screams of a 25-player bloodfest being played out around me. I rung Ari on the way too, but reception was lost and I never rung back. So then I walked down to the Nitelink and on it I met a girl I went to school with from Kerry called Moraid.

Moraid and I have this habit of meeting each other on buses and yapping away for ages after we get off. Well this time, we talked for hours. Literally. I’ve never stood for so long in ages. Just talked for yonks about people from school and from outside school and about relationships. I think I stayed so long because I was/am very comfortable around Moraid. Emer is fine, but I find myself checking how I’m sitting when we’re watching a film and generally censoring everything I say because she gives that look. The look I’ve seen on so many faces since I was a kid, this eyebrow/frown thing that says “what the hell are you saying?” in the cruellest way. I don’t mind someone saying “whatever Joe, you’re talking shit” even though it’s essentially the same sentiment. But I can’t stand that “ok…..” thing. There’s this picture I took during a rather tipsy family Christmas dinner last year. I took a picture of a few people at the table, and to get them all in the photo I stood on a chair. And there’s cousin Carol, in the right-hand corner of the picture, with that look. And I love Carol and when I see that picture I just feel like a complete fool, like nothing. And Emer sometimes makes me feel like that dork in the corner.

Anyway, we realised soon that the birds were singing, it was almost 4.30am and it was time to consider going to bed (separately of course). I…….I still don’t know why it seemed like a good idea at the time, but I thought I’d run up the estate and see if Emer got off the last bus out here that night. I ran up and sure enough, I heard her in the distance. I ran up behind her (such a good idea at 4.30am) and said hi. Emer was puzzled. “I thought you left cos you were tired”. “Well yes I did, but then I met this girl called…..” And then (only then!) I realised what I had just done. I had clearly demonstrated my true motives for the evening, which were to simply get out of any social situation with Emer because I wanted to be on my own. Only now it looked like I deliberately snubbed her for the first person I met on the bus home (which I suppose I did, but not intentionally). Emer’s last words to me were “call me or text me or something, I mightn’t have credit though”. It was good-natured, but ultimately awkward. She was hurt. But I still don’t know what to say to her.

So that was the Friday. On the Sunday, I got pissed and haven’t done so since. God I hate what I did that day. And ever since then, I’ve cut myself off. I got/am depressed. It’s more disheartening to be depressed now because I’m doing what I said I wanted to do, I’m following my own path, and I’m getting bogged down like I always did. I got a slight change of scenery and things have gotten worse. Kerouac asked me today how I was getting on in my “soul-destroying” job (it was in jest, of course) and maybe that’s true. Maybe saying “Welcome to Orange, Joseph speaking, which name please?” 653 times a day affects your soul. Maybe seeing the figures “01270” and instantly thinking “Chester” is unhealthy. Maybe I need to take off my headset.

The past few weeks have been spent in the bosom of…domesticity. I just go to work and come home, nothing more. I spend a lot of time just chatting to Sis. She’s getting more of my jokes, being a bit more straightforward. She was saying how much she missed me not being in Mayo the weekend before last with her and Catherine. Yes, that Catherine. I couldn’t go because I had to work and also because I was/am avoiding social situations involving alcohol for the time being. Sis said she missed me. We hugged, we hug a lot as it is but last night I felt really close to my little sister. Not in an Arkansas way, just close. She’s all I’ve got sometimes, when Mam is at her most illogical, and she understands this more than anyone could. The past few weeks I’ve been detoxing, trying to avoid the crap of life and focus on the essetial things. I’m taking some time to appreciate the things I already have.

How Oprah of me.

j