Right now am sitting on me laptop the lofi hip hop in the background is a calming presence in the room while the room is filled with the darkness from the outside creeping in like a fog sweeping through my window . my mood at the minute feels like the room , its dark spooky and just gritty.
When I was a child i always knew I was different from other children (Not that I was hot shit or special) but I always felt I had a darker presence around me like a blanket wrapped around my shoulders that could never leave my side like a shadow it was my own personal convey. Like many children I grew up in the “Golden age” fucking celtic tiger Mr big twat Bertie Ahem, different cultures brought in the mainstream “want to try that Italian down the road? fuck offf spuds only for me peace treaty? please “sure they haven’t gone away you know….” . Yes there was more money in the country due to dodgy dealings with wanker bankers , vultures fund and my personal fav YeeHaw cowboi fucking builders making a quick buck it was glorious but if you were working class you think you seen the best part of the celtic tiger you were wrong.
It was always me , Mam and Shannon with dad dropping in and out of my early childhood depending if he was on a bender. We moved regularly throughout my childhood (which never left me with a sense of a home ) we moved 10 times before I was 3 all around Louth/monaghan before we ended up in Blackrock with Dad coming back into the fold. We didn’t have much money and to live in a council estate in the rock while the rest of the village was booming was hard. Dad would be constantly on the piss forgetting the responsibilities of being a father and would come home and start WW3. My mother was no saint either by any means she would stay in take her ” back medication ” spark a zoot pour herself a double vodka and after 6pm she wasn’t to be disturbed. But she really tried her best which made me love her deeply.
I had 3 best friends on the street and one from playschool . But going into primary school we were all spilt up and I was moved in with the ‘posh ones” (Only positive was that playschool friend was in my class and I made another best friends with a another “council estate trash” called Danny) At this time trying to make friends with these new people were tough. I wasn’t aloud to have anyone over from school due to the fact my dad was an alcoholic and all of blackrock knew of his behaviour plus it was embarrassing to bring these people who came from big houses and designer clothes to my humble home. I remember me and Danny begging our moms to get us the same designer clothes so we wouldn’t be left out like our chums. All changed when my mother had an affair when I was 6 and my time in blackrock came to a end. Off we went to riverside drive a 2 bedroom apartment meant to be shared by my sister,Mam brendan (Her new fella )his 3 forster kids and myself. I think what My Mam did to my Dad was very humiliation and if I felt the humiliation as a child of what she did I can only imagine what it did to my Dad (He went very hard on the drink )
Now my life has completely changed in this new family dilemic. I would rarely see my dad in this period as he wasn’t aloud too see us as he used to bring us to pubs and parties when it was his turn to mind us when mam went galavanting around town with her new fella. I remember the last straw was when he had to take us and he stayed in the pub and sent us in a taxi alone with a stranger to our granny to mind us so he could finish his night only positive I can take from that experience was that my mam bought me GTA San Andreas to make me feel better which in truth it fucking did weapon of a game. Mam’s new fella brendan wasn’t a step up in the father figure role we cherished and was more of a let down. He was narcissistic , childish , drank way too much and didn’t really make a huge effort with us or even his own kids. a easier way to express him was that he was a Prick that looked like a badger.
Now the celtic tiger money is gone and its the 2006 recession baby. His building trade went bust and him and mother dearest opened their own taxi business and shipped us across to Tallanstown which was in the sticks and smelly fields not like the concrete jungle I was used too. Brendan’s behaviour towards us, his children and Mammy changed to more of controlling us and physical and mental abuse which led Mam going down a darker path with her drinking , smoking and taking her pain killers. Their arguments were explosive and you could always hear slapping and punching. What the fuck is that normal does every family fight like that? Calling us down the stairs just so you could tell us how much of a junkie our mother was. He was just pure poison and am praying I didn’t pick up any of his traits I grow to be an adult .
But in Tallanstown it wasn’t all doom and gloom Me, Shannon and Damien made friends with this group of misfits who didn’t really fit in any other social group . You had Conor “Condom” O Neil the oldest in the group but he was young at heart pure south armagh lad followed by Cormac who lived 8 doors down who was prob the most normal one out of us all , Dillion was one of the funniest people I met in my time and my partner in crime for any mischievous adventure we had set in our minds. Finn was the chubby one and he like many tv sitcoms chubby characters he would have been the easiest target for any insults or pranks (which I think we destroyed him looking back..Ohwell) then you had becky who was what you called a real “trallop” but was sound. Our group of misfits all bonded over the fact we all came from awkward/fucked family backgrounds which resulted in this tightness that will hopefully never go away. The family we never had.
All my I can rember of my Youth with these credtins was drinking 2 maybe 3 times a week , we would all chip in at the end of the week for fags and buzz. Conor would head into offy for us as we waited around the corner and we would all get smashed. My football career suffered at this time as I was living the life of Georgie Best. Out drinking durty cans till 3am smoke stinking from my breath as i would be awoke to play a game in dublin hung over completely and might score wee hat trick or so and go out that night celebrate and rinse and repeat until I choose the sesh life over any career in soccer.
School during my teens years was okay I hung around in my junior years with the rougher kids until again I moved towards the misfits of the dela and that’s where I met one one of my closest friends Remi a big polish lamp post. we did everything together and I met other people in the click that I grew to love. But things went south in 6th year 1 month and a bit before the leaving I found my mother dying and I tried my best to save her but I failed. for every breath I give her during CPR she would gurgle on blood and foam and her eyes were scared then turn into glass eyes like a teddy bear just no life behind them. That experience will forever haunt me to my grave and I take the full responsibility for her death. I knew she was sick and something was wrong weeks before but I didn’t act on it I thought “surely she’ll cope on that she keeps forgetting stuff and that she wasn’t as sharp as she once was. It’s hard when people say “you couldn’t have done anything” yet i would see my hands with blood on them. Before she was cold brendan signed everything over to himself had hookers over and snorted his way through his new riches which left my family home unbearable.
18 and am trying to find my way around this horrible world that hasn’t given me a chance at life but I push on i enroll myself into college but dropped out due to poor mental health. I was living in my grannys and my aunty going back and forth between houses before I started to rent my own place when I was 19 and got myself into a serious relationship. but again all good things must come to an end and due to consistent problems with my mental heath ( I was diagnosed with PTSD, Borderline Personality disorder, Bipolar type 2 and any other alphabet letter you can throw in .. Am crazy boi ) I was spending all my money on drugs and friends (went through 20 grand in like two months on a Hunter S Thompson diet ) my girlfriend at the time was sexualy assauslted and I couldn’t be there for her as i was a mess and she broke it off with me which I don’t blame her. Then after a 4 day bender on speed with coffee no sleep and no food I decided to pop some pills to make it go away and oh boy how my problems worsen. See in the Tv and movies they make an overdose look so peaceful and I kinda romance on the idea of dying on my own vomit but the tv shows and movies that really show you the before they died part and how un-quick it really is.
After scaring all my friends and family I was shipped out to corduff to escape town but my health worsen. My aunty and Uncle didn’t deal with anyone on the scale of what I was going through so after the second suicide attempt i was taking away by guards to the “Nut house” Now cavan Hospital was like a 1980’s hospital the mental ward was in the basement and the only outside was a wee garden in a square shape with four high walls like towers. I made friends with the other guys who tried to kill themselves and we bonded over .. well us trying to top ourselfs. other patients who suffered really bad with paranoid schizophrenia were hard to talk to as they were left in this institute for years and never had any dealings with the outside world anymore.
After 3 weeks locked away there I was able to make my escape I stayed with remi for a few weeks and then I stayed with another friend but my addiction worsen I began taking harder drugs like Xanax , Valium other sedative drugs like trampol anything that made everything slow and I can relax I began My phase as full blown addict lying and stealing to fund my drug addiction. I had to sleep rough in december in -4c before taking a place in the simon community . my life was in ruins but i wasn’t gonna be another statistic on the opiate and benzo problem in ireland and I kicked them cooled turkey before trying my hand at awful low funded drug addictions groups. I was living in my grannys but again family and me are like chalk and cheese I grew colder from my experience and cormac offered me a place to stay and I took it.
Am 23 now I am holding then a job for the past year pay rent and slowly connecting with society even though its hard. it takes time and I don’t wanna rush myself in the past year I fell off the wagon once only for the next day to get back on the horse. I went through so many experiences mostly bad and but some good . Am i product of the system and my environment or is it my personality ? I say both how-ever what I do did learn is that I can be a good person who makes bad choices and I can be a bad person who makes good choices proper yin and yang I also believe the state has failed many of us that went through some of stuff that happened to us from funding to mental health services being cut to addiction services being below par then other countries . SO the next time you see someone on the street or who is using you don’t know what happens behind close doors so care for one and other look after your friends and don’t let people fade away from society I wrote this to highlight that there are many stories like mine in this new ireland. So many people can be left behind without any of it being their fault. I shall leave you with quote
“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!”
― Hunter S. Thompson,
JJH1996 