Get off my cloud

As I glare jealously at the man opposite me on the train with his shiny glowing Macbook I take solace from the words of my journalistic hero Mr Charlie Brooker who yesterday condemned Apple products and their owners, despite his own hatred of Microsoft Windows, in his not to be missed Monday Guardian column.

And yet despite the fact that this GOD of a man to me has poked fun at Apple, ribbed owners of its products mercilessly for their unwavering support of the machines they will unanimously stand up for at any given opportunity and confessed to his own use of a Windows powered Sony Vaio laptop I cannot help but drool like a schoolboy in a biscuit factory at the Macbook that stares at me from across this cramped plastic train table. Why why why do these machines instil such ludicrous desire in me to the point that I genuinely have to think hard about whether I could conceivably kill a man for the chance to own a brand new 15” Macbook Pro?

Looking across at the git and his Macbook I try my hardest to justify my reasons for not having one (aside from the fact that I don’t have any money) and wonder about the glowing Apple logo on the back of the screen. Whilst this is aesthetically pleasing and indubitably cool it does have to be said that it is essentially unnecessary, other than to irk the likes of me who aspire to such machines. For every second it is glowing smugly in my direction I think about just how much battery it’s using up. No my dusty black Toshiba laptop has no glowing logo on the outside BUT it isn’t wasting any power in displaying one so HA take that Macbook. If portability is all about power then at what point does one sacrifice the longevity of a battery in favour of a big fat glowing “FUCK YOU MY LAPTOP IS BETTER THAN YOURS” neon giveaway?

Sadly however this small victory for my ordinary looking Windows powered machine makes not a jot of difference to my intense deep down desire to own not just a Macbook but an Apple iPhone AND a Macpro desktop to accompany my already much loved second hand iPod nano. How does Steve Jobs make his machines so unbelievably sexy? Sharing the train with Macbook owners is like going to the after party of some supermodel fashion show with your dumpy, pug faced, spotty, glasses wearing subspecies of a girlfriend in tow.

And even though I KNOW owning a Mac of some kind will put me in the company of some of the most irritatingly smug, fart-sniffing twats this planet holds I STILL can’t help myself wanting to be in among this “elite”. Even if it is a club of wankers, I want in.

Curse you Steve Jobs. Curse your aesthetically pleasing hardware. Curse your cuddly user friendly software. Curse your marketing strategy that makes me as a PC user feel entirely worthless as a human being. I don’t know how you’ve managed it but as I bitterly shake my fist in jealous rage I am at the same time entirely in awe of you and your company. This in turn makes me hate myself whereas I bet Mac users never feel self pity or shame.

How I loathe them.

Well, I went to see the lesbian comic who's show I seemed destined to see at the end of a festival that has obviously been quite severely overshadowed by super-hot-girl-friend-frenchmangate and my subsequent arguing with The Lesbian. As I said before usually I would instantly dismiss the idea of such a show (everyone knows women aren't funny) BUT it said it was all about her dealing with crushingly painful relationship mismatches (struck a chord) and her subsequent alcoholism (even bigger chord) and thus I came to the conclusion that it was FATE that I was to see this show. So I did, and it was a disappointingly low turnout so it felt a bit awkward to begin with however she worked it well and everything she was saying seemed to mirror my life almost identically except played out by a lesbian. She even recounted how she’d recently had her car taken away and crushed for having no tax (not that that makes the pain of my motor loss any easier).



Anyway it really did seem to be genuinely talking to me, like some kind of message from the gods, and this probably sounds like I’m high but I’m not. She went through stories of various narcotics (mirroring my experiences), embarrassing alcohol fuelled antics (mirroring mine) and lusting after women who just weren’t interested in her and would break her heart by copping off with other people right under her nose. I genuinely thought I'd had an epiphany. And at the end she explained how she was now tee total and happily in a relationship yadda yadda and how she had turned her life round. Sounds like some motivational god botherer but no, no it was ok, she seemed genuine, in fact she was very funny and absolutely filthy with it. Then before we left she handed us each a helium balloon with a card attached and invited us to write down the name of somebody that we felt resentment towards, someone we were angry with, someone who we should now forgive. My mind turned instantly to the crushing hurt of my now ex beautiful friend who I had treated fairly abhorrently since her doing the dirty on me so on that card, attached to the balloon, which I was to release into the sky to symbolise my forgiveness I wrote down the name of…

The Lesbian.

SCREW the Frenchman shagging ho, cow broke my heart and then rubbed it in. She even brought the French coq round to our flat before she left and I couldn’t even look at her. 



But the point was this show did make me think quite a lot and I ended up feeling better about things than I had been the rest of the week. It actually made me consider that perhaps alcohol and my increasing dependence upon it COULD be to blame for oh so many of my problems. Should I, in fact, be tee total and seek pleasures elsewhere for a truer experience of life?



I then went to a grimey club where they were pounding out 90’s house and garage before catching the bus to the airport where I had a Wetherspoons breakfast at 5am… with a jug of Pimms.



Back in Blighty I then got in an argument with some pompous train twat who was trying to fine me for not having bought a ticket in advance (I don't DO queueing) and despite my protests he was having none of it and insisting I pay him some fine. I lost my rag, told him to fuck himself then jumped the barriers BUT instead of running away I just walked casually away, pumped full of adrenaline, almost waiting for someone to tackle me to the ground for daring to screw the rail company. I was clenching my fists in a half victorious, half I'm going to smash something type affair but to my surprise I was left alone to stroll casually out of the station and into a taxi. Either the mug train wankers were genuinely scared by my blind rage OR they just couldn't be bothered to go after me. Either way I WON so stick it to the man



Passed out as soon as I got home then spent my Sunday getting through two bottles of wine and half a bottle of whisky on the beach in the lovely sunshine. It was again like things weren't all bad and for the first time I've ever seen there was a Jamaican food stand just outside one of the old clubs on the beach so I went and had some delicious jerk pork and they explained they were there for the bodybuilding competition in the club, so I wandered in through the back to find all these ridiculously musclebound men and women just getting changed into tiny thongs and lycra outfits, seemingly oblivious to my presence. I'm afraid it did nothing for me but if I were a bummer it’d be like I’d just walked into heaven (the one in the sky as opposed to the club). So I just went straight to the bar as these oiled up creatures exhibited themselves behind me.



I think despite my not heeding my own epiphany by drinking like an Irish student all weekend I would actually like to knock booze on the head, at least for a while anyway. BUT out of nowhere I have a date with a girl from out of town next weekend and when I asked her what she’d like to do she said “I love a drink, me, so let’s go on a pub crawl”. What is a boy to do? And I've not even got to the fake girlfriend yet, who has also caused me to fail on the not drinking ideal, for the third day running. She is very beautiful, and Irish, and I met her through placing a very odd but charmingly innocent (at least I thought so anyway) ad on Gumtree in the "friends & Dating" section. However that is a WHOLE different kettle of radish entirely and to start that story would only be robbing material from a future post BECAUSE I WILL BLOG MORE. Since qualifying as a journalist I keep telling everybody I'm a writer but I do no more writing now than I ever did, I seriously have to get into the habit of it, even if it is only the continued ramblings of this once loved journal.

Anyway the Gumtree ad and subsequent fake beautiful Irish girlfriend story is quite good so it's kind of leaving me itching to come back and blog some more to boast about this unusual scenario another day. A cliffhanger if you will. Or not. The point is I'm coming back.

x

As John Lennon once sang, however I think that figure in my case is nearer 90 per cent, and also he was wrong as I have always taken everything he has ever sung as both meaningful and of course beautiful.

And so begins this long threatened update, which to be honest I wish I’d gotten out of the way long ago so I didn’t feel this need to recount so much of the sloppy shit that’s been thrown at my ever ageing face since my last half arsed rant that I couldn’t even finish (did I just fall asleep or unthinkably run out of energy to moan?)

I’ve already bemoaned this pressure I put upon myself when failing to update regularly so tearing my hair out about it again seems somewhat pointless and thus I’ll just start with the most recent soul destroying misery to befall me in my seemingly never ending quest to fall ever deeper down the pit of despair I’m so familiar with.

So I write from Scotland, Edinburgh to be precise, where I am currently on “holiday” but as a) I’ve not actually left Britain and b) I feel like total shit I’ve decided it’s not much of a holiday, just a week off work in which I now wish I’d just holed myself up in my flat and ignored the outside world for as long as possible. Kind of like when I had Swine Flu. Yes, suffering from the pandemic outbreak of disease that’s currently scaring the entire planet was, in fact, preferable to this week. And you may well ask why, as certainly I would in your position, and whatever that position is I’m almost entirely enviable of it, so low has my ebb sunk of late.

Ok so to painful kick in the sack number one. The aforementioned “holiday” I’m currently struggling through I had in fact, at one point, been looking forward to. The Edinburgh festival has much to see and do, is full to the brim with comedy, oddball performances and drunk people so there are certain appeals. This year the appeal was heightened significantly by my fairly last minute success in convincing a lady friend to join me (and yes I would have gone on my own otherwise, pathetic loser that I am). Frequent readers and my future self will probably by now have picked up the fact that inevitably when I mention girls it’s because I like them in a greater capacity than the “friend” I may describe them as. It seems I only ever befriend girls I’d also like to sleep with which could possibly be because I simply fancy anything in a skirt OR just pick my friends based on purely vain and shallow reasons of their looks and, somewhere after that, their personality. But the chances are that if you’re female, not entirely hideous and have at least half a mind of your own then that’s gonna be good enough for me. Not that I’m saying I want to sleep with every girl I’ve ever befriended, but for the most part I probably wouldn’t turn them down.

Anyway this lady in particular had been occupying my every thought for quite some time now and things were getting to the boiling point where I’d realised that we were firmly in friend territory due in all probability to my failing to ever make any attempt on her to make it obvious that my intentions weren’t entirely innocent. But by the same token I’m about as good at hiding my feelings as Hitler so I’m fairly sure that in the past six months or so that we’ve been close it was fairly obvious as to how I felt. In fact everyone knew. Not only because I couldn’t shut up about her but every time I met any of her friends they’d suss me instantly and make subtle suggestions that I had a MASSIVE crush on her, discussing it every time she’d disappear to the bar or the toilet as I tried my best to not make it any MORE obvious because I’m not an idiot, I know girls talk and they don’t keep secrets that boys tell them from their girl friends. And my main fear was that as much as I liked this girl I have so little faith in my own ability to win the heart of another, so futile have my attempts been to date, that I genuinely didn’t want to ruin the friendship the closer we got.

This then makes things even more awkward because at the back of my mind I always knew that as close as we could be for all the time she remained single, the moment she got herself a boyfriend I’d die on the inside and end up pushing her away, unable to process the pain it would clearly cause. So it’s almost as if I was setting myself up for the big fall. Other people don’t stay single forever, it’s just me, and with every passing day this fear got greater and greater BUT of course I still had some tiny feint hope that perhaps one day we’d cross that friend barrier to the other realm, even though as usual I’d managed to pick a properly beautiful girl, immensely popular and outgoing that in reality I’d never have any hope of winning over. People should learn to stick to their own but sadly as yet I’ve not met anyone quite as pathetic and desperate as me of the fairer sex.

By now the more clued up among you (assuming I still have any readership, which is by the by anyway as nobody else NEEDS to know this, I just need to let it all out) will have guessed where this is headed. So I was buzzing with delighted that beautiful lovely girl had agreed to come away with me, we were even sharing a room in a holiday let apartment which I figured bode well for me that this situation hadn’t put her off from the start. In fact my worry by this point was that we’d end up sharing the bed and I’d make some drunken inappropriate pass that would result in a terribly uncomfortable holiday remainder so I tried my very best to be decent and gentlemanly and on the first night we did share the bed and I did nothing but sleep, appropriately, on my side with no behaviour to have shamed myself. So far so good you’d think, aside from my continuing failure to let her know how I felt, although this was never going to end the way I wanted it to so I’m not even going to entertain the “why didn’t I just tell her?” avenue of thought.

So it was the following day when things went awry, by all accounts entirely due to my EPIC STUPIDITY which started in all too familiar fashion. If ever a conversation turns to a wedding or marriage (not to myself, just in general) I always have to pipe up about my disappointment at only ever having been to one wedding in the 28 bastard years of my crudney existence . I suppose this is a rather pathetic attempt to evoke the sympathy of others but feeling guilty about my sob story I quickly followed it up with possibly the WORST thing I could have said: “So why not invite me to your wedding, eh?” If I’d spent any time actually thinking about this I could have quipped that indeed I and her should have got married with a cheeky grin on my face which could then have been laughed off and with any luck the matter would have tailed off there and then. But of course this is not what happened and instead the beautiful bitch started openly discussing her various options of three potential suitors she was currently deciding between, none of whom of course were me. This instantly left me feeling shit, and it wasn’t even lunch time of the second day. My mood hereafter I am ashamed to admit rapidly went downhill, coincidentally as my drinking increased significantly. She later confessed that I was bringing her down with all my negativity (there’s no god, I’d never inflict children upon the world, I’ve always hated myself etc.) and it probably is pretty hard work dealing with me whilst in that headspace so it isn’t like I don’t sympathise, but I just couldn’t help it, despite the warnings.

Anyway in an attempt to cheer up and thus lighten the mood I decided we’d go clubbing and I’d chuck drugs down my neck, because of course drugs always make things better... We went to a club, I got wrecked off my tits tripping and gurning like some fucking schoolboy on amateur night and the evening culminated in her winning the affections of some smug French CUNT. As she drunkenly staggered out of the club with him I did my best to follow and suggest we go home, but she was having none of it and the guy did his macho wanker best to get me to run along and leave him to take her home and bed her. Obviously I was powerless. He took her home, they had sex, I was in a world of pain. Not entirely sure how to cope with this (and having plundered all my class A’s) I turned back to good old fashioned booze and started chatting up strangers on the street before I met a couple of Begbie types who were impressed by the amount of wine I had access to back at the flat. Me and my two new companions staggered the streets in the early hours swigging from bottles of wine and putting the world to rights, or something like that. In truth I barely understood what they were saying, so proper jock they were. The next few hours are beyond recollection but all I can remember is waking up at 9pm the following day, with a hangover of legend. Stumbling to the bathroom I stared at my solemn battle scarred face in the mirror trying to make sense of things but failed pretty succinctly.

When beautiful bitch got in contact it was horrible, like the last voice in the world I wanted to hear but I knew full well that I was still meant to be looking after her on her first time north of the border and at any rate I had the only set of keys to the apartment. So I just ignored her calls for as long as I could, threw some clothes on and stumbled in the direction of the nearest pub I could find to drink off my hangover with Bloody Marys, which in fairness do seem to sink down pretty well after monstrous drinking binges.

The pathetic man I am I did my best to avoid her as much as possible for the rest of the time we were here and she quickly discovered that she had some old schoolfriend living up in the city as well as poaching the only other friend I had in the city (wouldn’t you know it, the lesbian) who unfortunately took her side and decided I was the shit for taking it all so personally. I found this pretty harsh as well being as me and the lesbian have been through much and in finally getting over my obsession with her had become close friends and confidantes almost. Suffice to say she knew full well how much I liked this girl and I thought she might show me some sympathy instead of congratulating her on her conquest and deciding I was a wanker for not being able to deal with it like a man. I believe this is called double ouch.

Beautiful heartbreaker has now left back for England as her flight was the day before mine anyway, so I at least don’t have to deal with the awkwardness of seeing her and sharing the set of keys with her at mutually convenient times. Instead with my last day up here I shall probably drink ludicrously again and do my best to actually go and see some shows before flying home seeing as I’ve managed to miss half the stuff I wanted to see owing to poor time keeping and over boozing. Curiously enough I was handed a flyer yesterday for a show called Love and a Colt 45 which describes itself thus:

“Hello, my name’s Beth and I’ve got a story to tell...

When I was a teenager I used to drink Colt 45 Lager. It was the cause of all my stupid decision...

Have you ever woken up in a strange place with no recollection of the night before? Or even worse too much of a recollection of the night before? Suffering from beer-fear? Alchonoia? Seeing loved ones giving you that look?”

So already I was finding some common ground here, and it went on:

“Shortly after that I fell in love for the first time – it was the cause of most of the rest of my stupid decisions...”

And again I thought, hmm this is actually AIMED at me. It continued:

“The show is about all the things you shouldn’t do because of alcohol. It’s about all the things you shouldn’t do because of longing.”

Well I am sold, it just seems a little too much like fate has handed me this flyer and destiny requires that I go. Mind you it’s probably sold out...

I may yet report back with my findings. I figure there’re bound to be more answers in there than in the bible anyway.

And because this post is already the length of an essay I will have to save the crushing pain of last week’s news that my beloved car had been crushed by the DVLA in an act of merciless motor murder which I had to find out about through the police. They say bad things come in threes. Doesn’t look like I’m going to be relieved of my life just yet then.

Shit

So another big fat gap emerges between my blog entries as I actually go out and get on with my life but as soon as I go and fuck things up massively once more here I am, tail between legs yet again, bleating to nobody about the pathetic situation I find myself in.

I often find that I'm intimidated about blogging after an extended period away, as if there's too much to recount and it would be an almighty effort ot fit everything, as if I HAVE to crowbar every detail I've missed out into my latest entry so as to keep everything well and truly documented for whatever self-satisfying reasons I have for keeping this blog in the first place.

I have a session with my therapist this week for the first time in about 6 weeks since he's perpetually on holiday/off sick/incommunicado and similarly I feel like there's nowhere near enough time in our allocated session to fill him in on everything that i've fucked up since we last spoke. So I guess I've also kind of answered my own question about why I even keep this up there too, it's a form of therapy. In a sense.

But this doesn't help me decide where to start from when trying to recount the latest skullfuckery in my pointless day to day existence.

Therefore, for want of a better structure, I am going to start with today. After all there must have been some catalyst which has drawn me back to blogspirit for some spleen venting. And yes, yes there was actually. But I shan't tell you until after I've raided the drinks cabinet to knock back booze that will make me feel marginally better about things for a very brief period of time...

... Cor I love Becherovka. Although I must be careful. My old man imports this stuff from the Czech Republic and will blatantly notice if I neck the whole bottle in one sorrow filled night. Particularly as I've no realistic chance of replacing it.

So, to today. I kind of got dumped. Although that would suggest I'd achieved the impossible and actually got myself hooked to a lady, which of course everyone knows will NEVER happen because I am very much destined to die a lonely pathetic old man, unable to experience true happiness. But I did manage to win some girl over on a drunken night out, we arranged a date, went out a few times and I was genuinely starting to think about the g word (by which I mean girlfriend, it's not actually obvious enough). She was by no means perfect, but I felt more of a connection with her than I do a lot of girls. I felt kind of safe that we shared interests such as drug taking, rave music and geeky over-reliance on a laptop for internet based nerdiness. With these boundaries/taboos out of the way from the start it does make things a lot easier in general as you're able to relax without fear that one of these dark secrets will come out and spoil things in future. I guess real men just make sure they only hook up with women who will understand them or simply won't care. But I am a long way from being a real man and on many an occasion have lied through my teeth about my lifestyle in order to get some kind of adoration/sex.

But I digress. The girl in question was perfectly nice and I was buoyed by the fact that her friend confessed to me that she'd told her that she liked me, which I have to be honest and say NEVER happens EVER. So I was feeling all smug and casually took her number then afterwards arranged a date, confident that she wouldn't say no, based on her mate's assertions. All good right? OK but that very same night of our casual meeting in the pub the girl in question needed to leave early due to a heavy weekend ahead and in her subsequent absence I quickly managed to sleaze onto another girl, presumably still full of confidence that I'd managed to make a good impression on somebody. God knows how but it worked and before I knew it this other girl was back at my flat and I don't need to go into detail from here on in. But yeah. I did.

So the next day this girl is gone and I genuinely didn't even know her name so I scanned my phonebook for new numbers, assuming that at some point I would have actually taken her number down but alas no, i hadn't. So I had no idea what her name was or how to ever contact her again. I kind of buried it there and then as a result, which was a shame because this girl had ENORMOUS boobs, but I had no idea who she was and judging by the speed of her exit had to assume she had little interest once sober.

Anyway this was all fine in light of the fact that I'd already arranged to meet the first girl I'd met of the night before for a date and I eagerly organised a meeting with her once she'd returned from her heavy weekender away. Now I probably should have waited to do things properly but she offered an invitation to come and meet her at her flat in her desperately-trying-to-recover state on the Monday after her weekender bender and having had a few myself I figured that it'd be great for us to hook up, both significantly worse for wear. And it turned out to be quite nice. We had some sort of half arsed conversation, discussed the merits of Kirsty from Property Ladder or Location, Location, Location (I forget which is which these days) and ended up having a bit of a cuddle in bed while Black Books played in the background on her lovely Macbook. I liked it anyway.

So there we go, not a proper date as such, but a night together that was enjoyable. And the next day I asked if she'd be up for breakfast with me and to my surprise she was very keen. However we were both grubby so I agreed to pop off home to smarten up whilst she did the same and what was going to be breakfast ended up as lunch, but I didn't mind obviously, as if anything lunch seemed more suitable a date than breakfast. Had a bite to eat in the pub and she was still very touchy feely and keen, so all seemed good. I was starting to get this wonderful feeling that somebody liked me more than I liked them, which normally only happens with utter trolls, and I imagined parading her to other people thinking I genuinely wouldn't be embarrassed. I guess I was jumping the gun but when somebody shows the slightest bit of interest and I'm not entirely besotted myself then I can't help but feel a little smug.

Anyway the lunch went well and I looked forward to seeing her again. We next met up for a meal in the evening and I was impressed by my gentlemanliness, if that's even a word. I thought it went well and we both ended up back at hers again. Surely good signs, particularly given her behaviour in bed which, without going into too much detail, suggested she was pretty into me.

Anyway, that was Friday night and she had to disappear on family matters for the rest of the weekend. Oddly enough she left me in her bed as she got up to drive to the other end of the country and I genuinely took time to work out how she could ever trace me should I decide to rob her. I soon went back to sleep though and 5 hours later she texted me from her destination whilst I was still in her bed. So I thought better of the robbery and trotted off home thinking I'd see her again on her return from the north.

Well Sunday came round and she wasn't back yet HOWEVER I caught up with some friends from London so got a bit involved on the Sunday night (knowing it was a bank holiday weekend) and this left me a little worse for ware BUT totally unprepared for the text message I received off the girl I'd slept with on the night I'd first met date girl. Apparently she'd finally gotten hold of my number and wanted to meet me. Now despite half of me thinking I should remain loyal to girl 1 and ignore this potential banana skin unfortunately I was wearing my penis that particular day so all rational thought went out the window. She said meet so I said yes.

Of course technically I was doing nothing wrong, agreeing to meet a girl, as a single man. But I had been letting myself get keen on this other girl, who as far as I could tell had been nothing but charmed by my delightful behaviour thus far.

Now by this point I was starting to seriously debate whether I'd have to end up making a tough decision as to who got the nod and knew full well that I couldn't take on that responsibility alone. I wanted them to fight for my affection, as has never happened before, not fear my iron fist. But then out of nowhere the decision was made very easy for me by girl 1 telling me, quite out of the blue, that she wasn't really interested after all. Now this really threw me as everything up until this point had suggested she was most keen, so it was a bit of a kick in the teeth. However she did definitely mean it and I later discovered that a catalyst in this decision was some other fella who had hitherto made no contact. This in turn made me feel shit even though in fairness

OK so I just got up, at 5am on Friday. I thought it was 5pm on Thursday and rushed to get up thinking I'd MASSIVELY overslept and had things to do. As I sat down at the computer to get some work done I noticed the date was IN FACT Friday and I got totally spun out that I'd lost an entire day and a half. Then my flatmate popped out of his room. "Why aren't you at work?" I enquired. Well mostly it was because it was 5AM.

So I hadn't missed most of Friday as I had feared, thank fuck, however Thursday went completely missing and I'd not even drunk anything. What a headfuck. And even though it was so dark outside it still didn't click that it was 5 in the morning rather than the afternoon.

I guess I can blame Nytol and Valium for this coma, man those things are powerful.

Oh yeah, and I was smoking the green stuff. I'd not actually bought any in over a year until I quite randomly picked some up on Wednesday evening whilst on the hunt for Ketamine. Today is day 13 without alcohol and I am approaching a personal best so when I was DESPERATELY in need of a drink on Wednesday night I spent most of the evening trying to track down a bit of the horse tranquiliser as an alternative. Now hunting down class A narcotics as a substitute for the readily available alcohol I am so keen to avoid may seem entirely stupid BUT I really REALLY needed to get out of it on Wednesday and was dangerously close to hitting the bottle, which would have ruined my attempt to prove to myself that I can cut it out when needed, and would also have left me in a right state - within which I've no idea what stupidity may have occurred.

So the point was I was running around chasing after the wonky donkey, without any success as it turned out, when someone offered me some Mary Jane. Initially I declined but as I got no nearer to finding the fabled Ketamine I was so sure would consume my evening I caved in and bought a henry, thinking that ANY drug was better than NO drugs.

Got home, feeling sorry for myself, so blazed away and popped a few Nytol (I can't believe I only discovered these recently, they are AMAZING) and some Valeries so as to send me comfortably away to dreamy dream land and therefore keeping me away from the evils of alcohol.

So that was Wednesday night, now is Friday morning. That's quite a good few hours I've been out of it for. Irritatingly I have things to do today too so this early morning will have to count as the start of my day. No more Nytol, Valium or Marijuana to knock the clocks forward a few hours, just get up and deal with it time.

Incidentally the reason I was SO desperate to get obliterated on Wednesday night was, unsurprisingly, down to the lesbian. But thinking about that right now really fucking hurts still so it will have to be a post for another day. Or night.

I just got an e-mail inviting me to sing karaoke with Justin Lee Collins.

Er...

FUCK OFF

So I met up with the lesbian today, and it wasn't even my idea! She called me up and wanted to hook up and I was pleasantly surprised by how normal and not awkward it was. All week I've been stewing that things will never be the same again and yet the one person I have been most worried about ruining things with seems to be almost fine with me again.

It was nice anyway.

But the real weird part is her suggestion that we move in together!!! Not as man and lesbian wife obviously, but I mentioned how it looked unlikely that my current flatmate would want to renew our tenancy in the current flat, and I wouldn't blame him either to be honest, and she said that if I am seriously going to be looking for somewhere new in a few months then she'd like to share with me as she's only in somewhere temporary at the moment.

Now obviously I'm DELIGHTED at this suggestion. Not least because it puts to bed all my fears that I'd lost my relationship with this girl, and it also gives me hope that good friendships can be repaired. And as I type I've just got a call from another mate which is nice as I've been almost entirely incommunicado for the past week. So fingers crossed it's not all totally shit.

But anyway, the lesbian as a housemate... Could I do this? Of course most of me thinks yes yes yes I'd love it, we get on well, she's really cool, fun, smart, funny, we're into similar things, she's a lovely person - what more could I want? BUT the part of me that's entirely in love with her (and it's a pretty fucking MASSIVE part of me) has smashed the glass to sound the alarm. Would it ACTUALLY be wise to share with someone you're THAT keen on who will inevitably bring other people back to the house? Now where women are concerned I don't seem to have a problem with this, in some typically macho "girl on girl is fine by me" way and I had no issue with her girlfriend when they were dating or any of her girl ex's that I've met or heard about. HOWEVER, since splitting with her ex she's been a bit lost and did end up getting off with a guy at our end of college party. Now that really hurt. Furthermore she often talks about other guys she's slept with in the past and I feel myself bubbling up with pathetic jealous rage. I guess these incidents with men would suggest she's not entirely lesbian, and I know obviously that's the case but she still refers to herself as a lesbian and therefore so do I.

So I am left wondering would it really be a good idea in my fragile state of mind to leave myself open to the possibility of being entirely heartbroken by this girl? I've never shared a home with someone I really REALLY liked before so it's difficult to judge whether the good times outweigh the possible pain.

I will mull it over at length but given I've had no other offers and cannot stand the thought of having to hook up with randoms for a houseshare again it's mighty tempting right now.

She is fucking livid with me but she doesn't hate me.

Small steps, but this is probably the single most significant thing that could have happened in this hideous aftermath.

I can only hope that whenever I see her next it's not just a complete fucking mess

And so, five days after my night of foolish twattery, it's really starting to sink in how badly I've messed up this time. Barely anybody seems willing to talk to me. This whole network of friends that I've worked years to build up in this city has pretty much been destroyed in one fell swoop. The flatmate who seemed to be the best home sharing option I've had in many a year is almost certainly going to be gone, and what's more the guy was a good friend too. I don't even know what we are now.

The lesbian, not just girl of my dreams but a genuine contender for one of my closest friends in years, won't take my calls. I have a horrible feeling she has suffered most from this stupid fuck up on my part, my wasted alter-ego spewing love-ridden sympathy texts her way in some subconscious desperate attempt to determine how much she cares. I don't know this for sure, but I've lived with my screwed up head for long enough to have half an idea how it works when it's in self-destruct mode.

I mentioned before how desperate I am to find that one true close special friend with the bond that I imagine exists between on-screen best friends such as Chandler and Joey, Will and Grace or Moomin and Snorkmaiden. But I don't even know if this even exists so commonly in the adult world. Just because I was deprived of any close allies during those personality shaping school years, doesn't mean that if things had been different for me then it would make any difference now. And when I look at other people, in my paranoia tinted specs, I still wonder whether lots of guys I see are as close as this hypothetical bond I find myself so keen to unlock. I think with girls it's a lot more obvious, and you rarely ever find a girl of any age who can't tell you who her very best friend is. I know my mum has a best friend but I have no idea if my dad would consider anyone his best friend, or even if he's even thought about it.

So maybe, as is the case with much of my troubled life, I am searching for something I believe I should have that, in fact, not everyone else does have. Well, of course I understand that obviously not EVERYBODY does have a best friend and there are clearly plenty of people out there with no friends whatsoever, and I pity them (as well as slightly sympathise right now) but it is all relative just as it is when people tell you to cheer up as it's not like you've lost your legs or have to die of starvation because your country is plagued by famine. I have never said my life is WORSE than those with missing limbs or severe malnutrition BUT I don't encounter these people in my day to day life, I've never been to Ethiopia and as wheelchair friendly as the modern age is I don't actually come across those unfortunate enough to be wheelchair bound on a regular basis. I don't want to compare my misery and suffering to that of other people but inevitably I do, always considering that the average guy on the street doesn't have to battle with anywhere near as many issues as I do. And what do I know? I know nothing just by seeing some guy kiss his girlfriend on the street in public. He may be beset by ill-health, have suffered severe trauma, lost many loved ones to a murderer, he might even have AIDS. BUT what do I see? I see the guy kissing his girlfriend on the street. And that says to me this guy is in a relationship, and instantly I feel certain that his life is better than mine.

So we're back to the girlfriend thing again, and doesn't it always come back to this? Reading back over moans of the past from these very pages and yes, yes it does come up a lot BUT I wonder which I crave more right now. Is it the closeness of a lover or the unbreakable bond of a best friend forever? I guess it's difficult to judge with experience of neither.

But what if there are people who consider me a close friend and I choose not to accept this? How do I even know I'd let anyone that close to me? Or at least as close as this imaginary bond I lust after defines. If I can never consider myself good enough for a partner due to my deep set feelings of having no self worth, how then can I ever expect to make it as someone's closest friend? I wouldn't date me, and I don't even know if I'd be my friend. Mind you, we do have the same sense of humour and taste in music...

But I digress. How do I recover from this? What is the way out? Surely the best course of action after a failed suicide attempt isn't a more successful effort and yet that's exactly how I feel right now. I am sure I had no real intention of actually harming myself on that drunken Friday in question, I was just in a foul mood and heavily under the influence of a drug I should be avoiding in this state. And the only catalyst can have been that I was having a bit of a petty strop - not a serious contender for suicide excuse of the year. BUT now where am I? More alone than ever having alienated myself from those I felt closest to. I can try my very hardest to win many of these people back but I know deep down that it will never be the same again, that I can't recover from this like I could a drunken late night "I love you" phone call or a slurred insult I didn't really mean.

Maybe I got a bit of pity out of it, but if I ever had any respect, I don't anymore.

And it's all about the lesbian. It is her I miss most in all this, and her that I feel, right now, I would cope worst without. Never mind that I've only known her 6 months compared with the 8 years of some of these friends I've lost, I just want her to understand. And why is this? Just because I am in love with her? What possible good can come of this? Knowing that I can't have her doesn't come in to it, and regardless of my feelings for her I just really want to be close to her. And I do think I genuinely want her friendship, I'm not just looking for second best being as I can never have her as my own. But how do I know that even if I got her back, even if she forgave me and things went somewhere close to how they once were, how do I know that the first sniff of some rival for her affections wouldn't send me spiralling out of control? Well, I don't. But right now I don't care.

I miss her.

I miss being able to be me.

As much as I don't update this blog anywhere near as much as I'd like I feel the time is right for a get it all out post which may or may not be the catalyst for more regular future postings. One thing is for sure though, I need to keep writing and I need to get this shit off my chest, regardless of the fact nobody will read it.

So I am finally over the other side of a weekend I wish had never happened. Why do I wish it never happened? Because I was a complete fucking dick. And why was I a complete fucking dick? Partly because I was pissed out of my tree but also, largely due to the fact that I am a head mental and have serious abandonment issues.

So what have I done that's so bad? Well unfortunately I don't have a very good memory of my actions so have had to piece things together from selected accounts from the various people who are ever so angry with me. From what I can gather though, I was too pissed to get into some club on the Friday night and instead of accepting this gracefully I instead got upset that my friends all went in regardless. Now whilst I don't remember exactly what happened I can easily imagine myself getting worked up by such a situation as I have a history of kicking off when I feel left out, sometimes justifiably so I feel, but this one is hard to judge because considering I don't even remember it there is a fair chance that I was too much of a mess to get in anywhere and so it was perhaps unfair of me to expect all my mates to change their plans in order to try and accommodate me. However, considering I had put everyone up at my place (seriously pissing my flatmate off in the process) in the hours prior to going out I have to sympathise with my drunken irrational mind here, and my frustration would have been made yet worse by the fact that I was already in a right old grump about having been purposefully shunned by another group of so-called mates who were enjoying a party to which I was not invited that very night.

Oh this is all so lame I know but come on, indulge me, I need to get this out.

So, instead of trudging off home a little worse for wear I apparently went MENTAL, spitting out pathetic attention seeking text messages left, right and centre AND (shudder) changing my voicemail greeting to something that suggested I had killed myself. You see, this is where it gets seriously UNCOOL. Presumably I then turned my phone off and what became of me after that I've no idea. There seem to be suggestions that I climbed all over the pier (idiot) although how I got up there and what happened to me there I really couldn't say.

So it's all pretty text book "look at me" attention seeking behaviour for which I am not in any way proud of myself BUT, concerningly, it would seem I didn't simply turn up back home in the morning, tail between my legs OH NO.

I actually came to on Sunday afternoon, a good THIRTY hours after my last meaningful memory, and it all seemed eerily calm - I was in bed, at home, as if I had simply overslept rather dramatically having hit it a bit hard on the Friday night. But then I turned my phone on... And the fires of Hades were unleashed on my already achey brain. There were SO many messages I lost count and most of them were calling me a selfish cunt, or other variations on that theme. Of course there were the "we are all very worried about you" messages too, but mostly people were ANGRY with me. And then there were messages from the Police, as someone had thought to report me as a missing person, which I didn't think you could do unless you'd been missing for several days at least BUT apparently I am wrong.

Anyway, as if this wasn't bad enough, my flatmate obviously hears me roused from my countless hours of slumber and pops in to tell me I've been a selfish cunt. He says the police came round several times, along with ambulance crews (why??) and several of my mates from the night out. He then tells me that once I returned on the Saturday the filth came round again to do some sort of "well-being" follow-up call except I was completely zombified and couldn't be woken. I'm really scared by this because there really isn't even the tiniest shred of memory here and you'd think when the pigs get involved that'd sober you up a little but apparently I was oblivious to this, and I've no reason to doubt it did happen, given the rest of my antics up until this point. Turns out there were several empty packets of sleeping pills on the floor which might help explain this state. AND it turns out he's had to ring round other people to see if anyone knew where I was so this little episode is now common knowledge among all sorts of people I'd rather didn't know about it.

Flatmate also points out that he's stripped the lounge of anything belonging to him (big telly, stereo) as he "can be selfish too". Now I can't work out whether this is meant to be some sort of punishment for me or whether he just doesn't trust me around his stuff or even whether he simply doesn't want to have to spend time with me so will retreat to his room permanently safe in the knowledge that he has everything he needs in there. At any rate, he is clearly NOT impressed.

And nor am I. How I let myself get into this sort of state I really don't know. For years now I've been warned by doctors, therapists, friends and family that I NEED to control my drinking habits but for some reason I choose to ignore these warnings and end up losing DAYS of my life in which I could have lost my entire life. Now from what I have been told and can gather I'm fairly sure this was a pretty desperate attempt to get some sympathy and attention but at the same time I don't actually remember what I was doing so who knows how serious my battered mind was at the time? I could have killed myself almost subconsciously. If I'm not in control then who or what is? I know you can argue that the alcohol is in control but it's not ACTUALLY is it? I mean I still have the use of my limbs and whatever else, surely at the time I'm not just unconscious and my body is being controlled by some outside force, right?

I guess I just don't have a very right frame of mind.

Sadly this is not something I can brush under the carpet however. And as the latest in a number of alcohol related attacks of stupidity I'm acutely aware of the fact that I genuinely have to stop drinking, at least until maybe I am better again, if I even can be cured.

But what's really killer about it all is that I know I've lost good friends to this behaviour, and I don't even blame them. Selfish, attention seeking, pity parades such as this hardly endear me to other people and why bother getting close to someone who threatens to throw it all away and hurt you? There are many people I'd be devastated at losing and yet I can't imagine other people feeling that way about me. I never have done. I am constantly battling with my feelings of self-loathing, beefed up every time I get left out or miss out on some event I feel I should have been invited to. As if every time I'm not being cared for and adored this is some personal slight against me for being some kind of blemish in whatever social circle I'm paranoid about being excluded from.

Furthermore, I've managed to involve two distinctly seperate friendship groups which I have been desperately trying to keep apart as deep down I think I've known for a while I'd inevitably fuck it up with one lot and thus would end up relying on the other for support. It would seem however that I've royally fucked it up with BOTH groups. The only friends I've not involved and therefore alienated are all the far away, out of touch or settled down types that sadly won't make things better.

I feel like I'm going to have to start from scratch all over again, which is daunting to say the least, and may sound overly dramatic BUT I have really messed up with some people, whilst other relationships were hanging by a thread anyway. This leaves me really alone again. I always seem to be desperate for that one true best mate type friend, and often I go looking for that person in somebody far too soon, or even when it isn't totally appropriate. True deep friendships are forged over years and years of hard work, but I don't have TIME for this. I need somebody to listen to my troubles, tell me things will be alright and share secrets with me in a girly fashion that boys wouldn't usually admit to but all secretly love, and I need this somebody NOW. These days my therapist knows more about me than anyone else in my life and I guess that's not that unusual in that opening up to strangers can seem a lot less risky than trusting someone close but I still feel I'm missing that best mate material that I've been crying out for since the succession of losses I suffered in primary and middle school (losses to other countries mainly, not THAT dramatic).

I've always wanted to be adored. Apparently sloppy, drunken suicide attempts aren't the way to go about it.

I am feeling: ASHAMED

:(