Adoration

After 83 days of living with him, I think it is time to write about him. My housemate.

I haven’t lived with anyone I didn’t really know before, I won’t holiday with anyone I don’t like, I’ll rarely spend time with people I don’t really know so I technically moved in with a stranger. Yes, he was in my social circle but I never said more than 10 words to him and now here we are living together.

Day 83 has us sitting in the living room together. He is sitting on the couch reading the Sunday Times while I watch him from the kitchen table. I am pondering how to word what I want to say about him.This morning he made me coffee and laughed when I didn’t like it, he toasted my bagel for me and helped to pack my friends suitcase for her.

Usually we stay up late talking to each other, I tell him stories about growing up and he laughs while I recall the silly things that I have done. He has an incredible memory for remember the silly things I’ve said while in his company and he loves to repeat them to anyone who will listen. He loves to sleep and usually starts his “It’s nearly bed time” count down from about 9pm. He picks out music that I have never heard of that he thinks I will like. He is afraid to be in the car with me because he thinks I am a dangerous driver and will sit in the back unless he looses a bet and has to ride shot-gun. He is trying to teach me how to play guitar and he thinks I can play a perfect G. Sometimes he will sit with me and play and when the song requires a G chord, he’ll nod and I’ll play. He tries to make me sing more, and keeps asking us to start a band or go busking. We talk about our families and friends that we had that are no longer around. He loves humous and reggae sauce, he eats creme eggs whole and has a new found addiction to winding me up. We Facebook each other across room, text each other throughout the day and have a handshake that we do before bed time.   Sometimes we hide in my room and talk, sometimes he climbs into my bed when drunk. He always says “Please and Thank you” and always remembers to give me a fake evil look when I leave the door open by accident.  If I tell him something about someone and he repeats it, I get mad, he’ll later take me aside laughing and say “You know it is okay to let someone know that you will miss them”. He is respectful and wise, he doesn’t push his beliefs on anyone and he is generous with his time. He appreciates when I cook for him and he always cleans up after I do. He makes me laugh so hard that I cry and when he is hung over I crawl in next to him to check his pulse. We’ve made some funny traditions and all of them make me feel like I belong here. He gives me advice and reminds me of my self-worth, he helps me to figure things out and he always sits next to me when he thinks I might be feeling lonely.

Most importantly he thinks we are family and that families should look after each other and he does, he takes care of me, even with all my ups and downs. I love my new home, my new family and my new friend, Brian.

7 things you need for silence

Things needed if you are giving up talking for 24 hours for charity.

1. A doodle board (for small chit~chat)

2. A notebook (about 200 pages should do it, This can be used for longer conversations!)

3. Cigarettes or Chewing Gum (Handy when stressed out of you realised you have chewed the inside of your gum away to keep you from talking)

4. Board Games (Do not play if you are not able to win, losing without being able to moan about it, is not only horrible but boring for the winner)

5. Music you have never heard before (Music you don’t know means lyrics you don’t know, which means no singing along!)

6. Chocolate (No explanation needed)

and 7. your favourite people in the world. Gather them all together and make them stay with you. They’ll torture you in with things that never bothered you before, they will drag you around town and make you socialise, they’ll text you when they know you can’t reply, they’ll take fake phone calls and whisper because you can’t ask what’s going on and they’ll drive you around the bend until you think you are going to lose the plot completely.

The thing is though, at the end of the day when you are about to start talking again and you have butterflies in your tummy and you’re starting to get really nervous, you’ll say your first few words and look around and see that amidst a crowd of social acquaintances are 5 faces looking at you and they are smiling, they are smiling because they are proud.

More to life than 96fm

It’s been one of those weeks where I have either been really up or really down or just all over the place.

When I’ve been down I’ve wanted to throw kettles (and other kitchen appliances) at peoples heads. I’ve wanted to scream and shout and just go mental.

When I was in good form I was chatty and being funny and wanting to be around people and loving being busy.

When I was neither here nor there, I was clinging to people for comfort and love, the smile or wink that lets me know they love me.

Since moving out I can’t figure myself out, I was so used to the comfort of running into Mom and saying I’m not feeling great. I’ve bickered so much with housemate 1, I can’t tell him and I’m only  getting to know housemate 2. I feel bad because I have depended on the other so much more, making the stay late, asking them to stay over and making sure that I have this really strong support system.  I don’t know how they put up with me to be honest, I won’t shut up the I go quite, I don’t know my arse form my elbow when it comes to talking about anything to do with, well anything really. Politics, world affairs, authors, music, movie directors, Not a clue.

Makes me wonder why they hang out with me at all, yeah sure I’ll say anything to anyone about anything but have i got substance?!

I gotta go to a class, a class on confidence and world affairs maybe I should start taking and interest in the news, I don’t think the Evening Echo and 96fm have it all covered somehow.

Tea and Tears

Sometimes we get tea together and inevitably he comes up in conversation. She always asks how he is and I always reply that he is fine. He is sick though.  She worries as much as I do and the funny thing is that if we talk about it for too long, her eyes well up.  She keeps everything under wraps, all her emotions are hidden under huge rocks that I am only able to glance under, but her feelings towards him are on the surface.

The strange thing is, that I am much closer to him than she is and I don’t deal with it, I try not to think about it. I ask him how he is in a concerned motherly tone and I jump when he coughs, I hear him blow his nose and wonder if its all connected. I can’t believe that I lived 23 years without him, to live in a world without him doesn’t seem possible to me. I won’t think about the future because I’m not sure I could cope, my feelings about it are the only ones I keep under wraps.

 

Teach me how to shine

The was only four of us left in the room, it was about 5am, pushing six and he picked up the guitar and started to play a song by the Frames.  To the left of me another guitar got picked up and their voices joined together.  Waiting for the chorus, we joined in. You could feel the room change, like magic sweeping all around us, into our lungs and back out.

“Star Star, teach me how to shine”  Looking around, I got a wink, a smile and I saw tears. It was  one of those moments you couldn’t plan but I knew would be put in a box and remembered forever.

Midnight

Just before midnight, minutes before turning 25, I drove to Monkstown with one of my closest friends in tow. We sat in the car listening to terrible 80′s cheese waiting for the clock to strike. It was then I was suddenly aware without even realising it at the time, that I had driven as near to Mary as I possibly could, right across the river, only a stones throw away. It seems my subconscious is alive and well and thinking about her today, of all days, my birthday.

Meh.

It’s 3.30 am and I’m all stuck in my head. I never know what is actually going on in there. I had a great day, I cleaned my room so that’d I’d maybe be able to clear my mind. I had a delicious dinner with a friend and went to see UP. I wouldn’t usually go see an animated movie but I relaly enjoyed it and had good banter all night. By the time I got hime though, I felt so unsure of myself, not for any reason though, just unsure of myself. It’ll be my birthday soon, in about 9 days or so. I used to be so excited about it, counting down the days and planning something to do. This year for some reason I want it to just pass over like any other day. I know when people get older they hate their birthdays but I’m only turning 25 it’s not like I’m about to get my pension. Anyway, I can’t sleep and I’m bothered by the fact that it’s only been winter weather about a week and I’m already feeling a case of SAD coming on. I hate winter and all the emotions that come with it.

Fighting for Friendships

I always think that friendships are funny. How they start and how they sustain. What makes a good friend and how do some people stay friends and some people don’t? Rachel was like a second half as it were. We met at secondary school when we were 11. She was pretty and popular, I was the opposite. I had friends in school but I was bullied for the first few years. I  remember telling her that her new hair cut was nice back in 1st year. She looked me up and down and made a face and mumbled thanks. I used to remind her of this all the time. It made her cringe and it made me laugh. By 3rd yr we had become friends, forced together through after school study, we soon became passing notes and bonding through crushes and the secrets we knew from different circles. Soon we became inseparable. Always sitting together in class and through lunch. She’d study hard and I’d start planning my life, lists of countries I wanted to see, people I wanted to meet, hair colours I wanted to try. I was always making lists and she was always studying.  My mother thought we were too close, holding hands and sleeping in the same bed went on for years.  There was kissing for a while, when were about 16 or so, that was on and off dependant on what was going on in our lives. Kissing seemed very natural, we certainly didn’t feel like lesbians, it just seemed to be another expression of what we felt for each other and how clsoe we were. Boyfriends came and went and we were always there to pick up the pieces. Hours of Dawson’s Creeks, yards of knitting and litres of ice-cream helped to mend the wounds and meant days of talking while cuddled up together. Sometimes I would wake up and she’d be next to me, she’d have gotten up in the middle of the night and driven over to me, sometimes she’d arrive drunk from town, either way she’d let herself in, steal a t-shirt , climb over me tell me she loved me and fall asleep. Dad used to knock before he’d enter the room, afraid of what he might see, this always made us laugh. We are just friends I’d reassure him of no lesbian activity in his house. The thing is, it did sometimes feel like we were in a relationship. Aside from the kissing that went on as kids and the random drunken kissing that happened every now and then. We were not in a relationship. Through the years we fell out over silly things, hurt pride and hurt feelings but we always came back together, a little bruised but always forgiving. I didn’t chose to pull away, it just happened naturally. I guess I ran out of things to talk to her about. Without even realising it we had taken different paths, we had started to change and we forgot to tell one another. At the end of July she said we couldn’t be friends anymore, that I wasn’t putting in enough effort and that it was all my fault anyway for hurting her feelings af ew years back, she never recovered she said. I wanted to tell her that I loved her, that I didn’t want a life without her, but I wasn’t willing to fight for her. She wanted me to fight, fight for our friendship. She wanted me to tell her outloud that I couldn’t and wouldn’t let her walk away but just like a relationship sometimes feels like its nearing the end, this too felt like it was coming to a close. 9 years we were best friends.

Since coming back from holidays, my bed does seem a little bigger than I remember it, there is no one to sit and watch me knit and I have no one to make toast for.

I didn’t fight for her and now she is gone.

Childrens Names

I was chatting with my friend the other day and the conversation of children’s names came up. We sat and discussed names we liked. I had to admit i laughed at most of his, he picked names that wouldn’t match his surname and I advised him to let his future wife name the kids. For girls, I like names like Savannah, Vada, Elizabeth, Alex. For boys I like Adam, Ronan, Eoghan/Eoin/Owen, William, Harry. (I can’t really name kids William and Harry though since that might be terms for bullying!) The thing is, I don’t know anyone named Savannah, Vada, Elizabeth or Alex (Well I have a friend who is a guy called Alex, ironically the guy I was having this conversation with!) BUT I do know and Adam, Ronan, Eoghan/Eoin, William and Harry. They are the men in my life who have been there through the years, people who mean something to me. They keep me strong, they are my guiding stars and because of them, I know how I should be treated by a guy. Someone said to me recently, “anyone who gets to know *insert name here* is just looking to have their heart broken, how have you escaped?”  I laughed and said. “I love him, like all my boys in the simplest most puerest way, He can’t break my heart, he is someone who helps protect it for me” It suddenly became clear to me why I would name a child after one of them. I love them, they are real men who inspire me, comfort me, protect me and remind me, to just be me.

Distinctive Cheering

Today I got the DVD of my time as a Cork Rose contestant. I watched it when I got home alone and I was so critical of myself. I didn’t like the way I looked, I was too fat for my dress, I was moving about the whole time. I never stopped talking, I nearly said porn but instead said “lovely magazine” I was sprouting so much rubbish. I had to turn it off. I watched it later with Mom and she thought it was brilliant, loved the dress and thought I was great. I needed some time before I could turn it back on.

After a few hours, I went back to watch it again. I watched it over and over and analysed the way I move and talk. The more I watched it, the more I didn’t see what I looked like. I started to hear myself, the way my voice goes into a higher pitch when I’m excited and how I make this funny face when I’m laughing at something I think is really funny.  Just before turning it off I just listened to it, I didn’t want to analyse my dress or the way my arms were going the whole time, I just wanted to hear what it is I sound like. My voice doesn’t sound the way it does in my head. Just as I was starting to think I was terrible, I could hear some distinctive voices cheering in the background and then I remembered that it was all because they believed I could do it, that I did.