Sleeping like a Dad

Our own Dad-like Hell!

I’ll keep this one brief because the past few days, my spare time is like my sex life: It doesn’t exist. And when it does, it consists of me panting for breath, wiping the sweat from my brow, and weeping silently. You see, my wife has been put on permanent bed rest until the baby is born, which essentially means I have to take care of her, my 3 year old son, as well as cook, clean, do laundry, and make daily visits to her doctor’s office. I don’t need to tell you that I’m failing miserably. Already, the laundry is beginning to pile into a giant amorphous beast. I think it has developed sentience. We need to keep the door locked to prevent it from absorbing my son. And I’m pretty sure it raided the fridge last night.

My Wife has it pretty bad too. I have to admit that. Her body is serving up the eviction papers as we speak. My daughter will have to vacate, because my wife has had enough: Back spasms, high blood pressure, nausea, discomfort, pain, and about eighty more symptoms that she likes to remind me of every… 2 minutes or so. I told her that’s how I feel when I go to the gym. Now she has a sore fist to add to that list.

So there’s a high likelihood that I’ll have a daughter the next time I post – that could be when she goes to college, at this rate. Maybe I’ll get her to guest post. Hopefully she’ll settle down quickly, and her and my son will keep each other entertained, and perhaps they’ll tire one another out and sleep 16 hours a day, and my wife and I will have all the time in the world to rekindle our pre-baby magic. I know this is just fantasy, and I’ll spend most of the next three years in a sleepless fog of screaming kids and shitty diapers. But a man can hope. After all, “once you choose hope, anything’s possible.” Christopher Reeve said that… before he died… from severe complications from his quadriplegia. Hmm…

I do want to point something out. I would happily murder the person who coined the phrase “sleeps like a baby!” Babies don’t fucking sleep. A baby’s sole, single solitary goal in life is to deprive his/her parents of as much sleep as possible, while still managing to survive. It’s like a game of Russian roulette for the wrinkly little Benjamin Buttons`. “Let’s try to drive our parents to the point of insanity, without them abandoning us by jumping in front of the nearest passing train!”

The problem is, it doesn’t end with the newborns. Tonight, my son (whom I’ve spent every waking hour with over the past five days) decided I’d misjudged his bedtime tonight. “Hey Dad,” I imagined him say, “it’s Saturday night. Let’s stay up for two more hours.” Well, son… believe it or not, I had a game on the DVR I wanted to watch. Maybe you should just go to sleep and climb in to our bed around midnight, like you do… Every… Fucking… Night! Nope. It’s 10.30 now and the little Beelzebub has literally just fallen asleep 10 minutes ago (To note: I began writing this post 12 hours ago).

So yeah… the uncle, or aunt (‘cause it wasn’t a Mommy, or Daddy), who coined the phrase “sleeping like a baby” is more than welcome to spend the evening putting my son to bed. Sleep like a baby? Yeah right! Should be ”sleep like the parent’s of a baby… any fucking chance they get!!!”

Hey Roomie!

Hey Marv... tonight we eat!!!!

My mother-in-law will be arriving in a week. That’s pretty much the last thing we’re waiting on – aside from the actual baby. When she arrives, we’re pretty much ready to go. I’m pretty excited about this (the baby arriving more so than my MIL). My wife, understandably, is not so much. She’s more… how would one put it – in a constant state of blind, unrelenting terror. Basically she’s got an operation to look forward to; an operation whereby they’ll cut through layers of her abdomen, until they reach her womb. Then they’ll keep cutting until they find a baby. While she’s awake! Let that sink in for a moment. When they performed a C-section on her to spelunk for my son, she remarked that although numb, she could feel them tugging and pulling at her insides. It was a fucked up sensation for the eyes too. Like one of those magic tricks where they put the body in a box, saw through it, and separate the feet end from the head end: where my wife’s torso should have been, were two surgeons rummaging away at the table like two bums in a trash can. A very bloody trash can.

I made the unfortunate comment, a few weeks ago, that I was nervous about being in the room with her while they cut her in two. There little point in me telling you it didn’t go down well. I do feel genuinely bad for her though: where I’m beginning to get excited – up at 4 am excited – she’s essentially paralyzed with nerves.

But the thing that gets her through it, the thing that gives her a beacon of joy at the end of her painful, mentally draining ordeal, is the knowledge that for the four or five days she’s going to be recuperating, I’m going to be housemates with her Mom.

Now, I have nothing against her Mom. My MIL and I get on just fine. We interact when we have to. We make polite conversation, we both enjoy willfully corny jokes, and she stays out of my business the exact right amount a Mom-in-law should – which is totally. She can be a little passive-aggressive at times, but show me a lady in late middle age that isn’t. We get on perfectly, which is to say we keep each other at just the right distance to never have to argue or, I dunno… hug and stuff. But now… now we have to decide what to have for dinner together, we have to coordinate getting ready in the morning, which may involve me knocking on her bedroom door and maybe seeing things I never wanted to see. We’ve got to watch TV in the evenings together, and go grocery shopping together. And we have to do these things together. We can’t just ignore each other for nearly a week; then the charade is blown. There’s no going back from that. Ultimately, it’s akin to saying “I’ve got nothing against you; I just don’t like you.” So we have to do all these things together. And I have this irrational fear of us walking through Wal-Mart together hand in hand.

Of course my son is the delicious filling in this crusty tasteless sandwich. He’ll fill all the awkward silences. He’ll be an unending topic of conversation when the only sound is the clock ticking in the background. And that moment when we’re watching a movie and the sex scene comes on and me and my MIL are silently dying on the inside, well, that’s bedtime.

And then when my wife and newborn child return home, myself and the MIL will go back to being polite strangers, casually avoiding any genuine commitment to a shared relationship. But every once in a while, we’ll catch each other’s eye, and share a knowing moment… that we’ve been to hell and back, but that we shared it together.

On a totally unrelated note (because right now my options are: keep writing, watch reality TV with my wife, or tidy up), my wife and I have been getting up super early lately, and I have no idea why. The past two mornings I’ve been up before 4.30am, and my wife usually follows me down the stairs an hour or two later. My son meanwhile, stays sleeping until after eight. It’s like bizarre world. When I was a small child, I can’t think of one incident when my parents were up before me.

In part I suspect it’s because my son climbs into our bed in the early hours. He doesn’t do this sometimes; no, he does this EVERY. FUCKING. NIGHT. And he fidgets. It’s like having a three foot tall, somnolent break-dancer under the covers.

But it’s more than just that. He’s been disturbing our sleep since he was born, and the effect has, hitherto, been me draining every last second of time until my alarm clock goes off. So it can't be just that. As I mentioned above, it could be excitement, but to be quite frank, I’m not very excitable in the mornings. It usually takes a not-insignificant amount of caffeine before I’m able to raise a smile.

It could be the fact that I’ve been falling asleep while putting my son to bed, the last few nights. Why am I falling asleep while putting him to bed, I hear you ask? Well, aside from the fact that I’m waking at four fucking am, my son has started to take sometimes more than an hour to fall asleep. We think it’s a phase he’s going through – I believe the phase known as “being a little shit” and it lasts until he’s about 18. He stays awake by playing little games with himself. We make sure to remove all toys from the area, we turn out all lights, we don’t engage him at all; it’s full-on like sensory deprivation for the little guy. But like some middle-eastern political prisoner, the kid bears his solitary confinement out, by keeping his mind active: he’ll wiggle his toes and feet for ten minutes. Then he’ll play with the corner of his pillow for a while, flicking it back and forth, back and forth. Then he might make little shapes with his fingers. How he gleans entertainment from this is beyond me, but it’s the kind of thing that could have me punching myself in the eyeballs with frustration, if I hadn’t learned a coping mechanism of my own: it’s called sleep. Yup, I just clear my schedule for the evening, and lay there in the darkness until I get drowsy. He probably caves around 1am, I have no way of knowing, other than I stumble back to my own bed around 2, and he follows me not long after. Then squirms and kicks until I’m awake again, downing cup after cup of tea and coffee, waiting for the sun to come up. Ad infinitum.

As you can see above, I’m super-fancy now and have my own domain name. No more “.blogspot” for this go-getter. I’m on my way to the top. Unfortunately, this had two nasty side-effects. One, I think I may have an ulcer from the fucking frustration of trying to redirect my domain through my blogger domain name. Seriously, I’m fucking gray now. And two, it erased my blogroll (why did it do that, you might wonder? My money is on spite. It makes no other sense to me than Google wrote code to erase my blogroll out of spite, for removing the “.blogspot” from my address). The upshot is: I need the names of anyone who may have been on my blogroll, and now isn’t, and wants to be again. Or if you were never on it, and want to be anyway… we can do that too. I’m desperate. As long as you’re not trying to sell penis enlargements, or some shit like that.

H.E.R.O.

Nondescript Super Hero Type Character

If you haven’t picked up on it from some of my other blog posts, I’ll spell it out: I’ve been feeling a little depressed lately. That’s nothing too unusual for me; I suffer from depression and anxiety. My doctor told me. Depression, for the uninitiated, isn’t a simple case of feeling a bit blue, a bit glum; depression is a way of life. You might punk your hair up and listen to death metal on the weekend, then show up for work on Monday in a suit and tie, but we’re the guys with tattoos on our faces and gauges in our nostrils. We’re living it 24/7. We don’t have bad days, or a bad weekend; we have bad fucking years. My depression usually lasts for about three months at a time, maybe longer, maybe shorter. And I don’t just feel sad or wistful: I get headaches, I can’t eat, I succumb to alcohol, I keep the blinds closed until my wife can bear it, I wear pajamas 90% of the time I’m home, I miss work, I go into short bursts of panic when the phone rings or there’s a knock on the door, I don’t cry at sad things – I cry at happy things, but worst of all, I walk around with this emptiness, this emotional black hole that sits in my chest with the weight of a collapsed star, and eats… just eats away at me, at my humanity. So yeah, I’ve had that going for me for the last few months.

But here’s the good news: I can feel it start to lift. A lot of this is just timing; it’s the gradual and natural healing process. Some of it is experience; I’ve come to terms with having this illness and have learned when, and how, to say “fuck off depression” and kind of force myself to get over it. But there are some awesome changes going on in my life right now, and I surprise myself by how excited and happy I feel lately (seriously, having a happy disposition is a depressive’s Holy Grail). In two weeks (maybe sooner), I’m going to have a daughter – the absolute mind-fuck of awesomeness this brings is starting to sink in. We’re cutting her out, so already that’s one decision we’ve taken out of her hands – the first of a lifetime full of them. I guess therapy has helped too. My therapist played a key role in getting me to write again, and that sure has helped. The outcome of that is this blog, and I’ve had a lot of positive feedback about it, from people who don’t know me, and thus don’t have reason to offer false platitudes just to protect my gentle ego. But most of all, I’ve had the unconditional support of my family: My son and my wife.

When I was about 15, I had every inch of wall covered with pictures of Rock Stars and Sporting heroes. I had a poster of every member of the Manchester United ’94 double-winning team. Individually. I had about 50 posters of Eric Cantona. And while my hero worship for these guys never faded, the pictures eventually came down (there comes a point in time of every man’s life, when he either starts taking pictures of fully-grown, athletic men in awkward positions off his walls, or else starts putting them up; they’re a different kind of picture). Nowadays, although I’m still a fan of sports – to the point of obsession – I don’t really look up to the guys on the field anymore. They’re not my heroes. Sure, I can admire them, and I can appreciate the action and drama they create in my life. For a start, they’re all younger than me now. It’d just be weird to worship a 22 year old because he can throw a ball real good. Ditto with music: I can be moved by a piece of music, inspired by lyrical genius, but I wouldn’t cry if Robert Smith died tomorrow, like fifteen year old me did over Kurt Cobain. Nor do I try to find deep, hidden meanings in their lyrics, as if God’s signature was hidden somewhere in the second verse.

Le King

My heroes are a lot closer to home now. More tangible. They’re my heroes because I love and admire the sacrifices they’ve made in their ordinary, everyday lives, not for fame or fortune, but because it was right, or because they had to just to get one foot in front of the other. Because of pure, old-fashioned integrity.

My Dad is my hero: he faced his death with a stoicism and strength that’s still unfathomable to me as a mature (no really…) adult, and a father. Even in his dying moments, he tried to protect us all from the worst of his pain. But more than that, he was a man of incredible integrity, who didn’t take bullshit off anybody, who believed in himself at all costs; he a man with razor-sharp intelligence – he studied math for fun – but most of all, he was a kind man, and an awesome dad, who never failed to make my Brother and Me laugh. And even though I haven’t seen him in 15 years, he’ll always be a hero to me.

But I have another hero in my life. Right here and now, the one person who continues to stand side by side with me, through my darkest days, through all the shit I’ve created in her life, is my beautiful wife. My wife suffers from a long-term chronic illness, which sometimes is a complete drag and the rest of the time makes the simple act of existing painful. It’s the kind of illness that would have destroyed me years ago, but every day she gets out of bed, eats breakfast – sometimes through a thick mist of nausea – gets in the shower, puts her make-up on, makes her hair all pretty, and says “Fuck you Ulcerative Colitis” like a fucking boss!

She cares for our son while I’m at work, with no family for support, despite the fact that she’s 37 weeks pregnant, and often enduring the kind of suffering most of us can only guess at. And she’s awesome with him. She does little art projects with him, and teaches him his colors, and numbers, and letters. She’s even thought him to read a bunch of words. And she’s sweet and loving and patient with him to an extent that seems almost impossible on reflection.

And she’s sweet and loving and patient with me too. She didn’t sign up for an alcoholic with depression who’s let himself go a little, but she sure as hell is sticking by him. My wife is the main reason why I’m starting to feel better. Without her support and love, I’d be drunk in a studio apartment somewhere, weeping silently while I furiously masturbate to some kind of strange foreign pornography. But she’s protected me from that life – Goddammit, she’s swooped in superman style, and saved me from that life. A life of bad pornography and tears. Her problems are hers, and my problems are hers, and though that might not be fair, she gives zero fucks because she’s my wife and she loves me. And I love her. Immensely. She’s my hero for all that, and more.

Plus… she’s super fucking hot!!!

Freudian Tip

Freud: They see me rollin'... they hatin'...

I seem to have started a therapist turf war. I’m in demand. I’m seeing a Therapist about a half an hour away in downtown Portland, but the local Therapist ain’t having that. Downtown Therapist has stepped on suburban Therapist’s patch, and it’s going to end only one way: in a violent and bloody shoot-out.

Or at least it would, if either of them knew the other existed. See, for a few weeks last month I was seeing two Therapists. This wasn’t planned – I’m not that messed up that I need a team of Therapists to fight my inner demons, like a nerdy croc-wearing version of Fathers Merrin andKarras. I just kind of got stuck with two Therapists. I was going to explain how this happened, but it’s quite a boring story involving the kind of clumsy, disjointed social awkwardness you only see from people with deep-set, OCD veterans, such as yours truly.

A cinematic representation of my treatment. My Brain is the levitating 12 year old girl: apt as a motherfucker.

Long story short, I ditched local, suburban Therapist because, while he was professional, and clinical, and understanding, I didn’t really connect with him like I did with downtown Therapist. I think he actually blushed when I mentioned sex, which then made me blush. One awkward silence and a change of subject later, I decided he probably wasn’t my guy. By the time we finally made eye contact again, I was certain.

The first guy, my current Therapist, is a pretty cool guy. He talks a lot about acting, and truth be told, he nudged me to begin writing again. The outcome is my blog. So you can blame him for that. Personally, if I had to make a guess, I’d say he’s an ex corporate drone, who cut loose, moved to Portland (he’s from out of Town, just like everyone else from here, it seems; about 90% of people I’ve met in this town are from elsewhere), and began living his dream as a Therapist. At least I like to think so; I have no way of knowing this, because despite being privy to the very darkest moments of my life, I know little more than the dude’s name. Weird isn’t it, how you can strike that sort of relationship with someone because you’re paying them? He’s like a stress ball with legs, and a mouth and brain, nudging my verbose meanderings into some kind of revelation. It’s a very underrated and overlooked skill.

But one thing I have noticed, in my search for Therapists (plural) is that there are fucking millions of them. The market is flooded with them. That kind of competition must get vicious at times, right? You probably have inner city Therapists capping each other like 90’s rap stars. It’s like personal trainers. It’s like every fifth person is a fucking personal trainer. Where’s the demand? It’s getting to the point where PT’s and Therapists are going to be hustling on street corners, promising to fix your body and your brain “for fie dolla!!!”

Take Suburban Therapist, for instance, who went to great lengths to “squeeze me in next Wednesday at 11”. And every time we scheduled a new appointment, he would go to great pains to make it seem like he was struggling to find a slot for me. “Hmm, how does ten o’clock on Tuesday suit you?” No, I can’t do Tuesday. “Ok, well… hmm … hmm.” Pause. ”Hmm…" Long pause. "How about ten on Wednesday?” But then, two hours later, after I realize mine clashes with my Wife’s appointment – sorry Doctor, can we make it Wednesday afternoon? A flash of irritation, overridden almost instantly by desperation (We’re losing him!!! we’re losing him!!!) “Hmm…. How does Wednesday at four suit you?” Sure. “Thank fu… I mean, uh, see you then.”

I can afford it, fortunately. My co-pay is five dollars. I feel almost rude handing it over. “I can buy lunch today,” I imagine him wonder, as he snatches it Gollum-style from my hand. But I forget it doesn’t work like that here. In Ireland you either pay or you don’t. Insurance covers everything but a deductible, which essentially means you pay full price for a lot of stuff (medications, primary care visits, etc.). But when they carted me out here, my company gave me really good insurance. I’m not sure why; part of me thinks it’s because they are so awesome, but another, more cynical part of me thinks it’s so I didn’t run screaming for the nearest airport after the first brief flu season. Either way, it’s really good insurance. The problem with this, however, is that when I walk into a doctor’s office, I can feel them eyeing me up; I can hear them wiping the drool from their chin. I feel like a big roast chicken to their Sylvester the Cat.

To be honest, I’m not complaining. They can poke, prod, slice, crack, bend, and straighten all they want if it’ll make me feel any better. Five dollars? Just keep the Vicodin coming, Senior Doctor.

Fade to Black.

Beards n Bellies

Zach Galfinanaiakinaniakis 

My wife seems to think I’ve let myself go, over the last few years. She says I don’t take care of myself like I used to. I’ve let my gym membership expire. Twice. And I invest neither my time, nor my money, in grooming myself like I did when we first met. My answer to that is: be careful of what you wish for.

It’s true, I sometimes cut my own hair, and go unshaven for days on end (but hey, facial hair is nothing to run from right? Beards are cool now. And I live just outside of Portland, Oregon. Beard capital of the world. Even some of the chicks have beards. Maybe). And yeah, I might have packed on a bit of weight around my gut and jowls, but she’s a damn good cook. And to be honest, food is one of the few pleasures I haven’t yet sacrificed for one reason or another. When you don’t drink alcohol, and you haven’t had sex since the summer, and your idea of a Saturday night is watching Stuart Little 2 on loop, with a whiny three year old, come back and tell me you’re going vegan. And I’ve essentially replaced booze with soda. Sell your shares in Anheuser-Busch and buy Coca-cola, I’m mainlining that shit.

But what my wife fails to remember is that I spent a lot of time, money and effort on my appearance for the very purpose of snagging hot, blonde chicks that otherwise would be out of my league. Aka: her. My motives have changed, and that’s a good thing. I’m a dad and husband now, and $50 haircuts and expensive clothes are the domain of younger, singler men in search of their prize (“you sir have just won, two kids, a wife and all the responsibility and burden your broad shoulders can carry – and then a little bit more).

Ultimately – and this is what’s sometimes hard to admit – I agree with her. I have let myself go a little bit. If I told you I wake up and feel a healthy sense of self-worth and just, well… just the fucking energy to lift some weights, shave, style my hair and floss, then I’d be lying to you. I have spurts. I have times when I’m ready to take on the world, but they’re little islands of an archipelago surrounded by an ocean of languor (I robbed that line from The Dice Man, then changed it to make it look original. It’s a little trick us mediocre writers like to call “blatant plagiarism”).

The sad part, is I’m not sure why. A part of me knows that well-groomed David was a fake. That the guy who made the effort did so with the ultimate goal of someday not having to. That isn’t fair on my wife though. She didn’t sign up for the guy in his pajamas, eating cold Pizza at four in the afternoon, watching the game. Ok, she married a guy, so she kind of did sign up for that, but not every fucking day. But a bigger part of me knows that it’s more than that. I’ve allowed myself to put walls up, to hide away from the outside world. I suffer from anxiety and depression, and I have had sleepless nights about the responsibilities I’ve taken on (I’m a delicate soul – don’t judge). I’ve used alcohol to cope, and all I got out of that was pain, a label, and a copy of the big book. And now I have to figure how to cope with all the tricky, nasty parts of life. And really I don’t want to. That’s why I go to therapy, I guess. To figure it all out.

So I guess it is that I’m allowing my exterior to reflect my interior. “I’ve let myself go,” is really another way of saying, I’ve parted, or hidden from myself. Which is kinda what I’ve done inside. I just hide from all the debris and complications I’ve gathered in my 34 years on earth (most of which I’ve been privy to their creation; some of which just blind-sided me like birdshit on a new jacket).

There is no real moral to this post, by the way. Just maybe that I look like shit because I feel like shit. And that I’m really trying to figure it all. So maybe I’ll see if I can start from the outside: clean up the diet, bring my gym gear to work (we have a gym, awesome huh?), maybe hit a nice barbershop, and trim the ol’ nose hair.

And the soda? From my cold dead hand…

Death Breath and the Expensive Couch Cushion

My three year old lodged something up his nose. We’re not sure what exactly, because despite shoving a pair of tongs about 6 inches up there, the doctor couldn’t find said hidden treasure. She said that it was more than likely a decomposing piece of food which had started an infection. This made sense because of the smell. That smell. Two foot away and he was the cutest kid on earth, a step closer and it smelled like the apocalypse had begun; Satan was releasing his dark angels on every exhale. To kiss the kid goodnight required the resolve of a Benedictine monk, and afterwards the Missus and I would sit silently for hours, with the thousand yard stare of an old man who’d seen too much war and was waiting to die.

Then there was the nose-whistle. The kid was like a slide whistle on legs. Every time he ran, he sounded like Mickey Mouse in SteamboatWillie. We’d be in Target and Wal-Mart getting strange looks. “He was born without a tongue,” we’d tell them as their smiled cracked, “we’re teaching him to communicate through song.” Then the smell would hit and they’d flee to the nearest Catholic Church.

The antibiotics seem to be working though. The neighbor’s dog has stopped howling. And my wife and I can take the breathing apparatus off to shower and eat now. Also, the brown-green slime that masqueraded as his boogers have all but dried up. We’re feeling good about his chances of re-assimilating into normal society.

What I want.

In other news, I think the Missus wants a cat: she keeps dropping hints, and watching TV shows about kittens, telling me how cute she thinks they are, etc. Plus, she said “we’re getting a fucking cat”. So, the subtle hints are there. I’m quite perceptive when I want to be.

What I'll get.

Of course, I’ve no problem getting a kitten. I love Kittens. I’d sleep in a bed made from kittens, and wear kitten-made pants. They’re cute and cuddly and the only issue I have with them is that they eventually turn into cats. I have little passion for cats. I just don’t get them. We – humans – domesticated cats, so I suppose the least we could do is give them a home and food. What I don’t understand is why? What do cats do? What was Caveman David thinking when he decided to do this? “I need something for my dog to chase”? Ok, so they catch rodents. Well, here’s an idea… domesticate the fucking rodents. Like I said, I’ve nothing against cats per se; I just think some new couch cushions might serve the same purpose. And I won’t have to feed them and empty out their shit every day.

Our Last Dance Together...

I’ve started listening to The Cure again, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I first started properly listening to The Cure after my first ever session of therapy. I had been experiencing emotional pain that I hadn’t known possible. It scared the shit out of me, to be honest. When you think of physical pain, you have a map of it in your head. You may never have had your hand chopped off, but you can kinda, maybe take your mind to that place; to how horrible that might feel. But emotionally, I was in uncharted waters. Until then.

I rode the bus there – I think I had intended to drink heavily afterwards, or before… during if I could swing it – but because the session with my therapist went so well, and because I vomited all this congealing, rotting bile of emotion onto her office floor, and because afterwards I felt a glimmer of hope, and maybe because it was a crisp October afternoon, I decided to just walk home. Past the bars, past the liquor stores: just home. I had bought Disintegration a few days before. My ex and I had liked some of their more upbeat tunes. The poppiness of Just Like Heaven, and Friday I’m In Love along with a bunch of other favorites bands from our past had added a flavor of blitheness to the previous summer. I guess I’d never been a huge fan of theirs before that but I picked up a copy of the album few weeks before our split. Though I hadn’t yet listened to it. Couldn’t, if I’m honest.

I put it in my Discman (I’m not gonna lie – I’m old) and listened to it on the walk home. And I didn’t stop listening for the rest of my twenties. Robert Smith’s lyrics and music were simply who I was – and, more importantly, the part of me I couldn’t figure out – converted from brain chemistry to sound. They fucking echoed through every cell in my body. And for the next five years every friend, girlfriend, family member, colleague, shop-teller, fucking passer-by were bombarded by my obsession with this band.

The break-up with the ex had destroyed me. I sometimes wonder how I survived it. That kind of trauma can’t be compared to a physical suffering, because if it had been physical I wouldn’t have survived (there were many physical side-effects: I lost a shit-ton of weight, and essentially became an alcoholic around then, for example, but the white-hot core of agony was purely emotional). Still, to try to give it some context, I liken it to a car crash. A sickening smash from which I emerged forever changed – scarred and disfigured.

And then the pain kind of reached a breaking point, whereby for no other reason than it simply could not get any worse, it had to start getting better. Like when you’re travelling so far away from home, you eventually reach a point where you’re returning. That’s what happened that day, the day I bawled my eyes out in my therapist’s office, and listened to Disintegration in full for the first time. And there I found something just like me; with exactly as much shadow as light, and exactly as much hope as despair.

Eventually I started to recover. I fell in love again. I matured. I got married and had kids. I bought an iPod and put fucking Britney Spears on it – gym music. I started listening to Just Like Heaven and Friday I’m In Love again. Eighties rock became my soundtrack. In a way (Oh God, this is corny as fuck) I felt like I was cured (barf!). The scars have faded; like little silver ribbons, they remain a part of me. I’m better for them, but I wish they weren’t there. And I still miss the ex from time to time; in ways that it shouldn’t, my heart sinks when I remember her. But it never lasts long.

I have therapy tomorrow. It’s my second visit. And no, I haven’t cried yet. Shit happens: I sometimes find it hard to cope with stuff. I can feel blue too easily. I suffer from fucking depression and alcoholism – it’s clearly not a bunch of flowers. But I’ve a good job, a great wife, an amazing son, and a daughter on the way. I’m just listening to The Cure again, well… because they’re awesome!

0,-1,-2... Dammit

Nokia 3210. My First True Love. I'm OK, it's just a bit... dusty in here, is all!

There was once a very brief but glorious period of time in the history of humankind. I like to call it the 'Golden Age of Human Interaction'. It was perhaps a circumstance of my age, my social circle, and my locale. But the best we ever had it, was when text messages were limited to 160 characters. Do you remember that? 

I refer to my age, and location, because I was earning way too little money to actually waste time with dialogue, and pay-as-you-go credit was by far the cheapest way to afford to use a phone in 00's Ireland. So we – my friends and I – were limited to having exchanges of verbal communication using 160 characters or less. "Coming out tonight?", "Can't. Sorry.", "Why not?", "Exam in the morning.", "Cool. What about the weekend?", "Sounds good." That was it: Conversation over. Back to dial-up internet porn before the page had even loaded her boobs.

Of course, like Icarus and his obscenely strong arms, ever reaching toward the sun with those waxy wings that somehow melted in cooler air, we didn't realize how good we had it. There were those conversations (usually with girlfriends) when you needed to squeeze those extra digits into 160 measly little spots. Some among us, like the little Orwellian prophecies that we were, figured ways around this: we used numbers as words, and letters became syllables. Ever straining at the leash of technological boundary we began to revert back to a primal state. Utterances such as "Cn u cum out l8r", became commonplace. Something had to be done. And eventually, phone companies caved, and allowed long, gaudy paragraphs of deep, tortuous insight, and fumbling explanations that trailed on and on about why "It was a joke. Everybody knows sarcasm doesn't come across on texts. I didn't really mean you're a fucking loser." to come in to being. We had eaten the forbidden fruit, and were banished from our Eden of brief, concise and above all only-when-fucking-necessary communication.

It's maybe why I like Twitter so much. I'm not particularly active on Twitter, but that's simply because I've no fucking friends (I probably lost them all when texts got longer, and they discovered I was a jerk). And because my kids aren't old enough to embarrass yet. But I love how the focus is strictly on getting the information across, and not the means of doing it. If you want to get into get into a debate about sports with @bobsadick, then you better damn well have your facts at hand. It's the one true pulpit of social media with which to get your words out. Sure, you can scream and shout about religion, and post shitty pictures of your dinner, just as you can on hovels such as Facebook and the thankfully dead and buried MySpace. But it's all garbage there; nothing else. At least on twitter, there's a chance, an outside shot you can discuss with a respected journalist, or scientist, or -- fuck it -- celebrity something you give a shit about.

And then, of course, it's the greatest filter of intellectual vapidity known to man. As my super-awesomeblogger buddy proves, when you're truly thick as shit, you can't hide behind waffle and bullshit to deflect from the true absence of character or ethos within you (I'm looking in your direction, Kim K). When you truly have nothing to say, say it on twitter, and give us all a good ol' knee-slapping chuckle. It's the least you can do for suffocating us with your bullshit lives on every magazine stand and TV station.

Crash and Burn (or just exchange Insurance details)

The above dent was the result of a nuclear explosion. Probably.

You might, if you’re one of the 7 or so people who read this blog, remember me writing about having to exchange my rental car (provided by my employer) for a new one, due to a pesky maintenance light on the dashboard (If you didn’t, go read it now; I’ll wait….). Well, it seems that was quite prescient of me – either that or my subconscious is an irredeemable asshole – because on Wednesday night I drove into the back of a 1967 Chevy Pick-up. Before I continue, there’s one thing you should know about driving into the back of a 1967 Chevy Pick-up in a 2012 Toyota Corolla: You.Will.Lose! It’s comparable to the time Darren Sproles ran into Ray Lewis (apt Super Bowl reference: check).

It was literally no more than a tap; it may have been the alcohol, but I barely felt it*. Of course, this could have been because my hood took all of the impact, and crumpled like the look of the guy’s face when he got out of his car. “What the fuck, buddy?” he yelled, looking at the ruins of my front grill. “Look what you’ve done to my…” and his eyes rested on his almost perfectly intact rear bumper. “What’s this?” he asked, dusting off a light scratch with his hand,” and this is all bent,” pointing at the almost noticeably buckled license plate. Of course, I don’t blame the guy: we were at the stop lights; he moved, I moved, he stopped, I didn’t. And if he puts a claim in, that’s understandable. What’s awesome is that no cops were called, he wasn’t hurt, I wasn’t hurt, neither of us had passengers, and the only car that had any significant damage belonged to a giant multi-national corporation.

Of course, it rattled the shit out of me. My hands are still shaking (could be withdrawals from the sedatives, but who’s counting; the effects linger). The next morning I went to the Hertz office and they were spectacularly awesome about it. As it turns out, I’m 100% covered for the whole thing. They didn’t have a replacement there and then (or at least not one they were willing to part with to the idiot Irishman who keeps wrecking our shit), so I came back the next day (the Corolla was still drive-able; it really was a minor crash) and they handed me the keys to a two year old Nissan Sentra with 50,000 miles on the clock, a rust-hole in the side, Utah plates, and – which I thought was a beautiful touch, intended or not – a giant dollop of birdshit on the hood. In rental car terms, this was the equivalent of Fred Flintstone’s ride. And I was eternally grateful, because for someone with so many innate tendencies to fuck my life up, it seems I’m one lucky bastard.

So, I’ve spent the last two days driving around like a 90 year-old on Xanax, and that still feels too fast. I’m determined not to wreck this. But don’t worry, you’ll be the first to know when I invariably do.

*No alcohol was involved during the making of this crash – that was merely a joke. Laugh dammit!!!