Niall’s virtual diary archives – April 2000

Wednesday 5th April 2000: 4.06am. I finished my project today, all that remains is to make a few spelling corrections, print it off and have it bound. I also visited my friend Melanie today, and she informs me that she will shortly be leaving university. She's been having a miserable time recently, and has decided it's time to go home for a break to get things sorted in her head.

It's left me feeling sad. I see her and see myself when I was with Kathryn, thinking you are happy, should be happy, why am I not happy? And I think that with all the experience, knowledge and realisations I have gained over the years, I am completely unable to help her. I have tried to ask the questions which will help her towards the truth, but she refuses to let herself think about these things. I feel so powerless.

And also this will leave me with no female friends left. All my close friends will be male. That's bad. I like contact with women, but I find myself increasingly alienated from them. To put it simply, they don't seem to do what I do. But then, no one seems to do what I do.

Have you ever felt like you were on a desert island and the tide just keeps rising and rising? I feel the world changing around me, friends leaving my life. And it hurts, and I feel uncomfortable as everything keeps changing and I feel unsteady with no solid ground beneath me. Constant changes forces evolution, forces one to stay on one's own toes. But I liked having Melanie to talk to and be around, not least because of her physical beauty, but because it was comfortable and I didn't have to be on edge when I was around her. You never get to relax nowadays when you're out having fun, there's always someone who might take advantage of your fucked state. Partly of course it's the drugs which induce the paranoia, but it's also the lifestyle of spending time with so many groups of people. You can never let your hair truly down. And that induces stress.

One of the great things about this bohemian lifestyle is the learning aspect. You meet so many people and have your mind exposed to so many new ideas in a short space of time. But it definitely takes it out on you. Mixing with those that I do means you must be on edge for most of the time.

Man, I need a day off to do nothing. And I'm going to miss Melanie, a lot. Maybe, in some ways, I have kept sane through being in her presence every few days in that being with her was regular female contact. Now she's gone and that's gone.

Am I being selfish though? Am I thinking of just me and the effects of this on me? No, I think it's a genuine concern that I have known her since she came to this university. I have seen the mistakes she has made which have led her to this early departure and at the time, I spoke with her and tried to persuade her not to make those mistakes. I saw this coming, from quite some time ago.

So in many ways, what has happened has been due to my failures as a friend. I foresaw this, at each step of the way, and tried to prevent it. Maybe if I had tried harder at the time it would have worked? I know it wouldn't have had, the mistakes she made were hers to make and she made them despite my best arguments against them.

Damn, I'm off for a joint and then bed. I feel like shit, and it's all because of this. A bad day.

Anyway, I'm at Grooverider tomorrow and supposedly Leeds on Friday morning, back Friday night and moving out of the Lawns on Saturday. I'll still be in and out of uni during the Easter break for the next three weeks, so there should be updates here. Anyway, all be happy, see you all again soon!

Sunday 23rd April 2000: 2.28am. Whoosh bang, there go another three weeks. I'm coming into the last week of my Easter hols, my last at this university as far as I know. Ruth left a bit over six hours ago now. She informs me that she wants me out of her life. She says that daily life in Spain for the last four months since my last visit in December has been near impossible. She can't have my non-presence constantly hanging over her, she needs to know in her head that we are finished.

I dealt with the news as best as I could at the time - with refusing to do anything other than store the information for later processing. I didn't want to deal with it immediately less I make some offensive remark and hurt her still further. But now she's gone, my brain's working overtime. I can't sleep now. I feel worse than I did in December when I was fairly sure I still had someone wanting me. Now I have someone who wants me too much and it's damaging her life.

God, I love her so much. I was hit with a revelation in the train station just before she left. Y'see, I had always had in my mind's eye an image of her dreaming of us together forever, but she had always denied it and said she didn't want children and wanted to remain single in the future. I was almost convinced that maybe it was wishful thinking on my part.

But just before she left, she said that this wasn't true. She had dreamt constantly during these last four months of us married and with children, and it had scared her to death. She wanted to be strong and independent, not subdued with an infatuation with me and weighed down at the apron-strings. I can see now just how difficult a position she was in - follow her heart and lose out on the life she had always dreamt of, or be rational and cold and choose her dreams.

And she chose her dreams. Not surprising, dreams are reliable - they are based on you and your drive. Love is harder. Love involves another person. Love is inherently more unreliable, and hence scary.

Well, my head's still all screwed up. I don't know how I'll deal with this, probably with more excessive drug abuse as I numb the pain. But not for much longer. Now I am more back to square one, I feel the need to start the search for love earlier. Maybe as early now as October of this year. And I think emigrating to Spain is still good, I am considered much more attractive down there due to my pallid nature and hence I raise the odds statistically. And who knows, maybe I might bump into Ruth over there - I can always dream ...

Good luck to all you readers out there. I hope you're finding life a bit better than I. If not, try to be happy anyway, and I hope to see you all again soon.