Niall’s virtual diary archives – February 1999

Thursday 4th February 1999: 6.10am, I'm on an all-nighter. Need to be into uni early tomorrow y'see to book me a venue for my Legalise Cannabis fund-raising night, plus lots of other stuff.

Now the last few days have been interesting. I've got lots of stuff organised, including this fund-raising night above. Indeed, the timetable looks like this:

• Monday February 8th the Endorsement of Legalisation of Cannabis motion will be debated at that night's union council. I've already mounted a large picture of Bob Marley smoking a huge rifa right next to the stairs to the bar with appropriate words indicating what I want people to vote. Wish me luck ...
• Feb 21st we have a dub night at the Adelphi club in Hull by Exodus. This is being organised by Hempology though.
• After rag week in semester two, we'll have our information week where we'll be handing out lots of flyers, both near incitement to illegal act ones and government information ones for balance. Kindly the government provided me with 250 of them for free, cool ...
• Mid March we have a 1000 body capacity night of dance music. I have Lulu from Clueless lined up as the main set, with Renegade (resident of our uni at New Horizons) finishing off the night. I also will have lots of green leafs and pictures of people smoking spliffs around the walls too. Should be cool ...
• Just after the Easter break on April 15th, we have Howard Marks, the man himself, visiting us for a lecture + smoke. Should also be cool, especially if I can get a 20 foot high picture of him smoking a big joint hung on the side of the student union building. Maybe ...
• Just after that, a little demo in Hull to publicise the May event. Should also be cool if last year's Reclaim is anything to judge by.
• And then of course, May 1st itself! As you can see from the counter above, it's 85 days away and counting ... hopefully we'll be taking loads and loads of people down. If all goes to plan, we should be anyway.

Now, I feel very happy this is all the case and such, but of late I've been feeling somewhat sexually deprived. I haven't had sex in god knows how many months now, and I want some. I don't even get any female seduction anymore - no flirting or anything. It's not good. Porn just doesn't cut it really, and wanking isn't the same either. I want someone to cuddle and tell things to, even if I say most of them to around 60 million people anyway. No matter. I crave female contact.

But, y'see, with the schedule I have, the days are taken away from me. Leaving the nights, which I spend visiting people for smokes. Which means I meet all of 0 women. Yeah, yeah, I know only too well how much I dislike the meatmarkets most students frequent, and how much I dislike the idea of getting completely fucked all the time (been there, done that). So while everyone around me has fun pulling birds and shagging them, I get nowt. Although, that said, I know well how empty and unfufilled it makes many of them feel, but in my case just the sex and female contact would be enough I think given how full my day is. And knowing and having realised this, it becomes hard.

So right now my inclination is to smoke less and meet more people I haven't met before. Which isn't entirely easy. Much of English culture makes meeting people hard - it's mainly done by the student populace by getting fucked on alcohol and losing enough inhibitions to be able to reach across the barriers. Which kinda doesn't fit well with my current lifestyle - never mind as I found with Elli that my lifestyle is majorly incompatible with a relationship. ie; I have to choose between my cause and not feeling crap because I'm not getting any sex.

Now I don't want it to sound like I just want sex. I want plenty plenty more - a good-looking intelligent girl who smokes lots of pot, lives near to me, socialises like I do, likes all my friends, knows plenty about completely useless stuff etc would be lovely. Yeah, I know, I'm looking pretty much for a female me. Isn't everyone really? And how many realise their wishes in this respect? With the divorce rate climbing every year and the suicide rate also, I take it less than the majority anyway. So I'm looking to buck the odds not only with the legalisation of pot, the ability of my body to withstand the shit I throw at it, to create something on the computer that is really revolutionary, but I'm also wanting to find a soul-mate. Yup, sounds like me all over, doesn't it ...

And one thing I've realised is that odds are heavily affected by personality. I feel confident we'll get pot legal soonish, I also feel confident I won't drop dead soon, I feel confident I'll do something computer-related that is revolutionary. But I most definately do not feel even remotely confident I'll find a soulmate. It's the only thing that as part of the fundamental repotoire, I do not have confidence in myself in. I can do everything essentially but women. As most people actually I suppose, but that doesn't make me feel much better.

Obviously, these realisations make me feel somewhat depressed. This is how I've been feeling these last few days. Not good. I've even smoked nothing tonight as part of clearing my head to see if I'll feel better. I don't - I didn't expect to though - just worried about cannabis psychosis ;).

Right, nuff of that I think - for the time being anyway. A few days back, I knocked lots of mushies into me, and tripped quite pleasantly. Wandered around Cottingham, was some experience. I wanted to make an entry that night for your benefit, but was too wasted by the time I got back - sorry. I promise next time I go tripping I'll make an entry, if I can get as far as frontpage anyway. Oh - got some Absinth (sp?) coming in soon, that should really wanker me. I may try making an entry. If I'm capable. Hehe, fun is student life ...

Right, I'm off to write a error pop up box in assembler, mainly for fun. Talk to you again soon - be happy till then!

Thursday 11th February 1999: 3.42am, god damn it's been a quick week! This week's been interesting, big up, then a big down. Unfortunate.

Let's start with the big up. Last Friday, having spent all night awake, I bumped into Kathryn (ie; same one as mentioned like how often in past entries). She wanted me to call round, so despite having had no sleep I popped round hers that evening, the first since we split us nearly a year ago actually. And well, it was good - I enjoyed myself - even though I passed the "38 hours awake" pointer which is bad. Me and her talked about things past, present and future for about nine hours, just like old times really. And the old chemistry is still there, it has to be said - it felt just like it used to, except I wanted to be physically closer and I wasn't. But I'm not going down that road again, it's taken me a year to get back on the road.

I don't think there's anything else to say really. Nope - we talked for nine hours about stuff I can't remember (twas a week ago and I was well tired I suppose). We agreed again though we're both fucked up from each other, even still now. Not good.

Saturday night saw me in Twisted, the weekly cheese night at the union. Normally I avoid this place like the plague, but that night I got well trollyed on alcohol for a change and actually really enjoyed myself. Might do that again maybe, it's only a pound fifty ...

Then came Monday. Yup, the same when the motion was supposed to go through. Except, y'see, it didn't. After a weekend of such good fortune, this was a bad start to the week - and it was only a start. I withdrew the motion minutes before council started as I was forewarned of the tactics they'd be using to crush it, and I knew they'd win. So I withdrew it, giving us a chance to correct the flaws, and try again without leaving too much egg on our faces.

Also that night, I was standing for chair of council. Most nastily, I was taken apart by one the rival's friends based on my cannabis motion not being intra vires, and subsequently lost the election. I felt this was substantially underhand, and stormed out to return after an hour to be elected unopposed to the senate as Engineering and Maths representative. I also stayed to see the Legalise Cannabis Society's constitution go through (this allows the society to exist), which I thought would be relatively straightforward.

Not the case! Many objections were raised, and moves were made to move straight to the vote which was held. The Legalise Cannabis society came into being by a margin of half a vote, 12/23, which made me sufficiently angry to storm out and give the wall a good kicking. Can a set of around 20 year old students who are supposedly enlightened and open-minded people really want to prevent us from even being? I have no problem when people disagree and fight us on equal terms, but this vote was close to censorship and I do not and never have approved of censorship of anyone. Especially me.

So after a crap Monday, the days since have been spent licking my wounds and thinking about the path ahead. The motion looks like now to be delayed indefinately, but at least we have the society and I'm in the senate now (hehehe, I can imagine the waves I'm going to make there!). Indeed, the new HUULCS webpages are up already at http://come.to/HullLCS - so go give them a read (much of it is from the original "Niall page of cannabis" which is now gone from this site).

Hmm, and that's about it. Tomorrow is New Horizons, this is a drum n' bass night down the union where I shall hopefully be taking large quantities of illegal substances and having a good night to boot. Also, lots to do tomorrow society related and also to do with my new positions. It's 4.02am now, so I'll be off to bed for an early start - good night, and be happy!

Friday 19th February 1999: 5.46pm, I think I've got it - I understand now.

As we might have guessed from these pages, fundamentally I have been unhappy ever since me and Kathryn began to split ie; start of 1998. Since, I have gone through bouts of severe depression which only last a day or two, or even hours, before they vanish. Typically, this page has always missed them, but two I can think of recently were my birthday party where I hit a bus stop repeatedly and that night got blotto, and indeed yesterday during which I didn't hit anything but did walk home from uni in the early hours of this morning (it's quite a distance). Why? Because on both, people questioned why I am campaigning to legalise cannabis, which in turn makes me ask it.

Now I can fool myself that it's a good cause etc, and while I do believe in it passionately, I have always known there was some other psychological reason why I have made it such a mission. The reality is that since Kathryn, I have been unable to let anyone close to me. That includes both men and women actually. Now, during these bouts of severe depression, the fundamental thing that runs through my head is that I am alone, and I know no one and no one knows me and no one cares and my life is loveless. Interesting, isn't it? That's how I am now after Kathryn, but of course the old method of blaming her doesn't work now as I can't hate her anymore having spoken to her since. So I can blame only one person, me, and hate myself for being incapable of opening up to anyone.

So I end up in my current situation. I know a hell of a lot of people, but I'm not friends with them. I enjoy meeting lots of people and such, and it's great to see people rally around the cause, but I have no real friends here - not to the depth that say Kathryn was or indeed Aoife before her (who is now locked up in a looney bin of course). In many ways, the cause gives me an excuse to maintain the distance between me and everyone else, and hence protect myself from getting hurt yet again.

There's also a conflict of logic. In order to solve this loneliness problem, I need to meet the right woman whom now for the first time in my life I have a pretty good idea of what she'll be like. To do this, I need to meet as many people as possible, but by doing that I get to know more people less if you see what I mean.

But why don't I cut my losses and grow closer to fewer people? It's a problem of trust and identification I think. I do not identify with anyone here - bits of me identify with certain groups but there isn't a group with which a majority of me identifies. Because I don't identify enough with any group, and I only have known them for at most a year and a half, I do not trust them sufficiently to let myself grow closer. Actually, probably the group I identify most with is the first year lot from last year - Rachel and Steve of course helped me through last year's depression after Kathryn, and that builds lots of trust, but with them being so far away now ... well, it isn't helpful.

So now I'm left in an interesting situation of self-awareness. Elli was giving me hassle yesterday about why I was single, how I disillusioned people. Of course she was right, but that was never me before I came to the UK. I have a terrible fear of becoming a man who through his own fear becomes bitter and twisted - I can see this happening to me. As I am hurt by others repeatedly, I shut them out and as I do that, I am becoming slowly a bitter and resentful man who sucks the life out of those around him through spreading his bad humour. In other words, essentially causing everyone else what he perceives as what they caused him.

I don't want to be this person. I don't want to live a life of seclusion, which after time becomes hatred of others and everything. I want to love, understand, be understood, be loved and I definately want to stop feeling alone.

But if life were as easy as that, wouldn't we all have it sorted? I can't see much of a way out of the current situation. I can grow close to people if I really had to, but they need to be physically close and of course, in a matter of months they'll all be leaving - of course, knowing this, I have deliberately not got close to this year's first years. Another option is leaving the Lawns, but then I defeat the object of finding me a woman. So really, it's a choice of settling for a set of people with whom I would be happier but not happy, or taking a huge risk with my future sanity and praying I can withstand the buffets of utter loneliness so that I have a chance, a merest chance, or being happy.

Tough choice. Want to make the decision for me? Wish someone could, it's a bitch living life at the moment ... what I really dislike is not seeing the beauty in things anymore. Once there was a time when I could look at a set of trees and appreciate their beauty. I can't do that anymore. My head feels like it's stuck in mud, incapable of soaring to the heights it once did. That's what I miss most about my life before my current one - I don't see beauty anymore - in many ways, I'm too busy to see beauty. And that's a sad state of affairs to be in.

Right I'm off to go to the Room tonight - going to see Alister Whitehead playing. If I can relax enough, it should be a good night. Be happy, and see you again soon.