Niall’s virtual diary archives – May 2001

Saturday 27th May 2001: 4.32am. Just got back from inner Madrid, took over an hour and a half to get a bus. Real busy there. Said goodbye to Dominic whom I know from a mailing list I'm on, for the last four weeks he's been getting me out. Also, had two friends from uni over, so all in all I've done a lot of socialising these past four weeks.

Also of course, I have stopped taking the anti-madness drugs, and now they're gone I'm much more back to feeling the pain of living again. It's good in the way it's motivated me to get up and go out and socialise, change my life rather than let it slip blithly by. But it's also made life equal to constant pain, cynicism and an inability to see happiness in anything anywhere.

Maybe this is the future me? So much more cold, so much more rational. It's not that I think poorly of people that I observe out of nastiness, it's more of seeing faults in them, how they think they are happy now but won't be soon because of reason X, Y & Z. I see the tragedy and pain as I walk around observing. Everyone is struggling, everyone is trying to make it work for them but I know it's an inherently futile quest.

During these past four weeks, I have met people who seek new challenges, ideas and stimulation as I do. This is something new, as the majority of people never push themselves in this way. It has occurred to me more than once that many of these people are also burdened with questions which they cannot shake - the answers to these are also the keys to their happiness, or at least they perceive them as so. And so, like me, they keep changing, moving, altering - hoping that some day before their energy gives out, they will somehow find those answers and become at last happy. Until then, they wander lost, miserable, in pain, and in constant toil. Just like all those who try to make things never change, those who live life in routines and by shutting out as much new information as possible - effectively trying to be happy by stabilising their life, always hoping to keep it still enough long enough to get a grasp, and with that enlightenment and happiness.

When I lost Ruth, it was as though she died to me. I feel like I have been grieving ever since. Why is it that I have always made my concept of who I am include a woman? I depend on that concept, that dream, that hope. All the futures I have ever had have contained some mythical woman, someone who understands me, loves me and is always there for me, someone who takes away my constant tormenting loneliness. That's my fault, my achilles heel. If someone wanted to break me psychologically, it would be through that soft soft weak spot. That is my greatest fear in my life - it's not death, it's loneliness. I can see oh so easily now sixty more years of crushing loneliness. It's all I can think of, it consumes me. Because when I had belief in there being some woman somewhere out there who was my Ms. Right as the Americans say, I had hope to offset the pain of life. I would say, "maybe today I'll meet her", just as 90% of every other single person in the western culture says every day. And that would be enough, that media & culturally perpetuated dream.

But now I cannot help but feel deceived, that it's a lie. The older I grow, the more experience I acquire and the harder it is becoming to believe in love nor destiny. I see all around me lonely people whom if they are lucky, experience glancing fleeting moments of happiness, long enough only to be shown that it can exist before it is taken rudely away again.

When I lost Ruth, I lost me. I lost the person whom I was and the more time goes by, the more I believe that the person I was is lost to me forever now. There will be no abatement of loneliness for me, not through women, not ever. With the death of hope comes the death of dreams and as these realisations sink in, I feel my personality change, traits reorganise, and I know I am becoming another person. A different person. Someone who knows he will always be alone, forever. A person with no more foolish dreams nor hopes to deceive him. Just cold, hard unforgiving reality.

Be happy wherever you are!