Niall’s virtual diary archives – November 2001

Saturday 17th November 2001: 10.48am. The project is definitely on now until Christmas, and most likely sometime into the new year. Arse. I am beginning to feel like I am living in a prison. No music. No going out. No access to internet except for brief spasmic bursts which are always rushed and never give enough chance to study at leisure. Very little to think about except the project. Everything in life has to do with project. Everyone I see, everyone I talk to, everything I do is entirely centred around the project.

This weekend is the first one in two weeks that I've had time alone - probably as you might infer given that I'm writing this. I am constantly struck by the similarities with prison. I tried a few nights ago to give another swing to it, say comparing it to my time in the Gaeltacht in my youth but there you see you had plenty of new things to explore, especially in human terms. Here it is the same thing every day. Nothing new, just same. It's hard to maintain individuality.

What has struck me though is the hypocracy of these feelings. A year and a half ago I was quite prepared to settle into an almost married life and give up precisely all those things I lament the lack of right this very moment now. Given that it never happened, that in effect for that time I was having my cake and eating it too and therefore not noticing how my life was increasingly being build on less solid foundations - well, it makes you wonder how it would have all turned out? Could it actually have gone well? It appears, especially at moments such as this, to be an impossibility. There are too many conflicting forces - inner conflict - within me to have any idea which will predominate or indeed if that itself is possible. Ex-girlfriend Aoife tore herself apart from the inside by being unable to restrain her inner conflicts. I have always known that to be a danger within myself as well but I have never been able to say to what degree. With such multi-faceted psychology, one gains a great deal especially in terms of being able to relate to and understand multiple conflicting ideologies simultaneously. Unlike Orwell's doublethink which is a passive regurgitation of imprinted paradoxes, I actively hold many totally contradictory opinions on everything. It is a dangerous, constantly fluxing and unstable world about which I have written at length in here before.

Probably, eventually, one will have to resolve all of these into some semblance of direction. And that is what I have been effectively since Ruth ended things with me, vis. directionless. I tried for a while to carry on regardless which has taken me to Spain. On reflection, it has to be agreed I could not have stayed in Hull for many good reasons, and my original pre-Spain logic that if not Hull then in the UK it would be Cambridge again and that would be repeating things so why not do something different. That I have done, and in many ways while the coming months in England on this project will be hard, they are also signalling not only the end of the project but also the end of post-uni and post-Ruth life because I will have cash in the bank, freedom to go anywhere in the world I choose and all both those things imply. Whilst most probably life wherever I choose will be a slight variation of what I have already experienced to date - there is also a possibility of something new, an opportunity to grow and learn and perhaps find the solutions and direction I am looking for. If I found it once, irrespective of its poor foundations, it can be found again and now having known the psychology of it, one should be better aware of the pitfalls. Hmm, that sounds like similar logic as once applied regarding relationships with women.

Actually, that reminds me of an entry above regarding psychological dependence and fixation (possibly with mother figure). How's this for a theory: I, a mass of confused contradictions, yearn desperately for inner peace which I when a child used to have. The figure most identified with early simple childhood is the mother figure and I in my quest for peace am trying to return to childhood replete with mother. This is what is corrupting my ideals regarding attraction to women and making me choose mad ones. It could be inferred that until I sort out the inner peace thing without involving women, I couldn't possibly make a good judgement call regarding them unless very lucky. This can be backed up by the probability that if I entered near married life relationship, feelings much as I have now of imprisonment would arise to kill of the relationship by causing many irrational problems.

Hmm, that's a nice one. Similar to what I have posited in here before, but with a slightly different twist. Maybe I am refining it slowly over time? I should quite like actually to get a hold of the notes written by that psychiatrist I went to a year ago or so as a source of ideas, especially from one who has studied it professionally. She might have seen things I couldn't and still can't. Difficult to know. And probably very unlikely I would have success in obtaining them. Can't see it being in professional practice guidelines somehow especially as most patients would probably react very poorly indeed ... actually, I am having quite humourous visions of certain reactions ... hehe ... that Soprano's TV show is pretty good for that. Ok, I should probably get back to work, it is a Saturday after all - be happy all, see you all again soon and until then, slan agat.