Niall’s virtual diary archives – September 2000

Saturday 9th September 2000: 7.07am. I was wandering around tonight thinking I'd have a quiet one and so I popped into some friends to have a quiet smoke or such. Oddly enough, they had two sets of decks and the place was absolutely stuffed with people from the ground to the third floor. Everyone was in a particularly good mood - which they attributed to these red Ferrari pills that were kicking around.

I hence broke my abstinence from pills since June for a half. And they were really nice. Had a great time, until it got to the end ...

I was standing skinning up in the kitchen and there were these five or so blokes that no one really knew. Maybe it was my paranoia creeping back in, but I swear I heard one of them repeatedly ask "who's the guy with the pipe " (me). I thought, after more of this (they went into a corner to discuss something etc.) I began thinking they must be undercover. None of them smoke, and they kept asking questions (like [to owner]: how many people went through this place tonight).

I got a chill down my spine and felt compelled to leave, instantly. As I was walking homewards, I felt I was being watched (lots of single men hanging around doing nothing at 6am?) so I thought I'd better neck all these remaining pills in case I get searched. That's three extra, all gone at once. And now I am sitting here, utterly buggered and really wishing I hadn't taken all three at once. Whoah!, my head is in bits ...)

I'll know tomorrow of course if that party got busted and it wasn't just my imagination that these boys really were suspect. Anyway, I'm off - I leave for Madrid next Wednesday, so expect another update from Madrid itself! Until then, be happy!

Thursday 14th September 2000: 7.15pm. Well, I'm back in Spain again and we've got circa four weeks to go before I move out here permanently. But I'll talk about that later - right now, I'd like to get down a lot of what has been going through my head during the last few weeks but I haven't had time to give it a good think or indeed get a handle on a lot of it.

I feel uncomfortable a lot nowadays. I'm not as bad as I was a few months ago at all, but I do get spells when I get a negative turn on my perceptions of things, especially when reading emotional states of others. A good analogy is if life were like an acid trip, and when you go on a bad trip then everything just seems bad, much as when on a good trip everything just seems good. It's like that - I observe something and think the worst and I have to use logic to check myself from rash actions. It's like having a bad arm and having to constantly work around it. I miss a good reliable sense of intuition.

Of course, it seems obvious that this is related to the symptoms experienced a few months ago when I actually heard negative things coming from people - now I perceive negativity rather than hear it mostly. And I suppose you can see why one might feel uncomfortable if one is constantly going through an imagined negative life.

My current theory is that this is effectively an irrational fear. It is a fear of me making others unhappy, it is a fear of not being accepted. But this extends - I do illegal things regarding drugs, and hence I am now irrationally fearful of getting caught and punished. Do you know that when I was running the society I was ready to get caught and punished? But now, the mere thought fills me with dread and utter mind-numbing spirit-crushing fear. I have lost the strength to be me and not give a fuck. I have, I suppose, lost my self-confidence in certain respects.

This is especially exemplified by my fear of saying things which may annoy people. Those past hallucinations of people saying bad things about me effectively is a manifestation of my fear that I am not being accepted by others.

This probably stems back to childhood. I was not accepted by my peers when I was young. I got over that, but I was severely knocked back around June 1999 when the p h and hence it was a reason to be very upbeat. I think I even said that I was as strong as I have ever been.

So what has gone wrong since? I remember Christmas being fine, and for much of my project (prior to the Easter break) I remember being pretty together. Easter saw two things happen that I can think of - one was that the police started following friends of mine, and the other was Ruth breaking up with me. I remember the first time that I realised something was seriously wrong the night I took that Red Devil acid about two weeks after Easter break when I accused everyone in the room of being undercover policemen and stormed out utterly convinced that I would be in a police cell within hours. Acid has a funny way of putting your insides outside.

Since then, there have been good days and bad days. My programme of improving my health and stopping drugs has reduced the voices from audible to merely being impressions. But I still fight those impressions most days by logically deciding if they are valid or not which merely adds to my uncertainty & confusion sometimes.

I realised quite some time ago that stress does not help matters in this regard, so I have been attempting to reduce stress. But now that I have tackled entirely or partly all the causes I had identified, I have begun to suspect that there must be another cause that I am missing which I have not yet alleviated. The big question is, what is it?

A nightmare that occupies my mind a lot recently is the one of people whom are thoroughly nice and pleasant to you when face to face but secretly they bad-mouth and plot against you. If you think about it, that's undercover policemen. It's also hallucinating that people are saying bad things about you in low whispers. Originally, back when I was healthier, I used to feel that if people did this then they did, and there was little one could do about it. Logically I still think and realise this, but now I no longer feel it. I fear it instead.

You see, those party people must have spoken badly about me in private before they rejected me. Before this, they never said anything to indicate that they didn't like me, but there were signs in hindsight - but I ignored them at the time. I made the modification after thinking about it during Canada to be more sensitive to such signs, but what seems to have happened is that I have become over-sensitive to the point when I begin to interpret perfectly neutral signs as those of dislike of myself. The big question is, why has this happened?

To answer this throws us back to that missing cause. There is no doubt that the events of that Easter break had a large part to play, but the question still is why? and how much? Is it the case that unresolved fears from childhood were masked over and that these events that I mention merely caused it to surface? Perhaps through the society and my role as figurehead made me feel that people accepted and believed in me - I do remember being mostly shocked that night those people rejected me, partly because I hadn't foreseen it and partly because it opened old wounds. Maybe when the society was killed, I realised that certain people had been plotting against me despite being nice to my face. Then when the police were around during Easter, it became serious as unlike political plotting against me, I could now end up in gaol being raped every day for the next few years - and all at the behest of some informant. This change of response (in that a year earlier I wouldn't have cared) was justified by (a) actual police doing investigations and (b) I now have far more serious contacts than previously and hence it is much easier for the police to throw me away because I would not cooperate with them.

The question still is why this healthy fear which aids caution transmuted itself into the irrational and debilitating fear which I have detailed here. I am hopeful that with the changes I have instigated into my life that the aforementioned healthy fear will not need to be exercised so much in the future, but that does not prevent what is happening now from happening again. I need to identify the root cause or causes and deal with them. If these stem from childhood, then it is even more important to have them done with and over. But first I need to identify them.

Anyway, Ruth has just arrived home, so it's time for me to finish up. I'm happy to have written a lot of these realisations down at last, as I would reach one and then forget it. Writing it down cements the knowledge of it. Hence I look to the future with hope. Tiempo dará las respuestas.

Cool, not sure when the next update will be, but until whenever it is, be happy!

Saturday 16th September 2000: 5.56pm. Ruth has just gone out to visit her friend's father who is sick in hospital, so I'll grab this moment to continue from where I left off two days ago.

Do you know that almost from the moment of finishing the previous entry two days ago that I have felt healthy? An excellent analogy would be my mental health being like a dyke and evil insane stuff being the sea and my brain the land. Before, the dyke was feeling the pressure of the sea and cracks were beginning to show. Now it is like the sea level has lowered considerably and so there is much less pressure on the dyke. However the cracks are still there. But now the pressure has gone, I can heal those cracks.

Now it could just be that getting out all that I did was cleansing and purifying. However, I had realised bits and pieces for some time, so I think not. I am trying to remember how I was whilst in Ireland, but to be honest I don't think I managed to get time to think much there. There was always something else to do.

It's dangerous to let yourself get into a lifestyle which does not allow adequate time for reflection. Eastern philosophies embody this concept particularly, but so have traditional western philosophies - even if this was often perverted by some organised religions into guilt-trips. I have been particularly guilty of not making time for myself to sort through the shite in my mind, especially as I have run into troubles with this before time and time again. I think perhaps that when initially you think about something of this nature and you do not succeed, you can tend to plunge yourself into activity to prevent yourself reworking the same mental ground but then it becomes so easy to just grin and bear it that you forget to stop all that activity to see if things have changed yet.

Luckily for me, my Spanish is not good enough to keep track of conversations here without a lot of concentration so it has given me ample time for reflection - as indeed evidenced by the entry of two days ago. Well, I've had plenty more time to reflect on what the missing cause of the last entry might be - and I have two possible candidates:

The first is that I have now solved all the causes but it is still taking time to filter through. I should know the answer to this if this is indeed the cause when I return to the UK because now that I have realised that I am doing all these things without cause, I should stop doing them. This is the most preferable solution. It's a lot nicer than the second.

The second possible missing cause is Ruth. If you remember, all these troubles came to the fore when she rejected me during the Easter break. If you think I'm letting a girl's actions get to me too much, I shall remind you of the entry of the 9th July 1999 where I determined that the cause of my new-found inner peace was probably Ruth. If you look at the entry of the 16th August 1999, I write about the implications of this realisation upon my life at the time:

As long time readers will know, women are the bane of my life. Everything else I've got covered, but not women. Until I reacquainted myself with Ruth, and suddenly this great peace fell upon me and I became obscenely happy. At the time, I put it down to my double digit Ecstasy pill habit, but it wasn't just that. It really did happen.

I then warble on about what a risk she poses to me in that she could really treat me like shit and I would probably let her. Pretty much all of what I said then still stands true today, but now it is far more pertinent as the move I talked of then is potentially only weeks away now. We are standing at an important set of cross-roads.

To digress for a moment, I have been hesistant to talk about Ruth in this diary ever since the entry of the 29th June 2000 which caused her a lot of pain & a frantic worried phone call to my mobile - but in my mind, a diary is a diary. Anything I write here I don't mind others knowing about, but in the case of Ruth where she understands some parts but not others and then blows the bits she did understand out of proportion - well, now that I'm here in Spain with her, I can explain things before she gets worked up. She'll see this before I publish it, so it'll kinda be vetted first.

I have been aware for some time that Ruth exerts an amazing amount of control over me - too much for safety. I cannot be absolutely sure that my recent mental difficulties stem from her actions upon me at Easter, but I can be fairly sure that they played a part. If you think about it, I did not have inner peace before last Easter plus a year - then I had it until last Easter. It cannot be a coincidence.

Knowing this, I have been working on a set of mechanisms and defences to handle interactions with Ruth in a way which will make me strong. Current methods which have worked so well for me up until now are of no use when with Ruth - she cuts to my core and there is nothing I can do in traditional terms to stop it. What must be understood is that the very reason why our relationship is so powerful is that she can bypass my defenses like this - for every measure she has to make me happy, she has equal measure to make me sad. Clearly, to place barriers to prevent her from hurting me also places barriers to prevent her from making me happy & hence places barriers between us.

I'll just flesh out this point. Normally one goes through life with an inner core of personality, probably formed in very early childhood. As one ages through late childhood, puberty and some would argue until death, we are constantly learning limits or barriers to place upon that inner core. For example, I might really fancy some girl but a barrier or limit I have mentally erected prevents me from walking up to that girl and telling me my honest feelings. Another example: I might see a poor person and feel really bad that I have money and they do not and I might have an impulse to go give them some of my wealth - but a learned barrier reminds me that to do this too often will mark me as being soft and easily taxable and taken advantage of. We spend 99.99% of our lives not telling the truth of our inner selves, but hiding or modifying it to suit the norms of the society and culture in which we are raised. Most couples open themselves up a little to one another, but retain the vast majority of mental barriers which prevent them saying and doing a lot of which their inner impulse wishes.

Now I am by no means saying that these barriers are always bad. They are very necessary in the world in which we live. But they also divide us from our fellow man, and this leads to loneliness. If you are in love with someone, really truly in love, then you must surely trust them enough to lower at least some barriers. In the unique case of Ruth, she has always been able to cut through my barriers - or maybe it is because I lower my barriers very easily to her. But whatever the case, she can penetrate my mind deeply with ease and there is little I can do to stop it if I am going to be around her frequently.

The solution, clearly, is to do away with the idea of barriers as a form of defence from Ruth completely. The only solution which does not interfere with our relationship and still leaves open all the potential our relationship brings is to become fully open to her. But to become open to her with a traditional mindset cannot work - what needs to be changed is my way of thinking with regard to her. A good analogy of this is electrical wiring which shorts out and causes a fire if a certain load is placed upon it. If one changes the wiring appropriately, no load will cause a short.

And how do I suggest changing my mindset? I must also bear in mind that she is not working on anything like this same level - she will try to retain a more traditional form of mental conditioning. What I choose must not cause her harm; it must not allow irreversable harm to come to me; and it must be compatible with how she thinks (which includes not scaring her to death by me being too "weird"). This, as they say, is a sticky situation :-)

Right, Ruth's just back right now and we must go out, so I'll continue this at a later stage, maybe in a few days when I've had more time to contemplate things. See you all soon - until then, be happy!

Sunday 17th September 2000: Hi everybody. I'm Ruth. The first thing, I'm sorry for my english it's very bad, I'm sorry so much. Now Niall is walking for Madrid, he is alone now. I'm very worry for him. I'm going to try to explain the other side. I love Niall, he is increible man, but it's the first time in my life I want to be alone, to selfish, to be with myself, I hope you understand my fellings. I know that Niall love so much and he want to be with me all his life!, it's very beautiful but I have fear, I need time. I want to Niall come to Spain, we don't know so much about us, we need to have time for know us. Maybe my future is with him, but maybe not, who knows.

I don't know if you will read this or not, but at least Niall will do. This is for Niall. I LOVE YOU, I'm going to be with you all my life.

Earlier that day ... 4.55pm. I had a bad night last night. I kinda span out in a bar here in Madrid. It was unexpected, and it has led to a lot of tension between me and Ruth. Clearly she hasn't been understanding this diary. I reiterated much of it to her between 5 and 6am this morning.

The problem was that I have never particularly liked those sort of youth pubs which are so common in Europe nowadays. They have the wrong atmosphere - I'm not sure why. The way I usually handle being in one is to get very drunk, which works fine in England but it doesn't here because (a) people don't really drink alcohol here and (b) it isn't constructive in the current situation. This has always been the case ever since I were a young lad, and nowadays in England I mostly avoid spending much time in them unless getting drunk. It's just not my scene.

Now previously in Spain I had always grinned and beared it, but last night it all got a bit too much. It was like everyone was looking at me, or at least this is what it seemed like and this reminded me of hearing voices days. And it was so full of people pressing against me, the music was so loud and every time I kept accidentally bumping into people and there was this feeling of panic because the words didn't immediately leap to my mouth for an apology. I just had to get out of there before I exploded.

But of course, being reliant on Ruth for transport makes this so very hard. So I lost it a bit. Which has led to this current situation where she is so obviously uneasy around me. I guess I'm a little intense :-)

I went for a long walk today. I have spent these last few days totally at the behest of others with no freedom for myself so it was greatly needed. And as I walked, things became clear: I am pushing myself too far. I know how ambitious I am, I know that I want the world but I think I have to be realistic. I have placed myself in this situation of great change and hence stress and I am still recovering. What's more important is that as mentioned many times here, I am subjecting myself to woman-stress, the most potent and penetrating kind. I think something has to give.

So I sat down on a bench somewhere, and I logically worked things out in my head. Ruth does not want a relationship for now. She never wants children. She wants to be alone for now. I have been maintaining a dream that she needed me, which is why I have implemented such a fast timetable to get to Spain. But now I realise that she does not. Which means effectively, there is no rush. Amsterdam Cannabis Cup 2000 sounds nice :-)

I mentioned in my last entry the whole thing regarding barriers and how I would like to remove them. I perhaps have spent my life trying to find someone with whom I could remove my barriers. I now realise that at this present time, Ruth is not that person. To pretend that she is opens me to a mental stress which I could really do without right now and it is for very little gain as far as I can see other than to satiate my desire to start being happy for once. But I must accept that I will not be happy for the foreseeable future.

I still think that the move to Spain is a good one. I think I shall enjoy being here very much. But I must stop wanting Ruth. Maybe I will always love her, but I must remove the dream that I have built of us being together. I must reduce our relationship to that of only being friends, and to stop hoping or dreaming that it will ever be more.

As the more astute of you may realise, this is erecting lots of new barriers, the exact opposite of what I want to do. But hard times call for hard measures, and I must protect myself at this crucial stage. It is entirely possible that once in Spain myself and Ruth may end up together, but I must stop dreaming of this. I need to.

Ever since I took these decisions it has been like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders (again!). I don't feel vulnerable anymore, I suppose this is a good example of why barriers work. I feel sad that it has to have come to this, but I see no other way out. I am also greatly worried about how Ruth is going to take all this - it will be very hard for her I think. God, thinking about it now, it will probably crush her inside, whether she shows it or not. Man, I really have fucked up this relationship. Maybe I am destined to never get this arsehole of a business right. Fuck.

Anyway, we are off to the cinema at some stage soon, so I'll be off. Wow, this has been a productive few days eh what? As I've said before, a happy person is a boring person. People who have really shit lives and keep fucking up all this is good in their lives are far more interesting. Aren't you readers oh so lucky?

Well, until later, be happy!

Monday 18th September 2000: 12.55pm. Well, it's been some weekend eh? After me and Ruth talked about pretty much the contents of my last entry, and it was agreed that we were at an end, I passed out probably from nervous exhaustion. When I woke (probably around 8.30pm) the whole situation was suddenly reality. Y'see, before when I took the first walk which preceded yesterday's entry I came back thinking the below but not really feeling it. After sleeping for a bit, when I woke it was no longer a dream, but truth.

I needed to think where I could smoke, so I left somewhat abruptly. I clearly worried the hell out of Ruth. I wasn't gone all that long (back at around 10.30pm), but it was long enough to put her into a terrible state. As you can see, she even wrote in an addition, god bless her. She is such an incredible person.

So now where are we? Well, the sensible thing would seem to be to carry on as last entry said. Even as Ruth has said here herself, she doesn't want to be in a relationship for now, so I need to get her out of my system especially as I don't know how long she will want to remain outside of a relationship. If I come to Madrid, I must have a clear mind and expect nothing so that she can take as long as she wants. Or maybe she will never want a relationship between us. I must accept this possibility too.

Well, it looks like there's going to be a little more time spent in Hull after all. I need to get all this stuff through me and done and lots of other issues need to get sorted in me little ol' head. And then, when I expect nothing more from Ruth than friendship, I will return to Madrid and get on with my life.

Three days to go. I was in a good mind late yesterday to book flights out of here immediately - I have no friends here really, no support base and I needed someone to talk to. Instead I talked to Ruth, something I had always promised myself never to do since Kathryn as it easily turns into a form of manipulation. And oddly, it worked - I feel a lot better.

Anyway, Ruth is at me to go open a bank account, so I'll finish this later. Bye - be happy!

Tuesday 19th September 2000: 12.22am. Do you see the bit "Now Niall have to write," below? Well, just after she typed that, I told her that as I read the first paragraph, I realised that even if I stopped loving her, when I come back I will just fall back in love with her again - so what's the point of going through the pain? I suppose it's fairly obvious where the remainder of Ruth's typing came from ... :-)

So I guess I must acquiese. She wants more time, she's going to get it. Arse man, this is definately not the best thing for me to do. In fact, it's downright stupid. But I am 100% sure that I'm right, I could purge the girl from my mind as I had started to do today and yesterday but as I have noticed all day today, I can't stop myself from falling in love with her. It just doesn't work. All that pain would be for no gain if it all got undone within hours.

So that's that. I go back to England on Thursday, I'll come back here as soon as I can and I'll wait for as long as she needs me to. I have no choice in the end.

Well hasn't this been a week of some change? :-) One minute I'm doing one thing and then another. Isn't love crazy?

Ruth: Tu quieres verme escribir, pues toma dos tazas, pero claro no vas a entender nada de lo que escriba, para mi es muy fácil escribir en mi idioma pero si tengo que pensar en ingles acabo agotada, creeme, es horible estar pensando todo el tiempo lo que quieres poner y luego traducirlo para escribirlo. ¿Que te parece?. No tienes ni  la mas remota idea de lo que escribo, eso es una ventaja para mi. Bueno creo que ya es suficiente. Bye, bye, Bye - be happy!

Just now when Ruth stole the keyboard ... Well, I'm Ruth. Niall are crazy, now he can read all I write. So he is crazy, He don't want to kiss me, I can understand why, but i think that we are very young and we have to live. Niall can't understand what I want, it's normal, but, maybe, I don't know. I would like to be with him, but I need a time, I don't know what time maybe I want all, I 'm very selfish, and I want to have all that I can't have, maybe. I'm a very strange woman, I'm very ambitious, and I want always all. And I want  Niall.  What do you think?.

Now Niall have to write, or not, no, now he is kiss me I win. he is touching me, he is kiss me, but my parents are in the other room, estoy cardiaca.

Maybe I want all I don't have, I love to have the power every time, I love whrn you touch me it's increible, you know all I want every moment. It's strante because this will be in Internet, LIKE NOW, I donpt want to change anything.

I ask  Niall.  Are you happy? He said  "I'm sure this is a mistake". and he start to kiss my neck. He said: "Of course I'm happy, but it's a mistake". Something more to say?

Niall said:

"umm, muac, ehhhh," You can not typing like this. It's difficult to write now, I want to touch you. don't put this in Internet it's terrible, he move his head said no.

I dont'know what I say. he hold me. and he squeeze my breast.

Earlier today ... 1.59pm. I can't really think of much to say above and beyond that of what's already been said. What needs to be done has been pretty much formed in my head, and I have explained all that needs to be to Ruth and she also to me. I guess it's coming to an end.