don’t know why I didn’t. Maybe I didn’t want to jinx it. My family was always into the whole mad Irish country thing of keeping secrets anyway. It’s nearly like a kind of embarrassment, not wanting to say anything about yourself for fear you’ll be judged or looked on as foolish.
I don’t know in the name of God which way is up now. Bobby is after doing away with his auld fella, and Réaltín won’t leave me inside the door, and her father, who’s a quare sound auld skin, says I’m as well off leave her be for a while. Fuck that, though. He’s my young fella too, like. I’m no good to him, though. What good am I?
I NEVER THOUGHT I ’d ever be depressed, really. It’s quare easy fall into that hole. You can kind of lose yourself very quick, when all about you changes and things you thought you always would have turn out to be things you never really had, and things you were sure you’d have in the future turn out to be on the far side of a big, dark mountain that you have no hope of ever climbing over. I was never idle a day since I done the Leaving. I got just enough for the apprenticeship and done my time as a steel fixer and Pokey gave us all jobs when his da handed over the whole works to him. We done everything: roads and houses and formwork and plant and drainage and the whole lot. Pokey tendered for everything. He took on a rake of Polish subbies and screwed the poor pricks and we all thought it was a laugh. That whole subbie thing was a right con job. Then he screwed the rest of us and we laughed on the other side of our faces. I still went aroundlaughing and messing and joking and all, though. I’d never let nobody see how I was panicking.
Everyone thinks I’m gas, that I don’t give a shit about anything. I never told anyone about the blackness I feel sometimes, weighing me down and making me think things I don’t want to think. It was always there, but I never knew what it was until every prick started talking about depression and mental health and all that shite. I’m not a mentaller, like. I’m not. I just can’t see for the blackness sometimes. It’s always there, waiting for a chance to wrap itself around me. I often wonder why I was born at all, why my mother had to suffer to give me life, why my father bothered his bollocks with me, working his arse off to pay for things for me, everything I wanted, just about. I think of the ma and the da and how good they always were, and how they always encouraged me, even though it was pure obvious I was the waster in the family, and how they were so let down when I got Réaltín up the duff and they not even having met her and how they met her then and thought her shit was ice-cream, and they were nearly proud of me for a while, and they even thought I might marry her, and how they’re solid heartbroken now over never seeing the child and all. It’s all gone to shit. That’s all my doing, how they’re upset like that. Sometimes I feel short of breath and my heart pounds and I feel a whooshing in my ears and I double over and put my head in my hands and a few times lately my hands have been wet with tears when I’ve taken them away from my face. No fucker knows that, though, nor never will. I’ll be grand in a while. I have no right to feel like this.
I think of the young fella, little Dylan, and how gorgeous he is, and how I always go about things the wrong way with Réaltín and accidentally look at her tits and she ends up pissed off with me and I always react like a right stones. I can’t hold myselftogether at all, I gets pure wicked with her and tells her to fuck off and I can’t tell her properly how I want things to be because I can’t really think under pressure, when she’s standing there, waiting for me to be a proper man. When I found out the other week that Bobby was above doing jobs for her I flipped the lid altogether; like, why couldn’t she have asked me to do them jobs? But by then Bobby was after flipping his own
I don’t know in the name of God which way is up now. Bobby is after doing away with his auld fella, and Réaltín won’t leave me inside the door, and her father, who’s a quare sound auld skin, says I’m as well off leave her be for a while. Fuck that, though. He’s my young fella too, like. I’m no good to him, though. What good am I?
I NEVER THOUGHT I ’d ever be depressed, really. It’s quare easy fall into that hole. You can kind of lose yourself very quick, when all about you changes and things you thought you always would have turn out to be things you never really had, and things you were sure you’d have in the future turn out to be on the far side of a big, dark mountain that you have no hope of ever climbing over. I was never idle a day since I done the Leaving. I got just enough for the apprenticeship and done my time as a steel fixer and Pokey gave us all jobs when his da handed over the whole works to him. We done everything: roads and houses and formwork and plant and drainage and the whole lot. Pokey tendered for everything. He took on a rake of Polish subbies and screwed the poor pricks and we all thought it was a laugh. That whole subbie thing was a right con job. Then he screwed the rest of us and we laughed on the other side of our faces. I still went aroundlaughing and messing and joking and all, though. I’d never let nobody see how I was panicking.
Everyone thinks I’m gas, that I don’t give a shit about anything. I never told anyone about the blackness I feel sometimes, weighing me down and making me think things I don’t want to think. It was always there, but I never knew what it was until every prick started talking about depression and mental health and all that shite. I’m not a mentaller, like. I’m not. I just can’t see for the blackness sometimes. It’s always there, waiting for a chance to wrap itself around me. I often wonder why I was born at all, why my mother had to suffer to give me life, why my father bothered his bollocks with me, working his arse off to pay for things for me, everything I wanted, just about. I think of the ma and the da and how good they always were, and how they always encouraged me, even though it was pure obvious I was the waster in the family, and how they were so let down when I got Réaltín up the duff and they not even having met her and how they met her then and thought her shit was ice-cream, and they were nearly proud of me for a while, and they even thought I might marry her, and how they’re solid heartbroken now over never seeing the child and all. It’s all gone to shit. That’s all my doing, how they’re upset like that. Sometimes I feel short of breath and my heart pounds and I feel a whooshing in my ears and I double over and put my head in my hands and a few times lately my hands have been wet with tears when I’ve taken them away from my face. No fucker knows that, though, nor never will. I’ll be grand in a while. I have no right to feel like this.
I think of the young fella, little Dylan, and how gorgeous he is, and how I always go about things the wrong way with Réaltín and accidentally look at her tits and she ends up pissed off with me and I always react like a right stones. I can’t hold myselftogether at all, I gets pure wicked with her and tells her to fuck off and I can’t tell her properly how I want things to be because I can’t really think under pressure, when she’s standing there, waiting for me to be a proper man. When I found out the other week that Bobby was above doing jobs for her I flipped the lid altogether; like, why couldn’t she have asked me to do them jobs? But by then Bobby was after flipping his own
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