Furthermore…

Starting with a positive again tonight! I just made pancake batter, using the recipe from the old Fake Dog blog. All I need to do tomorrow morning is buy myself a lemon and fry up half the jug. That should be enough for 3 or 4 pancakes anyway. Sweet, simple pleasures.

My quiz team also managed to get first place in O’Connell’s bar tonight. We only had 3 players, and our regular friendly rivals were playing with 5, so over-taking them in the second last round was a lovely little achievement too. There were only 6 teams in total tonight, but the standard of the questions was still fairly challenging.

Most pressing on my mind tonight though is the DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) in my legs after jogging last night and the night before. The 27 minute run on Saturday was fine. The run last night, which was 2 km longer, wasn’t such a great idea. I was on the move for 42 solid minutes, and my legs were tightening up after only 30. I managed to jog the last kilometre down-hill and get a few stretches in, but looking back now I almost wish I’d just walked the last quarter of my route!

I’ve been missing training in a big way since I started my job. My roster has meant I’ve only been available for a maximum of one out of the three weekly sessions, and I’ve been too tired every week to attend that. I’ve done two or three soccer training sessions instead, but the intensity of exercise there isn’t the same at all. However, despite the lack of structured exercise in the past 6 weeks, I’ve lost a few kilos and cut back on the amount of bad food I was eating. I reckon I could be down to my target weight just in time to put it all back on again over Christmas!

I don’t have any particular plans to keep me occupied over the “festive season”. Hopefully it’ll be a chance to catch up with friends who haven’t been in Limerick very often recently. I haven’t been getting out often enough to see people socially. The quiz is great, but I don’t meet enough people at it. Missing jujitsu is really getting to me as well. Work tends to be too hectic for making good conversation with anyone.

Another unfortunate side effect to finding myself in employment was the insurmountable time-restraint it would have put on my last relationship. We were together for almost 22 months when we eventually decided that the time had come for us to break up. There was no major falling-out or argument. Neither of us wronged the other. We just drifted apart, bit by bit, going from fortnightly visits to seeing each other every three weeks or so. And then, suddenly, we both had jobs! And as such our weekends were decided for us. Knowing we literally didn’t have time for each other any more was the final straw.

Being honest, I must say I’ve been too busy to notice the difference. I’m no longer in a committed relationship, and yet I still don’t feel “single” or “available”. I don’t really know what I’m looking for right now.

I miss the closeness I used to have with my ex. Just spending time talking, cooking, shopping, sleeping or reading together was great. I knew I had someone I could turn to whenever I needed a hug, someone I could talk to, and someone who could turn to me too. That’s how it was for a long time anyway, even if it wasn’t quite so cosy towards the end.

That sort of a connection doesn’t just burst into existence suddenly. It takes time and communication and trust to get close to someone, to love them and for them to love you. I don’t think I’m ready for that kind of an experience again so soon. I don’t feel ready at the time of writing anyway. That’s not to say I’d run from it! But I can’t see myself chasing it any time soon. Similarly, I’ve never been a man for quick hook-ups or one-off meetings. I don’t go on the pull. Clubs and dancing do nothing for me, and I’m not going to take up a bad habit just so I can chat to girls in the smoking area.

It may be that I should just forget about romance for a while. Take the time to sort my soul out first (or something along similar lines but with a more atheistic approach!) Re-charge mentally and physically and emotionally. Centre my spirit, so to speak.

I don’t know if it’s the loneliness of missing friends or that of being single, or if it’s the cynicism creeping in after getting through my “training” period at work, or even if I’m just worn out from two nights of running, but I’m not feeling 100% tonight. I went back through my old blog entries (all three years of them) on Saturday night. It brought up a lot of old memories that I’d almost forgotten about, things I’ve dealt with and from which I’ve tried to move on. Maybe revisiting those old essays wasn’t the wisest of ideas! I’d been feeling pretty damn good about myself until then.

Chances are I’ll feel fine again by bed-time tomorrow. I’m going to training for the first time in ages. I’m also planning a little bit of shopping, and a new shirt or two might make me feel a bit sharper too! So really, things are fine. I might write another meandering stream of thoughts tomorrow, or even more as the week goes on, but really I’m just trying to put some sort of order to the things in my head at the moment. It’s easier to follow the course of the river when you’ve overcome it to look down from the top of the hill.

December Update

To begin, a haiku I wrote features in a poetry blog this week! Not a massive deal, but nice all the same. Follow the link here if you’re interested. http://haikuj.blogspot.com/2011/12/haiku-j-volume-005-page-20.html

I’ve a number of longer poems in the latter stages of revision, but I’ve been neglecting them for a while. The base material is there for another collection of 14 or 15 poems anyway. I can’t remember the last time I put something like that together, but I’m happy I’ll have something creative to show for 2011!

What else is new? I started my first ever job six weeks ago, working in a pizza kitchen. My hours are somewhere between part-time and full-time, irregular and usually quite busy, and the money isn’t amazing, but a job is a job. Only this weekend have I felt like I’m getting the hang of it. I know the menu at this stage anyway! The first month was a hectic rush of learning by doing, asking questions and making mistakes.

It’s been a while since I’ve had to get used to making mistakes. It’s not a pleasant feeling, but it’s an enlightening one. Four years in college taught me little about being a “learner”, ironically enough. I never struggled with the learning side of my degree, even if the doing experience of Teaching Practice ended up being a bit of a disaster.

Lecturers used to emphasise finding the right methods to help every child understand a lesson. We had to think about how we help pupils overcome their difficulties and challenges. Such challenges were mere concepts to me, as bold as it may be to say so. I never struggled with my school subjects. Learning information from books, films, songs and blackboards came naturally enough to me. It’s a gift I know a lot of people don’t possess, and it’s not something I ever tried to highlight or brag about.

And until recently I didn’t really appreciate how it must feel to struggle with learning something new. It took a year before I could comfortably play a guitar, but that was something I did for my own amusement. I was petrified when I started learning to drive, but the lessons were limited to one or two a week. I had a great instructor when I was preparing for my driving test, and a set dead-line to prepare for, so that was a short-term goal with long-term benefits.

I don’t know how long I’m going to keep working for minimum wage. I don’t even know if I’ll be needed after the Christmas rush is over. But I do know it’s not easy. I probably would have given up after a fortnight if the rest of the staff weren’t so friendly and helpful. They’ve had to show serious patience to help train me in! And as well as showing me how to prepare and make pizzas, how to deal with stock deliveries, and everything involved in the massive closing-time wash, tidy and clean-up, they’ve been great teachers to me. We over-come language barriers to work together as a team.

As an experience it’s taught me more about teaching and learning than three years as an undergrad in college did. Recognising my own progress over the weeks is giving me a sense of confidence. I’m making a bit of money now too, so I’ve been able to update my phone for the first time in three years, and I’m saving up to replace this crumbling laptop some time in January. I’m getting up off the couch, getting to work on time, putting in a shift and planning other things around that. That’s in stark contrast with the last six months, which basically involved surfing the Internet, going to 3 training sessions a week and spending every second weekend dozing away the hours with my ex-girlfriend.

I reckon I’m almost ready to give this whole teaching thing a proper go. I’ve updated my CV, got a more respectable hair-cut and generally grown up a lot in the past six weeks. I don’t want to be a teacher forever, and I don’t know what exactly it is I do want to be, but I’m finally taking steps in the right direction. I even made myself go running last night and tonight, clocking up 13 km in less than 70 minutes between the two routes. It’s progress, and it’s all keeping me too busy to worry about being single again.

I don’t write here much these days. I don’t write too often when things are going well. That said, I have a few things on my mind at the moment, so there could be a bit of a surge between now and the new year. If anyone is still following this blog, feel free to leave a message!

The biggest downside to this working life is the lack of free time to meet with and talk to friends. I miss you guys and girls!

Mise le meas,

Tomás.

A few updates!

I tried to record a Vlog this afternoon, but alas! It would seem my camera just doesn’t want to record sound properly. The picture comes out fine, but after 45 seconds the sound recording loops over itself. Very strange camera behaviour!

Fortunately I can remember most of what I said. The first thing, topically enough (or should that be tropically?) was the weather! I’ve been sitting by the window for most of the day, with one eye on the stormy winds and the other on my laptop.  It’s the tail end of Hurricane Katia, now downgraded of course, and it’s battering the west coast of the country today. The only noticeable effect in my  immediate vicinity is just a pretty effect on the trees up the road, which are bending and swaying in all kinds of directions. I believe it’s worse elsewhere though, and I’m told a large pane of glass crashed out of one of the big buildings in the city centre. No reports of injuries, thankfully.

In other news, a project I was expecting to start today has had to be put on hiatus. The plan was to do some observation of teaching methodologies over the coming months, liaising with a lecturer as well as communicating with a group of college students. I was excited about being involved in research, so it’s disappointing that it didn’t start as planned! Hopefully the lecturer involved will be back to full strength soon.

With that out of the way for at least the next two weeks, I’ll be looking for other side-projects to keep me active. I used to upload videos to Youtube, whether of me playing music or of my friends engaging in funny conversations. I’ve been thinking of doing recordings of some of my old poems and uploading those. I have a micro-phone somewhere that’ll connect to my laptop via USB, so it might be an option. I’ve also been writing a bit again recently. I have notes and scribbles for five or six new poems, but they’re a long way from being finished yet.

On the sports front, the Gaelic Football Junior Championship got off to a predictably bad start last night. Most of our panel hasn’t trained this year, and those that have been training are mostly aged 16 or 17. Of the five players we had over the age of 23, four haven’t trained at all since last year. Monaleen had a lot of young players as well, but had some very strong players in key positions who took full advantage of our short-comings. A bad season for football in the club continues.

On the bright side, I’ll finally be grading for my green belt in jujitsu next week! I was scheduled to do it last year, but college commitments got in the way. I missed close to 8 months of training and got rusty, but I’m happy that I’ve got on top of the basics again. The techniques on the syllabus are coming along nicely too, and my fitness is good. I know it’s going to hurt, but I’m looking forward to next Wednesday night.

Also, I finally got around to signing a registration form for a local soccer club. With any luck I’ll be getting called for games in the next few weeks, although there’s a chance I’ll be away from home for some of the coming weekends. Time will tell!

That’s enough for now, I think. I’ll try to post something new soon.

Writing about writing.

I recall being told I had a flair for languages all the way back in primary school. Certainly in my last few years at that level I was doing well in spelling tests, getting good marks for my stories and reading quite a lot for recreation. I can still remember spending lunch and break-times with books in hand. My 5th and 6th class teacher encouraged us all by giving the class 15-20 minutes of reading time first thing in the morning. More than once I got lost in stories and had to snap myself back into reality, five minutes or so after everyone else had started writing or maths lessons!

In all that time, my hand-writing itself struggled from atrocious, through poor and up to acceptable, before I finally got the hang of cursive font. I even came up with my own way of writing a joined-up “f”! I remember being asked to demonstrate it on the black-board one day, and not being sure of my teacher’s motive; was I suspected of getting someone else to write my home-work, or did the teacher really want the whole class to copy my letter “f”? It remains a mystery to this day.

Secondary school was a different story (pardon the pun). I left 6th Class on a high, top-of-the-class. My 1st Year parent/teacher meetings, however, were tales of a very quiet boy who rarely gave answers in class. I went from having my hand up for every question to keeping my eyes down. I started bringing home disappointing results, a “C” being considered far too low a grade. Essays and answers were hastily written in the morning, or during the breaks between classes, far more often than carefully and correctly at home. In a way I saved all my best work for the Junior Cert.. My mother still takes the piss out of my results, nearly seven years on. “You did no work at all for those! How on earth did you pull that off?!”

It was around 3rd Year that I started getting ideas for poems. There were two in particular. One eventually became “The Goalkeeper”, a fanciful tale of a young lad who over-came adversity to make a cup-winning save. The other was later developed into “Help Him”, a third-person perspective on school-yard bullying. It was originally one verse longer, and narrated in the first-person, but it needed changing. I didn’t want to worry the teachers!

Transition Year was when I finally realised I could write proper poems. One assignment was to write one poem, about anything, in any style. That was when “The Goalkeeper” was brought forth from its hiding place near my bed and given a re-vamp for a reading audience. A few short months later I handed up my end-of-year project, a collection of 12 original poems which included the two already mentioned, a third that I wrote during class after the mid-term break, and 9 that I came up with on the spot, two nights before the project was due. It was a feat of creative out-put that I’ve never matched since.

I wrote a few sonnets that summer, before going into 5th Year. Leaving Cert English started to inspire me. Over two years I got to know a little about Kavanagh, Yeats, Bishop, Montague, Plath and Frost. Every new poet and each of their poems taught me something new, some stylistic nuance or linguistic trick to make art of images and words. I wrote over 60 poems over the two school years. Having a gifted and terrifying teacher helped! The man was a master at what he did. Every essay had to be drafted carefully, or else. He pushed me to my limits, refusing to award top grades unless he was exceptionally satisfied. I can recall two essays that he gave me “A”s for. One in particular stands out.

I used to sit beside one of my very best friends in English class. The two of us used to encourage each other, read each other’s work, offer little bits of advice. I know that for me it became a competition, although I never told my friend so. He was at a level that I had to match, not so that I could say I was better than anyone else, but so that I could say I was proud to be his equal. One week in 6th Year we were given a list of essay titles for the weekend, with four or five choices, and a vicious warning that ‘sixth year students can’t write good stories. In 99.9% of cases they’re derivative, boring, or nonsense. Basically, if you want a good grade, don’t give an examiner a story.’ Needless to say, my friend and I decided to take him up on the challenge. We were the only two students in the class to get “A”s that week.

Since then things haven’t quite been the same. It’s fully four years since I finished my Leaving Cert. English was my one and only A1 subject, my top mark. I let myself down in other areas. I’ve written less than 40 poems in the last four years. Perhaps it’s because I feel I’ve lost my old audience. The guys at school were always an inspiration for subject material, rocks to depend on for advice and criticism, friends to chat with about life and art and everything else. I haven’t felt compelled to compete with anyone. The fear of disappointing used to spur me on. Now it stops me from trying. A lot of critics on-line are more comfortable with prose, and are much quicker to emphasise the mistakes when they do review poems.

In many ways I miss the sense of encouragement. I used to get it from my parents, my teachers, my friends. Even people I would rarely talk to at school would come up to me in town, or at matches, and say they’d enjoyed reading my poems on-line. I defined myself as a poet for those few years, letting my ego swell and believing in my own self-created myth. I failed to recreate that effect in college. It’s reminiscent of my crawling into a shell in those early secondary school years. Maybe it’s a self-confidence thing. Maybe I just don’t feel as rebellious as I did when I was younger. Or maybe I just miss the attention! 

I don’t really know. I’m hoping that writing here will help me figure myself out again. I’m not a kid in a classroom any more, or an angsty teenage prima dona. It’s not up to anyone else to make me write. It’s up to me. Fuck the excuses.

Sobering thoughts…

No matter how often I remind myself, I always seem to forget at the crucial moment just how much I dislike nightclubs. By the time I realise my own mistake, it’s already too late. At that stage I’m inside the building, somewhere between €5 and €12 lighter, and thinking about throwing away even more money.

Last week I had one of those nights. It was a Monday, which, I suppose, was fortuitous in a way. I only had to pay a fiver at the door, which is far less demoralising than the full fare charged during the weekend. Alas, drinks were still being withheld until a suitably inflated charge was met with the requisite tender.

Paying five euro for a drink hurts. That’s especially true for pints, and even more so when said pint tastes like it was poured from an old boot. I don’t drink beer, but my tastes aren’t so unusual that a licensed premises should have difficulty finding something I’d enjoy drinking. It should be possible to order a pint of cider that isn’t flat and warm. It’s a shame that more care is given to pouring three shots of whatever brightly coloured alcoholic syrup is on special offer than to providing the customer with a tasty and refreshing beverage.

I spent ten minutes waiting at the bar to be served my one and only drink in town that night. Two others who arrived at the bar after me were served before I was. Not a good start. I cheered up slightly when I finally did have a full glass between my hands. Alas, I was then kept waiting until a further two fine young things were served before I was handed my change. That’s just poor service.

It was just one little incident, but it was worthy of a case-study in how to demoralise a customer. And that’s even with my personal preference for pubs taken into account! Yes, I am slightly biased against clubs in general. It’s one thing putting up with music you don’t enjoy. It’s another beast altogether when you have to ignore it at 120 decibels. It kills conversation, which is a big deal when you dance like a shed door flapping in the wind. Communication through words is so much more straight forward than gyrating, head-nodding and rigid arm-waving. 

I prefer sitting with friends around a table, finger and thumbing the condensation down the side of a cold glass, listening to the three or four simultaneous conversations, laughing along or interjecting. There’s far less guilt in nostalgia when it’s shared over drinks, whether the glass is half-full of ice or half-empty of Lucozade. The reminiscence is a fond thing, that old, embarrassing story transformed into something extraordinary. Everyone gets a chance to be the centre of attention. Get that much attention on a dance-floor and chances are you’d be asked to leave!

Alright, so you may be asked by someone pretty to leave and join them somewhere else. In which case, for most people, mission accomplished. Clubs are for dancing and pulling. I’m not too enthusiastic about the former and I haven’t attempted the latter since I was 14 and going to discos. And even at that age I was in a sober minority. Who knows, maybe that’s just my personality. It takes me a while to feel like I fit in. I was an awkward child, and I haven’t really grown up yet! Which is ironic, considering the context. Kids don’t belong in licensed premises, etc.

And yet it’s difficult to say “no” to friends. When three out of four point their noses in the direction of a club, the remaining one doesn’t have too many options. Which is more socially acceptable; going home early on your own or toughing it out, wasting money on drink and sharing a taxi home but still getting there on your own? It’s a choice I find myself making far too frequently.

>What next?

>

Two questions I’ve been asked a lot recently are, “What are you doing with yourself these days?” and, predictably enough, “What will you do next?” The former is far more easily answered than the latter. I applied for a Masters in Irish last summer, was accepted in September, and spent the months from September to April studying. In stark comparison to my time as an undergraduate, I was quite satisfied with that course. The material was interesting, the lecturers were engaging and my class-mates were all lovely. I had little to complain about!

Since the exams in April my go-to reply has been to mention my thesis. I’ll be submitting somewhere in the region of fifteen thousand words, and possibly up to twenty thousand. I know my topic inside out. I just need to get my ideas, my research and my findings on paper! What happens after that is much less clear. 

Last October I graduated with a degree in Primary Teaching. Many of my peers have struggled to find jobs. I haven’t even been looking. By the time I finished the B.Ed I was an emotional wreck. I just couldn’t handle the course, and I didn’t have the discipline to get through Teaching Practice properly. I went a month sleeping for three hours a night, with three-hour naps in the evenings, as I struggled to get my paper-work in order for my TP folders. I was drinking Red Bull just to get through the teaching-hours. I did enough to pass and to graduate, but left myself borderline phobic of classrooms.

The general expectation is that I’ll still do some teaching. Ideally I’ll pick up two days here, one week there, three days somewhere else, as a substitute. I could see myself enjoying that kind of experience. Gaelscoileanna would be my first preferences, with Irish being one of my greatest strengths, but more mainstream classes would be alright too. I could get to work with various age-groups in different locations, re-learning how to teach as a teacher should, and not learning how to deal with teaching practice.

When I first applied for the B.Ed in MICL I had visions of myself teaching art and music and P.E. and poetry and drama, being the enthusiastic teacher that everyone both loved and respected. I thought I could be the guy who could impart wisdom one moment and draw it out the next, helping children to think about thinking. I thought I could make every lesson as fun as it was worthwhile, productive and challenging.

I’ve come to realise that I wanted to be the teacher that I would have idolised myself. Someone who would have fostered my creativity and shown me how to cultivate it to the entire fullness of its potential. I was imagining myself as a composite of my two favourite teachers in primary school, enriched with the power of my Leaving Cert English teacher. Those three people brought out the very best in me. Alas, I met no-one in lectures who had the same effect on me.

Between the middle of 2007 and the end of 2009, my psyche had been rocked by two emotionally crippling break-ups, my own failures in college and the impact of a murder/suicide involving a young man I’d known (briefly). I was far too slow to look for help, instead letting my own problems engulf me. I effectively stopped writing poetry, and it’s been over 18 months since I was truly happy with my productivity as a writer.

I want to fix all of that. I want to be a writer. I want to be an artist and a musician and a poet. I want to make people think, make them look at the world and see it a-fresh. I want to be a social commentator, not some tabloid-esque shock-value column-filler but rather one who inspires fresh debate on important issues. I want to get people talking about music, sports, the economy, literature, philosophy, mental health, love, life and death. It would be a dream come true to make a living from such endeavours. 

That is what I want to do next. The trouble now is that I have no idea how to make those ideas my reality. I can write here as much or as little as I like. I can post on message-boards, I can submit poems to various journals and I can enter short stories into competitions. 

I have been told in the past that journalism is one of the very toughest sectors in which to make a successful career, and I’m aware that I have no qualifications in that field. I have no friends in high places or family who hold sway. Chances are I’d starve to death by Christmas if I tried to live off my writing after September. But do you know what? I don’t care. I’ve denied it for long enough now. A writer is what I want to be, whether I write poems or stories or songs or essays or articles.

I’m a realist, but I can still be optimistic. I have to start looking out for opportunities, and then taking them. This essay is just a signal of intent. The hard work starts now.

>This is just a tribute…

>Friends of mine have noted that I rarely write in this blog when I’m in a good mood. In other words, I save it for when I’m feeling down. No better phrase could describe how I feel this week. Given the circumstances, that’s perfectly understandable. I’m writing tonight because I need to say things. I need to get things off my chest. So many people have offered their support, but for one reason or another I haven’t let myself take it. When I’ve had the chance to talk, I’ve changed the subject. I’m writing now so I can say the things I’ve been needing to say all week. I still thank everyone who has been in contact. I love you, and I wish I felt strong enough to talk when ye’ve been there to listen to me.

In my life I’ve only ever attended three funerals. The first of those was a long time ago, when I was still in primary school. A boy in my class, who later became one of my very best friends, lost his young brother. I didn’t really know them well at the time, and I was detached.

A few years later my grandfather died. I was 13 years old. Two weeks before my grandfather’s death, I was told what a “hospice” was. Then I was told that he was in one. He passed away on a bright, blustery Friday in September. I didn’t attend the funeral. Instead, I stayed in my grandparents’ house with my brother, my sister and one or two of my older cousins. There had been a trend of houses being burgled during funerals, so we were on a mission to mind the house. Well, that’s what we were told at the time anyway.

Later that same school year I was in the guard of honour for a teacher in my school who had died. He never taught me, but he left a lasting impression on those who did have the privilege of being in his English class. I’m reliably told he was an inspired teacher, and a remarkable human being. I remember little of the ceremony, but I know I wore a black jacket.

Years passed. The next funeral I attended was a Church of Ireland ceremony for the grandfather of another friend. I can’t recall much of it now. I just wanted to be there for my friend at the time, even though I had no idea what I was supposed to do or say.

All that time I thought I was lucky. I’d never lost anyone close to me. I knew my Grandad, but I never knew him well. My mother’s grandmother had died when I was four or five, but I hadn’t been close to her either. And anyway, she was ninety years old. She’d lived her whole life. It was her time. Grandad wasn’t expected to see his 70th birthday, so people seemed consoled that he lived two or three years beyond that.

And then the news broke. Tuesday, 31st of May 2011. I found out at approximately 21:05, although others had known since 18:30 or so. Maybe even earlier. I guess the time didn’t really matter. What matters is that a truly amazing young person died this week.

Róisín Burke was my first real girlfriend. We went out for 13 months, between 2006 and 2007. I’ve written about her here before, at least in references. Our relationship was made up of a series of incredible coincidences, first-time experiences and startlingly powerful emotions. We broke up at the end of May 2007. I thought I’d got over her by the start of 2008. Thinking about Roe this week, it was clear that I’d never fully recovered from the break-up.

She introduced me to web-fora, to house-parties, and many other things besides. That was before we ever became an item! She’d been seeing another guy when my friend, Seán, first introduced me to her. I went along to a house-party that she hosted in Kildare, and then another for New Years Eve 2005/06. Everyone else was getting drunk. I was on pain-killers for a broken collar-bone, so I tried to avoid the crowd. Sitting on my own at the bottom of the stairs seemed to leave an impression on Roe.

I flew out to Vancouver for a week in April, knowing that she’d be in Limerick by the time I got home. She’d broken up with her boyfriend by then. We kissed one night in the middle of April, and arranged to meet up again around the start of May. On May 1st, we decided to give a long-distance relationship a go. She gave me a gorgeous green friendship bracelet with little beads on it. I wrote poems about her. She came to see my soccer team win the National Under 17s Cup in Limerick.

But it wasn’t easy. We were so young. I went off to Irish college in June and met another girl. That should have been the end of us. But, we met up again and made an effort to put things right. When she came to Limerick for my 18th birthday it looked like things would be okay. We saw each other only once every month. We regularly argued over the phone. I played sports too often, or didn’t text often enough. It’s hard to describe it now, but there was an intensity of emotional investment in that relationship that I’d never experienced before.

When we were together it seemed perfect. I’d never met anyone I could talk to so easily. There were nights when we’d stay up talking for hours and hours, taking turns to tell each other about our lives. We had some shared interests. The music of Snow Patrol was one such shared love, at the time. I could never sleep easy though. I was always afraid I’d snore, or breathe too loud, or talk in my sleep. After cheating on her, I was terrified of messing things up again.

On Thursday this week I went into town with friends. I wore my red tie for the occasion. I bought that tie for a black-and-red themed New Years Eve party at the end of 2006. I remember going to that party in blue jeans, and knowing nobody there except for Roe. The only other thing I remember accurately from that night was a fire-juggler from Galway.

In February 2007 my friend Seán had his 18th birthday. Roe and her friends came down to Limerick again for the occasion. It was a fun night, but by that stage cracks were becoming clearer in the foundations. We broke up the night before St.Valentine’s Day, just because she wanted to. We got back together again two days later. The Leaving Cert was drawing close. Neither of us was entirely sure of what course we wanted to do afterwards, or where in the country we’d be studying. We argued more and more often, and by the end of May we’d broken up. It’s entirely possible that Roe’s death coincided with the fourth anniversary of our split. It’s hard to recall exact dates at this stage.

One of the few consolations I have now is that I saw her again before she moved to Indonesia last year. Boards.ie’s Nocturnal Forum threw a party in her honour, aptly titled Rozabeers. After over three years, I finally saw her again. By that stage I’d been through another entire relationship that had lasted 2 years, and  was 7 months into a new one. I’m happy to report I’m still seeing that girl, coming up to 17 months now. Roe was one of the very first to congratulate us on getting together. She was such a good friend like that.

That night last summer was the last time I saw her. It was as if there had never been a bad word between us. She introduced me to her friends, we drank cocktails, we posed for pictures with giant bronze cattle. I fully expected to see her again, for a home-coming party in June 2011. It’s so hard to accept that she’s gone. I’ve cried myself to sleep four nights this week. Nothing I write will do justice to the mark she left on my life. I try to remind myself that we broke up four years ago, but it makes no difference. I loved her beyond words for over a year. Part of me, somewhere deep down, never stopped loving her.

I’m hoping to make it up the country to her funeral, which should be on some time in the next week. I don’t know how I’ll cope. I can’t even imagine what her family and close friends are feeling right now. I’d seen the girl once in the last four years, and I’m barely consolable. I know there are hundreds, if not thousands, who feel the same way. She touched so many people, whether that was through college, work, play or through the forums she used on-line.

It hurts so much right now, but I know that in the future I’ll think of her and count myself lucky. Roe was a special, special person. She shaped me, and even the way I look at life, for the better. I’m so glad I knew her, and I wish beyond measure that the world hadn’t lost her.

R.I.P. babez. x x x