The End

This blog is now defunct yo. My newy, at my company website, can be accessed here – http://www.henryhugman.bmtafeweb.com/portfolio/blog/

…

Really??

Baby, We’ll Be Fine

The National – Gospel

It’s been a year and half since I were last properly drunk. I still love to have a few drinks, I’m just not into binging it – it makes my ears wail like a screaming baby, and that really is a completely fucking unpleasant thing.

A year and a half ago I was at a point where I kinda felt as though I wasn’t going to be able to keep going on… as though I had no confidence in the future. Anxiety attacks and all the rest of it. In order to regain some semblance of wellness to my state of mind I decided to initiate a few lifestyle changes, one of them being to completely abstain from situations which aggravate this problem I have – amongst other things, intense drunkenness was included in that. For a while there I completely gave up on chocolate too (caffeine), wow. Though I have started slipping on some of these changes, the alcohol thing has remained constant.

I spent christmas sobre whilst largely surrounded by drunken friends. I have no problems with people being drunk, I sincerely want people to be having fun… and it’s mostly fun for me anyhow. Abstinence has however revealed some interesting/irksome situations… peoples unwavering alcohol fueled desire to promote their point, even meandering into the murky area of personal derision in order to do so, being the most apparent.

I also almost busted out in tears whilst having a conversation with John and Erin about my Mum.

I drove home alone from the furthest reaches of Upper Colo late at night along a long & old dirt road that I’d had no prior experience with. I even had to cross a ford with water running over it. It was interesting, most of the time I was fantasizing about catching a glimpse of the Lithgow panther, to no avail though.

Eyes wide open

A week and a half ago, a person that I am very close to was admitted to the mental health ward at the local hospital here. If you know me, you will know who it is.

There is a back story to this, but for his sake I don’t feel that I am really at liberty to divulge it here… though I feel the desire to express myself, this is going to be intentionally vague.

Since he was admitted, I’ve spent an amount of time almost every day visiting him and hanging out in the grounds of the ward. It’s been interesting – the way that this period of adversity has brought us closer together. I’m kind of the only person he has up here, and although our relationship has been very much troubled for the past few years now, I still feel the responsibility to be there for him.

I thought I had seen the end of that hospital after Mum died. Nope.

Purely out of priority and self preservation, over the years I’ve developed an anesthetism to the times that he created ill feelings within me – when he first went into the ward I was very much carrying this disposition, it sadened me to see him so delusional, but it didn’t really affect me. This morning when I arrived at the ward, after walking down that familiarly long, empty, sterile corridor with its multitudes of locked doorways, he was sitting there painting. It kind of hit me at that point… who he was, our history, the things we had shared.

It is sad… to sit there and listen to him going over these delusions with such conviction, when they are so obviously that, delusions. For him to see it as absolute truth, when it is so obviously not. When he is who he is.

We’ve been through a lot lately… death is intense, and I am sympathetic towards his position. He is slowly getting better. We had a great conversation today, I told him to write a book while he was inside. He said he might.

Anyway, this ones for you mate.

Unfinished work

I’ve been working on my portfolio/'company' website a bit of late. It’s by no means finished, but I think what I have done thus far is sufficient for me to start whoring myself out.

It can be found here.

Check it.

Celebrations and speculations

This time last year I had pneumonia. It was horrible, It was simply the worst I have ever felt in my life.

I’d had a cold for about a week.  I was traveling into the city each day from Katoomba for work, and had already taken a couple of days off.

On the Friday night I went to sleep feeling as though I was in the process of overcoming the cold.  Silly me, it certainly wouldn’t prove to be the case.

I woke up in the early hours of the Saturday morning completely overwhelmed with sickness. You know when you’re so sick that you just can’t sleep… yeah, it was like that.

I lay there in a dizzy haze in the darkness for an hour or so, shaking with a weird fucked up cold sweat, until the sun rose. I was coughing up all kinds of horrible stuff, the saturated colors of which I’d not before seen emanating from my own body. I knew it was bad.

Rosie made me an appointment with the doctor, and luckily we got one that morning. We got the cool young asian doctor, he was wearing a transformers t-shirt.

He asked me if I’d had any contact with birds, apparently I was showing some symptoms of bird flu. Eventually he deduced what it actually was, gave me some instructions and we were on our way.

When we went to the chemist, Rosie got out of the car and looked after it all for me. I sat in the car, the invalid that I was, and listened to The Naked City. The world was spinning as though I were drunk, but I wasn’t. I opened the window and violently threw up all over the side of the car and onto the pavement. It was 11am on a sunny Saturday morning in Coles car park, there was wholesomeness and families everywhere.  It was so one of those situations that was way to conveniently not what it looked like…it makes me laugh thinking back on it, I would have totally looked like a drunk, sitting there in the drivers seat of my car.

The doctor ordered me to take a week off work, I felt like a bastard for it, but it was necessary.

The whole next week was testament to how hopeless I am when I’m sick, and what a brilliant a carer Rosie is. I often wonder what (if anything) I did right to have luck place her into the path of my life. Whatever it was, I am thankful for it every day. Sometimes I think that there must be better people out there more deserving of her love… and there probably are. But she’s been with me through so much, and I really don’t want to ever let go of that.

This is in honour of you Rosalie, you are a beautiful human being.