This week has been rough. And no, I’m not talking about our British conflict of opinion over whether our government is worthy or not—although more on that later—but about far more important things. Life, death, health, friendship, love, pain, emotion, loss, depression, betrayal, grief. Hurt.
Last Friday one of my colleagues at Wycombe Sound was killed in a car accident in the early hours of the morning. He was 26-years old. Although we never really spoke, I looked up to Seb—his vitality, his life, his passion for presenting—and as his close friend Clive Hodghton put it, Seb would ‘light up any room he walked in’. The world has lost someone wonderful. It doesn’t make sense to me how one moment you can be looking at someone, sensing their energy flow around you, and then there’s another moment when all of that is gone. And that doesn’t necessarily just apply to death. Caitlin Moran wrote an advice column for struggling young girls in The Saturday Times Magazine recently (I think it was last Saturday) and she mentioned something like ‘the only moments you ever have to face are the next two minutes’. She is right, and oh how is that so very wonderful and so very tragic at exactly the same time.
I’ve had recurring infections this week that have been keeping me pretty numb. Sigh. So I’ve had a lot of thinking time—it’s a fact that the best thinkers in the world also have herpes(gimme a smooch and find out?)—and it has been incredibly atmospheric with all the past week’s tempestuous ambiance. Pure pathetic fallacy. Or was that last week? I can’t remember. Speaking of herpes—I have two different types!—I read a post by the wonderful Ella Dawson yesterday. The title included the words sex and Taylor Swift, so of course I was gonna bloody read it. Anyway. In it she writes about how she published some stuff about an ex that pissed her off, and why she feels the need to write about these moment of her life for others to see. Now anyone who keeps up with my writings, and knows me vaguely, will know that I went through a phase of doing quite a bit of this, normally in the form of spiteful, revenge poems that were an anagram of thou enemy’s name. Of course, being a teenager in a community of stuck-up, ignorant, bigoted narcissists, I got quite a lot of shtick and no sympathy. So what? It’s not like I want your false sympathy(I’m a sucker for sympathy), especially bigoted, narcissistic sympathy. That’s always the worst kind. Dawson’s reminded me that my honesty is my integrity as a writer; I don’t censor. And shouldn’t.. What these idiots forgot is that whenever they have problems, all they have to do is call up a mate, arrange to meet up, and hey presto it’s time to hunt for a rebound fuck. Or perhaps they’re at school and they can have an angry pissing contest on the fat kid. Of course, I (the moral angel) would not dream of engaging in such despicable behaviour, but shouting lots of swear words with my friends sounds pretty appealing when it’s played out in my fantasy dreamland. Last year I was very much an invalid: not able to go out very much; often stuck in bed with shut curtains because light hurt my eyes(vampyre); I didn’t get to see my friends very often, and texting is never as satisfying as shitting profanity from your mouth(thanks Giles Coren). By that point, I’d lost my faith in humanity anyway, so didn’t really give a fuck about what people thought of me. Those pricks didn’t matter. One of my best friends, after all, had stuck his dick in the hand of my ex when he was supposedly helping me get over her. Thanks buddy! Another best friend, when I was very unwell and in and out of hospital, visited me once across the 6 months I spent out of school. He lived roughly 7 streets away: a 7 minute walk. Must’ve been too busy, I guess. Now although it may seem like it, this isn’t a stab at those guys. They made their choices to be shitty friends, and they’ve moved on with their lives. How wonderful for them. It’s me that’s left behind. Left behind with crushed dreams of my athletic ambitions as a national rower, which my team eventually achieved together. It was me that didn’t get to do my GCSEs because I was still vomiting my guts out and tearing my oesophagus with the copious amount of bile and stomach acid that my gut decided to spurt out, like a geyser from the pits of health hell. It was me who called his mother at 2am in the morning crying with a fear I had never before felt because I thought I was going to die and none of my friends would care because they hadn’t visited me in hospital. I felt I was the only one who mourned what I had actually lost: me. And for a few of my friends, I still believe that’s the case. But for many, that’s bullshit. Of all of my closest friends now, only one I was just as close with pre-illness. He’s stuck through me thick and thin; he told me to stop being a dick when I’d write those spiteful poems when I was hurting and didn’t understand why I couldn’t be happy anymore even though it had been more than six months since everybody else had moved on—I didn’t listen to him, but a friend who tells you when you’re being a dick is more of a friend than most people could dream of so young. Joe, I love you so much. All the other “new” friends I have: William, Luke, Ollie, Amber, Jamie, Jacob, Ella, Emily, Maddie, Amelia, Vit, Kate, Henry, Jess, just to name a few (and there are SO many more—MORE THAN THAT!—I am so lucky to have these guys I can’t sum it up into some beautiful words), got me through the darkest moments of my life: my depression. It’s these guys who got me through the weeks I went through with only one hour of sleep per night. It’s them who stopped me drinking when I really shouldn’t have been. They got me through hospital nights when I thought I was dying. They got me through 2014. Alors, this week has been bad, but thanks to my real friends, who I believe will continue to be my friends till death due us part, I am no longer depressed. And that is something to be thankful for. Those old friends wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near banishing those demons that entered my life for a year and half. They were too busy haunting my dreams.
That is why rowconn is dead. I killed him, and I am Connor Howlett. Thank you for getting me this far. You know who you are. You cheeky poos.
I hate politics. I also hate the Tories. What do these two have in common? They’re necessary evils. What the left don’t seem to understand is that WE ARE IN DEBT. People are complaining a lot about cuts with a Conservative government that wouldn’t happen with a Labour government, but without those cuts, where is our spending money coming from? We’d go further and further into debt. Still, our government still has so much work to do. Fox hunting? What the fuck is that going to achieve? People need to feel safe with the NHS, and it needs to improve drastically: with an ageing and growing population, that should be the last place that should be affected by cuts. The NHS needs more money invested in it, not less. Scotland: we need to do more for them. Question why the SNP got so many votes up there, and so many seats down here. Why would that be, if the Scots weren’t demanding that us English start to take them seriously?
I want to continue this political debate I have begun to set up, so maybe I’ll write a couple of political columns over the next few weeks for Ulterior, but I had a weird-tasting-and-smelling French press of coffee earlier, and I think it’s done something to my sense. Maybe that’s why I’ve been so fucking bold to write in such explicit depth for you all today. Hey, at least I’m honest. And if I receive complaints about this, you’re just censoring the truth. WHAT DOES THAT MAKE YOU? THE US GOVERNMENT? Lick my ass, suckah.
poetic rage 