I solemnly swear that I am up to no good (or at least I was)!!

Smarty pants brought home a lovely laminated certificate from school yesterday. At first I assumed it was an award of some sort. It turned out to be a promise, there laminated in black and white, that she would never use drugs and would not drink alcohol until she is 18. I asked was she given a choice about this, she said no, they were told to sign them and hand them back up.

As a parent I'm torn about how I should feel about this. On one hand I should be delighted that my daughter is promising things like this and that the school are pressing such issues. On the other hand it's complete bulls*#t, it means nothing, it's not a real promise. To the kids it's just writing your name on a piece of paper because you were told to.

I know this and the kids know it too. The problem with how we deal with these things is that the education system so often fails to see kids as human beings who deserve respect, honesty and not to be patronised. If they just got someone in to talk to them to say look, I know you'll be presented with drugs and alcohol before you're 18. I know a lot of you will probably drink before then and some of you may experiment with drugs. So just don't be an idiot. Don't get yourself an addiction that will take over your life and destroy it and those of everyone around you. Don't get yourself into situations where you're drunk in an unsafe environment where someone could take advantage of you etc. If they got people who have fallen foul of these things to come and talk to them it would probably help too. At the very least they should be honest with them and not just get them to sign pieces of paper against their will that they know mean nothing.

They had a talk on smoking yesterday as well. The guy appears to have been a bit of an idiot. He went way way over the top with the effects of smoking. Exaggerating them so far beyond the truth that my daughter who despises smoking found him ridiculous. The thing is the kids see through this crap. They all know someone who smokes, they see people smoking every day so to tell them that a 40 year old person who's smoked all their adult life will definitely look 60 or 70 is just insulting their intelligence and breeding a mistrust of the type of people who give these talks.

I suppose the issue itself and the dealing with it scares me too. We're heading, swift as a bullet for teenage-dom. I was not a good little girl, in fact I was very very very naughty indeed!! If it was taboo or forbidden I did it, if it made you high, low, laugh, cry, hallucinate penguins growing out of postboxes I sniffed it, drank it, smoked it, ate it. Loathe as I am to admit it, most of it never did me any harm what-so-ever!! I became addicted to almost nothing because I never did many of them more than once or twice. Yes, I smoked, became addicted and still am addicted to nicotine, but of all the other things I did, to have that be the only lasting consequence is a bit of a feat I think. Especially since some of the most well behaved people I know are as hooked on the fags as I am!!

So where the school and the education system fails I am supposed to pick up the slack. I am supposed to talk to my daughter frankly and openly about smoking, drink and drugs and their effects. Fecked if I'm going to be honest with her about drink and drugs. The smoking she knows all about, she knows I smoke like a bleedin chimney. She hates it, but it wouldn't surprise me if she did it at some point. I just hope she never ends up as completely hopelessly hooked as I am.

As for drink, I can see it now. Well Smarty Pants, I once drank so much vodka that I blacked out while still upright and walking, screaming my loaf off wandering some of the dodgyest streets in Dublin (and that was the least embarrassing, most blog-worthy example I could find) So eh, never drink that much vodka, ok!! And drugs. Well, my little girl, I remember doing mushies in Rembrant Square in Amsterdam once and losing about 3/4 of a day, in which I'm sure we wandered about and did things but to this day none of us can remember what they were (most definitely the tamest example I could think of and least likely to get me in any large amount of trouble, I didn't inhale and all that) So eh yeah, don't do drugs, drugs are bad m'kay!!

Obviously I can hardly tell her these things and the stance, if not the approach of the education system is one I agree with. Life is precious and interesting and exciting, it is not worth risking it all for one cheap high. The real highs in life are much more valuable and sustained than anything you can get from the grimy jacket of a dodgy looking bloke on O'Connell St. Drugs are bad, but in fairness, you can't beat an ice cold pint on a hot day!! Oh my!!

Melancholy And The Infinite Blog Post

It's odd when you haven't done something for a long time it feels like doing it for the first time. It should be fresh and new then shouldn't it. Or stagnant and old with a new mask on. 

There's no excuse, so I won't try to make one. I haven't written anything in ages. No, that's a lie! I've written a lot of things, too long, too short, too boring, too personal, too...me! Me is quiet, reflective, drab and dreary. Me is silently, slowly drifting off somewhere. Domestic bliss remains, cleaning, dusting, cooking, slowly disappearing. There have been breaks in the monotony, but few, and disappointing, not living up to what a break from the banal should be. 

 

I discovered this post yesterday http://theantiroom.wordpress.com/2010/11/15/being-depressed-just-means-youre-not-a-moron/ Winner of the 2011 Irish Blog Awards best post accolade, gong, or whatever you'd like to call it. The post and it's author deserve it a million fold. It is the single most perfect description of what it feels like to suffer severe depression that I have ever read. I have been almost exactly where she describes, months worth of laundry and old pasta included. That was many many moons ago and I have since escaped the clutches of my bed. I should feel good about sharing this, about being open and honest and talking about the disease that has shaped my life. I should feel proud to have come through the worst of it, ready to show others the path through, to display the light at the end of the tunnel. I don't. I feel awkward, long legged, plaster on glasses bumping into furniture awkward. 

This post has sat unfinished for the last week. I've popped in and had a look at it, you know, to make sure it was doing alright, but I just couldn't finish it, until now. Yesterday evening I was telling Rock God about the above post. How the author so terrifyingly accurately describes my life in my early 20's. "Remember I used to call over" he said, "and there you'd be sitting in the bed, surrounded by, stuff, a half finished sliced pan, a jar of miracle whip, bottles of coke, books, all sorts of everything". "Yeah", I replied, "I remember, mad really to think where we've come from." "I suppose", says he, "you were much happier then though" and he walked away casually, not a bother on him, leaving me holding my sense of self in my hands. 

Surely that couldn't be true. Surely I'm much happier now. I get up every morning, I wear proper clothes, I shower, I use my bed for sleeping and folding laundry, occasionally for bouncing Monkey boy on but never for living in. I clean, I cook, I chat to friends, I do "normal" things. So I must be happier than I was then, I'm a lot better than I was then. Aren't I? Or is it that even at my most depressed, even at the lowest depths of my misery, I had a grasp on who I really am, I knew who I was and I was who I was. Now I seem to have lost that, I'm beige, I'm transparent, I'm not really me, therefore I'm not really here. Maybe that's why I seemed happier then, I hadn't lost whatever it was I had.