The Unpredictability of Insanity

This time I sought her out- It wasn't going to be coincidence. I had spent nearly a week in my flat without human contact, and on my first trip west I saw her again- the girl that mystified me so much back last month. So I returned the next night, it was the same time, same train I saw her the last time. I got to Tottenham Court Road again at quarter past eight and waited close to the ticket barriers. I have no idea which entrance she'll come through, just that she will sometime soon. I think to myself how wrong it is, but that no-one would believe a nice looking innocent boy would be capable, even want to stalk someone. I really don't know whats come of me- I stand in the station ticket hall watching them all pile down- I could follow any one of them, but no I wait for my girl. It turned half eight so I decided it was time I left. I'd been waiting there for 15 minutes now, with my fringe covering my eyes. A ticket inspector had been checking me out but I had my cover story ready should anyone talk to me. Pendulum blares so loud through earphones my ears feel like they are bleeding. I can't hear any background noise- pure concentration.

I began to give up. I left my spot and went through the barriers- it was then I started to sober up. What the hell was I doing? These arent the actions of a sane person. I hit the westbound platform and to my amazement the punk girl I had given up on overtook me. I had an excitement inside me that I find hard to describe. I'm transfixed again, I get onto the carriage next to her and watch through the half empty carriage her every movement. I hope she'll look through and smile but she doesn't. We get off at Notting Hill and despite my efforts to stay behind her, we go through the barriers in unison. I know her route so I take it, hoping she'll be in tow. As I cant hear anything but my music, and I don't look back, I have no idea if she's following, until she overtakes me suddenly. Then I feel my phone vibrate and I turn my music off. As I answer it the punk girl looked round and smiled. I didn't even look at the phone as I was so engrossed. It was my dad with news. News of my mum. She's in hospital after having overdosed again, but this time its serious. He asks me where I am as he was outside my flat in Shoreditch looking for me. All I remember saying next is I didn't know where I was. I slumped against a random car and cried. Cried for the first time in 15 years.

My dad took me for counselling this morning with Dr Robert. I felt like a kid again-my dad taking me to the doctor, and me calling him Dr 'forename' as opposed to using his surname like us adults are supposed to. Last night I had a breakdown, fuelled by drink and drugs, and my dad came and picked me up from Notting Hill. He drove me back to Essex and we talked a lot about the recent past and also my childhood. I stayed in his place in Essex, and to be honest I wanted to stay there forever. My sister visited me after the counselling and we chatted for hours at the kitchen table. It all felt normal for the first time in years. My sister reckoned my breakdown was brought on as I had no proper home, and my move to Switzerland was approaching. My split with Lucy had been particularly brutal as most of our mutual friends had started ignoring me- I hadn't even noticed that until my sister pointed it out. All that with news of my mum on top and I cracked. I'm now dreading my new employers finding out I'm a crazed stalking loner. My dad wont let me go back to London yet so im holed up here for the foreseeable future. He'sgoing back to Germany tomorrow so he cant keep me here forever. All I keep thinking about is the mysterious punk girl. She smiled at me. I might have been high and drunk, and it might have been only for a split second, but she did. I'll keep that in my head for ever, but the stalking is over. Leave that be.

For now im aiming to get my life back on track. 6 months ago I just landed my dream job, had a beautiful girlfriend and friends that couldn't get enough of me. We bought a cat, shared a car and was looking to buy a house, maybe get married. Six months on I'm sitting in a street against a random car crying down the phone to my dad. No house, no girlfriend, no family, no friends, no cat, no car, no money. No pride. Where did it all go wrong?

bank holiday weekends usually mean fun-filled days of joyous sunshine and nights of drinking and merriment. Not for me this one just gone. I didn't leave my flat, or talk to anyone else aside from Romana and Louis my increasingly annoying flatmates. I remembered back one year ago to this exact bank holiday weekend. Lucy and I had not long moved in together to our place in Notting Hill. A group of about 20 of us piled up to Hyde park and spent the day laughing and drinking in the sunshine. Amerie was there, but no chemistry was there yet- she was then just my girlfriend's younger sister. My friends were all there that seem to have slowly deserted me since I left Topshop. Even my university friends were still around.

I haven't left the flat since Thursday morning- I haven't really needed to, and now im thinking of seeing if I can make it a week without seeing natural light. I spent Friday night in depressingly watching big brother, drinking Romana's red wine and generally becoming more depressed. Romana came home early with a bloke, both of them clearly drunk. He fell asleep on the sofa, and she quickly gave him a slap and sent him on his way. It cheered me up to see she couldn't keep his attention, despite being on the cusp of an easy lay. Romana is easy, and I think that's why I like to see her ill at ease. She's used me as well, and that gives her superiority in the house. I don't like that. She shut the door after the random guy had left and asked if she could have some of her own red wine. I didn't mention it was hers anyway and politely said yes. She tried for half an hour to crack onto me, as she had on my second night in the flat, before she too fell asleep, legs sprawled on the sofa, glass of red tilted, slightly spilling over her dress. I contemplated doing something funny to her and taking some photos- revenge for using me, but instead I left her sprawled, letting her drink spill slightly over her expensive looking dress.

Saturday I didn't see Romana- suppose she was too hungover to get up, and I thought myself lucky I didn't wake next to her. She's the worst hangover sufferer there is, and she doesn't look good in the mornings. Louis was scrubbing red wine stains off the floor and I instantly felt bad for him. Louis is a good guy, and he owns all the furniture and the flat. I quietly helped him as he cursed Romana and scrubbed away. Romana opened her bedroom door at around 8pm, and I'd already started drinking another of her bottles of red wine. This time she recognised it and gave me a cheeky grin. She brought out her duvet and said we could have a 'girls' night in infront of the TV. I offered her a glass and she said she'd stick to the water tonight. We watched an Uma Thurman chick-flick and then the music channels until about 3am.

Sunday I spent in my room on my laptop, downloading music and buying clothes from asos. Louis and I played Pro Evolution on the Playstation for hours. I asked him if he'd slept with Romana, and he said no. I wasn't sure if he was lying or not, but I was happy with the answer. I could live happily naïve that she doesn't sleep with just everyone. Plus I thought it a good opportunity for him to tell me about their bet- he didn't, and now I'm a bit happier I wastn just a pawn in one of their dirty games. Yesterday I spoke to Amerie on MSN for a while. She is now going out with that guy Russell, and they have even spoke of moving out to get away from her over-bearing parents. I thought of using Hugo as bait to go round there. Can I visit a cat? Do I have rights? Would that look silly? Might get me out of the house though....

Getting a new tatoo soon, but not sure what to get. I want to get my upper arm/shoulder, something like this, but not as big.

What do you think?

So this is a story of one of my housemates from university, and his decent into psychopathic oblivion. James was my best friend in year one. We got put in the same halls at Bristol, and we shared similar interests. When five of us moved into a house on the downs near Clifton, we moved together with three of our mates from our course. I lived with him for the three years duration of our course, but we drifted as friends. James had an older brother called Stuart who was heavily into drugs. James claimed his brother never dealt or anything, he just loved to smoke. James used to deal though. Stuart would give him great lumps of weed and James used to microwave it, break it down and sell it on. People would come round all the time and buy the stuff. Innocently, out of his room, he fed our circle of friends all the weed they wanted.

In year three I hardly spoke to James, despite us living in the same house. His brother Stuart died on holiday in Ibiza, falling off a balcony- I didn't really know what to say to James after that. As his best friend I should of helped him but I couldn't. We all began talking about him behind his back, and I remember one time he walked into our lounge and we stopped talking. It had come to a head- he went crazy and grabbed the playstation controller and began swinging it at Ed one of our housemates. Then he picked up the actual playstation ad smashed it on his head. The rest of us got up and held James back- id never seen him so angry, red with sweat and puffy eyes. We took him back to his room and then I realised something was very wrong. I hadn't been in his room since year two, but it had become foul. Drawings on the wall with charcoal, weed, food and rubbish everywhere. It stank. I tried to wring his parents but couldn't find any contact details. Me and one of my housemates spoke to the uni and they said they'd refer a doctor and call his parents. I'm guessing both never happened. James didn't complete his exams- he went home in May of our final year. Someone picked him up- im not sure who it was, but they politely said thankyou and sorry on James' behalf.

Over a year on and James is in a mental hospital in Southend after he killed his parents pet dog. I found out from Ed and Paul my housemates who had found out somehow. He stabbed his family's pet dog over 200 times with a kitchen knife and buried it in the garden. He may have pulled it off but his kitchen was plastered in blood from every corner. I saw his parents last July and they told me where he was. I went to the mental hospital but I wasn't allowed to see him. That was one of the scariest places I had been in my life. People were allowed to wonder the grounds amongst the visitors- I thought of what James did and thought about how safe that actually was.

I think of James sometimes and wonder what I could have done. Seen the signs earlier? Tried to do more to get in touch with his parents? Spoken to him after his brother died? It tears me up inside. One day I really hope I bump into him on the street and he's fixed up. We laugh and joke and share memories of year one in Bristol, when we played guitar at 4am on the roof of our halls in the pouring rain, causing our neighbours to shout profanities from their windows....Get well soon Jimbo xxxxx

The reappearance of my mum this week has come as a bit of a shock. I hadn't remembered how much she fucked me up until I spent a day in her presence. She went round Lucy's parents, where she found out all about my recent brush with the law, and how I'd wasted my chance with Lucy, she'd left me and I'd been harassing her little sister Amerie. She got my new address and turned up at about 11am. There was the mandatory awkward hug, followed by the initial pleasantries, then she got stuck in. She asked me why I'd thrown a great relationship away with a successful young woman. Five minutes and she had started. At least she wasn't drinking I sighed to myself. We went to a coffee shop nearby. I looked at her in disgust whilst she ordered our coffee. Stuff came flooding back to me whilst we sat at the small table. She told me about rehab and how beautiful Scotland is, but I kept thinking about my childhood. My mum was always telling me how I'd die if I did this, and die if I did that. If I didn't wash my hands before dinner and bed, I might die. I must have only been 4 or 5, but she drummed this message into me. If I ate the wrong thing, or touched the wrong thing. I remember on a bus as a very young child, I wanted to touch things all the time, and I tried to reach an old lady's coat on the seat in front. I was told to stop, and warned I might die as stranger's coats are full of bacteria and germs. This is probably why I cant comfortably get on buses and tubes now.

I was totally awestruck by my contempt. Obviously there must have been good times- my sister remembers them, so why cant I? I convince myself that the reason our family is split across 3 countries, is my mum's fault. She's been an alcoholic most of my life, probably was before as well. She's been in and out of rehab so many times, she called Scotland 'home' throughout my childhood. She seemed fine today, but I sensed she needed a drink. I brought her back to see my new place, and she met Romana. I felt beyond awkward as I hadn't actually seen Romana since I left her bed Saturday morning. She looked pretty bad with no make-up on this time. Mum left my place at around 3ish to make it to my sisters where she was staying for the rest of the week. I was relieved, and hoped it would be another 2 years before the next visit.

She left me with a throw-away comment, which I dismissed at the time, but now im worrying about. She said she hopes I haven't been drinking too much, “wouldn't want to end up like your dear old mum would you” were more or less her exact words.....She obviously got that from Lucy. But thinking about it, I have been drinking a lot. I like it because it lets me forget my troubles- am I becoming like my mum? She's been back in my life 4 hours and I feel like killing myself.