Suicide Solution

Do you ever wake up and look and think there are a million things i could be doing today but when you start to decide what to do your mind shuts down and you decide to write in your blog instead? I'm having all sorts of bother trying to change email addresses and every time i go to connect to this page it won't let me and i have to go round the houses.  I'm going to set up a new account in a new address with wordpress and i'll try to inform you of the changes and let you know how i got on. 

What i just experienced whilst navigating and negotiating unresponsive and unhelpful advice and information was the same feelings of 'Hopelessness' I had in prison.  It sweeps over me like a warm blanket and i normally feel it in the pit of my stomach before it reaches my brain.  I'm lucky enough to recognise it and trained in how to deal with it.

What is it? 

It - is every positive and negative thought that you can and can't remember which triggers a switch which triggers 'IT'.

It - most importantly, is a process. It will come, be assured it will come, but it will also pass if you know the signs and can breathe and let it go. 

I've visited this process a hundred times in prison but could never really tell anyone.  I was a 'Listener' I get it, i really do, but in prison the words 'suicide' and 'depression' cannot be used in the same sentence to authority.  These words automatically set in process a chain of events that will leave you spinning out of any semblance of control you previously were clinging on to. It's called a SPAR or PAR - Suicidal Prisoner At Risk or Person At Risk of suicide or self harm.  I'm not going to tell you what this involves, look it up, find out about it and read how plausible and helpful it sounds, you'll find it under Safer Custody in the Prison Standard Operating Procedures. 

The men I know who come off a SPAR do not do so because they have lost their suicidal tendencies.  I'll tell you if you are interested but not here, it's way too personal.

It breaks my heart to see how the threat of culpable manslaughter has allowed the system to legally administer abuse.  The reason I started all of my work in Criminology and prison shenanigans was because of a lady called Pauline Campbell from the Howard League (I became a member yesterday) who I met in Brixton in 2007 along with Francis Crook and Lord Carlisle.  Pauline's daughter killed herself in custody.  Pauline killed herself at her daughters graveside, on her birthday, in 2008.  This chain of events left me with a burning rage in my soul.  This is state sanctioned abuse - resulting in hopelessness - resulting in action/suicide - causing a ripple effect on others - resulting in solution which equals suicide.

I lost count how many times in the last couple of years I wanted this for myself.  I was able to tell a person who worked with me in the prison my true state of mind. The person was physically moved and shocked 'but you always come across as...'  Yes, i did but only out of fear from authority if i went looking for help. Thankfully I survived.

Suicide is a solution, but what most people forget, in the heat of the moment, is that they will not be around to see it's outcome.  I lay in the sun yesterday, in my massive back garden and watched a big fat, battle scarred, one eyed Tom cat, nonchalantly but stealthily walk past me.  He kept glancing at me with his good eye and in a moment of clarity i thought - he's just like me Mr Tom battle scarred, wounded and traumatised but he still walks the walk and seeks out his prey, he's fat so he must be doing OK.

I hope you get this message, it's a bit like....

It's The Simple Things!

Left the house at 08.00 this morning all biz, emails sent, morning planned, timetable done all set. I've no washing machine yet, no fridge, tonnes of toiletries but no soap, so no shave!  My Dad's place is a five minute walk so i pack up my washing and decide i'll stick it in his machine, chat to him, head back once the cycle is done, hang it up and then headt to the station - another five minutes away.

He's not in.  I've been sitting on the wee bench outside for an hour now and do you know what?  I couldn't give a flying .... I'm completely indifferent to the matter, i'm now going to head back to the house, dump this lot off and go into town and try the washing again tomorrow.

Isn't it just wonderful to have simple choices in life without soemhairy arsed fuck whit hangin on your every word and action waititng to pounce and cause you shit.  God I'm missing them already - not. 

Do you know how nice this is?  It's like throwing a scrunched up bit of paper into the office waste paper basket on the other side of the room - and it going in!

Stay safe, be well.

Re- Entry As A Right. From Non Person - Person

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This Time Next Year We Could Be Millionaires

It's 04.53 but I've been up since 04.00 trying to access this bloody page.  Woke with a freshish mind and had a clear idea of how I would start writing.  This has now been totally blown to pieces as my head is frazzled with passwords, usernames, verification codes, and a complete lack of patience when one clicks and doesn't get what one needs.

There is something at the back of my mind dragging me towards an idea but can't quite get a hook on it yet and I suppose that's exactly what i was going to write about.  Everything I'd hoped for in the past year HAS happened and I sat on my sofa yesterday afternoon, rolled up a couple of soft fleeces, wrapped them in a soft towel (an old con trick) and slept for three hours. It was glorious as I realised how much 'the madness' had started to leave my self for better pastures.

All was going swimmingly until last night when my Father and I had our usual (must stress it is usual been happening since I was old enough to remember) rage fuelled blow out over something trivial that turns into the same old argument of "you talk to me like a child."  The problem with that little statement is - it isn't me saying it! The outcome of these flare ups leave me broken and the song lyrics "you make me wanna die" goes round and round in my head, over and over and it gets multiplied and infused with the knowledge that all of this re-integration and far reaching implications of my actions, is my bloody fault.  Can see the pain, can feel the hurt the look that tells you - boy I'd love to throttle you for what you've done combined with God I so want to help you but my hurt keeps floating to the surface.

During the conflict resolution make up process by eating much of humble pie as apposed "to fuck you I'm done, you will never see me again" allows the restoring of sensibility - until the next time.  This is what one used to do.  Run, run to drink, run to Coke, run to women, run to another country, run, run, run only to return to run again.  Done runnin.  My ego, my id, my self has been shaped and nurtured by imprisonment and I see a lot of damage but I have to say that prison has helped me. We all know that, in prison, you can't run from yourself, one has to man up (or women up - that just sounds wrong) and that's what I was able to do last night which has, in turn, allowed me to leave here this morning, still smarting, but able to get on with the actual task of leaving the last six years behind me.

Funnily enough, one is not 'dreading' going back, more the opposite.  Today is all about saying "this is the last time I..."

In a cafe in Botanic on the day that Obama came to town I sat with my friend and mentor, discussing my future and sharing life almost one year to the day since i had my first hours of temporary freedom.  This time last year I sat in Cafe with My Prof, Pete, Raymond and discussed the Desistance event and my real time leaving prison experience.  This was made all the more surreal by my brother happening to walk by the cafe.  He came and joined us and we all chatted about life, crime and punishment, implications of Criminology and also plotted and planned and dreamed of change.  It was a magical couple of hours. I spoke to all of these men at different stages of the day yesterday and our thoughts and plans and dreams and realisations are, believe it or not, starting to come together.  This time next year we could all be Millionaires.

It's 05.35 now and I must get up and perform a ritual.  Aha, not what you think.  I must dismantle this bed so my brother can move it to my new house.  This is the last time I sleep here, the next time I lie on top of this bed talking to you I will be free.

Re - Investing in Assumptions

"Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, stands a mighty commander, an unknown sage – he is called Self. He lives in your body, he is your body"

(Nietzsche, 1883).

It's 05.00 and I'm fully clothed under the duvet, loaded with piping hot coffee and plugged into Led Zep - Mothership and loving the howling wind and rain battering off my window.  Still in prison but I'm heading over to reception about09.00 to be processed and home for the weekend.  Then back Tuesday for one night to be processed for TIME SERVED Wednesday.

One might assume that I'm jumping all over the shop - like the cat on the proverbial hit tin roof.  One might assume that because of the kak weather thee has been a dampner put on my day and I will no doubt have this brought to my attention on several occasions before I get out the gate, and onto the train and typing this up.

Nothing could be further from the truth.  the weather has never dictated my mood in prison.  My perception of it is like most things of the real world.  Complete detachment and indifference.  the physical storms of mother nature compare not a jot to the storm, battles and raging tempests in my own mind.

God - the piano in the middle of 'No Quarter' is so soothing!

Sorry, I digress, but no quarter is quite apt as to what follows.  Further to a couple of strained/tetchy conversations this week with family members on the subject of prison and me being in it I have come to the conclusion that my assumptions have been all wrong.  Had assumed that they had accepted it like I had and that they will willingly and openly want to discuss it in the future.  It's only now when I stop to think do I see, in their eyes, the politeness of love, the tolerance, the patience and the flashes of anger which betray their true feelings.  This prison experience has been my life, I assumed because they support me they will want to share.  You know I study psychology, right?

It's now Sunday evening 21.48 and I'm lying on top of my bed in my Dads house, still under curfew.  I have just read over the two pages of assumed cleverness I had written, ready to have pop at the madness of it all and how terrible it all is and…  Do you know what?  It doesn't matter.  I've been at MY house, all morning and left MY front door unlocked and listened to MY birds sing in MY back garden and had My friends and MY family trapes in and out until I left at 14.00 for a well deserved feed with MY Mum.  My sister has got engaged and we are all very pleased.  My Mum has her son in his new house a free man, and a daughter who has found true love, happiness and HOPE again.  My Mother is purring and I'm left like the guy who got the last bit of cream.  So what of assumptions?  They are all only temporary or as permanent as one wants to make them. As I finished my blurb I wrote "Ramble On a more fitting end I know not.  It still stands.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKVp-atyiVA

Wearing a Mask...

 A lot of people are asking me what my story is.  My story of prison is nearly over but my story of how I got there is summed up in a short story - what I wrote - a few years ago for a collaboration book called 'Postcards from...'  I'll add it on at the end and you can have a little peruse.

This little stint out has been great.  It's been much easier,  less panicky and I never felt seasick once. I had to explain this to my Mum on Sunday when she asked me if I wanted to take the ferry, the scenic route home from Portaferry.  I told my lovely Mum that each and every time I came home I felt seasick.  My wee Mum looked quite horrified and hurt, as Mums do, because she wanted to take the pain away.  It was like agoraphobia in claustrophobic space and claustrophobia in an agoraphobic space resulting in much palpitations and sips of water and all the things that go with that.  I have spoken to several ex-cons who tell me this is a natural process.  This natural process arrived around 20.00 last night and I thought oh shit here we go again.  I received a few tweets, had a conversation with a Celtic fan, which is in itself a major achievement for me (only joking Allan) and had a phone call from a lovely girl from Stockport who's just as excited about what we do as I am. 

These interactions help and they ease the transition but the fear is always lurking.  Fear is the key, intimidation is the weapon and I have to ask myself, and often have, "if we are all so 'vulnerable' why are we treated so badly and why is this seasickness, anxiety/post traumatic stress disorder a natural process?"  Is this not a complete contradiction of the word 'care'.

I had breakfast with an old dear prison friend yesterday morning and he told me about chopping his logs for fire wood.  We roared with laughter when he said he'd chopped enough wood in two weeks to keep him and his village for this winter and the next.  Then I listen to the clichés and 'sure your nearly there' and 'upward and onward' and 'it's all behind you.'  No it bloody well is not.  This institutional bullying has left a deep resentment in me that i never had before.  The amount of guys who are leaving prisons with pure unadulterated hatred in their hearts is quite frightening.  Something they have all said they never had before. 

Is it not the 'duty' of a prison sentence, in law, to provide the prisoner with the ability to return to society and be a purposeful part of it and no prisoner should leave prison worse than they went in - mentally or physically. Personally, on a physical level I've stopped all vices but abused myself with death by chocolate over the years but the 'mental' damage will be much harder to shake.

I'm going to go and prepare myself for volunteering to go and be abused for another two weeks.  Who in their right mind does this.  I say it every time as soon as I walk through that gate the real me gets hidden and the game face is back on.  How can you risk assess a mask of survival?

A Postcard from Cape Town

by Michael Irwin

“One day I’m gonna stand on top of that mountain!”  It’s cold, dark and depressing outside.  I’ve just been reading Wilbur Smith’s Rage. My bedroom windows vibrate.  The thump of another bomb exploding in the centre of Belfast. The harsh reality of life, a feeling of fear and foreboding in the pit of my stomach. Twenty five years later I leave the cable car with a similar type of feeling in my stomach, only this time it’s a rush of adrenalin, anticipation and excitement.  I walk up the steps carved out of the dark grey rock, eyes closed, with my girlfriend trailing behind me.  My girlfriend moans about her hair blowing around, her hat not being able to stay on because of the wind.  I wish I’d left her behind; I will as soon as I get my driving licence.  She decides she doesn’t want to go any further so I suggest she goes and gets a cup of coffee in the café which is very well signposted.  “Oh, won’t you come and show me the way?  I’ll be O.K. when I get there.”  Like I’ve been here before!  Doesn’t she get it?  To keep the peace I accompany to her to the café and get her a seat.  “Off you go and do what you have to,” she says.  So’ I head off back to the steps wishing I could drive, wishing I didn’t have this beautiful White South African goddess for a girlfriend and feeling even more excited as I neared the top of the steps.  A twelve year old Belfast promise made in my bedroom is about to come true  I walk up the gradual incline and I can see the wall about 20ft in front of me. I close my eyes again and slowly make my way towards the wall.  How did I get here?  How did my life lead me to this place and this time?  Was it fate or is there a greater picture that I’m not aware of?  I touch the wall and open my eyes.  The vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean as it joins the Indian Ocean on the horizon, in a slightly darker haze of blue.  Next stop – the South Pole Oh My God!

I don’t actually believe in God but at moments like this it is the only phrase that I can think of.  The South Africans have one word that translates into the same thing, Yessus!  My heart pounds; my breath unloads itself into the enormity of the sea space in front of me.  The cliché of a breathtaking place being made physically real.  I sit on the wall looking out to Robben Island where Nelson Mandela spent many years of his life as a prisoner of the apartheid era.  The claustrophobic tiny seaman’s larder in the 1500s.  I think of the freedom I have now and how lucky I am to be alive.  I can’t help but wonder how a wee boy from Belfast ended up here, on top of Table Mountain in South Africa.  At that moment I decided that when I get back to London I’ll pack up my stuff and come back to South Africa only, to live!

            I arrived back in Kapstaad (Cape Town) about a year later without the girlfriend and with a driving license.  Myself and a friend had driven the 12 hours from Johannesburg, one week after I had passed my test (I actually bought a car on the Saturday, passed my test on the Monday and drove down here on the Friday).  Like life – the great adventure – to see more of Africa in one day than most Africans see in a lifetime.  Johannesburg and its surrounding areas are flat, brown and dirty compared to the lush, mountainous shades of green in Kapstaad.  I moved into a guest house at the back of the property owned by the ex dean of Cape Town University.  On the second day of my arrival I’m invited by the ex-dean to join her and some friends for lunch, the following day.  That same morning I’d been for a game of golf and the 19^th hole was beckoning.  When I ordered a coke the rest of my four ball where a bit shocked and wanted to know why I was being so rude and un-Irish.  I told them “I had to fly” and - weirdly enough – that’s exactly what did happen for ‘Lunch’ was at The Stellenbosch Flying Club and – afterwards - there was a 2hr flight in a Piper Cherokee over the Franchoek Valley, Swellendam and the surrounding area of Kapstaad.  At one point I could see the golf Club where I’d played that morning and where I later became a member.

What a week that was!  I can look back and recall how I felt at the time.  I was free, thousands of miles from home and away from the influence and restraints of previous friends or family.  Nobody knew me, I was free to become whoever I wanted to be, free to reinvent myself and start a new life for myself and heavens forbid, be honest to myself?  I can now be honest and say that all I really wanted was to fall in love, settle down and live a comfortable life in the sun.”  I’d left Northern Ireland when I was eighteen, lived in Greece for a while, then to London where I’d spent 15 years.  I now had the perfect opportunity to “Start Again” - to meet new people and to try and be a better person. 

“Where did it all go wrong?”   Someone asked George Best that question in a hotel room in Dublin; at the time Besty had just won £25,000 in the Casino and Miss World was ‘slipping into something more comfortable’ in the bathroom!   Cape Town – like football for Best – offered everything and nothing and it’s sometimes hard to know the difference.  I started to play golf three or four times a week which was inevitably followed by the 19^th hole, dinners, pubs and clubs till the wee hours of the morning.  I had a different girl every week, sometimes every night.  Life was hedonistic and full of new people experiences, scenery and culture.  More friends than I could remember.  My phone always ringing.  Different friends in different social groups - some where ordinary run-of-the-mill folk, just enjoying life – some – like myself - living life a bit like a Rock Star!  Some bankers, business men with a lot of clout and a lot of collateral.  Some gangsters with even more clout and even more collateral.  As I was an ex publican from Belfast who lived in London, I’d no problem fitting in. 

That’s when I met my friend Charlie (Cocaine) one Saturday night at a club in Kapstaad.  I was absolutely exhausted, I’d been playing golf that morning and I’d been at the pub all day watching the football and the rugby.  Another so called mate at the time said “bloody hell Mick you looked fucked.  How’re you gonna drive home?”  Meet my friend Charlie he’ll give you a lift I thought.  Did he ever.  What a friend and he never took the same amount of money as his twin brother had in London.  I met Charlie every Friday and Saturday, and together we became even more free, more full of energy and more popular than ever.  We started to hook up regularly after I played golf. Sometimes he’d even give me a shout before I went to play golf.  Before I knew it Charlie was a constant Kapstaad companion.  I can’t say I wasn’t a willing participant, that I wasn’t aware of the consequences.  I just didn’t think getting hooked would happen to me.  Soon I didn’t want to stop and – after a while - I just didn’t care.  I started to see the seedier side of Kapstaad, the underbelly.  My gangster mates had me doing some seriously dodgy and dangerous stuff.  Eventually I carried a gun with me at all times, my car recognised in most of the bad areas near to where I lived.  The point is I was one of the very few ‘white guys’ who could go into black areas without fear of death.

I suppose for me, Cape Town is like a drug.  On the surface everything looks cool and carefree although underneath there is something sinister lurking.  I don’t know if it’s because of the History of Africa, the Apartheid era or the huge gap between wealth and poverty, but ‘money’ is foremost in people’s minds.  People in Cape Town are driven by a need to make money which in many cases leads to people simply taking from others.  Tourism is one of the prime sources of income in Cape Town; so whilst it seems like everyone is kind, friendly and caring all they are really interested in is where the next buck is coming from.  I recall one particularly beautiful morning.  I was looking out over False Bay at the Whales breaching in the distance; it was a picture of tranquillity.  I cracked open a beer and walked into the living room where four of my friends friends where sitting with AK47s on their laps.  I felt sick and it was then that I realised how much Cape Town is a contradiction, a seductress who will leave you crumpled and broken, if you let her.

I wanted out of this lifestyle and I wanted to get my life back on track.  I made a deal to deliver a suitcase from the Caribbean to the U.K.  I’m now back in Northern Ireland sitting looking at a much smaller version of Table Mountain, it’s called Benevenagh, just outside Londonderry.  Every time I look at Benevenagh I smile, because I stood on top of the Real Table topped mountain and I cherish the memories, the fun and the laughter before I met Charlie.