2010-01-14 / 2:12 a.m.

Awake again past two in the morning but the ice has begun to thaw and I'm not so cold anymore. Spent upwards of a week at home with my mother and my two dogs and one cat and I only loved my dogs more and my cat the same and my mother less. I guess I like to be alone, and there's nothing wrong with that, but my house is so out there in the open with all its windows and doors and all its comings and goings and with everything happening. I don't ever get to be alone ever except for in my room when I close my curtains but still I hear all this noise emanating from other lives and when I open my curtains there are just all these people that can see me so plain, just as plain as I can see them and they pretend not to look and I pretend not to look but everybody knows it's just pretending.
I want to be alone and within myself right now. All I do day after day is cycle on a stationary bike (oh how appropriate) and read Bukowski stories and light my nag champa and pet the dogs. I think about playing the guitar and I think about finishing off my portfolio, but Christ, I just don't find enjoyment in finishing anything these days.

Nearly a year ago now, I was as drunk as I've ever been ever, and I met this guy named Patrick. He was from Canada and was probably in his thirties and I don't know how we started talking but my friends were waiting on me to follow them into some pub or some club or something and I love my friends but they just have to learn that I was upset that night and that there was some Canadian man with a backpack on his back and he was talking to me about how angry he is. I just remember asking him if he was drunk and he said that he hadn't been drinking at all and so I apologised for being so uncharacteristically drunk and I made him give me his phone number, and I gave him mine and I remember him talking about his mother and for some reason, it seemed like a good idea to apologise profusely on behalf of my whole country, and he seemed to like that idea. The next day I thought that he was humouring me maybe, but I was so fucking hungover that I threw up on a bus and I didn't really give a shit because my boyfriend had driven all night to come see me and to collect me because I'd been in a panic to him on the phone, all tears and confusion and he'd come, all three hours of a drive to pick me up, but what had I done? I'd fallen asleep, passed out, and nobody could wake me, nobody.
So he left again, all three hours home and went to work at seven in the morning and that is precisely why I know that he is a good man, because he would do anything for me, and I couldn't give a shit about him.
God, I have that feeling that I had that morning when I woke up, not the hangover, but the shame of everything and everything and everything all building up on me. Thinking my boyfriend had never fucking arrived, wondering where the fuck he was and if he was okay and feeling so sorry about my place in the world. I lost my scarf that day on that bus. Some gift I'd received from another friend that had long since left, a scarf with all these white sheep and a small number black ones and man, thinking about how I just left it there after wiping up my own vomit makes me fucking cry. Even after my best friend told me to take it anyway and that she'd wash it for me, I left it and I walked away.
Patrick text me sometime over the next couple days thanking me for everything I'd said to him and for putting his mind at ease, and he told me about how he'd like to meet up again sometime in a cafe if I was ever nearby anytime soon, and about how he'd let me read some of his writing if I so pleased. I text him back, about how I hadn't mentioned that I don't live anywhere near that city and how I thought that he was very sweet and that I would be sure to look him up if I was ever around again. He never wrote me back, and I guess it's my own fault and at the same time a blessing because I don't ever need to relive that night over again.

Thinking about it, I never did look him up again after I made it back to Cork, but I guess I can be forgiven because I was staying in a room paid for by charity because I was waiting for a woman to either live or die (she lived, or at least for now she lives) and I was lost and never really did get found again.

Fucking hell. Last year. Oh last year.

I don't know if I should write him again. I don't know if I should let sleeping dogs lie, but I just want to tell him that everything's okay, and hope that it will be, or I want to know if everything is okay.
Most of all, I just want to be alone.