guinness tshirt

number 29.

Bought aged 24, from the guinness factory in Dublin. A birthday weekend. My actual birthday had been a bit of a washout. Later that week I'd gone to a ceilidh alone, that had been good.

It was just at the start of a downward spiral. A friend died, suddenly, the start of March. He was 36, which seems younger and younger the closer I get to it. That was after my birthday. The trip was organised and paid for by my partner at the time, for my birthday. I wanted to go to the funeral, but I didn't. I wasn't strong enough, I acquiesced, he didn't want to cancel, I think he had a grand idea of what the weekend could be. We went to Dublin. It turned out to be the thing that broke the relationship. If it wasn't already broken. He said later it had been his plan to ask me to marry him. By the river, in Dublin. He had gotten a chest infection. He died of a chest infection, as far as I know. I never got to say goodbye. I never got to tell his parents that he was important to me. He had always seemed so alone and now he was dead. We'd been close but he had made me feel uncomfortable so I had pushed him away, and now he was dead. The last time I'd seen him I'd backed away, I'd disregarded him. I felt guilty. I still feel guilty. But not for him anymore, but for me. I let myself down.

I didn't cope well.

A month later my great uncle died. He had been more like a grand parent. He was the only person I had ever met who told me they believed in me. He thought, and expressed, that I was valuable. He would tell anyone who knew me. I would feel like I could do anything after I talked to him, motivated, able, powerful. Noone else has ever made me feel like that.

He was very into sports, education and sciences - he liked maths and chemistry - (what is that game with the match sticks that relies of X to the power of 2? Pim?) and tricks. My first memories of him are of him standing on his head. He was loud and liked a good argument. I think he had difficult relationships with the people closest to him - his siblings, wife, children and grandchildren. But as his grandniece I got all of his enthusiasm, belief, valuing but none of his interfering. I loved him. I found it hard to visit him in his hospice. He seemed so small, it seemed so dark. He wasn't a particularly tall man, as I knew him, but he had always seemed big.

I was living and working away from everything I knew. I had made some friendships but - at the time- they seemed insubstantial, an evaluation that was probably unfair. The old friendships from home seemed to have dwindled with my leaving. My mother couldn't forgive me from the end of the relationship. I was alone.

My memory of that time is of sitting in the floor of my small rented room, unable to move. But I must have moved. Because things moved on, and got better. I made sense of it all as best I could.