Читать книгу Surprisingly Down to Earth, and Very Funny - Limmy - Страница 22

Millport was brilliant, but it was also where I slashed my wrist.

My mum and dad weren’t there this time, they reckoned that at 15 I was old enough to look after the place myself. So I invited my pals down from Glasgow. I had an empty! For weeks!

There were about six of us, staying in the caravan and the wee extension bit. It was fucking magic having them down. We’d all get ready and splash on the aftershave, then go and get a carry-out, and drink it with all the folk I knew. My mates were asking who was who, especially who the lassies were.

I wasn’t on the pull myself. There was this lassie from Greenock that I’d met. I really liked her, but she’d went home, and I was lovesick. And what maybe made it worse was that all my mates were pulling. There was all this joy around me involving lassies and guys, and I was in a world of my own, lovesick. Maybe I was jealous, fuck knows, but I think it was something else, something that wasn’t even about the lassie or my mates, something going way back.

And what made things worst of all was that I was drunk.

I was drunk, and I wanted to see her. I wanted to speak to her. So I phoned her. I’d phone her and hear her voice and everything would be alright.

I went to a phone box, and gave her a phone. I can’t remember much of the conversation, but I remember one thing.

I said to her, ‘I love you.’

This was a lassie I hardly knew. I mean, how long had I known her for? A week? A few fucking days? And we hadn’t even shagged or anything like that. We got off with each other a few times. We talked, though, we got on. I liked chatting with her, so I just latched on. I latched right on. And I told her I loved her.

I wanted to hear it back. I wanted to hear her say that she loved me as well.

But she just said, ‘Right.’

It wasn’t what I wanted to hear.

I said, ‘Do you love me?’

She said, ‘Em … I like you. I don’t love you. We haven’t known each other for that long.’

I was like, ‘But I love you.’

I started crying. My voice went all high. I was like that for the rest of the conversation, with me telling her how much I loved her and how much I wanted to see her. And there she was having to deal with this drunken fucking loony, having to let him down gently.

When we finished chatting I stayed in the phone box for a while, crying. When I left I bumped into my mates, and told them I couldn’t take it any more, and I was going to go back to the caravan and get a knife and kill myself. They said I was overreacting, but they followed me back. I went into the kitchen drawer, but I couldn’t find a sharp enough knife, so I took a fork.

That’s right, a fork. A blunt one at that.

I ran away, with them chasing me. One of them started crying, telling me that he loved me. I said I was sorry, but I needed to do it, I hated my life, I hated myself, I was a fucking joke. I probably spilled out all sorts of reasons why I hated my life, stuff going back to primary school.

I managed to get away from them, but I could hear them shouting for me. I liked it, in a way, but not in the way that put a smile on my face. I liked that I was making them aware of how I was feeling.

When I couldn’t hear them any more, when it was all quiet and dark, I just thought about myself. Just bad feelings. Bad feelings. All bad.

I took out the fork, and tried to do my wrist in with it. I pushed it and jabbed it against my wrist, hoping to break the skin, but it was like trying to slash your wrist with a chopstick. It was fucking laughable, really.

But then I found something better, an empty bottle of Merrydown cider. I smashed the bottle against the wall, and slashed my wrist with the broken bottle. I took a few swings at it, but I didn’t hit a vein. I couldn’t see or feel any blood spurting. But I could see that there was a big, dark gash. I’d slashed my wrist. Veins or not, I’d done it. I’d finally done something about it all.

I couldn’t really have wanted to die, though, because instead of having another few goes I walked down to a shelter at the beach, one where I knew people would be coming and going. Nobody was there at the time, so I lay on one of the benches inside and waited.

Eventually, somebody came along, some guy I knew. He didn’t see the wrist at first, so he was just asking how tricks were. Then he saw it and started going, ‘For fuck’s sake!’ He shouted on folk, and I was taken to the hospital.

I’d calmed down by that point. I don’t think I was numb, I think I was just calm. It was out my system. Whatever I was feeling before, it was gone.

The doctor checked me out. It was just me and him in this wee room. The hospital was this tiny wee place, because Millport’s tiny, fuck all happens there. It was this calm white place that smelled of a hospital.

The doctor asked me why I did it, while he stitched me up.

I felt embarrassed. I said, ‘I don’t know, I’ve just got … I’ve just got problems.’

He laughed. He said, ‘Problems? What age are you?’

I said, ‘15.’

He said, ‘15, haha. Wait until you get to my age. You have a wife, mortgage, children. Then you will have problems.’

Now, you might think that’s insensitive. It’s maybe something a doctor would get sued for these days. But it actually helped. The way he just laughed it off as he was stitching me up. It was his accent as well, maybe an Indian accent: ‘Then you vill have problems.’ It was like he’d been through a lot more than me to get to where he was, and if he could do it, I could do it. Or something.

I was told to stay there overnight, which I was happy to do. I woke up the next day in the hospital bed. It was a bright morning, with sunshine pouring through the windows. I was told that my dad would be coming from Glasgow to get me, and I’d be going home that day, so I was just thinking about what I’d say to him and my mum when I saw them. I felt relaxed, though.

Eventually, people started turning up. My mates from Glasgow turned up, and they were smiling and calling me a mad bastard. I said sorry for everything, and they told me not to worry about it. Then they went away and some more people turned up later. That went on for a while. I liked it. It was embarrassing, though, like I felt the need to slash my wrist because I’m special and I’m deserving of special attention. But I did like it. If you’re feeling down, I definitely recommend it. No, I’m joking.

My dad and brother turned up, and they were shaking their head, asking what I did a stupid thing like that for. I told them I got drunk and I didnae really know why I did it, I just felt down. We drove back and didnae talk about it, we just talked about other stuff like it hadn’t happened. When I got home, my mum was the same way as my dad and brother. The conversation about it must have lasted no more than a minute. My mum and dad weren’t into big conversations about feelings, whereas I’m the type of cunt that can go on about them a bit too much. As you’ve maybe noticed.

I was taken to a counsellor, a one-off meeting where I said I wouldn’t do it again, and the counsellor said okay then, and away I went.

As for the lassie from Greenock, I met up with her, in Glasgow. We hung about for a day, just fannying about, chatting. I don’t even think I got off with her, it was all quite friendly. Then we didn’t meet up again. I can’t remember if we decided we were just pals, or if we just didn’t bother getting back in touch. Either way, I was fine with it. I had a pretty easy-osey attitude about it all, considering I’d slashed my wrist a month or two beforehand.