Men are talking about mental health at last

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

Fleeing responsibility, I seek mental peace; time to settle my heart and refresh my soul. I’m only away for two days, so that’s a pretty tall order. If this wee break only allows me to dip my emotional fingers into a particularly wonderful state of being, I’ll be happy.

No floatation tanks needed: just splendid isolation.

To awake to an empty day; to sniff the familiar whiff of freedom; to go to bed when tired, awake refreshed; to walk for miles.

I love people, yet need solitude to repair and recharge. As a selfish youth, I repeatedly stretched and broke the boundaries of my fragile mental health. One morning in 1989 I found myself stumbling up Auckland’s Queen Street, wondering what the hell I was doing in New Zealand. Broke and broken-hearted, paranoid without a passport, I felt as mad as a hatter and sure I’d never see Europe again.

Obsessive love had driven me temporarily insane and while it was terrifying to be crazy on the other side of the world, it was supremely liberating to know I had no plan and truly did not give a damn.

I’m a feeble human, unable to appreciate my mind’s many states of being, but I’m grateful for the experiences of madness I’ve garnered.

While her people enjoy a slumbering Sunday morning, I drive four hours through Ireland, to glimpse for the first time the sunny southeast. This lunchtime it turns out to be soggy and grey, with dark clouds threatening low over Waterford City.

Onwards to the edge, to the sea, where stumbling around Tramore, I’m sad to see so many bars and restaurants closed during the tourist season.

The seaside town’s hills leave me sweating into my first whiskey. Although I enjoy a pleasant evening with fine people in a good town, I’m weird and would rather be in Lahinch on a Tuesday evening in November.

Down here, the smaller places seem bigger. There’s more infrastructure and it’s slightly more clipped than it feels back west. Here, dandelions are pummelled by trucks on the roadsides while I miss the willow herb and cow parsley of our slower roads and boreens.

Oh – and they don’t Howya when you walk past them on the street. Found that out straight away, but kept on Howya-ing like a culchie anyway.

To read Charlie’s column in full, please see this week’s Galway City Tribune.