MENTAL HEALTH WEEK

It's not easy going crazy. But the task can be made simpler, given the right circumstances. Like taking up a high-pressure job in a strange town where you don't know a soul. The epitome of soullessness. It's a Sunday today. I can tell. I see the sun peeking through my banana pineapple and tropical fruit-decorated curtains. I should almost certainly be out covering the desert race, rather than drinking myself into a stupor in this darkened room. But sometimes you got to do what you got to do. Like 'enough is enough', it is by definition.

Ex's.

(I can only write about her in the third person, otherwise i go to pieces). She says she wants to have a baby. He has been with her for eleven years, and loves her to bits. She gets pregnant to him twice, and has an abortion twice, whilst telling him that he really should get himself a good, nine-to-five government job, with all the concomitant wages and conditions, and when he says are you crazy? i'd rather die, and when he says i am going to do a postgraduate diploma and work as a photojournalist, well, she leaves him for her boss, a high-up lawyer in the Federal government department in which she works. Moves into his house in Fremantle. She always wanted a house in Fremantle. And now she's having his baby, instead.

Ex's. Where's the bottle opener? Why don't they make these double-black vodkas with a twist top? Oops, it is a twist top.

I have never used The Nerve to dish it out to the ex, mainly because it's a tasteless thing to do. My only defense now is that i'm drunk, which of course is no defense. People have to do what they have to do. By definition, i suppose. And that little baby will certainly be better catered for brought up in a privileged, high-income household in the western suburbs, rather than crawling around some squalid, fibro sharehouse in the wild west.

Nurse Nikki just phoned. She texted me from the Sexpo last night, disappointed that they did not have a police uniform in her size. But she bought a showbag. Good, i say. Some of the items i can't use, though, she says. Don't throw anything out, i say. It can all be put to good use. Anyway, i might be in town next week, i need a mental health break, i say. I am getting on the bus with some knockout pills to get thru that 12-hour tortuous journey, then i'm going to lie in bed and watch videos with a girl i know. A bonkfest? Nurse Nikki says. No - it's just mutual support. She is being neglected. Besides, it's mental health week. Well, i know mental health week was last week, but everyone who knows me knows i'm never on time for anything. Only problem is, her tattooist boyfriend has already said he wants to kill me. Perhaps he fails to understand the purity of our relationship.

Are you sure you have thought this thing through? asks Nurse Nikki. It sounds like you are just inviting more trouble for yourself. I'm back in a couple of weeks, i can ride around on the back of your motorcycle in my fishnets and short skirt and cop uniform. I have a litre of Absolut vodka. Let's have a party.

Ah, midlife crisis. So many options, so little time.