Snow in August

The trip to Limerick was a bad turning point in my relationship with Michael. It was during a heatwave and Michael had scheduled just a few hours to meet me in Limerick and sent me a schedule which crammed a huge amount into this few hours, adding 'Welcome to my World!' After some confusion when he'd gotten confused about whether he or I was booking the tickets as he kept swapping it around, he booked the tickets for early on the Tuesday - Tuesday being his special day. Michael knew better than me that the Green Bus was very unreliable, for myself I'd only been on it a few times to go to house sits, and it hadn't been great but as I prepared to go to Michael, the bus was so late it was covering the next bus as well as it's own schedule and thus also very crowded. Michael knew about this being fairly routine but hadn't told me. This meant the bus was running late for his packed schedule which he was so proud of - someone later told me that the packed schedule...

  Famous Christmas scene in Limerick Limerick. August 2026.  I work weekends. At lunchtime I sat with my salad and looked at my phone. My eye was drawn to something, and I looked closer.  A year ago, someone in my life asked me to help them to commit suicide, and I immediately contacted their mental health team and asked them to come out. The person in question was a recluse, wouldn't go to them and wouldn't speak to them on the phone, and I had to badger the mental health service to come out. The person in question had attempted to get the means to commit suicide and I took this seriously while his friends said 'Oh, he's always like that'. I knew before I was trained that if someone is trying to obtain the means for suicide, they mean it.  The meeting which ensued was calm enough, but the person in question was open that they wanted to die, that they had a method in mind, and that they'd asked me to help them. The mental health team engaged, listened, changed t...

Limerick, August 2026. The alarm wakes me at 6.15 and it's time to get ready for work. Clean work clothes are laid out and my bag and boots are by the door. I make my tea and look round the bedsit as I try to wake up. It's clean and tidy, ready for an evening of writing and study when I come home and my new ukulele is waiting for me with clean new strings. The walls are lined with exercise programme instructions from the neuromuscular therapist, there are souveniers on the cupboards, Leinster House, UL, events. Things are so different from two years ago, and so much has happened, one thing that reminds me of the penthouse is the floor, the same brown bare floor, the other thing is Michael and his associates still showing off in the press - I can't understand the psychology of a man who behaves like that after nearly killing me and doing goodness knows what to others. I make the bed, pack my lunch, check I've got everything, put my headphones on for 'The Belfast Polk...

This story starts on the terrace of the Penthouse where Michael placed me, and is a slow start as it is hard for me to go through what happened. This is a slow post, if you want to jump to summaries, go to the bottom of the post.  It's been two years since I stood on that terrace, a tangle of emotions, he was so far away, and causing so much confusion and uncertainty. Contacting him didn't help, but I didn't know how not to, because I was in an increasing state of distress. He had taken over, he had control, but his ideas and plans changed and evolved rapidly and had no foundation, no grounding, no point of reference and he was unpredictable and said all sorts of strange things but without clarity, and yet I adored and admired him, he was my future and my saviour, so far away in Limerick as I looked over to the Dublin Mountains and my guardian mountain, Three Rock.  Here I am now, in my bedsit in Limerick, surrounded by paperwork for the last week and next, thinking about J...

Marine Road. It's August 2026, two years on from Snow in August. I declined an all expenses holiday for some reasons I choose not to share, apart from not really being a holiday person, and just took a few days leave to combine volunteering at events with a few day trips. It was nice to see Tipperary again and even nicer to see Dublin and catch up with friends.  He's standing there as he does in my dreams, as I reach the corner at the bottom of Marine Road. I shout his name, desperate that he doesn't hurry on. All day as I caught up with friends in Dublin, I hoped and prayed I'd find him. God whispered 'Go to Dun Laoghaire, get your hair cut' and I did. Well, along those lines. I can't afford a haircut in Limerick and Rob gave me 50 when I met him on North Earl Street and my hairdresser in Dun Laoghaire does my hair for 25, so it made sense. I went to Dun Laoghaire to get my haircut, knowing my friend could as easily be there as in Dublin.  He turns and a sm...