TEN-FOOT HEN BENDING

I’m running my fingers through Eimear’s pearls. They feel cold on my collar and I count them slowly like they’re rosary beads. Sitting on this bus makes me feel a trepid power, like I’m riding on the back of an angry wild bull. I hadn’t left my room in the evenings in 105 days. The time before that, it was 78 days. The weird thing with anxiety is you create this map in your head that keeps tabs over where you can and can’t go, it helps you gain a sense of control. For me, it started a couple of years ago in first year, during a lecture on early medieval history. Our lecturer, Susan, was going over a slide about the economics of feudalism, when all of a sudden, I just felt this belt across my face. And then a sensation of having a thin layer of clothing ripped off me in one go, like a medical gown. I didn’t feel naked or anything, just, like, imagine you were in a public place wearing a long gown, and then it just got pulled off. That feeling, of being vulnerable and tiny, with everyone looking on in disgust, worse than disgust, looking on in pity, feeling relief that they weren’t in the position you were in. Exposed in the middle of O’Connell Street, with everyone examining and judging and finding out, no escape. That’s what it felt like for me in that lecture theatre.

I was five seats in, on the seventh row. Everyone around me was just carrying on, listening to the lecture while my face dripped cold. My heart was belting in my ribs, I was like a cat trapped in a coal bunker, trying to get out. I couldn’t breathe. I was drowning in people, suffocating in how OK they were with the universe. My thoughts dangled over a fantasy of humiliating myself, raw, uncooked, exposed, dirty, public. What if I got up and tried to escape? I needed to run from the feeling, but if I did that, would they all stare and think I was mad? I could taste the bland, oozing saliva rushing around my tongue and convinced myself I was ready to puke on everyone. I just focused on that saliva relish and imagined puking uncontrollably on everyone sitting around me. Down Conor’s collar, on the nice fringe of that girl who listens to Jeff Buckley who I’ve never even spoken to. And then everyone would jump up, startled, horrified, and it would just be me in the spotlight, sitting like a freak on my own. They’d be almost sick themselves because they’d be inundated in my puke, the private intimate contents of my stomach, and their faces would be so disgusted, because my chunder and bile would be on them. In their hair and eyes. Then they’d look at me, me like a rabbit in their headlights, with that disgust, that offence and horrified anger that you direct at someone who’s guilty.

This shit just played out in my head as real as if it was happening. It felt as if it was. I felt sheer and utter terror, terrified that I’d just lose control, and paralysed that I was trapped in that lecture theatre. Rubbing my palms together, scared that the person beside me could hear my breaths. Then it just kind of faded. As quick as it came, for no reason, it just went away. And I went back to normal, with this great sense of relief. It was so horrifying, I just pushed it away. By the time it had passed, the lecture was over. I left with Ella and Cian as if nothing had happened. We went to lunch, they spoke about being out in Costellos the night before, who drank what, how much, who shifted who, and we laughed. I didn’t think about what had happened in the lecture theatre. I didn’t want to talk about it, I didn’t really want to acknowledge it in my own thoughts.

I went home that evening to my mum and dad, I drank tea, I watched a good documentary about the Aztecs on Discovery. The feeling crept back though. The next week, I was in Susan’s lecture again. She recapped on some of the bits about feudalism. Her computer for the lecture had this loud fan, and that’s what set it off. Not the same turn of events. But the memories of terror, of sitting in that room, and never ever wanting to feel that feeling again. Low-key PTSD. Of course, then I started worrying, oh no, what if it’s going to happen here again, the exact same thing? The sweats, the breaths, the pictures in my mind. It came from nowhere. I didn’t control it. And that was when shit got nasty. It’s not the panic attacks that fuck your life up. It’s the fear of when and where the next one will happen. So I stopped going to Susan’s lectures. My terror was drawing out the mental map of where I could and couldn’t go. I stopped going to that lecture theatre. If I stayed away from there, I was safe.

Or so I thought, until it happened in Boots when I was buying deodorant. A bad one. I don’t know what triggered it. I think it was a smell of lavender but it was the same experience. I got the fuck out of Boots. I ran down the street, and found a strong solid wall to lean against. When your brain is on a roll like that, crowds are the worst. You cannot control your mind, every idea is paralysing. Your brain reboots itself, over and over and over, each time it sucks breath from your lungs and blood from your knees. Resting against the wall, I started to scan the buckets of people in Limerick city centre. I pained to contemplate how each one of them had their own thoughts, and how they all had families who also had thoughts, and how I couldn’t possibly fathom how all these people were all thinking thoughts when I was there trying to control my own thoughts. Their faces were smudged unrecognisable by the fingers in my head. All their thoughts jumping out of their ears, like wifi signals, their eyes blinking lights, everywhere. All this activity trying to drown me in the notion ocean. There’s no unbothered spaces. Their thinking climbed down my neck-ladder and filled my insides like I’m a sleeping bag.

A hand grabbed my arm really hard. It was the security guard from Boots.

‘Where the fuck are you going with that?’ he screamed.

I looked down and saw that I had accidentally ran out of the shop with the lavender bottle of Dove deodorant. Lots of people on the street stopped, to watch me getting caught shoplifting. I tried opening my mouth to let them know it was an accident, but I couldn’t form words. I don’t mean to be insensitive, but I sounded like a deaf person sounds when they try to talk. Maw maw maw urrr oooo. All these faces, whispering, judging, ‘she’s been shoplifting’. Then, to my right, there was this older lady with dyed-black hair, and she looked so disgusted with me, so disapproving, like I’d hurt her. That’s when I felt that light just wave across my face and I went out like I was on a vet’s slab.

The rest after that is so hazy. I was in the security office of Boots. I think the security guard had his arm around me and took me back there but I can’t be sure. They were really nice, the security lad and the manager. My dad came to collect me. I felt really safe then, but also fairly useless. I got into my dad’s car and asked if he’d get me some nice cakes, Black Forest or something, and he did. That evening I was back in my room, with my smells and my things. My TV, my laptop, my bed, my bean-bag, my books. And if a panic attack happened, at least I knew I could do it there, on my own. And my parents would be downstairs all the time, if I needed an ambulance or anything. I asked my mum and dad if I could take a few weeks out of college, and they said ya, because they were really scared about what had happened in Boots. But they didn’t ask what the problem was.

I felt so safe in my room, so controlled. It was like a big womb that had no expectations of me. I began to stay in my room as much as possible. I enjoy my own time anyway. But the more I did that, the more threatening and frightening the outside became. I never ever wanted to feel the way I felt that day outside Boots, never again. That feeling was the worst I’d ever felt, hands down. I felt powerless, I felt incapable, and useless. I didn’t feel nineteen, I felt like a baby, not an adult. That feeling burned itself on to my brain so bad that not leaving the house felt normal. On the occasions when I did have to leave the house, I’d focus only on my breathing. I’d breathe deep into my nose and feel it expand my lower stomach like a ball, that’s how you get the most oxygen to your brain. If there’s lots of oxygen, then the bad chemicals like adrenaline and cortisol can’t cause the fear to attack. I bought a little digital metronome. It keeps this tempo’d beat with a click-click sound, it’s for piano players to learn rhythm. I’d put earphones in the metronome when I left the house, and time my breathing, deep, measured and rhythmic. I wore big baggy hoodies to hide my body, and to stick my hands inside to hug myself. I began walking with my head down, looking only at the ground. I couldn’t risk looking up, and meeting someone’s eye. I’d cry if that happened. I wasn’t ready for the cameras in their eyes. I wasn’t ready to see all their thoughts, when I was struggling to control my own.

When you get that far down with anxiety, you grow angry and bitter. You want everyone to go, to leave you alone. You pray someone won’t try and talk to you. You hate them for their ability to walk down the street without needing a metronome to breathe. For their happiness. It’s because they are stupid, they can’t see the pain and complexity I see in the universe. If they could, they’d be overwhelmed by it too. That’s what I told myself at least. It’s tiring, it was so tiring. I’d venture to town, only to get a book or a DVD or a CD, some piece of art that I could scurry back to my room with and enjoy there in that warm hug of safety. That’s what made the trips worth it. But it was tiring. You don’t notice how much breathing takes out of you when it’s autonomous, but when you breathe deep to a metronome, you’re fit to collapse at the day’s end.

The further into this lifestyle I slipped, the more shame I felt. I felt shame for being a freak, for not being normal. Conor or Eimear would ask me out on Tuesdays, where the normal thing to do was get yoked up and dance. But I’d make so many excuses: ‘I have work to do’, ‘I think the dog is sick’, ‘I think I’m getting a chest infection’, ‘I’m giving up drink because my uncle was an alcoholic and I’ve been told to watch it, it’s genetic’, ‘I don’t like using the jax in nightclubs because there’s an African lady in there to dry my hands and it makes me feel racist’. All lies. My friends just thought I hated them. Eimear in particular took it very personally. She’d heard about the time at Boots, her sister knew the security guard. Eimear told people in college that I was always stealing, and that I stole pearl jewellery from her room when I used her bathroom once. That totally wasn’t true, and it fucking hurt real bad. Ok maybe it was true. Sometimes I steal things, I don’t know why, I just do. But I wasn’t letting anyone else know that.

But I didn’t hate my friends, not them. I hated their ability to go out and enjoy themselves with the lads. And here I was, a baby, a toddler, a useless, worthless freak with no possibility of having a future. The shame hits hard, the shame of being incapable, and then the sadness comes on. It starts off like this pang of regret, which feels like something really disappointing has happened but you can’t think of what it is, and that makes you even more sad, because you feel sorry for yourself that you’re this sad but can’t think of the rationale for being sad. I’d cry for no reason, cry for what was inside me, cry for not being able to feel, cry for what wasn’t inside me. Crying for feeling too much, but not being able to label whatever it was I was feeling. I’d see my shadow cast on the wall, and get confused that I wasn’t able to tell the difference between me and the shadow. I’d stare at my hands, and they wouldn’t feel like they were part of me, they’d feel like they belonged to someone else, so I’d hide my hands behind my back in case I saw them. And this caused me to cry too.

As weeks passed, that sadness took everything. Worst of all, it took my enjoyment. My island of pleasure, my room, my books, my music, it took my ability to enjoy those things. It took any plans for the future. Every morning I’d wake up, and my first thought was this little hopeful glimmer, for just a moment. Then it was smothered by the blackness and smashed with the morbid hammer. It became impossible to imagine never having that blackness. I forgot what happiness felt like, I forgot the reasons why I ever felt happy before. I lashed out at my parents. I slept a lot. Sleep was all I had. With sleep, you can switch off and rest. Thank fuck I had sleep, because some others don’t have that, but I did.

No matter how bad it got, I never wanted to end myself. I’d think about it, but there was this little voice of preservation inside me that said no, ride it out, stick with it. That’s what I did. I thought about cutting my ankles with a razor, when I got real numb. To feel something. But I didn’t, because it would have hurt my poor dad too much if he knew. No matter what, I knew my mum and dad really loved me, that they weren’t lying. I truly believed that, and it’s what got me through. One night I just exploded in tears. I cried and I hugged them in the kitchen, I begged them to help me, please do something to help, my life is so painful. And they did. They arranged for me to see the counsellor in my college, whose name was Alan. He was really kind, and looked like a poodle. He just asked questions, he didn’t talk. Which felt great, because I was finding my own answers through his questions. He’d ask me what the anxiety felt like, to describe it, in detail. ‘What’s it like to be frightened like that?’ he’d enquire. He’d never ask anything that had a yes or no answer. And he didn’t give me advice either. I’d go through it all, the thoughts, the feelings, that time in Boots. It felt safe to think about it, and to hear myself talk about it out loud. That room was safe. Sometimes we’d even laugh. We laughed about how I spoke like a deaf person when I got caught shoplifting. I hadn’t laughed in so long. I didn’t tell him that I deliberately stole the deodorant though.

Each week we’d go deeper. I’d talk about my childhood, and we’d go further and further still. ‘You mentioned feeling useless and like a baby. Can you speak about why you’d feel this way?’ was another one. And I’d rant, I’d answer these questions, and he’d just smile and listen, with no judgement. Every session, I’d have a revelation about myself, about my feelings, and it would give me such hope. I’d feel normal for like a day. Then the blackness would come back, but I knew, because I felt better after sessions with Alan, that the blackness wasn’t permanent. This made it a lot easier and less devastating.

Alan wrote to my tutors and explained my troubles, which really helped with project deadlines. I was beginning to feel like me again. In summer we had to wrap up the therapy, after the semester ended, but I was free to return in September. The great insight that I had gained was that I was scared of standing on my own two feet. I didn’t feel capable of being a proper adult, who could rent a house or drive a car or get a job or a boyfriend. Alan had a hunch and probed me about my childhood. I had an older brother who died when he was four. Gus. I don’t think about it much, to be honest. He’s just this picture of a smiley little boy with curly hair and fat fingers waving with a red ball under his other arm that’s always been above the mantelpiece. He died when he drank a bottle of caustic soda in the garden shed that my dad had left in a 7Up bottle for cleaning drains. I don’t remember Gus, but I know from speaking to my neighbours that it hurt my parents bad. My dad blamed himself, and my mother blamed herself. I was only two, but that was my earliest experience. The adults in my life were in deep grief and regret when I was just a tiny baby. Babies don’t understand this stuff, but we pick up on emotions and fears. We learn how to react to threats through those early years. Babies have huge empathy, and we learn our emotional boundaries from how our parents react to things, like big sponges, and sometimes the water is dirty. That’s how Alan put it.

My parents both over-parented with me after Gus died. Everything was a potential danger that could hurt or kill me. I wasn’t allowed get a bicycle in case I fell. I wasn’t allowed to leave the house in case I got hit by a car. If I wanted to go on a school trip, I was talked out of it, but my parents would do something really nice, like buy me tonnes of books or video games to make up for it. As I got older, it was the same for the Energizer teen discos in Mungret. I couldn’t go, but my dad would buy me something cool in HMV, which made it OK. I wasn’t unhappy, I was very happy. But I slowly began to learn that I needed protecting at all times. That I couldn’t risk doing what the other children did in case it killed me. The older you get, the greater the impact of that message, particularly when you get to fourteen or fifteen, when you should be taking risks and testing boundaries. I never did. I was always made to feel completely safe, so long as I never took any risks. When that’s the lesson handed to you by your parents, you just accept that reality. The problem for me was that when I hit nineteen, when I went to college, my friends were renting, cooking their own meals and talking about going on J1 visas and getting summer jobs in California, and it threatened the fuck out of me. It was too far from where I was at emotionally.

I didn’t know that it threatened me. Instead, it threatened me unconsciously. When the unconscious is threatened, it finds a strange way to act out. For me, it was anxiety attacks. I understand that now. But just like a sponge that gets soaked in dirty water, I can squeeze it all out and soak up new clear water now that I’m an adult. Alan introduced me to cognitive behavioural therapy. It’s a type of self-help that taught me that my thoughts influence my emotions, which then influence my behaviour. Basically, my anxiety and depression aren’t caused by lecture theatres or going to Boots. They exist because the way I think about these things is flawed. The way I think about myself, my future and the world is flawed. It’s flawed because my autonomous reaction is fear, which is what I’ve learned and it isn’t objective reality. If I can change my thoughts around these things, from flawed to rational, I can be happy. If I get a negative thought around my future or my capability, I treat that thought like a scientist would. If Conor from college goes to Tesco and buys carrots and meat to make a stew, I don’t say to myself, ‘God, I could never do that, I need Mum for that, that’s so adult of him.’ I say to myself, ‘Where’s the evidence that I can’t do that? There’s none. Just because I’ve never done it doesn’t mean I can’t.’ Then I quietly go to Tesco and buy carrots and meat, and I cook my own dinner, to prove to myself that I can, that I’m normal and capable. I identify my negative thoughts, my belief that I’m weak, then I test it with my behaviour.

That’s what I’m doing right now on this bus. I’m nervous as fuck, I’m regulating my breathing, and I’m fucking terrified of getting a panic attack. This is the first bus I’ve ever been on on my own. Ya, I know, I’m twenty-one in August. But public transport is a real trigger for me, because there’s nowhere to hide. I’m here, on a packed bus, and I’ve handed all control over to some driver who I don’t know. The thoughts jump into my head. What if I puke up? What if I just start screaming, and everyone stares? This time, I don’t tell myself how awful it would be. I say to myself, ‘So what if that happens? So fucking what?’ Ya, there’s a small chance I might get sick on myself or on someone else, or maybe get a leg cramp and have to stand up and walk up and down the aisle and draw attention to myself. But so what? Maybe I might even have a panic attack, but it will pass. It won’t be nice, but it will pass. What’s the worst that can happen? Some strangers will look, some might feel sorry for me and may even help me. But that’s it. I can handle that, on the slight chance it happens. I can clean sick off myself, maybe buy a new T-shirt. It wouldn’t be pleasant, but it’s not death either. The idea that it would be this horrible, shameful, life-threatening ordeal is not reality. That’s my earliest childhood memories talking, and they don’t define my reality, because I’m an adult now and I have complete responsibility over how I react to my environment.

And with these thoughts, this rational-thinking process, my fear subsides, then my fists clench and I feel power. I feel like I’ve just stood up to a bully, and they backed down. That’s what anxiety is, it’s a bully, it’s the bully in your head that knows exactly how to hurt you the most. Well fuck that, I deserve happiness, because I’m a good person. This is what it feels like to grow. I’m a flower reaching towards the sun, and that sun is the best version of me possible.

The bus rumbles on out past the Two Mile Inn Hotel, a poorly designed 1970s structure in the shape of a pyramid bent in the direction of Shannon airport. I press my forehead against the cold glass and watch the summer grass and hedgerows blur past in a collective olive smudge. I grit my teeth, to feel the vibrations of the engine and the road shaking inside my skull. I mentally scan my body. My denim pressing against the worn sponge of the bus seats, so worn I can feel my arse-bone. My back stiff against the rest, a slightly wet sweaty patch in the centre making my T-shirt stick to my skin all chilly. It will dry off in the sun. My feet are firmly on the floor. I feel them solid, while knowing that unseen underneath is passing tarmac that would rip my skin from my bones if I were to grate off it at this speed. I am OK with this. This is a grounding exercise. It helps with the feelings of depersonalisation that I get with anxiety, the feeling that my body isn’t mine, that I’m not in control. This exercise keeps my body, emotions and thoughts rooted in the present moment, and reminds me that only I am in control.

My breathing is slow and deep through my nose. For the first time in a year, I feel calm, confident and bloody happy. We move past Durty Nelly’s pub in Bunratty. It’s a gorgeous little thatched tavern, mainly used by American tourists, but it’s not tacky. It’s painted bright pink and has this cute river beside it, with jumping trout over a little weir. Dad used to take me there on Sundays for ice-creams in the car park. Behind Durty Nelly’s I can see my destination, Bunratty Castle, towering above. The bus takes a right, and settles alongside the other coaches underneath the shade of some sycamore trees with fat June leaves. I get off, I feel resilient, I feel normal, my posture changes. I can’t fucking believe that I’ve made it ten miles outside Limerick city, on my own. Just me. No help. I press my return ticket into my back pocket like an adult would do, taking note that I have five hours to explore the castle grounds. The weather is mighty, not a cloud in the sky, and that dry heat that bounces up off the tarmac and hits your chest. This is ice-cream weather for sure.

Bunratty Castle is one of the most well-preserved medieval structures in Ireland. It looms above me, with its ancient grey stone and yellow-white lichen growth that’s probably older than my parents. Each stone hand-cut with the most basic of tools. I’m giving serious thought to focusing on the castle and surrounding cultures for my second-year dissertation, and I’ve come here to survey it myself, on my own. The castle as it is today dates to the 15th century, but there have been Viking settlements here as far back as the 10th century, which were raided by Brian Boru. It’s thought that a wooden motte-and-bailey structure was built some time around 1250, when the Normans arrived. That’s the shit that really excites me. To stand in an area with so much history and culture. To stand in a place that has been settled by so many different people, speaking in languages we wouldn’t even understand today. Even when this castle was occupied by English-speakers in the 15th century, the English they spoke would be alien to our ears. The Gaelic spoken in the surrounding hills would be unrecognisable too. How would a 13th-century serf from Cratloe handle a panic attack? Did they even get anxiety, or depression? They had real reason to be afraid. They could be killed in their sleep by the O’Briens. Even a bout of food poisoning could end them in a weekend. They had real fear and danger in their daily lives. Did this give their life emotional sustenance? Or was being miserable just how life was then, and we are the lucky ones? It is this possibility of empathy across time that thrills me about history, that gives me a real feeling of meaning and purpose. I start to remember why I fell in love with it again.

I join a tour group. Our guide is Laura. She’s about 26 and is so passionate, even though she probably does this tour about eight times a day. She leads us up the drawbridge to the castle gates and through the main entrance. As we enter, Laura points up at the murder-hole. This makes everyone quite uncomfortable.

‘If you were a raiding party who had made it this far, you’d be dead by now. Above you is the murder-hole, through which boiling hot grease was poured on any intruders, who were trapped in this hallway with no escape. Any remaining survivors were stabbed, their heads impaled on poles at the gates as a warning to other intruders,’ she says.

I know this of course, this is Junior Cert stuff, but Laura explains it with such passion that I may as well be hearing it for the first time. I fantasise about having her job, maybe next summer, getting the bus out every day, packing my own lunch, speaking to German tourists about history, slowly and in plain English, at their service, being a real adult. That thought makes me feel very happy.

We move forward into the main hall, which is the next section of the tour. The tall walls are whitewashed in lime, and the temperature instantly drops as we enter. The acoustics make the smallest whisper boom loudly in the space designed for harp players. Incredible to think that the builders had that in mind hundreds of years ago. A massive oak table stands against the east side. In the centre is a metal grated fire with magnificent cast-iron work that twists black. The smoke rises up to the ceiling and out a hole, which fills the room with the unforgettable aroma of burning turf. While Laura speaks about the antlers of an Irish elk that hang on the wall, I notice a second tour group, who are being spoken to in Italian. My attention drifts as I observe their enthralled faces. I wonder if the guide is telling the Italians the exact same stuff that Laura is telling us, or if their tour is slightly edited to suit cultural differences. The architecture of Italy in the medieval era was much more advanced. Ireland in the 1500s was nothing compared to Venice or Florence.

As I ponder this, I notice a familiar face. Standing amongst the humble group of Italian tourists is a late-middle-aged man. He is wearing tight cornflower-blue shorts above his knees and an orange T-shirt. On his feet are blue low-top Converse sneakers. His hair is dyed blonde and spiked up. As I look more intently, I realise that it is none other than Hollywood actor Sam Neill. Or at least an Italian man who looks exactly like him. My face must look ridiculous. I’m not shocked, more bemused. Either this is an old Italian dude dressed like Bart Simpson, or the famous actor Sam Neill is in Bunratty Castle dressed like Bart Simpson with a load of Italian people. I direct my attention back to Laura, who is speaking enthusiastically about a tapestry that was commissioned by the Lord of Thomond, Thomas de Clare, in 1278. It depicts eight greyhounds chasing a peasant, and each greyhound’s tail is tucked between their legs. I try to admire the tapestry but I can’t hold my focus.

I stare again at the Italian man. I walk closer to his group, feigning interest in some 14th-century ash-beams. From this distance, I begin to examine the lines on the man’s face, his soft expression and the glint behind his eyes that frame a permanent smile. This is most definitely the man who played the role of Dr Alan Grant in Jurassic Park. As I make that realisation, he pipes up and with his unmistakeable New Zealand accent says, ‘The greyhounds’ tails look like their fucking cocks, hahaha,’ while pointing at the De Clare Tapestry. The Italians are confused. My group shuffles, silent and uncomfortable. I laugh pretty loud. Everyone turns to look at me. Normally this would cause me to go very red and freak the hell out, but not today. Fucking Sam Neill is dressed like Bart Simpson in Bunratty Castle, what the actual fuck?

Laura beckons our group towards a tiny stone door that leads up a steep stone winding stair.

‘Now I’ll take you to the ornate bed chambers. It is very very important that you don’t touch this exhibit,’ she says.

I stall back, and walk over to the man.

‘Sam,’ I say.

‘That’s me, kiddo,’ he replies.

I get fucking stupidly nervous and don’t know what to say. ‘Ah Jaysus man, I love Jurassic Park. Not just that, I know you’ve done more, but Jurassic Park was my favourite thing as a kid. Peaky Blinders, I saw you in an episode of that. You were a nordy Orangeman, your accent was spot-on. Cillian Murphy is such a ride too, my God.’

Sam stares in silence. I feel like a bit of a dickhead, I have this tendency to talk like a fucking bimbo to everyone, especially lads, and I hate it.

‘Cillian Murphy is my enemy,’ he retorts.

‘Oh, sorry.’

Sam laughs loud and takes out a cigarette, which he then lights with a match. I don’t know what to say. You most definitely are not supposed to smoke in here. Both tour groups have gone upstairs, it is just Sam and I in the medieval hall. He trounces around slowly and coolly like he owns the place, with the cigarette hanging from his lip. The rubber of his Converse pitter-patters on the stone floor, amplified by the magnificent acoustics of the space.

‘Wanna see something cool, kid?’

When he asks this, I feel kind of uncomfortable, every bone in my body saying no. I can’t tell if it is a rational fear, or just my regular chicken-shit inner voice that I am trying so hard to combat. But before I overthink it, I say, ‘Yes, Sam. I’d like to see something cool.’

I think I say this out of anger, anger at myself, for never taking risks. Today I’m taking a risk and looking at the cool thing that Sam Neill has to show me. He stubs the cigarette out on the wall and says nothing as he walks towards the west wall. I follow him. By the door that two tour groups have taken is another smaller entrance that has a clear red-rope barrier – it is not for visitors, but employees. Sam lifts this rope and ushers me in. We climb a metal ladder that has been recently built, down a utility tunnel that leads to a corridor that has masoned arrow-slits.

‘Look through there,’ Sam says. It’s the tour groups, in the next room, looking at a bedpost that belonged to the de Clare family. We can see them, they can’t see us. Sam crouches beside me, with this look of passionate mischief in his eyes. He reaches deep into his mouth and pulls out a full set of false teeth that he displays in the palm of his left hand. I look at the teeth, pooled in saliva, then look up at Sam’s gummy smile and mad eyes. He presses his palm hard against the limestone floor, cracking the teeth into their constituent parts. It sounds like Rice Krispies. About fourteen acrylic teeth lie on the ground shining like the pearls I stole from Eimear’s bedroom. Sam Neill produces a wooden slingshot from his back pocket, just like Bart Simpson would have, and he hands it to me. He doesn’t tell me what to do, because I know what he wants me to do. I pick up one of the iridescent teeth from the floor, place it in the leather sling receptacle and fire it through the arrow-slit, directly at the face of a fat Italian woman in the next room.

‘Mamma mia,’ she yelps, holding her face. Sam and I try hard not to be heard laughing.

‘My turn,’ he whispers. Two men have gathered around the Italian woman to see what her problem is. One places the tooth into his pocket, which is a bit of an odd thing to do with a worthless tooth.

Bam. Sam fires a lasher at one of the men’s faces, hitting him just above the lip. I grab the sling and let fly another, real hard and close at an old Irish woman who is near the masoned slit. It bounces off her forehead and leaves a mark. There is panic in the room, and I feel alive. Now I am in control. I control their reactions, and they don’t know what is happening. Their fear and confusion washes away my inner trepidation and my heart beats in a predatory way.

‘Hurry, before someone narcs on us,’ Sam says into my ear. We run out of the castle into the car park, giggling like fuck. Sam takes out a pen-knife, and I keep watch while he slashes the tires on the Italians’ big fancy bus.

‘I can do one better,’ I roar at him, taking the pen-knife from him. I use the blunt end of the handle and smash one of the side windows on the coach. ‘Boost me up, you auld prick,’ I say to Sam.

‘That’s my girl,’ he replies.

I climb on Sam Neill’s shoulder and clamber in through the broken window. The glass sticks into my hands, but it’s that type that’s supposed to smash into little blunt bits so it’s grand. I begin to rifle through all the Italian handbags, taking money and passports. Money goes in my pocket, and I pile all the passports up on the back seat. I flick through their faces and names. Mad names: Amatore Enzo, Amos Lallo, Urbano Cherico, Raffaele Lanzone, Alessandro Corelli, Giocondo Passarelli. They sound like a menu.

‘No looking, Sam.’

I take down my jeans, squat and piss all over the pile of Italian passports. The heat of the piss rises up and warms my arse. I feel very much alive, I feel like I have purpose, I am in control.

‘Come on, you dork,’ shouts Sam. We race each other to the side of Bunratty Castle and enter the folk park. It is a recreation of a medieval farm and village, with thatched cottages and the strong smell of turf-smoke. Sam throws a leg over a wattle-and-daub fence, into a muddy enclosure full of goats. The goats, used to tourists, are not startled.

‘Give me that money you took from the purses, kid.’

I reach in to my left pocket and give him half, easily €500 in twenties and fifties. Sam grabs it all in one fist and attempts to mount a large billy goat with long grey fur and eyes like a snake. He is unsuccessful in staying upright and lays across the goat’s back as it attempts to jock him off. The younger goats are disturbed and begin to make distressed barking noises. Sam stuffs the money into the goat’s mouth, as it bites down on his fist, drawing blood.

‘Look at me, woohoo, I’m Cillian Murphy, look at me,’ Sam says.

A woman who works at the park sticks her head out of the gift shop to see what the commotion is. I tell her to fuck off, that this is serious business and she wouldn’t understand. She goes back in like a turtle. I feel in control. I run to the next enclosure and begin bothering peacocks with a sweeping brush. All the tourists watch, in fucking disgust, staring at me, disapproving. I have flashbacks to the wall outside Boots when I nicked the deodorant, and I pick one woman. A middle-aged bint, who looks like that bitch who stared at me that day with the dyed-black hair. I march up to her, stare her right in the eye and slap her across the face as hard as I can, so hard she’s knocked back and holds her mouth. I stand over her and scream. She looks terrified.

‘They’re gonna call the cops, kid,’ says Sam. He’s probably right. So we walk out of the folk park like roosters. Me and Sam Neill. But the police don’t come.

We cross over across the car park to Durty Nelly’s. I use the money I have left in my pocket to get us both giant 99 ice-creams and large glasses of straight vodka from the bar. Sam has no teeth, and he laughs loudly as he gums the 99 and downs his vodka.

‘Why are you here, Sam? What are you doing in Bunratty? Why are you dressed like Bart Simpson?’ I ask him.

‘Because I live in the present moment, bucko. I picked this place at random, I just booked the tickets for the plane last night and arrived. I dress like the Simpson kid to feel young. You ask too many questions. What’s your story?’

I tell him about my anxiety, my depression, I tell him about therapy, I tell him that I got on that bus and faced my fear, I tell him about my parents and my dead brother Gus. He tells me that heaven and hell are a choice. Hell is when your mind lives in yesterday or tomorrow. Heaven is when you live today in the now. He struggles to remove his tight T-shirt and without warning he bounds towards a picnic table of women enjoying the sun and jumps up, kicking their drinks all over the car park. He tumbles to the tarmac, quickly getting to his feet and runs out towards the busy motorway.

‘You see this, kid?’ he screams. ‘If I take this traffic in the present moment, I’m invincible. If I think about what could happen, or what might have happened, I’m a dead man.’

With a steady pace, he runs freely across the motorway, back and forth, never stopping, never thinking. The cars, the buses, the motorbikes, the trucks, they all move around him, or run into the hard shoulder, but Sam never reacts. Sam just takes each step in the here and now as he races around the motorway. Sam controls danger, he controls risk. This is art. I join him. We both run around that motorway in an intense, meditative calm, as traffic dodges us. The drivers panic but we don’t. We sit down by the hard shoulder, exhausted.

Sam takes a softer tone. He looks at me and says, ‘You need to let go of your little brother, kid. You were too young to be around that grief. You’re carrying a pain that’s too hungry for your soul to feed.’

I feel the weakness come on. My power leaves, I am no longer in the present moment, and I cry really loud like a baby. I cry deep for Gus. I cry for my brother that I never knew. That tiny little toddler who drank poison. I imagine how happy he was to think he had found 7Up. I imagine his fear and pain as his throat burned. I cry for my dad who blamed himself, and my mum who tried to hold in her resentment for his carelessness while still loving him. Sam is reaching into a ditch and tugging at long strands of dry hay that he is forming into a crude shape. He hands it to me. It is a little straw man.

‘This is your brother, Gus,’ he says as he points at the stone bridge near Durty Nelly’s. He doesn’t tell me what to do because I know what he wants me to do.

I cradle Straw Gus in my arms, as I walk in a straight steady line towards the bridge. I gently toss him into the slow ebb of the river and let him go. I let him float, and watch him drift off. Gus and what happened to him is not in my control. I turn back to the motorway and Sam Neill is gone. The sky is getting pink. I reach in my arse pocket to feel my ticket and walk towards the car park to mount my bus back to Limerick, where the Italians are all huddled around their smashed-up coach looking upset and confused. I fumble at my collar to finger through Eimear’s pearl necklace, but it must have fallen off in the castle.