10 Tralee the buzzing metropolis of sex and business

 10 Tralee the buzzing metropolis of sex and business 

My day is divided into three parts:

Mornings: a rather circuitous walk to Lidl; around town; for fresh bread rolls and the things I usually eat for breakfast: tomatoes, olives, peppers (if I'm lucky and the kitchen in shelter is open); after breakfast: morning prayer in church, which takes me about 20-30 minutes and a phone call to my mum, I check if everything is OK with her and give her some information about my previous day and evening. After that I go to the library and spend time there until 1pm.

Afternoons: if the weather is nice, I walk through the city park to Dunnes Stores Cafe for lunch - I've had the same menu for a few months now: turkey or bacon with salads. But it's the cheapest option in town and the ladies working there are exceptionally nice. Between lunch and coffee I have time to write a few notes from the day in my diary - handwritten. This diary is the basis for a future book. After coffee, I quickly get ready and go back to the library. I type away again. I finish when the facility closes - around 5pm. I go back to the homeless shelter, grab my things for the pool: swimming trunks, flip-flops and a hand towel and head to the pool.

Evenings: A walk through the park to the Aquadome, where I usually spend 4-5 hours - one swimming, if I'm lucky enough and the pool is empty, and 4 hours in the sauna and steam room. I signed up for this water park because it was the only place in the city where I could stay until 9:45 pm on weekdays. As a result, I spend at least 5 hours there everyday, at least four of which in the wellness area with saunas and steam room. The crew probably already think I'm some kind of pervert, but the sad truth is: there is literally no other way to spend your time in this city. As a result of these treatments I am slowly getting a strange skin infection but unfortunately I have no other choice, another solution would be to start drinking in local pubs or to go down the path of drug addiction.

Many might think: wow, his life is amazing! Yes, it would be if I had another option and it was my choice. But for me, another option is: to lie on a bunk all day because where I am there is no possibility of even sitting. As usual, for some reason, there are no chairs, and the upper bunk is located in such a way that if I want to sit on the lower one, I have to unnaturally bend my back, tilt my head forward and arch my shoulders, which after a maximum of 5 minutes causes a lot of pain in my whole body. Another option is to spend the day glued to my mobile phone and scroll through tik-toks like my three cellmates do, get drunk once or twice a week, usually on Wednesdays - after payday, or get high by snorting cheap, low-quality drugs or injecting heroin, which is widely available literally everywhere. So, having no other choice, I have to repeat this endless routine over and over. Weekends are the worst - on Saturdays and Sundays the Aquadome is open until 7pm - the shelter's curfew is 10.30pm max, so I have to find some alternative places to literally kill time. The kitchen at Bibi's, where I am writing this, is much more spacious than the one at the house of evil, and the place itself is open until curfew (although it is a bit longer than 9pm, like at Finnegan's, which was otherwise constantly cold and usually dark, because they tried to cut every expense by constantly repeating the same argument like a mantra: "Would you let the lights on in your place? Would you let the lights on for that long?" Yes, I would, and - unbelievably - I did!). At Bibi's, as I wrote, the kitchen is relatively okay: spacious, with a long table and a few chairs, but that's why there is always someone sitting there, because you can't in the rooms. I don't mind people around me, but it's a bit different when I don't have a single minute of peace, not a single moment of silence - someone is always chatting, trying to talk, asking 1000 questions, talking loudly on speakers, not a second of peace, not a moment of silence: the same in the bedroom, the bathroom - because you have to hurry… You are never alone. Because of the lack of other options, on Saturdays I usually go to the Kelliher Shop at the petrol station in Tralee, which is open until 9pm. I buy tea (always herbal) and stay until closing time, using that time to write, if I have the energy for that of course. 

Sundays I spend in Midleton, with my friend and his family - they have a 5 year young boy and I think he really likes me, which is very therapeutic for me - any interaction with him is invaluable because I see a young man, who is still untainted by the existential filth I have to deal with on a daily basis. At first his presence was quite difficult and very exhausting as I am constantly tired and desperately looking for a quiet environment, but over time I discovered a huge benefit in the company of this loud and always overly excited boy. We try to meet up every week but of course sometimes they have other plans than to entertain me and then it is a big problem for me. Of course I try not to impose but the lack of that bit of normality which I have for 3.5 hours a week seriously disrupts the regular rhythm of my week (Tralee to Midleton by train usually takes 3-4 hours so I have just a bit over 3 hours per visit). In such cases, like last St Patrick's Day, I have no choice but to go on a trip. A trip to nowhere, like my recent one to Dublin where I spent an hour in the city just to eat a cheap, poor quality meal in a fast food chain because I can't afford to go to a restaurant, especially in a place like the centre of the capital. I try to use the time on the train to write, but sometimes the people around me are very loud (like on a national holiday) or the trains are suburban and not suitable for writing: no shelves or tables. In these cases I just kill time, staring out the window, away from the misery of the daily routine of a Kerry hobo. 

Everything is quite good if I am feeling well, but this is an increasingly exceptional state for me. Because I have huge problems with sleep (not because of my own issues, but mostly because of the conditions provided by the state), in addition to antidepressants, I also take sleeping pills every night, very often 3 or even 4 one after another, and regardless of this I am not able to fall asleep until morning. At night, because of this, I get a headache, which intensifies as the morning approaches. Almost every day I am like a zombie - I wake up with a migraine and symptoms of a giant hangover, although I do not drink, I have no energy for anything and I wander for long hours through the streets and parks of exciting Tralee. In such a case, my days are a pure waste and I only dream of waiting it out. I cannot lie down and rest, I have nowhere to do so. I cannot close the door behind me and switch off, because I simply do not have a door. And time: if you have nothing to do and nowhere to go, that beast is really deadly. As I have written before, there is no place in Tralee where most homeless people can spend their day. I am lucky that I have a relatively well-organised time, but many of my fellow prisoners are not. Very often when I emerge from Bibi’s cage in the morning, where they have crammed the four of us into 9 square metres, my fellow prisoners are lying on their bunks: glued to their mobile phones, scrolling through TikToks. The same scene when I return at around 4pm to get a towel and swimming gear, and when I come back at around 10.10pm: there is not much difference, apart from the fact that sometimes the lights are off and it is dark inside. They waste their worthless lives, not even in kind vegetation, but in sheer inertia. Apart from their smartphones, they have a choice: alcohol maximum twice a week, because drinking in pubs is quite expensive, and of course a variety of different types of bad quality hard drugs. Sometimes it takes less than 5 minutes to get them, sometimes they don’t have to leave the rooms they are temporarily allocated to. To be honest, I don't blame or judge them, because a drug-induced sleep is the only effective form of escape from this trap, the swamp that sucks them in every day. Some of them have been sitting there for 16 years, waiting for something that will never come (the miracle of a HAP apartment, or even more irrationally - a social housing). Some have ended up there recently, because they are only 20 years old and have been experiencing such an existence for two or three years, since they became adults (this case is particularly moving to me: this young man ended up in this place due to an unfortunate set of life circumstances; he had a mother suffering from bipolar disorder, who was also homeless; he had no other choice than this substitute for life or ending up on the street; I could say that he gave up: he has a problem with heroin and has already consciously tried to take his own life by overdosing twice). The council, and especially the unit dedicated to it, which should prevent all pathologies, does not work, and if it does, it does so in an extremely subtle, hidden, almost invisible way. This unit for preventing homelessness in the council, financed from public funds, i.e. from your taxes (yes! yours!), came up with a brilliant idea: to ban all (let's call it in prison nomenclature, because the reality here is quite similar) "wet passes" - that is: nights spent outside a shelter. If any of us spends a night outside that semi-prison, we will be excluded for a week, which means - a week on the street, or if you are lucky or rich enough: trying to find any accommodation on your own. Okay, let's imagine young guys: hormones are raging, trying to get their lives together, but… they can't! Council prevents even sleeping over with a potential partner. Have they committed any crime? I honestly admit that most of them have convictions, but they are not in prison! Well... are they really not? Are we sure? Kerry County Council has created a semi-prison reality for them and in return provided bunks in overcrowded cages. It doesn’t take a genius to understand what these conditions lead to: the level of frustration reaches incredible heights; arguments, conflicts and problems are the order of the day. For some time I had a very strong feeling that I was part of a strange sociological experiment, but even if it is so, its results would have been obvious from the very beginning.

It's a bit different with me, maybe because I'm older, maybe because I'm slowly running out of strength: I'd like to be able to spend the night outside this nightmare, but not for the purpose of having a great time, a really crazy night; quite the opposite! I simply dream of a night in a hotel: silence; fresh, fragrant sheets; a bath; sleep without waking up in the middle of the night; to finally get some rest. But I know that as long as I'm there, all these dreams are beyond my reach. I'm going to physiotherapy in Poznań, but I can't inform the council about it; I can't reveal myself to social welfare. I'm running away like a rat, even though I've done no wrong to anyone. They had a huge problem giving me permission to go to my stepfather's funeral, it would be stupid and ridiculously naive to think that they'd agree to a rehabilitation trip. A trip that they should cover the costs of, because it's the result of these conditions that I urgently need these treatments so as not to end up as a cripple. What they are doing in the homelessness prevention office is a pure restriction of freedom and this will not be changed by an apparent internal regulation that I can always apply for a "pass". From conversations with others and my own experience, I know that I will never get one. Why? I don't know: out of pure malice? To prove that they CAN? That they are above me and in exchange for what they "offer" they can treat me however they want? Maybe this is normal in Ireland; maybe this is the custom here, but according to normal standards, what is happening in that place is a common restriction of human rights and bears the characteristics of a crime. This cannot be explained by any regulations and internal regulations - they cannot violate fundamental human rights - the right to freedom. Of course, you can always say that no one is holding me or others there by force, that I can go... Where? To the street? I am a foreigner, but 90 percent of the “residents” of these shelters are Irish. Some of them have worked almost their entire lives and found themselves in such circumstances because of the policy of this country, their country! And the fate that was prepared for them was prepared for them with your money.

This is unfortunately the daily life of many people you pass on the streets of your: Tralee, Cork, Dublin; quickly looking away so as not to engage in even the slightest interaction, God forbid!