It's not always a happy ending.........

You've seen quite a lot of hurt and pain, even at eighteen years of age you were delving into domestic violence and the effects of rape, but still, sometimes, you look out the Police car window into the dark and you find yourself unable to comprehend what you witness. You see the nameless, random girls, they stagger along, intoxicated to the point of being catatonic, they are wearing skirts that are hiked up almost to their waist line, they laugh and shout, smiling as the effects of the last glass of wine kick in, the alcohol stimulating their confidence to another level. A few hours down the line:  

** They may find that they are in the room of a man they do not know, a man they have just met, a man that isn't their boyfriend, have sex with him, forget to use a condom and catch HIV or Syphilis.

** In another club, or the next pub, or a house party, they take it to another level by taking Cocaine, Ecstasy or LSD.

What you think, as you look at them, feeling superior, self important, and sometimes a little self righteous is that, for the majority of them, it is their own fault, no one forces the alcohol down their throat, no one puts a gun to their head and tells them to drink it, or to take a tablet or to take their clothes off (or not in some cases) and open their legs.  

No matter how much people dress it up, saying that they are only having fun or having a good time, the cynic inside of you, the immoral side of you, the apathetic side, built from seeing what you have seen, can't see it that way, you can't help but say to yourself that they are fools, deficient in judgement, lacking in common sense and they will at some point, be left to dwell in the sewer for which they have created with their own actions.  But then, you hear about people like Robyn Bennett who was, that's past tense, an 18 year old girl, 'bright, happy, intelligent, outgoing and friendly young woman.'  On the day she died, she went onto her 'MySpace' page, and edited it with a poem entitled: 'Every day is a party', she also proceeded to name the model Kate Moss as one of her heroes.  

As you put a name to a face, to a random girl, it becomes a little harder to judge, to condemn, to feel superior, because like it or not, wanting to have fun is not a crime, it's just what young people want to do, is it an excuse? No, it's not, and they must answer for the actions they take when they bring themselves to a state where they do not know what they are doing.

When you see the girls walking by the window, sometimes you want to get out of the car, take hold of them and tell them about Robyn and that if they are not careful, if they don't heed the advice of those who have seen it, have been involved in it, that they will end up just the way she did.  You want to tell them that no one deserves to die like she did and no father should ever have to give his daughter CPR and then watch her die in his arms.  Taking drugs, becoming intoxicated to the point of being unable to control their actions will lead to them becoming another victim of drugs, violence, rape and worst of all, their own mortality.

It's not a fucking game, and you know that if you did try to talk to them, you would be laughed at, as just another person in a uniform, dull, boring, lifeless and out to spoil their fun, but if you could, you would plead with them, to be careful, because if they had seen what you have seen, that if they had watched a fourteen year old sprawled out on the floor of a house with paramedics over her, having almost choked to death on her own vomit, or a young taxi driver, moved to tears because a twenty five year old woman is on her way to Accident and Emergency in an ambulance, because she wandered out into the middle of a dual carriageway, drunk and not able to comprehend what she was doing, they might just be saying the same thing, pleading with themselves to think, to stop and to walk away..........

  

'Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness.'

Seneca