London, 31st October 2012.

As it was Halloween and a Halloween gig, Louise, Annabel and I arrived in London in our normal clothes with the aim of getting changed before we went to the gig. Louise and Annabel got changed in the car park under Euston station, but when I put my outfit on I realised I’d lost weight since I’d last worn it and it was now way too big for me. I didn’t want to be the only person not in fancy dress, so I ended up going to Camden Market and buying a dress with a glow-in-the-dark skeleton on it for £20. I then put it on in a Burger King toilet because I am a classy bird.

Clear memories from this night are few (bar the breakdown I’ll talk about in a minute), but I know at one point I asked Pill if I could kiss him on the cheek because I was wearing black lipstick and I thought it’d leave an awesome print on a cheek.
I was right, it did. Probably would have worked better without the beard but hey, you can’t have it all. 

I didn’t watch much of Wednesday 13, which is something I’ve always regretted cos I used to love The Murderdolls and I quite like Wednesday’s solo stuff, but my outstanding moment in the set was Wednesday saying “Hey London, do you know what I did last night?” to which I responded with “If you say you walked with a zombie I’m gonna lose my shit.” “I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE!” and then I ran around in a little circle and disappeared to try and find a better vantage point. I still couldn’t really see but I enjoyed standing in the crowd and screaming the lyrics.

I had a total, complete and utter breakdown after this gig. Outside the venue when we were talking to the lads, it got to the point of having to start to say goodbye and I remember trying to say ‘thank you’ to Beveridge and just bursting into tears. I think I got halfway through saying “This has been the best month of my life” before I started to totally lose it and actually had to walk away. I know I hugged Beveridge around the middle and said “Please don’t forget about us when you’re rich and famous” and the next day he tweeted “Thanks to everyone who came out and made last night so special, you won’t be forgotten” and I had to lock myself in Louise’s pantry and cry by myself in the dark.

At some point Pill came over to us with a look of utter confusion on his face and said “…Have you seen a Mexican?” I looked at him for a split second then burst out laughing. 

Turned out he’d meant a Mexican restaurant, not someone in a sombrero. 

I told him it was around the corner and he disappeared. How I knew where it was and he didn’t I’ll never understand.

I also tried to say bye to Drew that night, but ended up latching myself to him from behind with my arms around his waist and telling him I was never letting go. His delightful response to this was “I’ll have to poo some time, Meg.”

I cried all the way back to the car, and once in the car the CD player threw out At War With The Thirst and I actually broke my heart. I proper mouth open, snot everywhere sobbed.
It was not attractive.

Trigger warning: Suicide/Self harm.

The reason that I found that last gig so crushing was because I didn’t actually know when I’d see the guys again after that. I’d just spent the best part of three months following these boys around the country with barely a month between gigs (my biggest gap was Download to Yeneville) and now I was going to have to spend an indefinite amount of time without seeing them. It killed me. The gigs were my escape from everything, and not knowing when I was going to escape again was more than I could handle. It was during this break, some time right at the start of November, that I fell out with someone I used to call a friend. She threw all sorts of shit at me, and that coupled with missing the lads like fuck and not seeing a way out of the deep dark hole I’d wormed my way into meant that I ended up finding myself sat in my bath with a butcher knife pretty ready to kill myself. But then I started thinking about Pill, and what he’d said to me at Yeneville when he’d seen my scars. (I told you he popped into my head when I needed him.) I thought I’d be letting him down if I did anything. Then I started thinking about Beveridge. I didn’t want to end my life without seeing him again, or any of them really. At this point I’d come to the conclusion that Beveridge and I were pretty similar and saw him as someone I could confide in, and for some reason something about that connection made me put down the knife and get out of the bath. (Just under a year on from this on the Madina Lake tour I’d ask him to do me a favour regarding the fact that he was one of the reasons I was alive, but more on that later.) I should also say that in the midst of all this the thought of my mother finding her only kid dead in the bath also made me realise this probably wasn’t the best of decisions.

But anyway, that’s why I credit those two tall hairy bastards with being two of the reasons I’m alive. And I couldn’t love them more for it.

Sorry this one got so deep. Honesty is the future.

Until next time, 

Meg Mercury xoxo