This week, a hairdresser informed me I had “a negative entity” attached to my body. Despite having the spiritual capacity of a beer mat, I nodded. As a general life rule, it’s unwise to disagree with anyone standing close behind you holding a sharp implement. “You must think I’m crazy,” she laughed. “Noooo, of course not babe,” I laughed back, because I definitely didn’t want the person holding scissors to the back of my head getting any hint I was questioning their sanity.
I was fresh off a spate of things going wrong. I got locked out of my house without my phone, while wearing a towel. I had a weird reaction to medication. A chronic health condition diagnosis. Transport failures. Work being wiped from the system. Things breaking down. Not winning the lotto and having to work for a living.
Lastly, my hair colour came out wrong. I wanted to go from my usual dark brown to dark brown with bits of light brown through it. I got ash blonde. And because I’m half-Irish I nearly left without saying anything other than “Bye, thank you, I love it!” before adding a tip, while a single tear ran down my cheek.
[ ‘It must be nice to have a partner who is understanding,’ my boyfriend saidOpens in new window ]
But I mustered all my assertiveness to squeak, “Could we just tone it down a little bit?” So here I was on day two and hour seven at the hairdressers after working 10 out of the last 11 days, listening to the hairdresser talk about how spirits of the deceased trapped on earth can attach themselves to the living because they’re trying to resolve trauma, messing up your life with their influence. I could have said it was quite convenient she had detected a negative spirit after leaving bleach on for a touch too long. But I am a coward. A coward with yellow hair.
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I started considering it. I was tired all the time, and I did have negative thoughts - the two main symptoms of negative entities matched how my friends would describe me. She gave me the name of someone who could fix it. A basic cleanse “started” at €1,400. The spirit was staying, then.
Apparently you can get a sense of who the spirit was before they crossed into the spirit world by how they affect your behaviour. Given my strange affection for V8 engines, mistrust of the internet and penchant for listening to divorced da rock while drinking cans on the lawn, I’ve figured out mine is a middle-aged bricklayer named Keith with a few ex-wives and a bad back.
I imagine Keith gets incredibly frustrated dandering about with me. “Stop fart-arsing around,” I can almost hear him say in the evenings as I do my six-step skincare routine. I sense him yelling at me to just “open a winda” when I crank the air conditioning to the coldest setting and run it all night with reckless abandon when it gets above 30 degrees.
I don’t watch enough contact sport for him, but at least we can both agree that the field fights are the best bit. We both rolled our eyes when the Norwegian biathlete admitted to cheating on his now ex-girlfriend at the Olympics. “How could you say someone is the love of your life when you dated her for six months and cheated on her after three?” I know Keith, I know.
It’s handy to have a spirit to blame less-optimal behaviours on. It’s Keith’s fault I’ve been indulging in ultra-processed pies from petrol garages. It’s Keith’s fault I find myself getting angry at the radio and yelling back at it like the guests can hear me, just like my dad does. “What do you mean you’re lost and don’t know what you want, you’re a grown man in your 30s?!!” I shout at an episode of RTÉ Radio 1’s Liveline about the state of dating in Ireland. “When I was this bloke’s age I had a wife, kids and a house. This generation is too soft,” whispers Keith, and I nod.
I blame Keith for my unadulterated love of smoking cigarettes while standing in a swimming pool with an ashtray at the side. It’s Keith to blame when I get angry that other people have the audacity to also go shopping at the weekend, just trundling about in huge family packs standing five abreast getting in the way, treating it as a leisurely day out instead of just buying what they need and leaving this retail hellscape. Keith made me describe an acquaintance as “Blisters” because he only shows up after the hard work is done.
Or maybe my bad habits are starting to rub off on Keith and I’m the negative spirit in his life. God knows he’s sick of hearing me complaining. Maybe he’ll fork out for the cleansing.
