Screw it! whoops. Did I say that out loud? I suppose I must have. I suppose I’ve been busy with what one might term life, if one were the charitable sort. What I’ve been doing lately does, in some fashion, resemble life, if one were a slinky.
Are you afraid of the dark? I shouldn’t think you are. If you’re here and reading then it’s likely you’re an adult of some sophistication. Or so I’ll tell myself until proven thoroughly wrong or slapped about the back of the head by Giles. Unfortunately I am just a little afraid of it. Well, not so much the dark itself but rather the fact that there is this giant gulf between the two halves of the day.
The symmetry is exquisite but the Moon seems lonely, no? And certainly the sun is simply too loud for me.
I can remember a tolerable portion of the past week or so. I seem to recall misplacing a lot of useful elements, offending more than a few people by missing various social cues which generally fall under the category of ’so blindingly obvious as not to warrant discussion’ and sleeping only when I should have been awake. Don’t ask. I can’t recall the specifics anyway.
I’m floating, irresolute and troublesome. Are there calm waters ahead? We can hope. Just as one ought to hope that God forgives one’s sins even when one does not forgive oneself for them.
Hook, line and sinker. Some days I feel my toes are wrapped round and round with fishing twine, so that explains why I cannot sense where I am to go before I am there.
This place, the thing they tell me is Earth, all round and blue and oddly shiny when you get out from under that awful ozone layer, it tires me. Why don’t they have directory assistance people any more? Only automated customer service. Machines — the devil dreads them too, you know?
Machines that lead you round and round in ever smaller circles. There really ought to be someone there, on the end of the line. Don’t you see?
You’ve to know I’m particularly ill-suited to the whims of my body. It, quite reliably, issues diktats — traitorous autocrat that it is.
Upon waking I am told that it is tired beyond measure, and generally my mind assures me that this is indeed the case and that it would be better that I did not rise.
Or at lunch hour it assures me that it cannot possibly tolerate food, no matter what I may have to say about nourishment and the buzz of tiny dots which flicker past my eyes from time to time.
I am bound in the red tape of the body, you see. It has singularly perfected the paradoxical arts. I sleep when there is but reason to be awake and cannot sleep when I feel the desire to do so. I may exercise but only when I do not allow myself time to see it coming, like a well-planned revolutionary coup. And when I wish to work there is nothing but dullness and apathy alive in me, and I must wait until my soul is loosed from the fog once again.
They tell me that the body and the mind cannot be separated. Only from here it seems someone has taken a scalpel and cleanly separated the two. The division is neat, the wounds well healed except that one misses the intersections of the heart with a longing unlike to any other. Now and then there is a calling, and I could bury my head in the sand;
But no. I shall find the nearest beer hall and some idiot mercenaries and demand that we stage a putsch. Or get incredibly drunk.
Possibly both.
There are those of us who would have been better off born to a different time. One more charitably inclined, wherein people do not interrupt your peaceful meditations with manic schemes designed to increase their already hyper-efficient lives.
The irony of refusing to be streamlined when one is using the very technology that most efficiently communicates said message is well noted. Still, one wants a butler called Lucius who prods one when it’s morning and who bothers to open the shades because sure as shit you won’t do it if left to your own devices.
I’m lucky if I notice it’s daytime, and when I do it seems like something to be endured rather than savoured. I understand there are those who can manage to enjoy it but even with a sturdy caffeine buzz under my belt I never could get the hang of it. I don’t take caffeine any longer, except via chocolate which I would happily take intravenously if it were physiologically possible and/or legal.
Have you ever waited, wishing the sun to sink below the horizon, just so as you can breathe? By day the pressure of all the things I’ve not done, that I ought to be engaged in, sits like a sumo wrestling nun on my chest. She recites the ten commandments over and over again whilst refusing to budge.
At the point one finally decides that this might be a good time to go out for earplugs, and once one has fully committed oneself to all such a plan entails, the shops are shut.
Well, Lovelies, I got home rather late last night. This morning. Whatever. Utterly disgraceful but such fun though I’d appreciate it if someone would pop by with a Bloody Mary. There’s a throbbing that refuses to stop and it isn’t the good kind.
The auction was wild. I was what’s referred to in the biz as “an interested party.” I felt a little like a gangster’s enforcer. My part was to stand there and be as thoroughly obstinate as possible (not difficult, trust me) so as the various estate agents and The Closer at least had to earn their commissions.
You’ll be happy to hear that in this case the gangster got away with murder and got the girl. Then we all went out for bubbly at a restaurant that had clearly been designed by the cast of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy:
There was a wall lined with magnums of champagne and the waiters all wore pink shirts to match the pink table salt and the rose-tinted down-lights. This takes exquisitely gay to a whole new level and thank goodness I was drunk enough to appreciate it.
There’s also something about dreadfully thin, baby-faced men fetching one artfully arranged cuisine which one finds strangely compelling when one is off one’s face. Someday I’ll be old and disgraceful enough to invite one such young man home for an evening of casual debauchery. I do like the thought of growing old disgracefully, don’t you?
Of course I’m far too timid to do any such thing by daylight and sobriety. Best not to stay sober long then, I suppose. It’s a good policy except that alcoholism runs in the family and I try not to follow in Daddy Dearest’s footsteps. Try and fail, as is the way of such things but at least there’s effort there. If I fail it shall not be because I was a lazy sod.
That’s the odd thing about spending much of your Life in a sub-par coma. One appears reasonably normal to the outside world except that if they knew the details of your day-to-day then they’d notice the cracks in the surface. It’s like those old ladies who spend absolutely hours doing their make-up with painstaking precision. Only, up close, the sure signs of age remain. And you look at them and wonder why they don’t simply quit and be what they obviously are.
The answer is that that would be giving up, and one must never give up. So sayeth the Dalai Lama and if you can’t trust the embodiment of universal compassion then I don’t know what the world is coming to.
Always the heart is beating even when it feels that it must stop. Always you cling to the things that you can do despite the ever-increasing list of things that your mind will no longer allow. It might feel as though you’re ancient and worn but you’re really just making a start.
Give me the peace that comes after the fight because anything else is a bore.
Things have taken a turn in a generally upward direction. More than a little paranoia surrounds this particular bubble o’ spritely. It could burst and this relatively buoyant mood would disappear as inexplicably as it arrived. I’ve washed and dressed and look Ma, no meds!
Mood swings ought to come with warning signs, don’t you agree? Little yellow post-it notes on the road of Life to tell us what the speed limit is and forewarn us of curves and steep gradients.
I’ve not yet made it outside, of course so this really could all go up in smoke the second I have to remove myself from my cosy little corner of the couch. Yet, I’ve danced and showered and done half my (short) to-do list already. Quelle horreur, Darlings, I’ve even spoken to real, live people. A vast improvement on the past few days which have consisted of my laying about trying to focus on a predominantly blank mind. Stare into the void long enough and it stares into you.
I’m to attend an auction tonight. With my customary state of increasing anticipatory anxiety I shall probably require some beer to get through it. I don’t do particularly well in crowds, and lately they’ve tended to make me want to burst into tears — which isn’t something I do terribly well either. I’m contemplating starting the drinking early. Now that I think about it, that also tends to ends in tears. Too bad. It seems like a perfectly marvellous idea right now.
This morning began with something of a jump start. Someone, I’ve still no idea who, rang my bell. He wasn’t quite cute enough for me to want to stumble to the door in my pyjamas, despite his inspiringly large package. So I grumbled a lot, told the buzzer to be quiet and practised ignoring the world with my eyes closed.
It may have done me some good, but still didn’t get me out of bed before 11. Insomnia takes the rap for that though I’m not sure I’d get up any earlier even if I did sleep.
Righto, before this energy goes back from whence it came I am going outside. Or at least to the post box because I’ve talked myself into being curious about exactly what the delivery guy had in that package of his.
Today was particularly stormy weather for me. The strength it required to get up made doing so seem awfully unrewarding. By the time I’m up I’ve forgotten what it was I was getting up for and I resent being reminded that the only way I’ll ever win Jeopardy is by competing against an Alzheimer’s patient on morphine.
Eventually I managed to recall that I’d meant to take a shower at some point, and being that I was already up I decided this didn’t sound like such a terrible thing. How hard can it be, right? Standing didn’t seem like such a great option though, so I sat at the bottom of the tub and hoped that the water would wash away the memory of last night. The memory felt all clingy, like a needy child beating its fists against my cold, bare skin.
Depression makes for long nights, and facing the day after them isn’t much better. You can barely face yourself for all the stinging, humiliating thoughts that rattle round your brain-pan making it harder and harder to see anything at all. It’s something how rapidly an hour can pass when all you’re doing is sitting still.
You’ve been lost and you’ve been found and now you’re repeating yourself. Remember how they tell you not to drop the soap if you’re taking a shower in jail? In the bell jar it’s time you’d best keep hold of.
If you’re lucky and you’re having a motivated day then the next couple of hours will play out with increasing levels of activity. You might have a slump or two but eventually things will pick up to the point that you can stay with things well enough to do something or at least to appear sufficiently engaged that you can go out into the world. It might not last very long but it happens if you keep to the ritual of it all.
The energy it takes just to get out and do the shopping or whatever almost isn’t worth it. Almost.
On the plus side, if you get into the habit of these things they also almost do themselves. Given that you’ve got all the focus of a goldfish you still don’t exactly know what you’re doing but at the very least you’re doing it. Today may not have seen much success in the doing things department but tomorrow will. Or I’ll go on hoping it will until proven thoroughly and irrevocably wrong.
One has ‘episodes’ of Depression. The term conjures up images of virtually translucent Victorian ladies taking to their beds with nervous exhaustion whilst their lovers procures some laudanum. This is not that far off. I have the virtually translucent part down pat. Just replace the laudanum with Valium and you’ve quite a reasonable look at the basic scenario. Handy hint: Try to avoid swooning wherever possible. It’d be helpful if my lover currently resided in the same country but other than that it’s about right.
It’s like having a particularly overattentive stalker for life. It’ll creep up behind you when you least expect it and cheerfully remove all the air from your lungs. The politeness with which this is done would otherwise be comforting except that it makes it all the more difficult to extract yourself from the pit that has been so carefully prepared for you.
All it takes to find yourself in said pit is a couple of days of inattention. Say you don’t notice you haven’t eaten for a day or so then you’re back on the highway to Hell. I’m reliably informed most people would have trouble not noticing if they haven’t eaten. Perhaps that’s a clue? It would be rather nice if mental illness came with its own set of pre-packaged diagnostic clues. Instead of vague symptoms one describes to one’s psychiatrist with feebly assembled metaphors one could lead them direct to Colonel Mustard in the dining room with the wrench.
Some people get it short and relatively sweet, it’s true but we’re not talking about the kind of Depression that’s cleared up with a few pills. Not that that kind is any easier, mind you. It’s just neater.
The kind we’re examining here likes to take its time breaking you down, and when it’s done it hides all the pieces in places you’re too scared to go. Bit of a nightmare, really.
I should tell you a little about Depression? What you need to know now, if you’ve never had the pleasure, is that it isn’t anything like you think it is.
What people don’t like to mention, and perhaps I shouldn’t, is that Depression hurts. That does sound a touch Emo, doesn’t it? I hate to start off that way as it isn’t how I intend to go on but there it is. Imagine someone has just hit your toe with a hammer, then multiply that pain throughout your entire body and you’ve some idea as to what it’s like to live with this thing, day in, day out. It’s just there. Things melt to fit the picture that the mind paints when it’s in pain. The world is different. Everything seems hollow and where it isn’t it looks like it has been Blue-Tacked together by a three year old.
I’m not merely having a bad day or week or year, though there’s that as well. Depression is a minimalist’s wet dream. It’s a world without space, time, colour or climate. It’d be incredibly dull if the spaces where things ought to be weren’t filled with pain. Oddly, I’ll occasionally snap-to and feel more or less normal for a while but that fades. Why? Haven’t the faintest.
People often describe it as a dark cloud, a fog or a labyrinth. These things come close but they aren’t quite capturing the grandeur of the beast within the beauty. More on this one later.
Sometimes there’s this feeling deep inside. Not that kind of feeling! My but we do have dirty minds, don’t we? How delightful. As I was saying, it’s as if I’m waiting for something momentous to arise. It stirs in the cockles of a heart that stubbornly keeps beating no matter how dark it gets.
I can sense it, something that will latch on and take me all the places I’ve been longing to go. All the places one can’t go if one’s trapped in a bell jar, inside a box, nested in another box in a very dark room to which somebody else has the key.
What would you do if your mind railed against every attempt to subdue it to the demands of Life? You know that thing you’ve seen other folks do? Walk, talk and chew gum all at the same time. Heaven forfend! The heresy. That’s what I want!
Go and Get it.
Grab it, love it, be it.
That’s what I say in the morning only it makes it a little more distant by the end of the day. A wee bit more improbable, in a world already filled with improbable leaps, because I didn’t have it yesterday and I still don’t today.
Getting out of the jar isn’t so easy, once you’re in it because you never see the bell jar coming — much like the soon-to-be-dead-girl in horror films who always opens the door for the murderer even though you tell her not to. C’mon, I can’t be the only one who talks to the television?!
What do you do instead…?
I don’t suppose having another beer is the right answer? Do you get points for trying in this game? How about another round of art therapy? That had the benefit of being mildly entertaining while allowing me to make a really big mess.
These are the partially triumphant, deliciously wanton writings of a twenty seven year old called Kit. They're the product of careful research, requiring years of mismatching socks and scribbling good lines on napkins and the backs of other people's hands.
This blog nearly didn't make it past the first day, what with the cat-killing nature of curiosity. But so far, so good: in black and white complete with insomnia-induced ranting and bursts of what could be charitably regarded as creative OCD, here are The Adventures of a Young Bohemian.
Fair warning, Kit also has what is "arguably the most unpleasant disease in the Western world bar rabies." Some people call it a phase, her psychiatrist calls it severe Major Depressive Disorder. Apparently it's going around because Depression is also known as the common cold of mental illness.
There isn't a cure. Just Life.
I like to dance, have a soft spot for Belgian beer and chew my nails too much. I'm working my way towards a better version of said Life. Hopefully taking a little stigma down with me because, unlike rabies, mental illness isn't catching. I believe that the only way change happens is if I talk and you talk back.
Here's to making a start with the little things. Perhaps you'll read through this bell jar and see depression isn't a special hell reserved solely for the weak, lazy and/or helpless. It's real. It's about as much my fault as the Earth rotating on its axis. You might not like the pictures it paints but then, try living with it sometime.
