It’s not secret on this blog that Depression takes me over a lot.

That my depression is a chronic reoccurring nightmare that not only tires me, but the people around me too.

Perhaps last year and still through to this year one major reason for such severe blips lately is the delayed impact of losing my best friend in January 2020 .

Yes she was ‘only a little budgie’ but she wasn’t ‘only a little budgie’ to me.

It didn’t help that I didn’t lose her in the usual way either. I lost her due to my own mistake, and that is something I find very hard to live with.

As it is I’m already a person prone to guilt, never mind a mistake where a little innocent life was ruined, or ended because of a mistake I made in the first place.

I had a dream last night that she came back home and then I lost he all over again, and throughout the whole dream I just kept hearing her calls but yet never finding where the calls were coming from.
And I’ve done that in real life too. I’ve heard calls I thought were her.
I’ve sat in the bathroom brushing my teeth and heard a call that sounded like it was coming from behind the extractor fan grid.
I’ve heard calls when walking out into the corridor from my flat.
I’ve heard calls I thought sounded like her when outside but it was probably just another bird that sounded a bit like her. Or maybe she sounded like them.

I see feathers from different birds that have been either moulted or stripped off from a predator and I always stop in my tracks and look more closely, looking for her blue colour in the feather.
Sometimes I see the blue colour and then I look around and say, ‘Charlie?’ As if the feather is hers and she’s somewhere close by.

But she’s never there. She’s never here.

Sometimes I look down at a feather for a bit too long, in the way of someone trying to get past me while keeping a distance.
I look and look, and look some more till I convince myself I see blue, her blue. And it’s hers.
But it isn’t.

Sometimes I look at the feather, look around and then say aloud, ‘I’m sorry, Charlie.’

It might have been a mistake, but I still blame myself.

It might not have been purposeful, but I still blame myself.

And I don’t know if there will ever come a time I won’t blame myself.

I have a budgie I ended up rescuing, he has learnt some funny phrases. And it makes me laugh.


But I still

Blame

Myself.