Who you tryin’ to kid anyway
You’re just a man, on the fray
Falling at the seams
Collecting the shards of all your broken dreams
Sharp enough to cut your wrists
You’ve got desperation in your eyes
It’s in your reflection
Who you despise
You want to be someone else
Who you are, makes you unwell
You’re dying but you figure
Everyone else is dying too
So what does it matter
If you linger
Isn’t that what everyone else is doing anyway?
Trying to go with the flow
In ways in which
Heavy hearts seldom float
Watching a bird take off
A reminder life carries on
And the radio plays
As if there isn’t silence beneath
When Depression has got it’s grip on you, every little thing you should do, need to do feels like a chore.
Every damn thing.
There is so much resistance, sickening resistance within, to do anything.
Forget the analogy of drowning in water.
It’s like wading through treacle.
The other day I felt so oddly calm. It may have been lack of motivation to care about anything. I don’t know.
But it was certainly calm. I even started writing up about ‘calmness’ only to find I was too calm to continue typing it up. I realise I had nothing much to say other than, “wow i feel so oddly relaxed considering how agitated and desperate I became just a few days earlier.”
Well, that calmness has gone.
I’m agitated and irritated by every little thing, even things that would normally have at least a minimal soothing effect.
Ear defenders to have some semblance of silence after I felt that noise was irritating me, only to find the ear defenders started to irritate me and then the silence started to irritate me. And then when I took them off I was irritated all over again at the feel of my ears getting used to not being covered again. Then I was irritated by the noises again.
I paced a bit. Came back in. Was instantly irritated by being back in my flat.
Tried talking to someone, not about this topic just about anything to distract myself. Felt irritated with the conversation. Realised halfway through talking I couldn’t really be bothered with it and so said those things you’re expected to say, “So i’m going back to my flat now, see you tomorrow,” All that stuff. Went back to my flat.
Still agitated.
The voices on the radio, music, knowing certain people exist in the world, my own existence, the frailty of life, the lack of any meaning to it despite all the fucking suffering, agitation and angst.
Which is like a slap in the face. Why bother with all these emotions when it’s all so pathetically ‘accidental’ and meaningless?
Yet still, my biology feels the way it feels. We like to try and forget that our biology dictates a lot of how we feel.
And that is just another slap in the face, my brain, my body keeps sending all these hormonal signals and neurons into a frenzied attack of making me want to scream all the while knowing I’ll be irritated by my own fucking screaming.
Everyone’s feelings and attitudes absorbed by me (or so I perceive) and all I want to do is push it all away. Keep away from me with your feelings and your baggage is what I want to scream at people. KEEP THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!
And then in the silence and in being alone, I realise I can’t cope with my own baggage either. At this point my baggage is so messy it’s not even funny. The bag is bulging to the brim of messed up shit, a lot that makes no sense. And I can’t seem to tease anything apart into breakable, edible pieces.
I think of a song I might want to listen to because a lyric comes to mind then I realise, no I don’t wanna hear any fucking sound. Even if it is one of my favourite bands.
The sun shining is provoking me, poking my agitation with its rays, “Here I am. A complete contrast to how you feel. Ah just soak me up.” And for a moment I think, “Maybe soaking you up will help?” After all sunlight is good for us, isn’t it?
But I’m resentful of the sun shining right now in this moment. I’m resentful that humans as a species made it so the sun is a symbol of happiness. Because I can’t connect to that word, or that feeling and never have been truly able to.
I think it’s a thing that doesn’t exist. Not in the way it’s sold.
But despite knowing this, I feel I’m perpetually mourning the ideals of ‘happiness’ we’ve been sold.
When I was amazingly calm the other day I remember feeling like I’d let go of everything, because everything just was and everything just is. I wasn’t particularly happy, in fact what I was somewhat feeling could have been described as sad. But I’d somehow for the day managed to let go of any expectations and of other stuff I can’t quite put my finger on, and so any feelings were just…well they didn’t have much weight to them.
What puts the weight back into them? I don’t know how my feelings gained weight again. I just know they did. And now they’re obese again with pressure and the heart is working harder to keep from losing itself.
I have feelings and thoughts that I can’t compute.
An error code is flashing behind my eyes with a symbol next to it. The symbol is a triangle with an exclamation mark in it.
It’s not just a writer’s block error code, it’s a code of full system failure to compute feelings and thoughts into words, even to speak them.
There is a lack of ideas at play but at the same time too much in the head at once.
I’m aware of things that for sure feel doom and gloom yet I have no… pathway to use from there to use the information for any purpose. Whether that be, write it out and spread a message, scream it, cry it… I don’t fucking know.
I consider going down and talking to people I see often, but I find once I get towards my door to leave I realise I have nothing I can think of to say.
I mean it’s not that I’m devoid of anything to share, it’s just that I’m devoid of anything that feels worth sharing.
I don’t know if it’s a good thing. A learning curve of realising not all is worth saying.
A silence that could be peaceful if i’d just let myself be lulled by it?
It’s not that I spoke so much previously that this silence is ‘new’ but that even the little bits I did used to speak don’t at present, seem all that worth it.
I kind of like it. But I don’t trust it at the same time.
Because mixed with that there is a sense of my depression being here, pushing against me like the gravity that it is.
I can’t tell if it’s a peaceful pact I’ve found within myself where I no longer feel the need to share things not worthy of sharing or if it’s the depression telling me those things aren’t worth it.
I know the depression never really goes away for me. But I have noticed those times when my depression wants to truly haunt me, but even then vaguely, I’ll find I’ll go to bed at the same time as usual but still find myself waking up late, and when I do wake up, extremely reluctant to get out of that bed.
It’s not that I get out of bed without reluctance even on my better days, but it’s a worse, more determined, grumpy reluctance.
A menacing, sinister unwillingness to shake the covers off and greet a new day.
It takes a lot more of something feeling urgent to get me up. Like needing to pee so bad I might explode and on top of that hearing the budgie that owns me cheeping and cheeping because she’s noticed she’s been in the dark for longer than a usual night so, “Get up goddamn it! Get up!”
Which reminds me that in previous years before I was owned by a Budgie these days would be spent all day in bed.
Being owned by a Budgie and needing to care for her leaves me with an urgency that means I must get up, even if it’s a few hours later than when I’m doing better.
I had a topic in mind I wanted to write about but as said previously I have no words. I’m surprised I’ve squeezed all this out.
Dust motes glide in the split streams of light as people raise their arms over their heads in a colourful array of supposed dance moves. The music blasts and you can feel the bass vibrating through your bones.
I don’t know if their smiles are real, I project onto them the fakeness of my own smile.
I find myself walking through the crowds of people aimlessly chasing for those moments with Jasmine. Women are brushing against me and I’m trying to act like it’s the best night of my life, looking around me at all these faces flashing different colours in the lights, and I’m thinking, ‘are you listening to the lyrics?’
“Please tell me why, oh tell me why do we build castles in the sky…”
“Do you ever question your life?” Why yes, yes I do I question it all the time.
I’m drowning and you’re all living in a submarine separate from me. I can’t breathe.
“I think it’s time to talk with you…..Where is the love?”
Can’t you hear the desperation in their voice? I want to shake these people. They call it trance music, and it seems appropriate because they’re set in a trance dancing, moving their body like hypnotised robots.
“Give me a reason, must be a reason to hold on to what we’ve got,”
I think I’ve seen Jasmine amongst a crowd of colourful dancing people.
What is the reason? Why are we holding on?
I’m spiralling. Going deeper and deeper into the depths of the ocean, I’m dying and the woman I thought was Jasmine was a bearded man with long hair.
The music is too bright to lights to loud. Existential voices sing over beats that propose promise of a good time. My mind can’t get over the contradiction.
Greenlight, arms raised, purple, pose, red, pout those lips and move that butt. Do the robot. “I don’t wanna say I’m sorry, because I know there’s nothing wrong,” But there is! Everything is wrong!
“Hold me in your arms, cause I need you so.”
I rush out of the club and throw up in a side street. I can still hear the thump of every beat inside the building, feel it shaking my bones.
“Don’t be afraid, there’s no need to worry…”
I go to a nearby carpark and climb till I reach the top floor. The music is blasting from across the road, the neon lights shining on the night.
I stand on the edge. I hear the beginnings of a song called ‘Children’ from across the road. I know they’re dancing in there like it doesn’t sound sad. It must be me and my perception. No. The world is lost and I’m drowning in an abyss. I stand on the edge. The beat the music has gotten heavier. Like my heart.
That lingering tone behind the beat, behind the melody it reeks of sadness. Or am I just too sad to hear the happiness?
I’m dizzy, I’m tired. I lean forward and open my arms to the wind.
Close my eyes.
This is it.
Blue lights. Heavy heart.
Are those blue lights part of the club?
Sirens reach out like a hand over the music.
My hairs a mess and my palms are wet with sweat.
I feel like I’ve had an electrocution to the head.
“You don’t want to do this, son.” A male voice says behind me.
The music coming from the club speaks for me. But he doesn’t hear it’s sadness, he hears it as people having a good night.
3 months out of hospital:
I submerge my face under the water and I look up at the ceiling. I hold my breath. I hear her footsteps drawing near; I lift my head out with a gasp.
Jasmine peers around the door, “The film will be starting in 10 minutes!” She tells me before closing the door behind her and sauntering off back to the lounge.
I’m trying to learn to be a dragonfish, learning how to be my own source of light.
The End
