Unholy Excrement!!!*
I’ve been enjoying a relatively prolonged spell of happiness. Or rather I was enjoying same, up until very recently. Witness my post of 8/11/‘21.
A few times recently I’ve had distinct wobbles. See the recent Nick Drake referencing post on poetry and depression. But tonight – or maybe today/this afternoon? – it, depression that is, hit me really hard. Like being squished by an elephant (with red painted toenails, perhaps?) who’s fallen or leapt from a very high tree!
It can feel like having been psychically streamrolled. One feels flat, dead, dull. A bit like the depressive painter from The Fast Show, everything turns to black. Sheer Dread is the dominant hue.
Staying with the road-building vehicles metaphor, it’s rather like being bulldozed, or, to reference a Black Metal act of yesteryear, Killdozed. (Not the sort-of famous band Killdozer, out of Madison, Wisconsin.)
I actually found myself ringing The Samaritans, as Teresa prepared our dinner. I hung up on the poor volunteer when Teresa came in to announce that dinner was ready, and asked who I was speaking to. I told her who it was; when she asked why, I replied ‘I’m feeling a little down.’
That’s a bit of an understatement! I don’t know about other folk. But I’ve had numerous depressive episodes over my lifetime. I’ve found that one reaches the depths quicker with each visit: at first it’s a gradual (and over time) deepening descent. Later down the line you can teleport from apparently fine/normal directly to stupefied zombie instantaneously.
Anyway, I had a bath, ate my dinner, watched a bit of snooker, and Teresa made us pancakes. It is, after all, Greasy Tuesday! I tried to still myself, and silence the looped mantras of hopelessness that are the usual internal monologue at such times. And, much to my surprise, the pitch black waves of the Ocean of Doom gradually receded.
One characteristic of depression – one I don’t always suffer from – can be that literally nothing is interesting or pleasurable. I was veering that way today. Indeed, I was careering off a cliff of nihilistic oblivion. I’m very surprised I’ve pulled through, to be honest.
Being still and quiet, when profoundly depressed, sometimes simply means stewing in melancholy. Luckily today I was, after a while floundering, able to clamber out of that particular whirlpool, or sidestep that ‘twister’?
One of the things that helped, I think, was trying to recall what’s good in life for me at present (despite the pitch black tsunami of emotion!): I’ve just been given a car! I have a loving wife, who’s come home from work and cooked us dinner and pancakes. And so on.
I’m also thinking (yet again!) that perhaps I should go tee-total. Either just until I’m out of this funk, or perhaps longer term? I have definitely been leaning into the sauce as a self-soothing or self-medicating crutch, or distraction. And, whilst it can be pleasurable in the short term, on balance I think it’s more harmful than helpful.
There are some other issues, but I’ll leave it at this for now. That’s enough candid confessional stuff for the time being, methinks. I just hope I can win the fight against my own demons, and/or the slings and arrows of this ol’ life.
*On a much cheerier shit-themed note, I do love Chris Packham’s crappy calendar!
