Windscreens

‘’And everyone is waiting but it’s getting harder to hear what my heart keeps saying cause everyone is waiting’’ Missy Higgins. Moving through the reflective stage of this episode which is far better than the chicken with the tree on the roundabout stage it occurs to me that the “My Family” stickers on the back of those SUVs irritate me even more than the stupid SUV’s on suburban streets. Which is a lot as those fucking cars piss me off! Moving on.... Why do people do that? I bet they are also the kind of people that update their facebook status continuously about meals they have eaten, TV shows they just watched and shits they have just taken. Seriously are they gathering evidence of a life less spent or do they actually believe we give a shit? Does documenting the banal activities of the day constitute having a life? Does placing stickers of all your dumb animals and kids on the back of your windscreen prove you somehow have a life of value? That you somehow matter more than someone driving with a clean skin? I don’t give a shit Breeders and their fucking Parents with Prams parking spaces piss me off more than a religious freak at my door or a chimpanzee in dungarees. Go forth and breed, apparently some even recommend it, but don’t put those ridiculous stickers on your car like it needs to be broadcast that you once opened your legs and spewed out another individual to this already overpopulated planet. See usually I would edit the last few paragraphs out in the interest of social niceties but to be honest my bullshit meter is on holidays when the black dog is sleeping in my corner. I also say the C word a lot at this time so if women’s vaginas offend you (as they should as fuck they can be nasty) then steer clear baby as this could get ugly. I would also usually edit that too but hey it was a long week. Back on point, if there ever was one...actually, I think that was the point. I describe in my last post of the depression diaries how depression is the brains way of killing your body and I think it is actually far more sinister than this. Mental illnesses being illnesses of the mind are drawn to people who actually use them which would also explain why the best people I know wrestle with the black dog, the nervous poodle and any other scanty mutt that chooses to drop their threadbare, saliva soaked squeaky toy on their life. The floater, the drifter, the whatever just well floats and drifts through life (and puts “My Family” stickers on their cars) and accepts the ebbs and flows, the highs and lows in wonderful ignorant bliss. Some days, like the days I can’t seem to drag my arse out of bed to face the nothingness that presents itself with the setting of the sun, I wish I too could float through this life with nothing but a smile and a XXXX beer. But I can’t turn it off, pretend that I like that piss weak beer or even muster a smile towards that setting sun that seems to just represent more. More life less lived, more dying in all this comfort of nothingness. First world issues whirl around my head and all I want to do is sleep through the choices that we seem to create to justify why we live a life without the fears that others face every day. Some days I want to slice open my arm again just to see if there is still blood underneath or that I am capable of real pain. But I leave my scars alone as facing the consequences of more stares smartens me up to the realisation that everyone is waiting for you to emerge, to couple, to breed, to produce, to contribute to the self justifying cycle we are all stuck on. It almost seems pointless to gift this misery to the emptiness, the nothingness. But I once lived there, I lived in the grey, I felt things, I gave things and I was even starting to take things. I will live there once again. I will drive my car and look at those stickers with less offence and even think it is cool when that red car shows they have 3 horses and 3 pigs and as many kids. I will stop stealing the Parents with Prams parking spots ready for a fight, stop saying the C word even though it seems to be working as a steam valve, and I will see the sun as a friend once more. My brain as an awesome tool instead of time bomb and my heart will beat with the blood that I’m searching for within my scarred arms. I may even find someone that I can talk to all night, dream with without the fear of the repercussions of the black dog and the nervous poodle that are stuffed in my baggage. Be with my incredibly imperfect self, stitched barely together with crazy, fascinating but often angry ideas. I may even meet someone that thinks these things are charming and the very thing that makes me great, unique and fierce enough to take on the world. Someone that loves the blues, the melancholy books, the macabre, and the odd but also squeals with delight over the stupid innocence of life. Someone that allows me to be the worse I can be but also steers me when it’s destroying me. How hard can it fucking be? Look at all the “My Family” knobs that have enough love and family to fill a windscreen for fuck sake. The tricky part is convincing me that these people have found something worthwhile and haven’t just settled for a person that will always just be present but never really there. That these people have found the person that stays up all night talking to them about things that matter and things that don’t. I fear more than anything that these people have just found a passenger, a white chalk outline of a life not worth sharing. I don’t want to kill time anymore; I don’t want to just survive, to just get through. I don’t know what I want or who I need but I need more than anything to know that it’s OK to not have a clue, to not know what my heart is screaming as sometimes listening to it, is the reason why we can never leave this very small room filled with the stink of the unwashed black dog and the nervous poodle that scratches it’s claws into the very door that keeps it safe, safe, still and barely beating. I know this room, every weather-beaten crack on its plaster as I know every fault that lies within my own surface. I know how small it is, how it steals time, distorts facts and I know where the black dog hairs penetrate the fabrics within it. I know the door that seems to always be shut scarred with the claws of the nervous poodle who wants it shut but still so desperately slices it until it opens. I know this space as it lies within the mind that insists on destroying me. This mind is often brave, sometimes brilliant and strange and frequently the best part of me but it also the things that holds me back, subdues me, and keeps my windscreen clear.

Iron Lady

I don't need your anger as I have enough of my own. I'm drawn to those that sit on the side of apathy these days, calmly bobbing on a sea of sickness seems a far better option than burning in a fiery lava pool. But I still carry my own and watch the world through a veil of red lace as I've never seemed to find the strength to change its colour, its habit of response. Anger is a foe that fuels me, no doubt growing its cancerous corrosion on my body and soul if that is indeed something we possess. I am flawed, I am human, not always a good one either. I try to walk amongst others without this anger and for the most part successfully, as some would not even attach the attribute to me, but it is there always bubbling under the surface forcing me to disappear when it is pouring out. Some will never see the tar that lies beneath. I came from a place of anger with glowing red infection all around and even though I have left this place I still carry the open sore of its consequence whereever I go. Like I said, I am flawed and maybe more than most. However unlike others I choose to monitor this by stepping back, stepping out and sliding away. Some days I feel like the Hulk ready to implode and destroy everything in sight so I walk away, I silence myself and swallow the thick tar once more. I seem to get sick a lot but then again my insides must resemble a cesspool of sludge and sin. These are the Depression Diaries and I'm writing these to document this disease while it is a seeping sore as the potency of it seems surreal once you are able to float back to the surface and live amongst the living once more. Like I have said before Depression is not a mood, not a state of mind and not something that you feel for one day as it is far more consuming than and equally as deadly as cancer or any other disease you want to throw my way. Depression is a sickness of the mind that infests the entire body and eats you from inside out. It is your mind’s way of telling your body to give up, to die. Every cell of your body reacts when you are going through a depressive episode and starts breaking down and shutting down bit by bit. Today is one of my favourite person’s birthday and instead of getting dolled up and joining her and others for dinner I am here listening to music, drinking and writing about how miserable I am. Why can’t I just snap out of it and turn off the blues, put down the drink and walk out the door? It seems so simple and makes me look so petty but the bedfellow of the black dog is the very anxious Poodle, the shaking, skinny arsed Poodle that can’t seem to walk out that door. Anxiety goes with Depression as well as salt goes with wounds. They grind against each other until the sting is so fierce the world seems just a little too overwhelming to face. Dinner with friends would mean questions, people looking at me, expecting something from me, conversation when the art left me at least a month prior and being present in the moment, something that is too much to ask during a depressive episode. Concentration levels are erratic and catastrophising seems to be your traitorous minds first course of action, leaving you only with the worst possible outcome, unable to see past these even though the last piece of logic within your lungs tells you otherwise. This is not a time for logic as how could a mind that is destroying itself have room for common sense? So I pour another drink, play another track and stay within the walls I have grown to trust. The anxiety infuriates me, fuelling the anger that destroys me and confirming the catastrophising that immobilises me. The black dog chases the nervous poodle and beats the shit out of it until the welcomed numbness returns. I’ve learnt to function within the numb now; I’ve learnt to walk through the door to keep the veneer intact. I’ve learnt to keep the life going when the black tries to smother me. My psychologist was right as she told me that the rest of my life would be one episode after another but I would learn to adapt, to function within the disease like an amputee that adapts to a life without a limb, I would function sometimes without a soul, without a purpose, without a reason to live. In times like these I cannot afford to ask for more but to survive this time round. That is all I ask even though mostly I wonder why survival seems so important to me. Maybe it is because of people like the friend’s birthday that I am missing tonight. Maybe that is why I keep walking towards a light I have yet to see. I face Depression alone, without counsel, without medication and face it every time with my pure stubborn will. I have an iron will that would rival Thatcher passed down from my mother and shared with my brother. We seem to stand on that cliff a lot with crashing waves threatening to throw us down, glaring into the sun, daring her to beat us. Thank god for the will. Thank god for blues music, liquor, and words but mostly thank god for the friends that forgive you.

Sticky

Depression is a black disease without a cure. Like addiction, you are either on the wagon or off it, like cancer you are either riddled with it or in remission just waiting for the next bout. You survive depression but you never completely recover. This is no cure; they are simply moments of grey amongst the black. Chronic sufferers of depression strive for the grey, hope for the white but understand that the grey is often the best they can ever hope for. However a lot can be achieved in the grey when the alternative is blinding black. Someone that has never suffered from Depression will find this concept difficult to grasp, they may even believe they have had moments of depression but generally they just had a few bad days or even months. Depression is not an emotion or even a state of mind as it is something more consuming than that. A person with depression doesn't have successful relationships, they struggle to succeed in their career, they move through friendship groups between episodes. They disappoint friends until they disappear, they often stop communicating, contributing, and rarely confide in others. They become secretive, sullen and dangerously submissive. First the anger appears like a bush fire clearing the way, sabotaging everything in its line of attack. Chronic sufferers understand that this is the first stage and generally learn to steer clear of the ones the love the most. They turn into vicious beasts that spit words and emotions like tic tac teeth. They are ugly, self loathing beasts. They communicate in shorter and shorter sentences, their emails and texts are brief and disjointed, and socialising is limited. This stage can sometimes last for years dragging down everything in their path. Then the numbness begins, the sleeplessness, the colds and flu and any other bug floating around, the mornings that never seem to come, the mornings that start with a heart attack pain in your chest, the lead boots, the concrete filled lungs, the sore eyes that never seem to open. This is the most dangerous stage as in this stage you search for pills, plan suicide in ridiculous detail, fantasise about pain, death, other’s death, anything to bring back any sort of sensation. Then there is the black. You start driving dangerously playing chicken with trees, mistreating your body hoping for any glimpse of sensation, overeating in search of stomach-aches or starving and obsessively exercising to regain some sort of control. You change your appearance to shed your skin, cutting your hair, tattooing or piecing your flesh, gaining padding to hide, dropping flab to conceal, control. You give yourself over to the black. People with chronic depression don't ask for help and nor do they want it because sufferers of this disease intimately understand the workings of the beast. They don't need sympathy, suggestions, supportive nods they need to be left alone while they slay the beast. A chronic sufferer knows how to tread water, how to hold their nostrils above the black sewerage filling their lungs. They know that the sun will keep rising spewing its rays through their windows even when they can barely keep their eyes open. They know the black will eventuality turn grey and the coming day will seem a little more bearable, their heart less like concrete, their lungs less heavy, more willing to breathe, to fight for air. They understand that if they stay still long enough, calm long enough, mimic emotions well enough that the light will come back. So if you know a sufferer, if you know me, please stay calm, stay at arm’s length but please stay in view as I will be back in the grey, back to the land of the living once more but for now I have a black beast to slay but don't worry as I've been here before, I've seen worse than this before, and I will once again live through this. Don’t be concern as I've got this bitch, but convincing her may take some more time and that’s all I ask of you now. Time, time to fight her but for now I’m exhausted from kicking the shit out this dog so I’m just going to rest for awhile and lay down and stroke her rancid fur until I find the energy to start kicking, and fighting the bitch once more. Sometimes the worst part of this disease is how seductive she can be. Like an addiction, the hole she creates is lined with candy, sweet and warm and like a bear you just want to crawl in there and gorge yourself. I’m gorging, I’m self indulgent, my mouth is covered in her stickiness, and I’m hibernating in a hollow log, a very dark, black hollow log. But the good thing about these logs, even the darkest ones, is that if you keep moving through it you will come out at the other end. Chronic sufferers of depression, the ones that learn to survive, the ones that accept this ailment as a part of them, the ones the factor depression into their daily life, know more than anything that the most important thing is to keep moving. One step after another. One foot in front of the other. I may seem to you to be stagnant, to be consumed, almost motionless but I’m moving, I’m crawling through this log and I’ll see you all soon on the other side. xxx