For every voice there is a countervoice singing dischordantly. And so it is with me, because for as long as I can remember, there has always been an alternative voice speaking to me. It is another Dave, one who treats life very differently.
He is the Dave that gave up 25 years and more ago, the Dave that refused to fight, that buckled under the weight of depression. Very few of you will have met him, some of you will have heard him for occasionally this is the Dave that speaks for both of us, the one who gains the upper hand and control of the host. I feel the need to out him, talk about his background and reason, in case he ever begins to show up more often and with a louder voice.
He is the me that never really got hold of his drinking habit in his twenties and did things to his body that would constitute abuse in any polite society, the me that collapses into tears for no reason at the cruelty of the world. Think of him as the Dave that forgets people love him for who he is, and never want him to be something he cannot or will not be. For him, life is a lonely, bitter struggle against impossible odds, and he simply cannot feel the warmth of the arms that embrace him, metaphorically or in reality.
For all his negativity, I pity him, because he could so easily be me, mental illness is a lifelong fight and there are many times that both voices will speak. I can only ever take one road at a time, and the battle is to stay on the right track. His way is the simpler way, to give up, to admit defeat and let depression wreak its ruin upon me. It is so hard to explain in simple words how much pull that option has sometimes, despite the inevitable bleakness of the outcome, because fighting is tiring, and you can never win the war, only the immediate battle.
Of course, that is why I must never let his voice become my voice. I have to rage against the dying of the light, I have to gird myself and spring into action in every battle, no matter how hopeless or difficult it seems, because it is simply the only option that keeps me whole. I said I pity him, and with good reason, because for him the war is over, and there is only bleakness and despair, his demons cannot be bested and they will take him, piece by piece, until there is nothing left. However low I get, however desperate life seems, I am still fighting. I cannot begin to comprehend the horror of life as my countervoice.
Thursday 26 January 2012
Saturday 21 January 2012
In the short term
Another of the gifts that depression has given me is a chronic case of short-termism. What do I mean by that? I refer to my inability to focus properly on the longer term aspects of life because the short term keeps getting dominated by the black dog, and any attempt to plan the longer term gets sharply and rudely snapped into the here and now.
Take tonight as an example. For the last few days I have been on something of a high, content in my own way and getting a kick out of existence. That's usually a harbinger of a looming crash. And so here I am, writing my blog becoming more and more aware of an attack of depression settling in. Apart from the process of putting words to thoughts here, my entire concentration is upon depression. How deep are we going this time? How long will I be there? Why is this happening now, what was the trigger? And how do I counter it, what weaponry is to hand? In fact I just stopped writing for a few minutes to think over those very things. So, as you can imagine, this sort of short term thinking wipes out anything longer term. Next month, next year might as well be next century right now.
If I do manage to shake off the immediate long enough to think about the longer term, the black dog has other tricks to pull. The denigration and mockery of dreams. Who do I think I am to dream of this or that? The black dog wants it to be known that he is my sole focus and raison d'etre, the permanent war against depression is all that I need to sustain me. Or so the black dog would have it. The harder I try to dream, the more unreasonable and wicked the counter attack - the certainty of failure is thrown in my face, for so it will always be with me, he says. Why plan for a great romance, I don't love myself so why would she? Is that really the black dog talking, or have I slipped into my old habits of self-doubt? Either way I am thinking of the dog, and even those examples of long term thinking have quickly subsided in the gathering gloom.
It has not always been this way. I used to dream, I used to plan things in 1, 5 and 10 year segments. And then I failed just once to follow through. The black dog never forgets a weakness he can expose, every plan became that plan, the one I didn't follow through. It is repulsive to be this way, I deserve better and, more importantly, the people I care about deserve better. The thing is, if I managed to gain the upper hand and start planning the future again, I honestly don't know what Dave I want to be. Dave the adventurer, Dave the lover, Dave the carer? There is so much untapped potential, but to tell you the truth, the black dog knows, and now you will know, that I am almost as terrified at the prospect of fulfilling potential and I am of never managing to do so. I am just a little bit scared that if I spend too long in the longer term I will lose myself there as a place that will always be better than now.
As I have said before, many many times, depression is a wicked and cruel illness.
Take tonight as an example. For the last few days I have been on something of a high, content in my own way and getting a kick out of existence. That's usually a harbinger of a looming crash. And so here I am, writing my blog becoming more and more aware of an attack of depression settling in. Apart from the process of putting words to thoughts here, my entire concentration is upon depression. How deep are we going this time? How long will I be there? Why is this happening now, what was the trigger? And how do I counter it, what weaponry is to hand? In fact I just stopped writing for a few minutes to think over those very things. So, as you can imagine, this sort of short term thinking wipes out anything longer term. Next month, next year might as well be next century right now.
If I do manage to shake off the immediate long enough to think about the longer term, the black dog has other tricks to pull. The denigration and mockery of dreams. Who do I think I am to dream of this or that? The black dog wants it to be known that he is my sole focus and raison d'etre, the permanent war against depression is all that I need to sustain me. Or so the black dog would have it. The harder I try to dream, the more unreasonable and wicked the counter attack - the certainty of failure is thrown in my face, for so it will always be with me, he says. Why plan for a great romance, I don't love myself so why would she? Is that really the black dog talking, or have I slipped into my old habits of self-doubt? Either way I am thinking of the dog, and even those examples of long term thinking have quickly subsided in the gathering gloom.
It has not always been this way. I used to dream, I used to plan things in 1, 5 and 10 year segments. And then I failed just once to follow through. The black dog never forgets a weakness he can expose, every plan became that plan, the one I didn't follow through. It is repulsive to be this way, I deserve better and, more importantly, the people I care about deserve better. The thing is, if I managed to gain the upper hand and start planning the future again, I honestly don't know what Dave I want to be. Dave the adventurer, Dave the lover, Dave the carer? There is so much untapped potential, but to tell you the truth, the black dog knows, and now you will know, that I am almost as terrified at the prospect of fulfilling potential and I am of never managing to do so. I am just a little bit scared that if I spend too long in the longer term I will lose myself there as a place that will always be better than now.
As I have said before, many many times, depression is a wicked and cruel illness.
Thursday 19 January 2012
Of sorrow
I wanted to write a little today about one of the facets of depression I find it hardest to deal with (not that any of it is a particular breeze to be fair). Specifically I am talking about sadness. Not the sort of sadness that comes with bidding farewell or anything by Dido, but a deep, underlying and seemingly permanent sadness deep within that seems to afflict everything once depression takes hold.
It can take many forms, one of which is to colour everything black. When in this frame of mind I have no need of the Stones to tell me to paint it black, everything is already there. The world is in a permanent sepia picture from long ago, faces are contorted into false smiles or grimaces, and everything, but everything is forced, false and unsatisfying. I hate it when sadness is this overt, it is a world where the good guy never gets the girl, heroes go unheralded and all of life is conducted under a cloud, a looming threat of disatisfaction, with whispered promises of ruin on the breeze.
For me, when things are overt like this, I find myself seeing sadness all around. The tears of a child that has lost their bear, the hackneyed ending to a drama on the box, whatever it is, it becomes to me a painful sorrow that is hard to take. It is as if the depression within me reaches out to feed on the sadness, I can feel the loss of the bear, it touches me. No, that is not right, actually it assails me, the sadness invades me and sets up camp. In the end I become like a sponge that has taken on too much water. I am drenched in sadness and inevitably it floods back out again in tears or worse in fevered mania, a state of being I desperately try to avoid inflicting on the world or those I love.
However, it is when sadness is not being overt that it is at its most pernicious. There is a core of sadness, hidden within that corrupts all other feelings, perverts normal, natural reactions and mocks the fleeting joys we have in life. It is as if sadness will not permit me to experience other emotional responses in the raw state, and wants all interraction viewed through its prism. So it is that I find myself laughing at a joke, but choking inside that humour is built on misery, or smiling at a photograph and yet within in a world of pain that I can no longer feel the hand I am holding in it or experience that day again. It becomes a second voice within that counters my reactions. The last word on the matter is taken by it, and of course that last word is sorrowful and bitter. I said it was pernicious, and so it is, for when I am under its spell, it will not let me enjoy the simple pleasures of emotional reactions.
Sometimes I read through my blog, and other writings I have jotted down in my life, and there is a thread. I see it everywhere, I see it in almost every poem I have ever written. There is a wistfulness in what I write, a wistfulness for the hope that is shut away behind the sadness, a deep regret that I struggle to feel the emotions I set in poetry, a longing to experience them without taint as I do when depression has subsided. Those poems read very differently when depression is in town and the sadness takes control and I forget what it is like to love and laugh untrammelled, uncorrupted by sadness.
This is why joy experienced outside the confines of depression is so very precious to me. Indeed, if I tell you you have made me happy or make me happy, believe me that you have given me a gift I treasure above all others. You have given me true joy, something that in those dark times of depression I find myself wishing for every single day and yet always feels just out of reach. I couldn't ask you for anything finer.
It can take many forms, one of which is to colour everything black. When in this frame of mind I have no need of the Stones to tell me to paint it black, everything is already there. The world is in a permanent sepia picture from long ago, faces are contorted into false smiles or grimaces, and everything, but everything is forced, false and unsatisfying. I hate it when sadness is this overt, it is a world where the good guy never gets the girl, heroes go unheralded and all of life is conducted under a cloud, a looming threat of disatisfaction, with whispered promises of ruin on the breeze.
For me, when things are overt like this, I find myself seeing sadness all around. The tears of a child that has lost their bear, the hackneyed ending to a drama on the box, whatever it is, it becomes to me a painful sorrow that is hard to take. It is as if the depression within me reaches out to feed on the sadness, I can feel the loss of the bear, it touches me. No, that is not right, actually it assails me, the sadness invades me and sets up camp. In the end I become like a sponge that has taken on too much water. I am drenched in sadness and inevitably it floods back out again in tears or worse in fevered mania, a state of being I desperately try to avoid inflicting on the world or those I love.
However, it is when sadness is not being overt that it is at its most pernicious. There is a core of sadness, hidden within that corrupts all other feelings, perverts normal, natural reactions and mocks the fleeting joys we have in life. It is as if sadness will not permit me to experience other emotional responses in the raw state, and wants all interraction viewed through its prism. So it is that I find myself laughing at a joke, but choking inside that humour is built on misery, or smiling at a photograph and yet within in a world of pain that I can no longer feel the hand I am holding in it or experience that day again. It becomes a second voice within that counters my reactions. The last word on the matter is taken by it, and of course that last word is sorrowful and bitter. I said it was pernicious, and so it is, for when I am under its spell, it will not let me enjoy the simple pleasures of emotional reactions.
Sometimes I read through my blog, and other writings I have jotted down in my life, and there is a thread. I see it everywhere, I see it in almost every poem I have ever written. There is a wistfulness in what I write, a wistfulness for the hope that is shut away behind the sadness, a deep regret that I struggle to feel the emotions I set in poetry, a longing to experience them without taint as I do when depression has subsided. Those poems read very differently when depression is in town and the sadness takes control and I forget what it is like to love and laugh untrammelled, uncorrupted by sadness.
This is why joy experienced outside the confines of depression is so very precious to me. Indeed, if I tell you you have made me happy or make me happy, believe me that you have given me a gift I treasure above all others. You have given me true joy, something that in those dark times of depression I find myself wishing for every single day and yet always feels just out of reach. I couldn't ask you for anything finer.
Thursday 12 January 2012
How she became my muse
She began as a wondrous composite,
Of all beauty I had seen.
Amongst constructs, the most apposite
To reign as the poet's queen.
And then, on a wistful, wandering day
There stood before a vision.
Such slender grace, head turned away,
My heart felt it's first incision.
As time slipped by, I caught her gaze,
More often than I should.
I fast lost count of all the ways
I'd love her, if I could.
Her face would soften when I came,
Hair framing that sweet smile.
I'd try to grin, but blush with shame,
As I invoked the crocodile.
No other girl leaves me so dumb,
So rooted to the spot.
My beloved muse she has become
My forever to have not.
For thus it is when so inspired,
So totally in awe.
The gods in cruelty have conspired;
Her hand holds another's paw.
Of all beauty I had seen.
Amongst constructs, the most apposite
To reign as the poet's queen.
And then, on a wistful, wandering day
There stood before a vision.
Such slender grace, head turned away,
My heart felt it's first incision.
As time slipped by, I caught her gaze,
More often than I should.
I fast lost count of all the ways
I'd love her, if I could.
Her face would soften when I came,
Hair framing that sweet smile.
I'd try to grin, but blush with shame,
As I invoked the crocodile.
No other girl leaves me so dumb,
So rooted to the spot.
My beloved muse she has become
My forever to have not.
For thus it is when so inspired,
So totally in awe.
The gods in cruelty have conspired;
Her hand holds another's paw.
Saturday 7 January 2012
The last grin
Was it a random jibe that made no sense,
Some oh-so-cool inanity?
Perhaps a hug from who knows whence,
When we crumbled, needing sanity?
Did it halt the worldly spin,
As they so often did?
Caress the lonely child within,
Amongst my frailties hid?
It might have come on slow but broad,
It might have lit the night,
It maybe when I struck a chord,
Brought you deserved delight.
I cannot recall the reason why,
As it declines into the past,
That smile remembered with a sigh,
From you, for me the last.
Some oh-so-cool inanity?
Perhaps a hug from who knows whence,
When we crumbled, needing sanity?
Did it halt the worldly spin,
As they so often did?
Caress the lonely child within,
Amongst my frailties hid?
It might have come on slow but broad,
It might have lit the night,
It maybe when I struck a chord,
Brought you deserved delight.
I cannot recall the reason why,
As it declines into the past,
That smile remembered with a sigh,
From you, for me the last.
Monday 2 January 2012
The Lowest Point
Sometimes I get incredibly scared. Scared not only of the world, but of myself as well. It is not an easy place to be, and it makes me reassess what I am doing, where I am going in quite a frenetic and frenzied way.
The world intrudes on life every day, that is only normal and expected, but at times it becomes pervasive, influencing and integrating, harrowing and hassling every action I try to undertake. What do I mean by that? Sometimes I lack the skills or inclination to shut out the world, and I can't make decisions without trying to take into account everyone and everything. I get scared that my actions have a far more dramatic effect than they could ever do, that my actions might set in effect a chain reaction that has a terrible and unforeseen outcome. The nasty trick that my OCD is able to pull is that I also become convinced that inaction would be equally disastrous.
Of course, it is ridiculously easy here in the comfort of a quiet January evening to set out the issue, and explain the mental meaness and trickery behind it, almost brush it off as an affectation, a 'thing' to be owned and ordered. Oh were that the case when I am in the moment though. When it strikes, it is not easy at all, it is terrifying, seemingly inescapable and very, very real. Even the most logical and obstinate part of my mind caves in under the pressure and accepts the gravity of matters. I have to do something and I have to do it right now, but what? What do I do, and how can I live with the consequences if things go awry? The mental gymnastics I go through trying to extrapolate the consequences are exhausting and rapid. It matters not that the downside risks do not appear, I have merely been lucky, once again amd next time I better get it right or there will be a price to be paid.
That's the world, but sometimes it is me that I am scared of. When it gets dark (and by that I mean dark for me), I go to places I don't want to be. This is very hard to write about as the me that is constructing this blog entry barely recognises the me I can become when suffering a severe bout of depression. Sometimes I feel ashamed of myself, unable to accept where I am. I find it a matter of great personal embarassment that I have never married, nor had a family, that it is weakness in my character and my mind that prevents me from finding love again. It hurts to write those words, but not as much as it hurts to feel those emotions. I taunt myself, parading failures like tickertape heroes and holding out unreasonable goals as what should constitute my proper expectations.
Taunting oneself is a terrible place to be in, the last trustworthy champion of the self is the self, and once that goes, it is a rapid and bitter decline into misery and the all-encompassing bleakness. That is when I reach the lowest ebb, the nadir, and where I face my greatest fears. I am not sure I have the strength to write about them openly, nor the desire to. This is the point where reality fades into insignificance and what remains of Dave begins to pose questions that I am too afraid to answer. It is a place where I am utterly alone and nothing can reach me or comfort me. Family, friends, loved ones are so far away that I fear I will never get back to them, and if I do I will be a shell of the man I was before. It is a place I have been to twice and somewhere I would fight any battle, face any demon, do absolutely anything to never have to go to again. There's fear, and then there is this place, beyond fear, beyond despair and I am terrified of it.
The world intrudes on life every day, that is only normal and expected, but at times it becomes pervasive, influencing and integrating, harrowing and hassling every action I try to undertake. What do I mean by that? Sometimes I lack the skills or inclination to shut out the world, and I can't make decisions without trying to take into account everyone and everything. I get scared that my actions have a far more dramatic effect than they could ever do, that my actions might set in effect a chain reaction that has a terrible and unforeseen outcome. The nasty trick that my OCD is able to pull is that I also become convinced that inaction would be equally disastrous.
Of course, it is ridiculously easy here in the comfort of a quiet January evening to set out the issue, and explain the mental meaness and trickery behind it, almost brush it off as an affectation, a 'thing' to be owned and ordered. Oh were that the case when I am in the moment though. When it strikes, it is not easy at all, it is terrifying, seemingly inescapable and very, very real. Even the most logical and obstinate part of my mind caves in under the pressure and accepts the gravity of matters. I have to do something and I have to do it right now, but what? What do I do, and how can I live with the consequences if things go awry? The mental gymnastics I go through trying to extrapolate the consequences are exhausting and rapid. It matters not that the downside risks do not appear, I have merely been lucky, once again amd next time I better get it right or there will be a price to be paid.
That's the world, but sometimes it is me that I am scared of. When it gets dark (and by that I mean dark for me), I go to places I don't want to be. This is very hard to write about as the me that is constructing this blog entry barely recognises the me I can become when suffering a severe bout of depression. Sometimes I feel ashamed of myself, unable to accept where I am. I find it a matter of great personal embarassment that I have never married, nor had a family, that it is weakness in my character and my mind that prevents me from finding love again. It hurts to write those words, but not as much as it hurts to feel those emotions. I taunt myself, parading failures like tickertape heroes and holding out unreasonable goals as what should constitute my proper expectations.
Taunting oneself is a terrible place to be in, the last trustworthy champion of the self is the self, and once that goes, it is a rapid and bitter decline into misery and the all-encompassing bleakness. That is when I reach the lowest ebb, the nadir, and where I face my greatest fears. I am not sure I have the strength to write about them openly, nor the desire to. This is the point where reality fades into insignificance and what remains of Dave begins to pose questions that I am too afraid to answer. It is a place where I am utterly alone and nothing can reach me or comfort me. Family, friends, loved ones are so far away that I fear I will never get back to them, and if I do I will be a shell of the man I was before. It is a place I have been to twice and somewhere I would fight any battle, face any demon, do absolutely anything to never have to go to again. There's fear, and then there is this place, beyond fear, beyond despair and I am terrified of it.
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