Even so, I am comforted by the word ‘symptom’ and its cool, empirical note. The reality, even if the lump in my throat is not actually real, is not comforting. It hurts, like a knotted rope thick around my neck, the knot pressed hard to my windpipe. And it never goes away. It is the sensation you get when you are struggling to hold back tears, the tight, aching ball that grows and grows even as you try to swallow it down. I read, somewhere, that crying can relieve the symptoms. It can’t, or not for me anyway. I cry and I cry. I cry so much that sometimes I am astonished there is any water left in my body.
I close my eyes. Time passes. I don’t know how much time. Is it day or is it night? I hear kids shouting on the streets. ‘Fucking wanker.’ School must be out. The shouts are too loud, banging in my head. I put a pillow over my face and push it down to cover my ears. I feel suffocated. The monster rears in my throat. I take the pillow away again.
The shouts diminish, gradually. It is so dark. Why is it so dark? Am I awake? Am I alive? I am. Fuck. I want more vodka, I want a sleeping pill, I want anything to stop me being awake, or alive, but I force myself out of bed to make a cup of tea and a cucumber sandwich. It is the only thing I can eat. That’s if I eat at all.
I slice the cucumber thin, shave butter off a cold block, and lay it on squares of foamy white bread. I hate white bread. Don’t I? I used to. I cut the crusts off, slice the sandwich in neat triangles, and put it on a white plate.
Once I have made the sandwich, I don’t know what to do with it, or where to go. I stand in the kitchen for a while, staring at the plate, at the steaming mug of tea. I remember this mug, remember buying it and how it had to be white and of a certain thickness of china and the handle must be curved just so.
I was standing in Heal’s, during the sale, and I bought six mugs, at half price. They came in a thick brown cardboard box, held shut by wide black staples. It took me hours to get those staples out.
A friend called the other day.
‘How are you?’ she said.
The sun was shining, the sky a merciless blue. It was only eleven in the morning but I had been awake since three twenty. I was in bed because, as usual, I could think of nowhere else to go. I said that I was feeling low. Low is the depressive’s euphemism for despair.
She said: ‘How can you be depressed on a day like this?’
I wanted to say: ‘If I had flu, would you ask me how I could be sick on a day like this?’
I said nothing. She meant well.
People send me cards. The images on the front are inoffensive watercolours of flowers or bland, abstract art. Inside, they write that they are sorry to hear that I’ve been unwell. That they have always thought of me as ‘such a strong person’. My sickness has a moral tone. I am reduced, made feeble. I think, well there is some truth in that. I am a shadow of the self I used to be.
I feel caged, suddenly, impossibly restless. It goes like this, inertia and then profound agitation. I must do something. But what? My daughter, Molly, is with Jonathan, her dad, for three more days. She lives with him for half of the time.
I miss her so.
I am so glad she is not here. The effort of trying to be that person she knows as Mummy is overwhelming.
I want to say to her that I am sorry, I am sorry that it is me who has taken her mother’s place. I want to tell her that she deserves better, that she should have a mother like the mother I used to be, who laughs and bakes and loses gracefully when her daughter cheats at Monopoly. But I can’t. I can’t tell her that her mother has gone, that her mother is lost.
It would break her heart.
And so I struggle on. I drink some tea, retching against the taste, the monster tightening in my throat as if in sympathetic recoil. I pick up the sandwich to take a bite, but abandon it halfway through.
There must be something I can do. Should do. I always did something. I was never still. There was always work to be done, a deadline to meet, a child to look after, a house to run, a garden to tend, books to read, films to see, friends to enjoy. There was never enough time.
Now, there is too much. And there are too few people. And I feel that they have nothing, any longer, to do with me.
I look at the sandwich, at the perfect half circle my teeth have formed. I must eat, I know, but it seems such a laborious process, to pick up the sandwich, to bite, to chew, to swallow.
I get up and look out of the window. People are walking briskly up and down the road. I try to imagine what I would do, if I were out on the street. Where would I be going? I can think of nowhere. The newsagent’s, perhaps, to buy a newspaper. Have I read a newspaper today?
I used to write for the newspapers. Almost all of the nationals, in fact. What was it I had to say? I can see myself, sitting at my computer, head bent, writing furiously, hands flying over the keys. I can’t imagine what must have been in my head to make my hands go so fast.
I look at the bed. I can see no newspaper. Not that I ever read them. I can no longer read. It is the greatest tragedy of my present existence. By the time I get to the end of a sentence, I have forgotten the beginning. Words are no more than patterns on a page. Sometimes, it is better. Sometimes I can manage a few paragraphs, but later I can never remember what it is they said.
It is like being bereaved, this lack of reading, like losing an old and dearly beloved friend. A lifelong friend. I used to read four or five books a week.
I remember reading something by Goethe, about losing reading and losing oneself, and how it struck me at the time.
My creative powers have been reduced to a restless indolence. I cannot be idle, yet I cannot seem to do anything either. I have no imagination, no more feeling for nature, and reading has become repugnant to me. When we are robbed of ourselves, we are robbed of everything.
That’s right, I think. Depression is the great thief.
When I was a child my mother was forever telling me to get my head out of a book and go outside and get some fresh air. Molly is like me. She reads all the time. I never tell her to get her head out of a book. I know the pleasure, the transport, the pure delight that reading brings. Before I was ill, I used to worry that I spent too much of my time with books, living in other people’s lives. I used to think it was, perhaps, because I didn’t much like my own. Perhaps that’s it then. Perhaps depression is simply inhabiting your own life. Or perhaps it’s simply too much reality.
No, this is mad thinking. All my thinking is mad thinking, these days. Round and round it goes, dipping in and out of perspective but always present, never still.
These days I only buy a newspaper because I want to be normal. I want to be a person who reads a newspaper. Besides, it gives me something to do, somewhere to go. Every morning, I go out to get my newspaper and cigarettes. This morning I didn’t. This morning was a bad morning. Or was that yesterday? I try to remember. No, it was this morning. I had a bath. I managed that but then I was shaking so badly with the medication I had to lie down. Or, at least I think it’s the medication. It’s hard to tell.
Why do they call it a ‘mental’ illness? The pain isn’t just in my head; it’s everywhere, but mainly at my throat and in my heart. Perhaps my heart is broken. Is this what this is? My whole chest feels like it’s being crushed. It’s hard to breathe.
I am sitting on the floor, in my bedroom, curled up against the cupboards. I have given up on the bed. I hate the bed and its soft, suffocating embrace. I would like to leave this room, but I can’t. I feel safe in here. Or, as safe as I feel anywhere, which is not very.
How fucking stupid is that? I can’t leave my own bedroom. Me, who used to fly across the world and get on a plane without a moment’s thought. I have been getting on and off aeroplanes on my own since I was ten years old. I am fiercely independent. I am fierce. Or so people tell me. Used to tell me. I never used to be so afraid. When I was one of his editors, I used to stand up against Rupert Murdoch, arguing with him. I used to be so brave. I used to be somebody.
I am still someb
ody.
Aren’t I?
But who?
I am somebody who can’t leave her bedroom, somebody who can’t walk across a road to buy a newspaper. I start to cry. I hate crying. I hate these tears that come, unbidden, at any time of day.
My cat, Bert, comes and sits next to me and purrs. When I do not respond, he gently bats my wet cheeks with his paw, first one side, and then the other. He keeps the claws sheathed so his paw feels like a velvet powder puff.
Clever cat.
He used to be a hunter, a champion mouser, when we had a garden. Now he follows me around the flat, turning somersaults for my amusement or butting his head against my idle hands, demanding attention. He cries a lot too, his calls echoing through the apartment.
I never used to cry. I hardly ever shed a tear. I spent a whole life not in tears. And that, according to one therapist, is my problem. Is this all it is then? Is this simply forty years of collected tears?
‘Have a good cry. You’ll feel better.’
Stupid, I think, furiously. Stupid.
I remember a nurse, in the psychiatric unit. She was Jamaican, wore her hair in braids fastened with bright glass beads. They hung in a brilliant curtain over the stiff shoulders of her starched white uniform. Her nose was perfect, straight and beautiful, and she had a wide, white smile.
She held my hand at four in the morning, as I cried. They’d given me sleeping pills, enough, they said, to fell an ox. I had to take them sitting in bed because they were so strong. They said I might pass out if I took them standing up. Two hours later, I was still wide awake, walking up and down the empty corridors, up and down, trying to walk away the tears.
The nurse came and got me, led me back to my room and put me in bed, then sat with me, holding my hand.
‘Have a good cry,’ she said, ‘you’ll feel better.’
I shouted at her. Her bright smile dimmed, and went out. I hated myself for shouting, but it seemed so important to be understood.
‘It won’t,’ I shouted. ‘Crying won’t make me feel better. I cry and I cry and I never feel any better. Why does nobody understand that?’
Why does nobody understand that these are tears without a beginning or an end? I thought sadness had a beginning and an end. And a middle. A story, if you like. I was wrong.
She said, ‘Has something happened?’
I ducked my head, plucked at the sheet. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Nothing has happened.’
She patted my hand.
I must stop this, I think. I must stop these tears, stop these thoughts. Perhaps if I stand up, they will stop. Perhaps if I get dressed, perhaps if I try to be me, they will go away.
I take off my nightdress. It is old soft white linen. I have always collected vintage linen. Now it is tattered and stained and sad. I no longer launder and starch it. I am still in my nightie at four in the afternoon.
It is shocking and, shockingly, I don’t care.
I pull on an old cashmere sweater and leggings. They are black. The sweater is large and comforting. The leggings are baggy and comfortable. I have been wearing these same clothes for weeks, months even. I used to work in fashion, to write about it weekly. I love good clothes. My wardrobe was once filled with designer labels. Some of them remain. I look at them and think that if only I could get those clothes on, that I might, once more, become me.
I try, sometimes, but I look awkward, uncomfortable, as if I have put on a stranger’s clothes. So I take them off again.
I feel frightened, suddenly. No, terrified. This is not fear. This is black, consuming terror.
‘Tell me,’ says my therapist, ‘what you look forward to in the day.’
‘Taking my sleeping pills at night,’ I say. ‘Oblivion.’
Not that it lasts very long. I am awake again at three twenty. Always three twenty, never three ten or even three thirty. My eyes snap open and my mind clicks on, as if somebody has pressed a switch. And on it goes, on and on. And it repeats the same thing, over and over.
I want to die. I want, so badly, to die.
I lie on the floor in my bedroom and scream, as if the walls could hear me.
‘Will somebody help me? Will somebody please help me?’
But there is nobody there. I don’t want anybody there. I don’t want anybody to see me like this. I don’t want anybody until the terror gets too much, until I know that I am a danger to myself.
This is one of those times. And so I make a call, to Sarah, my closest friend. We have been friends for more than thirty years. We have seen each other through successes and failures, through damaged romances and unaccountable bliss. She has seen me at my best and at my worst.
And so I call her. Poor Sarah. My poor, sweet Sarah. She gets phone calls from me weekly, sometimes daily. She gets calls when I can no longer contain the pain or the sadness alone.
She must be so bored of me. I am so bored of me.
‘How’s it going?’ she says. She is at work; she is the deputy editor of a magazine. The office is open-plan. It is difficult for her to talk. Sometimes I call her and just cry, because I cannot speak.
I imagine her sitting at her desk, the phone pressed hard to her ear as she searches for words to say to me, words that will betray neither of us in the busy impersonal world of work. I can hear the murmur of voices all around her, the shrill summons of phones, the lovely noise of life going on.
For a moment, I can’t speak. ‘Not good,’ I manage, finally.
Her voice is gentle, concerned. I hate that concern. I hate that it is me who is making her feel that way. ‘How not good?’
I hear my voice, rusty from lack of use. It sounds slow, as if I am talking underwater. ‘Bad,’ I say.
She knows from the sound of my voice how close I am to the edge. ‘I just have to clear something up here. I’ll be with you in an hour, less if I can.’
‘OK,’ I say, because it is all I can manage. I can’t even say thank you.
I lie on the floor in my bedroom and wait. I can’t imagine why she would want to be with me, can’t imagine what she could do for me. She is even more powerless than I am over this thing. Today I can’t honour it by calling it an illness. Today it is just a thing that neither of us knows or understands.
I hope she won’t be long, just the sight of her comforts me. I need her to be with me, even if there is nothing she can say. I am terrified she will give up on me, that this thing will drive her away. Every depressive has that fear. Why would anyone want us? We don’t even want ourselves. Sometimes, we try to drive the people who love us away. Not because we don’t want them with us, but because we cannot bear for them to see what we have become.
She arrives, bringing life with her. I can smell it, sharp and clear, on her coat. Then, just as suddenly, it is gone, absorbed by the dull, dead world of depression. My bedroom smells like a sickroom, stale and sad. I wonder if Sarah can smell it too. Once, there would have been scented candles burning on the mantelpiece, a fire lit, lights shining in every room. Now, one solitary lamp casts a dim pool on the table by the bed. The rest of the flat is in darkness.
Sarah is lovely, her cheeks pink and her eyes alive and sparkling. Her hair is thick and auburn, her coat black, soft leather. ‘Hello, friend,’ she says, crouching down to hug me. I am still on the floor.
Tossing her handbag aside, she sits on my bed. ‘Has something happened?’ she asks. Her voice is gentle with concern.
I duck my head, suddenly conscious that I am wearing the same, stained leggings and sweater, that my hair is matted from sleeping, my face shiny with half-dried tears and that the circles under my eyes look like bruises, purple and violent.
‘Nothing.’ I shake my head, ‘Nothing has happened.’ And it’s true. Nothing at all has happened in my world that day. Just me. I have happened.
‘Just a bad day then,’ she says.
I nod mutely. I have summoned her from her work, brought her all this way to tell her nothing. It is unforgivable. I am unforgivable.
&nbs
p; ‘I can’t do this, Sarah. I can’t do this any more.’ I mean, stay alive. I can’t stay alive if this is what living is. I start to cry. She lays her hand gently on my head, strokes my hair. She is used to me crying by now. She knows there is nothing she can do.
I wrap my arms around myself, to stop the pain, to stop the tears. My whole body is racked with it; I am shaking with tears. The monster is at my throat.
‘If I was an animal,’ I sob, ‘they’d shoot me, to put me out of my misery.’
‘No, Sal,’ she says, ‘they wouldn’t. Really, they wouldn’t.’
I look up at her face, at the terror and the love in it.
It still makes me cry, to think of it now.
She told me later that she always used to cry, when she left me. She used to drive home, tears pouring down her face, saying the same thing out loud, over and over again. ‘This is not life threatening. She is not going to die. My best friend is not going to die.’
I imagine her driving through the dark streets, crying, chanting aloud to keep the bogeyman away.
Self-Absorption and Symptoms
Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Before I became ill, I had no idea that severe depression has definite symptoms just like any other illness. Nor do most people. And that’s where the stigma around mental illness becomes dangerous. Our unwillingness to discuss it openly creates a damaging ignorance. We know the obvious symptoms of physical illness and seek help accordingly but we rarely take our emotional temperatures or check the balance of our mental health.
Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression Page 4
