Originally written at my lowest point, June 2015, as an open letter on Facebook. Posting now (at 4:03 am) three and a half years later because the bandaid has fallen off again.
This isn’t a life and I need a hand.
It’s 5:46am and I’ve been awake all night.
Can’t sleep in a straight line.
Can’t work in a straight line.
Can’t think in a straight line for more than ten minutes.
I feel like I’ve a brain tumour extending down my throat to my heart and it’s squeezing everything.
Sometimes I’m fine for a couple of weeks but lately life is reduced to moments of chirpy positiveness (even singing along to the radio) which punctuate tar-black hours of just wanting to hit the reset button but I can’t do that because: (a) reincarnation is bullshit (the only reincarnation I believe in is building something new out of something thrown away – my most fulfilling activity of 2014) and (b) if I ever selfishly toddled off into the ether I’d piss off/annoy/frighten/inconvenience/sadden too many people, and I just can’t have that.
And right there is the stupid and illogical irony of it all.
Feeling utterly alone and pointless, whilst having so many people who think good things of me.
But those people aren’t ‘here’. You’re not ‘here’. You’re in Edinburgh, New York, Sydney, Queensland, London, Norway or just in another Melbourne suburb and living your own life, dealing with your own shit. I’m a grown-up and I should have my *own* people to share my shit with, but I don’t so I’m sharing it here. ‘She-knows-who’ always said I share too much – in public, in person and online. It embarrassed her as she was “raised to not draw attention to herself”. Well if I had someone who gets me, someone who understood me without judgement someone who was there to help me bust through these black-dog moments like a bout of zits, I wouldn’t need to share here. But I don’t so here I am.
In every discussion about giving up, suicide, dropping out – whatever one’s flavour of self-deletion happens to be – the response from the people left behind is always “Why didn’t they SAY something?” “I would have helped them / told them I loved them / told them I had the same feelings and showed them how I deal with them!” but it doesn’t work that way and we know it.
The problem is this:
We usually think less of someone who deletes/drops-out/dies/disappears and the person in question is well aware of this. Giving up or wanting to give up isn’t attractive or sexy and it’s embarrassing enough without having to declare it in advance. In fact one of the key motivators behind these actions is an intolerable level of embarrassment that’s been going on for too long. It’s embarrassment-on-steroids. We’ve all heard of suicide letters or ‘why I ran away’ away letters but we’ve never heard of ‘I’m considering suicide/disappearing’ letters, and that’s because they simply wouldn’t work the way we’d like. All they’d do is diminish the author in the minds and hearts of others, and frankly, they already feel pretty bloody diminished as it is.
Sure someone might step in and help, but even for them their view of the person they’re helping will be forever tainted. So to avoid FURTHER embarrassment and shame, we just toddle off quietly.
It’s not what we want, but it’s easier than exacerbating the shame and it’s easier to walk away than to create a situation where someone important to you might pull that ‘slightly disgusted pity face’ and walk away from you first.
We need heroes and angels who see this stuff coming before it happens, pull us up and smile pull our shoulders back, kiss us on the back of the head and push us onto the good path. We need troubadours to sing the songs of our goodness and worth as well as our frailties to those who matter – because we can’t sing them ourselves, ever. How can I tell my ex how I messed it all up with the best of intentions, but am still worthy of her trust, energy and encouragement and that all would be well if she just… took a couple of steps towards me, and a dozen or so with me? I can’t. A few of you possibly could.
I’ve had the black-dog follow me around for much of my life. Some of you know my story, some know bits. I’ve had my periods of bliss, self-assurance, a sense of safety and warmth where the black-dog has run off to gnaw on someone else’s soul for a time – sometimes years – but certain events act like a dog-whistle and he’s back scratching at my door and pissing on my carpet and telling me I’m a shit friend, an ugly boyfriend, a boring party guest, a crap illustrator, a dreary designer and less of a man than every other man out there.
No I’m not going to top myself. Don’t worry about that. Not even close (see reasons stated above). But I wish I wasn’t here and I wish I wasn’t the ‘me’ I am just now. I’m inclined to be impulsive though. I’m inclined to sell everything I have and feck off back to Edinburgh. I’m inclined to pick a fight. I’m inclined to stay in bed for a month. I’m inclined to become the 110kg sack-of-shit I was in 2008. I’m inclined to wound those devoid of heart, conscience or simple decency so that at least someone who deserves it can feel as exposed and hopeless as I do – if only for a moment.
I let people down when I’m like this (sorry Paul, Keely, Mike, Katie, Jen, Richard, Alan, Nic, Rach, Freditor, and many, many more). It’s not deliberate. I’m not being a prima donna. I just get stuck in a corner of the rat-maze and don’t know how to turn around.
The black-dog version of me… Is. Not. Me.
It’s a distortion of me. It’s an insult to me.
It’s also an insult to everyone who loves or has loved me.
But I can’t shake it just now and I need a hand.
There. There’s your first open ‘Something’s wrong, it’s embarrassing and I need a hand’ letter. I’ve no idea what anyone can do. If I did, I’d do it myself. I just need a hand.
PS: I read the article below at 3am this morning. It resonates on a number of levels. I wasn’t taught how to take care of myself – even though I’ve been doing it for the most part since I was 15. Instead I learned how to take care of others – often at my own expense. Perhaps this should be the next thing I learn.
https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/5-must-follow-man-rules-hesaid/
