The other business is more worrying - we all know it is not great literature but why the decline in quality. Were the first twenty odd just flashes in the pan, some kind of writing therapy, things I needed to say. I remember when I joined Facebook for my very first post I put, 'This is my letter to the world that no-one wants to read," with apologies to my dearest Emily for a bit of plagiarism. But you my darling readers seemingly do want to read my dead leaf thoughts. And then it hit me; in Jane Eyre there is a sentence that takes you from being a passive spectator of the novel to a complicit witness. Jane says,"Reader, I married him." and at that moment Bronte has taken us all to that classic key to great fiction: the willing suspension of disbelief.
When I began I wrote for myself and for a reader who was a composite of people that I love and no longer have in my life. It was something very personal that became very public. And I love to please people so I began to write what I thought they wanted to hear, you wanted to hear. I tried to make you complicit in the writing - to do a Bronte. Incidentally I am not being all academically highbrow about the author's name - can't remember if it was Charlotte of Emily that wrote Jane Eyre so I am trying to fudge it. Just checked, it was Charlotte.
You know it is an oddly liberating feeling to worry through a problem, not necessarily arriving at any great solution, but still forcing the intellect to grind out thought and logic.
Over the last ten days my depression has been almost unbearable. I've tried by writing about Mum and home to exorcise the demons. The blog I wrote about Life and Death, I wept a tear for every key stroke. It would be so much easier if it was self pity, if I could pull myself together and apply the logical thought process above to my mood.
I think I have to be honest in this writing or why do it? I t may make uncomfortable reading, but,in therapy speak, that is not my issue. So honestly, I want to die. I want to stop existing and to stop pretending that there is anything better to come. When the pain of despair gets so bad I take a brooch pin and rake it over my arms until they bleed, because then, the pain is real and visible. I wish I had the real courage to take the pin or a knife or pills and be done with it. Damned to it. My only attempt was pathetic, enough sleeping pills to knock me out for a day and then I woke up. Another day.
I am now on much stronger medication, it makes me sleepy and weepy and numb - but oh God not numb enough. It will take time, they say. What if it doesn't? What if this is it? That great Jack Nicholson moment in the OCD therapists office, what if this is as good as it gets?
I have nightmares, faceless fears, terrors that have no name yet are more terrifying because of that. I wake in the morning and for a few precious seconds I am back in that place I used to know, where I was loved and felt safe. And then the horror of reality, a day of virtual farming, writing, and waiting for the dark like a hamster spinning on its wheel, round and round, never getting anywhere, never moving form that one spot. And you see, if I was to be writing complicitly with you, my reader, then this is self pity on a grand scale. My side of the bargain is broken - my reader is the composite character, Lochinvar riding ventre a terre to rescue me, someone I love to come and hold me and let me feel safe, loved despite being such a hopeless waste of oxygen and resources.
Oh, I know that - actually scrap that I don't know that I am loved, how can I be, I don't like myself very much. I said to someone the other day that at least I had a voice: so many people with mental illnesses cannot express the way it is - I can. I think I need almost to bear witness to this to let you know what this black dog is like.
Finally, those of you who will read this and think I must phone her tonight, or send her a message to let her know we care. I do know. Of course I do. But you have your own lives to live, my depression is not your responsibility, any of you. The gap between expectation and reality is so far apart it is hard to imagine that it can ever be bridged.
I started with an apology and I end with one. This blog may not be simply gentle memories of a golden time; in fact I think it has to be a place where I can express to the universe how I feel, because there is no other way. Nicely brought up Calcutta girls tend not to say, "Suicidal," when asked how they are feeling.
So, sorry for the misery, sorry for the bad writing of the last two and sorry for not being braver or stronger. Oh yeah, don't worry, this isn't the goodbye note. That would go on much longer and name names.
I have a comment - thank you to whoever was reading this on recoveryourlife.com . It made me go to the site and sign up. Lets' hope it helps both of us.
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