Depression:

‘I’ll never forget how the depression and loneliness felt good and bad at the same time.  Still does’

-        Henry Rollins

My middle name is Martin.  My eyes are blue.  I have a scar on my left leg, a mole on my stomach and the toenail on my right foot has been removed.  I also have depression. 

I don’t know when I could mark the beginning of this, the actual wick of the fuse.  I had a very good childhood, more or less.  I wasn’t indulged, but I had everything I asked for.  I was an intelligent kid at school, but didn’t really put in the work for the exams; until much later in life when I had both perspective and wisdom.  That’s when you really appreciate Shakespeare and still can’t get your head around Jane Austen.   

I was told at school that being a writer ‘would be a very difficult career option’ and I would be better ‘training as a lorry driver like your Dad; would be much easier’.  I ignored this advice and slowly, carved out a modest career as a journalist, then a writer and performer, then a teacher, then dead end jobs to pay the rent. 

If I think of anything, it was the need to be loved that brought it on.  I didn’t have my first serious relationship till I was in my late twenties. I ran from that as it began to get serious.  In a space of about three years, I had four, possibly five serious/semi-serious relationships with people who were uniquely unsuited with me; always ended by them.  Still, at least the sex was regular.

In addition, my ‘best friend’, slowly, by stealth, ceased contact with me.  This concluded with her sending me a long, rambling email of my failings as a human being and saying she didn’t want to see me again.

It’s very easy to mistake love or friendship for something else.  It’s a trick of the light, to let someone get close and watch them fade away; when you really need them in proper sunlight.  I felt let down by these people and I think that fuelled the fire that was already burning within me.  The fire that never really goes out.    But at the end of the day, I have that Catholic work ethic.  ‘By the sweat of thy brow, shalt thou break bread’.  That sort of shit.

I came out of teaching, more by other people’s choices than mine: let’s put it that way.  I was in a perfect teaching job; I said something that someone didn’t agree with.  I went part time and finally left, missing the maelstrom of madness and infidelity that closed the place permanently.  Which is a shame really, I’d like to have seen that.  I trained to be a counsellor.  I was very good at it.  I had a nice placement, where they appreciated me and me asked me to stay on after I graduated.  Which is roughly at the point I was working my redundancy in the day job.

Ah, The Day Job.  Putting bets on for a living.  When that ended, I needed a job.  That Catholic work ethic again.  I was in a relationship with a woman who had three kids. Of course, I needed to feed them/take her out. I took a series of low-paid/mind-numbing jobs to support this process.  Which neatly dovetailed with the slow, gradual fade-out of that relationship.  Something had to be done, to fill that gaping hole, that almost suicidal need to be loved.  I engineered a relationship with an old school friend. 

If there was one event, one last splash of petrol that fuelled the smouldering embers of the blues, it was her.

Ah Her.  Irrational, needy, spiritual Her.  Who asked me to move in and get married, when I didn’t really want to.  Who got into an argument with the neighbour, who then sent The Police to our door.  The pressure was racking up at work.  One slip of the mind.  It was inevitable, like falling on ice.  I was diagnosed with ‘mild depression’. I took time off work, which led to more arguments and spending money that I didn’t really have.  The visit from De Bizzies made this more of a ‘severe’ thing.  I contemplated suicide, but there was no Clarence to save me.  My Doctor prescribed Fluoxetine. 

If you’ve not taken it, beware.  For me, it put my emotions on a low level.  A sort of slow, deadening of the soul.  Sometimes, this forced its way to opposite ends of a dull spectrum.  Factor in the constant feeling of being sick and a complete disinterest in sex.  Which is a bit of killer when you’re engaged to someone you don’t really fancy in the first place. 

That relationship ended.  The event that preceded that was me deciding to come off anti-depressants.   I think sometimes, that person used it as a chemical cosh.  A method of controlling me.  Sometimes, I think I needed it.  This person then bothered me for six months – phone calls, emails, letters.  The full range of lunacy.  I lived in a nice flat, in a boho area.  I did The Boho Dance – galleries, films with subtitles, plays.  I could have, quite easily got into a relationship with anyone out of a selection of people.  But as soon as I felt them getting close, I closed, bolted and nailed the door. 

Of course, the happy ending to this is I met by wife.  I often feel we have lived a lifetime in a few years together, but I love her and my stepson very much.  I still have depression, but I understand the root cause of it now.  I felt myself slipping into it recently, as I lasted a mere four weeks as a Barista before I was dismissed during the probationary period.  I could feel the wheels of the car of my mind whining.  And I decided: ‘this shit isn’t happening’.  I decided to embrace, the blue-eyed man in the mirror as a functioning depressive.

What does it feel like?  Everyone’s experience is different.  Depression is like a Magic Eye Picture; different people both see and feel different things.  For me, it’s sort of reality turning off, withdrawing from people and losing interest in things I love.  You sort of feel like the spare piece of Lego, that never really quite fits.  These periods can last for minutes, hours, days.  But knowing it, recognising your triggers makes it easier, lessens the pain ever so slightly. 

You know that old phrase about ‘Recognise the devil within you and conquer it’?  That’s depression. 

And in a sense, I’m sort of drawn to it.  It’s here, in the music I listen to: From The Smiths cobblestoned misery, via the bitter humour of John Grant’s organismic self, through the bucolic sadness of Nick Drake, arriving at the anger and pride of Kendrick Lamar.  My depression comes down the iPod, through the ears and into the soul.  So fucking what? 

In a sense, there is openness about depression we have never had.  At the same time, there is the dismissive/pretentious/insensitive reporting of it in the newspapers.  It’s far too easy to crack a joke about it on a panel show. So, if you recognise this article as a mirror of yourself, say hello.  If you know someone who has depression, talk to them as a human being.  Not someone who has recently escaped from the local unicorn sanctuary. 

My favourite food is chicken, my favourite book is 1984, my favourite painting is Guernica and I have depression.  I accept all of this as part of my soul.