Dipsomania: a compulsive desire to drink alcoholic beverages. A synonym for alcoholism, I suppose.
I don't want to take any more of those happy pills. I just want to rot. You look at the bloody grad photo and you realise what a fucking waste of time it has been. Because it didn't teach you self-confidence and it didn't give you social skills. It didn't teach you how to analyse or be critical. It didn't teach you how to live. You would have given up after your third year. You really would have. In fact the breakdown process began two Aprils ago. Before Cuba.
The sun has just made an appearance, as slight as it is. I should go down to the pond to give the ducks the stale bread. But I can't. My legs betray me. My soul betrays me. I can't go out without showering, now can I? Or rather. Just face it. You don't want to go out. You don't want to get better. There's nowt to look forward to because you don't belong here. Briony was right. One is either inside or goes outside. There's no third place to go.
Well, you can give the sparrows the bread then. They deserve it more. Charity begins at home, after all.
I am glad there are so many people studying International Relations, though. They are doing something in the world. I feel utterly disgusted at the bloody Sudanese. First, they willingly allow slavery continue, perpetuating the Arab supremacy myth. Bollocks. Then they have the nerve to be so frigging stupid and arrest a poor teacher for allowing her kids to name a bear. Idiots. And the poor thing is stuck in a prison cell somewhere in the depths of Wahhabi land. Such idiots we humans are.
I agree with the angels. It's not like I have God-like knowledge, anyway. The more I learn about myself, the more I detest humankind. The weakness, the feebleness, the selfishness, the ignorance, the willingness to forget. The willingness to be pig head about everything, in spite of the signs. Had we the least bit of honesty in our blood, we would see life for what it is.
And an absent Imam. Today is Friday, it is the day we expect you to reappear. And all we do is forget. Or wait in the wrong manner. Or pretend we are waiting when we are not. And he waits for us and we don't know how to wait. And he just waits and is forgotten. And cries.
I don't want to pray to You to make me stop thinking and pondering. It would be good if anything came of it. But nothing does. This is just self-absorbed, self-fulfilling.
I'm putting my parents through shit. And my grandfather's sister and my grandmother's sister don't give a shit about me. I wonder what on Earth my grandparents think of me. They must be appalled at what their daughter has spawned. I should stop being so melodramatic in front of my father. He's gone and hidden the Paracetamol somewhere. I don't have enough energy to go to buy any more and when I do go out, it's when I don't feel like such a shit. This reminds me. I have to type this down so I can remember it always
"Depression is blankness. Blank nothingness. Your mind is adrift in a cold, emotionless space, where there is no past, no present and no future.
You peer at the mirror, surprised that the misery you are dragging around with you has a human face; your face; a horrible, staring, ugly face; a face best not seen too much in public. Eventually you take this face and point it at a doctor. You feel a fraud because you are not ill. On the contrary, you think you are seeing the world as it really is for the first time since the last time you felt like this.
The doctor, having held a position of inordinate power for many years, won't be able to sympathise, but he may offer condolences. 'Any corresponding ups?' he'll say. Sadly no, you'll answer. 'Thinking of killing yourself?'
You are, you tell him. (Though your interest in your own termination is more detached and academic than he probably imagines.)
The doctor reaches for his prescribing pad, or taps at his keyboard. Much better for you if he prescribes an old-fashioned fast-acting antidepressant like Imipramine or Prothiadine. But better for him if he gives you sodding Prozac. Less chance of his being sued by righteous relatives after you've accidentally overdosed. Unfortunately, Prozac takes between two to four weeks to take effect. So while you are waiting for the little blue capsules to increase the level of serotonin in your brain, you can't sleep, and you're worse off than you were before.
But friend, stick with it. Two weeks, two months, two years later (it's all the same when you are stuck in nothingness), without your even realising (so imperceptible is the transition), you will find yourself back once more on the bracing pooping-deck of this ship of fools."
Jeremy Clarke. Journalist, South Devon. From Threads of Hope, Ed. Flora McDonnell
I don't want to take any more of those happy pills. I just want to rot. You look at the bloody grad photo and you realise what a fucking waste of time it has been. Because it didn't teach you self-confidence and it didn't give you social skills. It didn't teach you how to analyse or be critical. It didn't teach you how to live. You would have given up after your third year. You really would have. In fact the breakdown process began two Aprils ago. Before Cuba.
The sun has just made an appearance, as slight as it is. I should go down to the pond to give the ducks the stale bread. But I can't. My legs betray me. My soul betrays me. I can't go out without showering, now can I? Or rather. Just face it. You don't want to go out. You don't want to get better. There's nowt to look forward to because you don't belong here. Briony was right. One is either inside or goes outside. There's no third place to go.
Well, you can give the sparrows the bread then. They deserve it more. Charity begins at home, after all.
I am glad there are so many people studying International Relations, though. They are doing something in the world. I feel utterly disgusted at the bloody Sudanese. First, they willingly allow slavery continue, perpetuating the Arab supremacy myth. Bollocks. Then they have the nerve to be so frigging stupid and arrest a poor teacher for allowing her kids to name a bear. Idiots. And the poor thing is stuck in a prison cell somewhere in the depths of Wahhabi land. Such idiots we humans are.
I agree with the angels. It's not like I have God-like knowledge, anyway. The more I learn about myself, the more I detest humankind. The weakness, the feebleness, the selfishness, the ignorance, the willingness to forget. The willingness to be pig head about everything, in spite of the signs. Had we the least bit of honesty in our blood, we would see life for what it is.
And an absent Imam. Today is Friday, it is the day we expect you to reappear. And all we do is forget. Or wait in the wrong manner. Or pretend we are waiting when we are not. And he waits for us and we don't know how to wait. And he just waits and is forgotten. And cries.
I don't want to pray to You to make me stop thinking and pondering. It would be good if anything came of it. But nothing does. This is just self-absorbed, self-fulfilling.
I'm putting my parents through shit. And my grandfather's sister and my grandmother's sister don't give a shit about me. I wonder what on Earth my grandparents think of me. They must be appalled at what their daughter has spawned. I should stop being so melodramatic in front of my father. He's gone and hidden the Paracetamol somewhere. I don't have enough energy to go to buy any more and when I do go out, it's when I don't feel like such a shit. This reminds me. I have to type this down so I can remember it always
"Depression is blankness. Blank nothingness. Your mind is adrift in a cold, emotionless space, where there is no past, no present and no future.
You peer at the mirror, surprised that the misery you are dragging around with you has a human face; your face; a horrible, staring, ugly face; a face best not seen too much in public. Eventually you take this face and point it at a doctor. You feel a fraud because you are not ill. On the contrary, you think you are seeing the world as it really is for the first time since the last time you felt like this.
The doctor, having held a position of inordinate power for many years, won't be able to sympathise, but he may offer condolences. 'Any corresponding ups?' he'll say. Sadly no, you'll answer. 'Thinking of killing yourself?'
You are, you tell him. (Though your interest in your own termination is more detached and academic than he probably imagines.)
The doctor reaches for his prescribing pad, or taps at his keyboard. Much better for you if he prescribes an old-fashioned fast-acting antidepressant like Imipramine or Prothiadine. But better for him if he gives you sodding Prozac. Less chance of his being sued by righteous relatives after you've accidentally overdosed. Unfortunately, Prozac takes between two to four weeks to take effect. So while you are waiting for the little blue capsules to increase the level of serotonin in your brain, you can't sleep, and you're worse off than you were before.
But friend, stick with it. Two weeks, two months, two years later (it's all the same when you are stuck in nothingness), without your even realising (so imperceptible is the transition), you will find yourself back once more on the bracing pooping-deck of this ship of fools."
Jeremy Clarke. Journalist, South Devon. From Threads of Hope, Ed. Flora McDonnell
Poetry. It's the best in the entire collection. Where the hell is South Devon, anyway?
I just do not want to be mundane and ordinary. But I have got to realise that that is all that I am. Ordinary. No spark and definitely not unique. Rebellion is not unique. We are living in the post-modern world where everyone is an individual. So where is the individuality in individuality?
If I become a writer or journalist, I shall be like thousands around the world and a pretty mundane one at that. If I become a teacher, after everything, I shall be one in ten thousands around the world, and a most ineffective one at that. And if I become a schizophrenic or become psychotically depressed, well there are thousands of those as well. And when I kill myself, I shall be ordinary by becoming ignoble. At least one person does it every hour.
So stop trying to be special. You are not. You are not. You are not. What is with this need to be different, anyway? What are you trying to prove, and to whom?
But I think I will kill myself. I am past redemption. I never wanted to live, Allah and You showed your Lordship over me by making me born. You challenged me to live it. I am not going to live. It's a fucking waste of time. I have ceased to grow. I am a black hole.
So I will stick to my d.o.s.
But I think I will kill myself. I am past redemption. I never wanted to live, Allah and You showed your Lordship over me by making me born. You challenged me to live it. I am not going to live. It's a fucking waste of time. I have ceased to grow. I am a black hole.
So I will stick to my d.o.s.