There is a low you reach, so deep that its barely a blip on the surface. Or at least I have formed it that way. Yes, customisable misery is the new black, it stops the hoi-polloi asking questions. You know, no matter how many times I chide myself for having a dreary outlook or attempt that godawful-buggering-bollocks positive thinking, I still feel it.

There's a sadness that doesn't sleep and no matter how far I sprint, nor how fast, it remains. It always will. They say once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic, just a sober one. It is the very same with depressives. Take away the bridge-jumping ambitions and you're still left with a fuck-up.

Little girl blue, your cure is not to feel. That's what the prescription does for you: you can watch the walls for hours and not tire. Sleep for days and not ache. At some point it all gets too much, does purgatory. Life is nothing but for the extremes of feeling. And so you draw a bloodied line across your thigh perhaps, or drink a crate of liquor or down a cocktail of drugs just to see if you're still capable of feeling. Of humanity.

Give me drugs and it becomes worse, it becomes my reality, my everything. I still hold that anti-depressants ruined it for me, that they made me a living doll, desperate for emotion and meaning. Unable to concentrate on a multitude of thoughts, leaving only the most powerful ones. The dark ones.

And now I have no drugs, I have no urge to cut, no wine to drink. I have come to terms with what I am. Almost. And I know that although I will still crumble for many years to come, that it is something I just have to deal with.

Then why still do I struggle to find reason to keep going? Except that I haven't the balls not to, of course. I still fail to see what visible impact I have, where I stand in all this, what my part is in this comedy of bills and 'getting by' is: where days roll into months and soon years. Where life is so inexplicably hollow.

I find myself wanting to return to past relationships, not because they made me happy, but because I need to be needed again, to be part of something beyond myself. I find myself crying alone, waiting for healing that never comes. I watch myself withdraw, become steely, critical, 'stronger'. So I can fuck without feeling, so I can work without a dream, so I can live inside myself.

I'm pulling a sickie tomorrow.

Piece of mind

All that I wanted to do today was give my room a nice once over and step into a boiling bath. Instead I cancelled a date, replied to a heart-wrenching email from an ex, did battle with a rude ebayer and cooked some pasta. What bollocks life is when you can't get a minute to yourself.

Hark!

A new dawn awaits us.