Neck-deep in sludge

Riddle me this. How come I’m on antidepressants and yet I’m still revoltingly depressed? It’s been two months now and I still feel as if I’m neck deep in a monochrome swamp. Thinking is an effort, even breathing is tough – every so often I realise I have been living on the shallowest whispers of air and have to take a huge gasp. There’s a fog in my head and my limbs feel like lead. My immune system has taken a crash and so the weird palindromic rheumatism I suffer has returned and is proliferating, a bit like a Russian vine, thrusting shoots all over my body so everything aches. I just get rid of one pus-laden spot and another one appears. On my face of course.
I sit at my desk, day after day, and watch my life passing by and just want to shake myself. I try all the old tricks – thinking of things to be grateful for; remembering all those who are far, FAR worse off than I am; taking it moment by moment. But sometimes I could slap the people who write the self-help books (and that would include me – the irony doesn’t escape me). Every night I go to bed and think that ‘tomorrow I’ll be OK. Tomorrow will be different. Tomorrow I will get my act together and get my life back on the road.’ Then tomorrow comes and the day passes and every evening is a fresh failure.

‘Don’t be so tough on yourself,’ people say. They point out that my mother died just six months’ ago (it seems like yesterday) and that the last few years have been extraordinarily tough on many counts. But the brutal truth is that I can’t afford to lie on the sofa and stare at the ceiling (as I would dearly love to do).
‘Oh, don’t fret. Everyone’s on happy pills,’ says a mother at the school gate, bright as a button, neat as a pin (swirling around managing a family and two jobs AND fund raising AND looking gorgeous).
‘Even you?’
‘Yup, even me.’
Yet hers are obviously having the desired effect and mine aren’t.

My doctor phoned up the other day.
‘Hello,’ he said, brightly.
‘Hello,’ said I, bleakly.
Pause.
‘How can I help you?’
Eh?
‘Er, I don’t know.’
‘Well, were you phoning about your results?’
‘I didn’t phone you.’
‘Oh.’
He sounded a bit disgruntled.
‘Well, your liver is fine.’
‘Great. Back on the booze then?’
‘Ha ha ha. Your chest x-ray showed up a little abnormality so we’ll get another one done. I don’t think it’s anything to worry about though.’
‘Oh. Good.’
‘Anything else?’ Still acting like I’d called him.
‘Well, I’m still not feeling great. Pretty grim really.’
‘You’re better than you were.’
Well, true. If not bursting into tears all the time is better. Now I don’t cry but I’m not sure that’s particularly healthy either. Grief has to go somewhere and if you squash it down it lays heavy on the heart.

Instead of crying, I read. All I really want to do is curl up in bed, or in a chair by the window, or lie on the sofa and lose myself in other people’s words and worlds. There is nothing as comforting as a good book and this last fortnight I have read some absolute stunners.

A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz – which took me right out of myself (a good place to be) and had me marvelling at his imagination and dark humour and use of language. So effortless. So sublime.

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh – backdrop the Opium Wars, cast a motley crew. Again, the language is remarkable (if sometimes difficult – a glossary would be useful) – an epic of a book (the next two instalments eagerly awaited).

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry – a 100-year old Irish woman details her pitifully harrowing life, alongside the testimony of her psychiatrist. I struggled with this to start with – and soon realised that its themes of memory, motherhood and betrayal touched particular chords.

I’ve now started Philip Hensher’s The Northern Clemency (yes, I’m working my way through the Booker shortlist) and holding out great hopes for it. He was one of my tutors on the Arvon course I went on and just fabulous – funny, generous, scary, inspiring. If you haven’t read The Mulberry Empire, grab a copy and give yourself a treat.

I was also sent review copies of a couple of books in the Sookie Stackhouse vampire series by Charlaine Harris (Dead Until Dark is the opener). It seems our appetite for sexy vampires isn’t remotely sated – though don’t expect the dreamy teen landscape of Twilight – it’s far more earthy and tongue-in-cheek, with a bit of crime plot to boot. I rather like the calm matter-of-fact way that Harris handles her alternative reality. Vampires have ‘come out’ and some try to rub along with humans (drinking synthetic blood and keeping their fangs to themselves). The heroine (a small town waitress) has her own ‘disability’ (she can read minds) and it soon transpires that half the town is ‘different’ in one way or another. Total nonsense of course but huge fun and wildly undemanding.

So I sit and read, or lie and read, and let the housework go hang, let everything go hang. Presumably I will surface at some point or another. But right now being inside other people’s heads is a much nicer place to be than inside my own.


PS – I’m not entirely sure that seeing my books (look on the sidebar) being sold for 1p on Amazon is helping my mood. How depressing is that?

If you want to read something a little cheerier check out my other (far more professional, far less self-absorbed) blog –http://brutallyfrank.wordpress.com/

Chalk and cheese, yin and yang……ah whatever.....