I’ve come to the conclusion that the main problem with depression is the isolation. At least, this is the issues with my depression, but I’m not sure that it is a universal. Perhaps all happy people are the same but all depressed ones unique.

It seems to stem from the complete lack of self worth. If I do not value myself then why would I expect others to? If friends go a time without contacting me this is to be expected, because why would they want to spend time with me? I don’t mean this to sound self-pitying, as though I am sunk in some fug of feeling sorry for myself (although this does happen, on occasion), it is just a self-evident mindset, an obvious state of the world that i accept and love with. So I am (I believe) less likely to go out of my way to contact people, to arrange nights out or get-together, to pick the phone and say hi and shoot the breeze. It doesn’t take long for this to become a self-reinforcing mechanism.

And it can be more damaging than that. It can lead to the Groucho effect; why would I want to be a member of a club that would have someone like me as a member? Surely there is something wrong with people who do want to spend time with you. So you chase people away, pick arguments where there are none - which, of course, is made all the easier by the fact that everyone has their own insecurities. Of course, this manifests itself with those we are closest to; not only are they obviously even more deluded than anyone else, we are just going to end up hurting them anyway. It’s what happens. We fuck up and hurt people and make the world a worse place by our very existence, so perhaps the best course of action is to drive them away early on. Take that minor annoyance or disagreement and build it up, in your own mind, into a major issue that justifies the short-term hurt. Yes, I will have to live with it forever but I’m a freak and I deserve it; I’m sure they’re a normal person who will get over it and, anyway, I’d have hurt them eventually.

The breakdown

My breakdown happened over an extended period. I guess this is the way it usually is, although it’s usually portrayed as a sudden snap, and some of it felt like that.

I know I’ve always been prone to depression. I’ve been of a melancholy disposition from childhood, had insomnia since I was eight or nine, and had a couple of minor episodes, but the break really started when my relationship collapsed. It wasn’t just that; I was in an incredibly stressful work situation at the same time, and I’m sure this contributed to the break up. We’d been together maybe 15 years, since we were both children really. Our son was born early on, well before either of us was ready for that responsibility, but we weathered that and were stronger for getting through those difficulties. After a decade and half, though, we had drifted apart. I had seen it coming for some time and just didn’t know what to do about it. Part of me just accepted that this was what happened; I’d seen it in my own family - my parents and and grandparents and aunts and uncles, my older sister. Relationships ended. It was inevitable.

But when she ended it my world shattered. She had been my life, my lover and my best friend, for so long. We didn’t do everything together, but shared so much - music and books, similar geeky tastes; we fit together. Too late I tried to argue that we should make it work, but neither of us could or would. My son was now about the same age as I was when my parents divorced, which saddled me with a mixed feeling of fate and crippling guilt that I had failed him.

A few months later I met someone else, and thought it only polite to tell my ex. We’d remained on friendly terms since I moved out, and I’d rather she find out from me that someone else. She responded with pain and anger, suddenly deciding that she had made a terrible mistake and that we should get back together. I was torn in two. Part of me yearned to go back to how things were, but I’d made commitments to this new woman and, besides, how could I trust Mel? She had already torn a hole in my chest that was still seeping rich red blood.

That night is etched into my memory. Mel had called me, asked me to go to see her, told me she needed help. I went over, to the house we had shared, and she tried to talk me into going back to her. I couldn’t, I told her, it was too late, too much. We talked in circles for hours, and I realised it was going nowhere so said I was leaving. “Please,” she said. “Please don’t go. If you leave I’ll kill myself.”

I remember this pressure building in my head, my thoughts speeding up. I love you but I can’t trust you I want us to go back to how we were but I am so scared but I want you but I can’t decide it’s too hard do you really mean that? how dare you say that I don’t want to hurt you I don’t want to lose you I have to leave I can’t leave what can I do? what should I do?

And something snapped, like a piece of metal suddenly reaching it’s stress point. I sat down and I could feel my eyes darting around, trying to find something to focus on, and suddenly Mel wasn’t cajoling or threatening any more. She was worried and scared and asking if I was alright. And I wasn’t alright. I must have begun to behave more rationally at some point, but I can’t really remember much after that. I convinced her I was okay and got back to where I was staying, but something had broken and I just papered over the chasm.

The next break was some time later. That is the only measure I can use; I really have no idea how long, but it was a good while. Work was still stressful, probably worse, the constant threat of redundancy and morale through the floor. I was cycling into work and the closer I got the more I could feel this pressure building inside me, constricting my breathing and making my brain feel like it would burst from my eye sockets. I rode past work and powered up the hill, the release of pressure pushing me along. I had no idea where I was going but just needed to get away. Yes, get away; the countryside. The Peak District, that glorious green swathe where I had spent so much time breathing the clean air and solitude.

I couple of hours in I realised I should call work. I got through to my manager and recall a surreal conversation.

“Hi. Sorry, but I can’t come in. I’m.. not well. I tried but it was too hard. I’m sorry for letting you down.”

“Paul? Are you okay? Where are you?”

“No. Not really.”

“Where are you, Paul?”

“I’m on my bike. I’m sorry. I don’t know, I just started riding. It’s beautiful out here.”

“Paul?” Getting more agitated. “Paul, where are you? Can someone come and get you?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t think I can come back. There’re a couple of finches flying along the hedge beside me, dancing around each other in the sunlight. It’s amazing, almost like they’re showing off to me, but they’re probably not even aware I’m here.”

“Paul,” (I’m aware she sounds scared now and is trying to sound calm, but it doesn’t really register) “Let me help you, tell me where you are and I..”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Look, don’t worry. You take care. Good bye.”

I ended up by one of the many reservoirs that pepper the area, providing water for Sheffield and Barnsley and Rotherham and Chesterfield on this side of the Pennines and Manchester on the other. I stood for I don’t know how long, seriously contemplating chaining myself to my bike and jumping in, trying to come up with reasons why I shouldn’t. The fact that I was always able to ask that question, to consider the possibility that there might be reasons to remain, means I never hit bottom. I know there are many people who didn’t have the strength to do that, and it is nothing but luck that I did. this wasn’t the only time I was that close and I can never forget how it felt to stand so close to that line.

It’s strange, all these years later I can  sometimes take the memory of that feeling out - the urge to give in and allow myself the peace of not having to worry any more, to be able to stop fighting and simply be enfolded in the warm embrace of nothingness - and hold it in my hand, hold it up for an almost dispassionate contemplation. But knowing that it is there, having stood at that doorway with my hand on the latch, I know that the door is unlocked and that to open it is an option. Knowing this scares me but, perhaps, it will only become a problem if it no longer does.

I tell her that I love her but I don't know if I'm lying.

I tell her that I love her but I don't know if I'm lying.

I just don't know. I look at myself in the mirror and vaguely recognise the face, but have no insight to the workings inside the head. How crazy is that? I guess being able to look in a mirror without wanting to smash it is an improvement.

When my mind broke it was like a whirlwind inside my head. I knew that I was millimetres away from it tearing me apart so stayed in the calm centre. I could feel the maelstrom swirling, barely outside the border of my skin and that I had to stay as still as possible to avoid being caught up in it. That storm was also inside my head; its violence was the tumult of thoughts I couldn't deal with so I blocked them off and refused to acknowledge them. So I shut off so much of myself to survive.

I've felt like a more-or-less functioning human being for a couple of years now - I rebuilt relationships, managed to get a job - but I don't know if that part of me I shut off is still there or, if it is, if I can still access it. I feel like I'm going through the motions. I don't know if I can cope with the stress of work, the demands and complexity of being with someone. The desire to let go is welcoming and terrifying.

Wondering how this could happen

A day later and it's still raw. We have not only returned to power a political party that is ideologically intent on destroying the welfare state in this country, but done so with a majority; we might think that being in coalition with the LibDems didn't make a difference, but I shudder thinking about what they will do without even that minor obstacle.

Make no mistake, this is probably the most extreme economically right-wing government this country has ever had; Thatcher was a cuddly moderate by comparison. I have already seen people I know who describe themselves as libertarians (of the absurd, childish Randian stripe) howling in triumph like the short-sighted, self-regarding hyenas they are. With an apology to the good name of hyenas everywhere. I think this tells us everything we need to know about this government. They will continue to asset strip our society for their own profit, leaving the rest of us disenfranchised.

I started by saying that “we” have done this, and we have. As a society we bought into Thatcher's lie that you can have a functioning civil society and welfare state without paying for it through taxation. Blair managed to get elected by proudly wearing these colours (although that government did quietly do some very good things it is all overshadowed by the harm they did, especially in joining in wholeheartedly to Bush's wars).

We had the chance to choose a different path. Looking across Europe there are movements taking a stand against the economics of austerity which are demonstrably not working to fix things and that the Tories have used as an excuse to cut public spending. But how often do we see reports on Iceland and Spain in our horribly biased media? The press encourages us to stay afraid and the British public clutched that fear and elected it. Enough people are moderately comfortable but afraid so voted for narrow, myopic – and ultimately self-defeating – self interest.

It is said that we get the governments that we deserve, but the effects of this election will be disproportionately felt by those who had the least say in it. Already a plan to further cut the Access to Work programme has been announced. Our health service will continue to be broken up and sold at a cut-rate price to profiteers (who are, coincidentally, often friends and donors to the Conservatives). People will suffer because of this election. Sick people, poor people, disabled people. Most of us will be at greater risk of falling through the cracks, and all of us are worse off, facing a meaner, colder, harsher Britain.

I'd like to apologise for a post I made the other day on Facebook. I shared a meme suggesting that anyone who votes UKIP is an ignorant, half-witted racist, and this is unfair. It is also completely at odds with the ethics I try to live by; ideas can be attacked, and should be if they are bad ideas, but people should be treated with respect. Assuming that a group of people are a homogenous, undifferentiated mass definable by their worst attribute is the very definition of 'prejudice', and is rather ironic in this context.

I am sure people have a whole host of reasons why they might choose to vote for a political party, and they probably think that these are good reasons. So, no, not all UKIP voters, or potential UKIP voters, are bigots, but they are voting for a party that is based on bigotry and if they do not accept this they are either ignorant of the facts or in denial of them. Not only are the mass of UKIP's policies based on erroneous “us and them”, little Englander stereotypes that bear no relation to reality (“Not everything is the fault of immigrants”, as it was so succinctly put to Nigel Farage in the recent BBC debate), they use the worst sort of dog-whistle – an indeed quite up-front – xenophobia in their presentation. And it is not just the racism; there is a strain of homophobia that is simply breathtaking. It is not just 'a few bad apples', either, the whole structure of the party is built on this way of thinking; it is why these people joined up.

What I really find staggering is the support that UKIP have managed to garner amongst parts of the working class; a least the BNP made token gestures - albeit badly thought out, expressed and spelled – to some working-class-friendly, Socialist-sounding polices. UKIP are economically so far to the libertarian right Keith Joseph would be saying “hang on, I think that might be a bit much”.

I think it is a symptom of prevailing attitudes fostered by a right-leaning, intolerant, hate-peddling media which encourages people focus their anger at immigrants, or 'benefit scroungers', or whatever, rather than at the real problems.

So, no, I don't think that all potential UKIP voters are racist, homophobic, small-minded, welfare state-destroying bigots. They are simply people who are considering voting for a racist, homophobic, small-minded, welfare state-destroying group of bigots. It is a fine but important distinction.

Reflection

I sit at my desk. I’ve been inactive so long my monitor has gone into standby mode so I am no longer reflected in the window. I can see across the valley, patches of orange sodium streetlight and the white lights of buildings, houses and a few high-rise buildings, but far less than you’d expect; this is a green city, so many of the streets lined with trees that they block the lights and make it look like a series of hamlets, at least at this part of town, the posh one I now live in. The hilliness adds to it as well. I can see the opposite side of the valley and the one behind that - appearing to be one continuous rise in the darkness and, in the daytime, the green canopy disguises the crest of the first hill distorting perspective. Seeing the lights twinkle, interrupted by the swaying of limbs or, perhaps, just the distortion of heat haze as the earth gives up the day’s accumulated radiation back to the cooling night, I think of a line of poetry. “Each star a light, each light a soul”. Where is that from? I can’t place it. Where did I read that? Wait; is it something I wrote, a piece of infantile doggerel I once thought profound?

I shake my head. Stop daydreaming and get to work. Okay; It’s (glances at the heavy, expensive watch on my desk that I remove whenever possible) after 11:45 at night. I’ve been staring at a blank screen all day. I hit the ‘Ctrl’ key and, after a moment, the monitor comes back to life and I glance toward the window, avoiding looking at the blank white page I have spent the day filling with a dozen words, a score, a hundred at most, and deleting. In place of the scattered patches of light is only my reflection, etched by the cold, sickly light of the screen. At least, I assume it’s me. I try to meet the gaze directly but the cowardly bastard always seems to avoid my eyes. I shake my head and look away, keeping him in my peripheral vision. I swear he’s looking at me, so I snap my head up the the pale reflection through which I can just make out a few shimmering points of white and orange, but his face is askew, as though looking at something behind me.

Laziness or disability, or a bit of both

I've had my laziest Sunday in ages.

My plan had been to go for a good distance run - 15 to 30 km - but a month or so of poor sleep culminating in the last few night of barely any sleep at all put the kibosh on that plan. Walking once around the park with the dog was about all I could manage. After breakfast I dragged myself to the supermarket then I've been on the sofa, reading when I had the mental energy to concentrate or watching videos when not. Well, putting videos on and letting them run.

I sometimes feel that it's hyperbolic to call my sleeping problems, my sporadic insomnia, a disability, but never when going through a bad patch. People who haven't experienced it just don't seem to get it. so you're tired? Well, I guess having a sprained ankle and a broken rib are both just pain, but it's a matter of degrees.

This patch as been a weird one, weeks of poor sleep interspersed with patches of very little at all. It almost makes me think of days of a complete lack with fondness, but only almost. Three, four, five days with literally not a wink of sleep is pure hell. By the third day your senses begin to warp reality and by the fourth you're hallucinating - although luckily I've rarely been far gone enough to not know that I'm hallucinating. Even at the less extreme levels everything is just harder. As well as having trouble exercising - when putting one foot in front of the other is almost too much effort how can I run? - my body interprets my low energy levels by making me constantly hungry and, obviously, tiredness makes self control on this front much more difficult. But it's the lack of mental energy that is the worst. Holding a conversation, concentrating on anything, being confident that I'm not making stupid mistakes.

So, I worked yesterday and had today off. I've been drinking steadily for the last few hours, hopefully to knock myself out. OK, it may not be the best quality of sleep, but it will be sleep (although that is not guaranteed; the sleeping tablets I've managed to beg from my GP do nothing, exhaustion and tiredness have no bearing on how I sleep, alcohol is no assurance of sleep. But I am so very tired.