The Anatomy of Ugh.
I'm depressed, then.
It crept up on me. I knew it was happening. I know the signs. There is the need to escape, to run away. There is a need to be heard and not to be questioned. There is the pain of miscommunication, the sheer effort of having to double down on the clearest language at your disposal. The misery of being misunderstood and the paranoid suspicion that the misunderstanding is being done on purpose, to further some hidden agenda, to promulgate another point that has nothing to do with your intention. I can feel the dryness at my throat, the banding pain, the desperate futility of attempting to talk to people. The feeling of leaving yourself wide open, only to have your organ's greedily harvested by oblivious jumble-salers.
Sale on, Salers.
And now there is the slow down. The fatigue that apes fatigue. I get up. I sit down. I walk around - in a limited way, my feet and neck are still in agony. I go through the motions of going through the motions. But the fight has gone. When its an effort to make toast, you can't trust yourself to try and write something. There's nothing there. Just this. The anatomy of ...what? Defeat?
I'm bone-tired of doing the same old things, of saying the same old things, of clinging to ideas like lichen on a gravestone. In the end it wasn't the isolation—I'm not isolated. Its not the constant indifference my work is shown by friends and strangers alike. Its not my ineptitude as a writer, though that is always there. Its not the paucity of ideas or the fragility of friendship, the pointlessness of it all.
It was the physical incapacity that finally wore me down: I can't go for a walk, its as simple as that. I'm in my lovely house sat soft on the sofa and I can't do any exercise. Its the constant, minor, jabbing pain. I relax, forget myself for a second, and there it is again. A reminder that my broken, neglected body is finally getting payback for the years of misuse. It has the whip-hand now. It has both hands, in fact, and a crippled foot, and a shattered knee and an arthritic thumb and a trapped nerve in the neck. After years of abuse my body is finally the boss of me.
I look at the weather reports. Tomorrow brings another glorious day. And then another. And then another. The gift of life generously bestowed, the colours brilliant through the glass. Bees bump into things. Small, fizzy birds hover. The sealant blisters on the garden furniture.
I may shuffle over the decking tomorrow. Sit down. Smell the air.
It crept up on me. I knew it was happening. I know the signs. There is the need to escape, to run away. There is a need to be heard and not to be questioned. There is the pain of miscommunication, the sheer effort of having to double down on the clearest language at your disposal. The misery of being misunderstood and the paranoid suspicion that the misunderstanding is being done on purpose, to further some hidden agenda, to promulgate another point that has nothing to do with your intention. I can feel the dryness at my throat, the banding pain, the desperate futility of attempting to talk to people. The feeling of leaving yourself wide open, only to have your organ's greedily harvested by oblivious jumble-salers.
Sale on, Salers.
And now there is the slow down. The fatigue that apes fatigue. I get up. I sit down. I walk around - in a limited way, my feet and neck are still in agony. I go through the motions of going through the motions. But the fight has gone. When its an effort to make toast, you can't trust yourself to try and write something. There's nothing there. Just this. The anatomy of ...what? Defeat?
I'm bone-tired of doing the same old things, of saying the same old things, of clinging to ideas like lichen on a gravestone. In the end it wasn't the isolation—I'm not isolated. Its not the constant indifference my work is shown by friends and strangers alike. Its not my ineptitude as a writer, though that is always there. Its not the paucity of ideas or the fragility of friendship, the pointlessness of it all.
It was the physical incapacity that finally wore me down: I can't go for a walk, its as simple as that. I'm in my lovely house sat soft on the sofa and I can't do any exercise. Its the constant, minor, jabbing pain. I relax, forget myself for a second, and there it is again. A reminder that my broken, neglected body is finally getting payback for the years of misuse. It has the whip-hand now. It has both hands, in fact, and a crippled foot, and a shattered knee and an arthritic thumb and a trapped nerve in the neck. After years of abuse my body is finally the boss of me.
I look at the weather reports. Tomorrow brings another glorious day. And then another. And then another. The gift of life generously bestowed, the colours brilliant through the glass. Bees bump into things. Small, fizzy birds hover. The sealant blisters on the garden furniture.
I may shuffle over the decking tomorrow. Sit down. Smell the air.
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