If you need help right now, the phone number of Samaritans is 116 123 from any phone.
It seems almost absurd to be watching what my own mind is doing right now. It’s off the wall. It’s been a long time since I have experienced such inner distress, turmoil and mental torment.
I was at my therapy session yesterday and for the first time was subject to pounding depression throughout the session. That scrunching feeling in my forehead of it trying to lower down on me and crush my face and that aching feeling behind my eyeballs as if something is pressing on them from behind, forcing them out. That bad. Trying to relate from a remote distance, from a place where there is no sense or reason, and everything is an act, because I’m trapped in this dark, bleak, place. It makes writing feel schizophrenic, almost, perhaps. I’m observing and experiencing at the same time. I’m not sure how that works, but I am doing it so it does.
My face could fall off at any minute and would I even care?
Depression is the weirdest damned thing, small wonder it is so hard to talk or write about.
It’s so damned hard to take anything in as well. You wouldn’t start up a conversation with someone who’s screaming and ask them what they want for dinner. Depression is not that dissimilar: what do I want? I don’t know. What can I do? I have no idea.
My world has shrunk, almost to a pin prick, that I must force my attention through. Thoughts come and go, none of them have any substance, not that I could write about. Not even thoughts occupy the same reality as the pounding beat of depression.
Did you know that yesterday was World Mental Health Day? Is it ironic to have been in a shockingly bad place mentally on World Mental Health Day? It’s something, even if I am not sure what it is.
Things that impact, may not seem be the big story, but they impact hard none the less. Today in PMQs, Jeremy Corbyn asked Theresa May, “Will the Prime Minister today show some humanity, intervene, and make at least the (Universal Credit) help line free?” She avoided the question, so the answer is no, but that’s not the big deal, the big deal is she has not a shred of humanity. That’s the killer blow from these Tory thugs. That’s what depression reads and sees, It’s not the brutality, it’s the heartlessness that lies behind it. That’s the big story!
These grasping, grovellers, after power, have sold their souls to lobbyists, bankers, hedge funds and corporations. They simply don’t give a damn about humanity, and they certainly don’t give a damn about mental health, they care nothing even for the dead on their watch, so our state of mind really doesn’t count at all.
They live a lie. They play us false and, as John Lennon so astutely observed, they smile as they kill. I have no idea how they can stand themselves, but that’s not the point. How do we stand them? How do we withstand them?
The Tories are a living (ish), breathing (unfortunately), national mental health crisis. They are the crisis that has enveloped this country and there seems no end to their brutality, certainly not in sight. Unless we can get rid of them.
The up side, and there is one, is that they play each other false just as much as they play us false, they can’t help themselves, they are false almost to a cellular level and they are falling apart. I don’t care how they got that way, that’s their problem and if they ever grapple with it I hope it is as distressing as everything they have dished out. In fact, I know that for them to face it would be a source of incredible pain, a full blown existential crisis, I know how it works. It takes raw courage to face your demons, and they have a whole heap of them that I doubt they will ever face up to. Not even if they ended up where they rightly deserve to be, in gaol. They’ve lied to parliament, they have lied to the people and they have lied to the world. Just how false can false be? Yet the UK media is largely silent, or supportive of them.
Meanwhile they have no legitimate place in their grand pretence at government. No legitimate government would cause such wilful harm, without the words despotic, dictator, fascists, tyranny being applied to them.
One of the most important things about depression is that it is about grappling with intractable problems for which no end is in sight or presents itself, no matter how hard you try. Depression is the wall against which a tortured mind beats itself. Sometimes the cause is apparent, sometimes not.
Right now, apart from anything else, we have a clear and present danger to the mental health of an entire nation, it’s called the Tories.
KOG. 12 October 2017
Samaritans – Whatever you’re going through, call us free any time, from any phone on 116 123. https://www.samaritans.org/
