Melancholy And The Infinite Blog Post

It's odd when you haven't done something for a long time it feels like doing it for the first time. It should be fresh and new then shouldn't it. Or stagnant and old with a new mask on. 

There's no excuse, so I won't try to make one. I haven't written anything in ages. No, that's a lie! I've written a lot of things, too long, too short, too boring, too personal, too...me! Me is quiet, reflective, drab and dreary. Me is silently, slowly drifting off somewhere. Domestic bliss remains, cleaning, dusting, cooking, slowly disappearing. There have been breaks in the monotony, but few, and disappointing, not living up to what a break from the banal should be. 

 

I discovered this post yesterday http://theantiroom.wordpress.com/2010/11/15/being-depressed-just-means-youre-not-a-moron/ Winner of the 2011 Irish Blog Awards best post accolade, gong, or whatever you'd like to call it. The post and it's author deserve it a million fold. It is the single most perfect description of what it feels like to suffer severe depression that I have ever read. I have been almost exactly where she describes, months worth of laundry and old pasta included. That was many many moons ago and I have since escaped the clutches of my bed. I should feel good about sharing this, about being open and honest and talking about the disease that has shaped my life. I should feel proud to have come through the worst of it, ready to show others the path through, to display the light at the end of the tunnel. I don't. I feel awkward, long legged, plaster on glasses bumping into furniture awkward. 

This post has sat unfinished for the last week. I've popped in and had a look at it, you know, to make sure it was doing alright, but I just couldn't finish it, until now. Yesterday evening I was telling Rock God about the above post. How the author so terrifyingly accurately describes my life in my early 20's. "Remember I used to call over" he said, "and there you'd be sitting in the bed, surrounded by, stuff, a half finished sliced pan, a jar of miracle whip, bottles of coke, books, all sorts of everything". "Yeah", I replied, "I remember, mad really to think where we've come from." "I suppose", says he, "you were much happier then though" and he walked away casually, not a bother on him, leaving me holding my sense of self in my hands. 

Surely that couldn't be true. Surely I'm much happier now. I get up every morning, I wear proper clothes, I shower, I use my bed for sleeping and folding laundry, occasionally for bouncing Monkey boy on but never for living in. I clean, I cook, I chat to friends, I do "normal" things. So I must be happier than I was then, I'm a lot better than I was then. Aren't I? Or is it that even at my most depressed, even at the lowest depths of my misery, I had a grasp on who I really am, I knew who I was and I was who I was. Now I seem to have lost that, I'm beige, I'm transparent, I'm not really me, therefore I'm not really here. Maybe that's why I seemed happier then, I hadn't lost whatever it was I had.