Part Six

The people that are crying inside are the same ones that flip and shoot up a school or hang themselves, these things are seen as shocking when they happen. Why? They’re inevitable with phrases like “everyone has their problems” indoctrinating the minds of the vulnerable at every chance.
This idea that Depression, and it is capitalized, can be baited out and exorcised like some kind of demon in the night is wrong on the most basic level.
A notion founded in outdated ignorance and an almost deliberate misunderstanding of mental health issues has fed the cycle of hurt and heartache across the world. If we were taught that Depression was a problem in the same was that Down’s syndrome is, we would help those affected and we’d do it without a hint of resent.
Instead, the stigma of Depression doesn’t resemble the stigma found in disability, despite its debilitating features, instead resembling the stigma attached to homosexuality or Asperger’s Syndrome. Like it’s somehow a minor issue, an aspect of a person’s self rather than the governing feature.

Depression makes a person think differently, right to the foundations of himself. It’s all-absorbing, a life is ruled and ruined by it. A decision can’t be made without forethought to future episodes of misery.

Winston Churchill likened it to carrying around a big black dog, a dark burden that weighs heavily and pushes against a man’s chest, suffocating him with pure… nothing.
Sadness and misery are estimations, a roundabout way of describing the indescribable. People assume they know what it feels like, being told they haven’t felt it is like saying a new color has been discovered; unimaginable.
The blackest punch to gut, a punch of guilt, shame, hatred, anger, sadness, tiredness, apathy, demotivation and the most profound sense of doom and dread possible, all multiplied to the nth degree and wrapped around you like the dirty hands of the angriest, seediest cunt in the world; yourself.

It never leaves. The punches draw back, but you know another’s coming and you know the grip’s coming back to squeeze you again soon. Always.

Part Five

Been away for a few days, lovely to return to so many positive and thoughtful comments. Thanks guys!

Part Five

People try to justify too many things by trivializing life, condensing the enormity of something so beautiful and grotesque into manageable nuggets of clichéd dialogue from the last rom-com they saw.
“Life is what you make it,” a piece of pop-philosophy from the pat-yourself-on-the-back school of “you can be like me one day” School of Arrogance. The implication being that one would ever choose to fail.

Being lazy and apathetic is never a choice, nor is alcoholism and nor is unemployment. If somebody is expressing the idea that they’re choosing not to “better” themselves, ask why. Don’t assume they’re bad, wonder why they’re making such a destructive choice. Why would someone willingly ruin his or her life? They must hate themselves to some degree to wish such a half-hearted fate on themselves, and if that’s the case then I believe they need to be helped. Not so they can contribute more to the world, but so they can absorb more of what the world has to offer.

We may be running out of resources in the form of energies and money and love and whatever else, but the jungles are still beautiful and the beaches are still idyllic. Birds are still majestic, so why can’t a man be happy in noticing these things?
If I knew, I’d be happy, but I don’t, so I’m not. Does that make me bad?

I was told a few days ago that “everyone has their problems.” I was expected to buck up and smile after hearing this. One of the most ignorant and idiotic attempts at a motivational line I’ve ever heard, and I’ve heard plenty.
Yes, everybody does have their problems, but how is that a positive thing? I don’t hear that and think “wow, they have problems yet they smile and live life!”
Instead, I think “wow, they smile and live life and yet they’re still unhappy beneath it.”
That’s one of the ugliest things about this world, the perpetual lying. On top of the lies, come lies regarding the lies and then lies regarding those. If someone wants to cry, let them. Hug them while they do. Don’t make him feel like it’s the right thing to do to bottle feelings up until he implodes.

Part Four

I’ve realized recently though, with the help of my counselor, my editor, my dad, and my online friends, that I am good at talking. Whether it’s blagging a fiver from my dad, landing interviews and writing jobs that I’m completely under-qualified for, boldly attempting (although often failing) to chat up girls, or selling double glazing for Zenith - I can talk. I can lie.

Accepting this, I don’t feel my ego swelling or my heart sinking with the usual disapproving resentment of such arrogant self-aggrandizing. I feel proud.

I can do the things I want to do with this skill, such as it is. I can live on the continent; I can apply for jobs, chat up girls, sell my own personal brand and feel completely at ease with myself. Just the thought makes me feel happy. I don’t want to die when I imagine this, I want to live.

So it’s time to do it, I’ve found what might make me happy and so I’ll leave. I want to wake up when I want, sit in a quirky French café and write on my laptop. I want to harass the girl at the counter for her phone number in my broken French and smile even when she declines, and I want to blag my way into the biggest and best situations imaginable. Why would I do anything I don’t want to do? Because “life isn’t fair sometimes”? Bollocks, life can’t be summed up some second-rate quote from a straight-to-DVD drama; it’s too vast to comprehend and too small to waste.

Letter

I don't hate you, but I am angry. I'm not angry at you, I'm angry at just about everything.
Until the other night I'd only shown part of myself to you, it's still me, but it's edited.

I'm sorry, because I know I gave you little choice in anything, I know I'm difficult to speak to when I'm like that.
I'm so tired of people claiming to understand and appreciate how it feels. Whether they're correct or not, it's just not what I need to hear.
I KNOW I need to just... man up sometimes, but if I'm not doing so already then why would being told it change that? That's my view at the time of feeling those things I mean, not necessarily my view when I'm myself.

I'd had a lot to drink that evening and I'd taken sleeping pills, my pills are harsh and I tend to sleeptalk for the last 10 minutes or so before crashing completely. I wasn't sleeptalking to you, but I was certainly beyond the point of caring about you, and I stopped caring about myself a long time ago.

I hate to say this, because I DO understand that everyone has their own problems and hardships, but please don't underestimate how hard parts of my life have been.

Some thing I couldn't express to you at the time is my frustration at the phrase "everyone has shit to deal with." I still can't fully explain it, perhaps because my logic is basically flawed, I don't know, but here's my best shot:
When I'm depressed I don't care about ANYONE. I'm angry at the world for being such a hate-filled and cynical place, a place where people don't care. I know this is hypocritical, but I feel it anyway. Hearing that everyone else is unhappy on some level too doesn't cheer me up, it doesn't make me feel the world is a better place and it doesn't make me worry about them. It makes me angrier, angrier that so many people accept unhappiness like it's to be expected and that nobody cares.

This anger is what drives me in my work. I find it easy to blackmail people and hurt people and damage lives, because I can choose to stop caring when I feel like it. It's just easier to do that than have to feel the emotions related to causing pain. 

Blah blah blah, I suppose.

I'm just sorry, and I hope you can forgive me. I miss your sexy face and smartarse comments, genuinely. 

Chris.