May 2012

This post won’t be about HIV, at the moment my view on that is an adaption of a recent Stonewall campaign 'Some people are Positive. Get over it.'

Some of you who have read my posts on here before know that I have to deal with a much more insidious and debilitating condition than HIV, and that’s depression. And I have been battling with it on a huge scale of late. It’s quite a lonely fight I’ll be frank with you. People want to help and try to engage to help pull you from the morass of darkness that is totally engulfing. They will ask how you are, and then get that panicked look when you begin to truthfully tell them. They tell you they know how you feel, but unless you have stood on a bridge in the rain staring at the expanse of freezing water below with a yearning so deep it is intoxicating at 11pm on a Wednesday night then quite frankly you don’t, and it’s insulting at the very least to try and pretend you do. Unless the only thing that has stopped you jumping is the fact there where 8 men in high viz working on a boat not a hundred metres from where you stand who would see you and try to save you then honestly you have no idea how the person feels.

I write the above with a sense of detachment, as to make it as personal as it truly is angers me and makes me wonder why I didn’t just jump? But I didn’t I decided to fight again, to try and escape the void that wanted to swallow me. To turn off the voices that had nothing good to say, to not listen to the words failure and loser anymore.

And once again I find myself transported back in time and starting again. On so many levels, work, personal relationships and even fitness. And it’s a challenge every minute of every day to keep just far enough ahead.

Getting out of bed each morning is a challenge I applaud myself for beating. Putting a smile on my face and showing the world I am fine is one of the hardest things I do. Turning up for unpaid work to give myself something to do, mindful of the fact that every unpaid job gets me one step nearer to a paid one, is not only at times soul destroying but seems futile. But I do it because not to it is giving in and if I give in then I truly fear I will give up.

So I protect myself by moving to a higher ground, a place where I superficially engage with the world, I listen to the problems of others, ‘works to busy! I cannot afford the holiday I want! I’m so tired I cannot wait for this day to be over (this one is usually the day after a big night out knowing they had to get up the next day and do a full day of paid work that enabled them to go out in the first place)’ and I say nothing, because to tell them how I really feel will create an explosion that I don’t think I could control. And god forbid anyone should have an opinion that doesn’t agree with the self-indulgent nonsense people spout on a daily if not hourly basis.

I refuse to look inward these days, if I do see a gap, and emptiness that I long to fill, but it will take time. Time I am giving myself as I think it will be worth the wait. I won’t compromise who I am and what I want for a quick fix. It doesn’t and never has worked before. Each day is an opportunity to start again and a chance to get it right this time. I won’t feel sorry for myself, I will employ every distraction tactic I can think off to keep myself from falling into self pity, I’ll clean my apartment, I’ll read a book, or I will actually sit and listen to music. And by listen I mean digest every word, find hope in the melodies and the prose. Truly engage with art and appreciate the madness and darkness that drove people to produce work that endures.

Each day is a fight, but every night as I fall into bed mentally as well as physically exhausted I tell myself I have won that fight. And each morning as I climb out of bed after a night disturbed by dreams filled with the very demons I fought during the day, I prepare to fight again.

The fact that I’m writing this means I am winning. And I have made a deal with a friend, a friend who actually does understand the darkness, the next time I find myself on that bridge, I will call him no matter the time of day or night before I make a choice.