Heads or tails?

What if I could prove without contest that it really would be better for everyone if I just did it? Who could deny me then? Surely it would be okay if I could show you all that the short-term trauma would make things easier in the end. Easier for you, easier for me.

Maybe it is a moral issue. Maybe it is just plain wrong. I didn't ask to be born but I sincerely hold it as privilege, if not always a pleasure, that I was. I know all the things I have that should make me happy. Would it be viciously disrespectful to do it in the face of those things other people might die to experience once? But then I'm not one for top ten lists and besides I am well aware of all that good stuff I have. I'm depressed even with that. Not sure I want to stick around to face losing it.

I'm not expecting to go anywhere after leaving here. This is it and when it finally isn't any more then my one chance will have expired. There is nothing more for us after. Maybe this will disappoint some people and I can sympathise if it does. However, I have this curious sensation that it's this one conviction that is keeping me here. If I thought I was moving on to something better then maybe I'd be gone already. But is nothing better or worse than this?

Do you think it's fair to leave everyone who cares? Everyone who would be devastated by your absence. The domino effect could be more staggering than is possible to predict. You might not be taking only yourself off. Can you justify bringing them down to where you are? Seems to me this is not how you have lived thus far, Ciaran. But of course you know how much that need to help fix other people is another symptom of what's got you here. Perhaps this ultimate act of selfishness is merely selfishness long overdue.

This soliloquising like Hamlet is my daily bread at the moment. Often the only interlocutor in my discussions is myself so it's important I try to look at things as objectively as possible. Not an easy task but I must continue. If the cataclysmic finale is ever too occur prematurely I'd like everyone to know that I can see all the things I'd be leaving behind. All the people I love infinitely more than I will ever love myself. The beautiful sensations on earth that only humans are lucky enough ever to comprehend. The hopes for a time when things may seem better for me. All of this and more I couldn't bare to live without. But living with them can be a difficult task too. I don't want anyone to think I didn't realise how lucky I am. I won the lottery when I was born. The problem is that even with that being said I'm still not happy. I might never be. I think I am just a sad person.

Isolation

I am not the only one here. Lets just be clear on that. Your brother might be depressed. Your mother or son or best friend might be in unimaginable turmoil. Most people refuse to talk about it or stick to sweeping generalities on the topic. It's a little awkward to talk about, is it not? I understand it with crushing clarity and often I find it hard to talk about. 

I tell more people than most that I am depressed. People I've just met, even when I can't tell people I've known forever. Acquaintances and friends, family and colleagues get the mundane privilege of hearing about the essence of my wilful self-destruction almost on a daily basis. I know some people think I talk about it too much. I know that there are some people who simply do not want to know any more. I can understand it if they think at times I do it for shocks and attention. I wouldn't even attempt to deny the charge. Sometimes I crave attention, even the bad kinds. But the reasons for talking about it so openly are precisely because of the contrast with many people in the same boat. People die because they can't talk about it. Because they think nobody will listen or care. People suffer pain in silence for years because this isn't something we talk about. 

There is a generally accepted opinion that the stigma around this thing has largely disappeared. No doubt it has but nowhere near enough. I hear all the things people talk about all day every day. All the food and the clothes, the quantity of alcohol consumed and the xfactor. These aren't bad things. All I'm saying is that in the middle of all this if you ever get the feeling that someone around you isn't feeling good, even when it doesn't look like they want to talk, please make an effort to speak to them. I know myself how difficult it is to talk to me on my worst days. That I don't respond or engage is typical. But it's not that I don't want to talk to people it's often that I physically can't. I apologise for that but I'm not really sure I should.

The stigma still persists. Not in me or in many people I know but still it's a hushed conversation with many. There is no reason it should be anymore. This is why I'm happy to talk about. It might help somebody else talk too. Someone forty years my senior recently asked for my advice on depression. It's only because I am open to it that I can help. It isn't something that should be pushed into the background only spoken about in whispered conversations. Ask me about it any time. 

The quest to de-stigmatize depression is undoubtedly a current personal crusade. You see I had an episode a week ago. Perhaps feeling no worse than I have at times before it became a crisis because I allowed the symptoms to manifest themselves in the physical dimension more than I ever have before in public. I'm glad people saw it. They need to because like I said, I'm not the only one here. Now I'm not allowed to work because people had to confront what has always been there and what will remain there when I do go back. Isolation seems a bizarre treatment for an illness often directly caused by it. Out of sight out of mind I guess. Up to a point I understand the policy of getting me out of there and keeping it reasonably quiet. Then I thought again. It doesn't really encourage anyone who saw me that day to open up about their problems. Better to keep sitting on them until they're fatal because this type of thing clearly isn't acceptable. I'd be scared to talk about it too if I thought that would be a typical reaction.

It's easy to think I was always so open about the illness but I most certainly was not. Years I spent hiding it, denying it, putting it down to a bad day or tiredness. This, unfortunately had a profoundly negative effect. Over time the depression became the general perception of my personality and so how could anyone see it for real. I left it too long to get help. I won't ever see a definite end. It is part of me now. I was convinced the doctors thought I would be lying to them when I first went. Perhaps I had contrived the whole thing and they would be able to see through it. Most people I have spoken to are quite receptive however. I only wish more people would be willing to speak up.

One million people a year die from suicide. That's more than through war and murder combined. I'm not shocked by that at all. It's under reported because it's still a taboo subject. There is no way all of these could have been prevented. Unfortunately some people are beyond help. But I know a lot of these could have been prevented if people felt more confident about talking or seeking help. Even in a few cases if one person had made the effort to offer some help. People with broken arms don't pretend they are fine although people with cancer do. Imagine how well that works out. I suppose we could just continue to brush it under to save that awkward conversation. It'd be worth a million or so lives.

Behind the Fossette

It was by mere chance that I was born this way. There was no divine plan, no omnipotent overseer of my fate. It seems to me to be a ludicrous pretension that any heavenly king would have the remotest interest in any one of us. But that's just me. The odds of my existence at all are severely negligible. The combination of factors leading to my appearance on earth, from the cosmos exploding into life to the chance moment of conception, are so unlikely to have lined up with such definite perfection that I might be forgiven for believing my life was not only an accident. Perhaps even some part of me wants to believe I am here for a reason (everybody likes to be needed). But it's clear to me that there never was any plan for me being here, even if there are any number of reasons for me to stick around. It was nothing but an accident, and in my present state of mind I see it as a rather unhappy one.

Strangely, my implacable godlessness has in my happier moments had the effect of stirring something like true wonder and awe inside me. The world is a beautiful place, what does it matter to put a label on a maker when we can't ever possibly know? I don't need false piety to exert twisted morals on me so that I know the right thing to do. I'm still a good person. I know what is right without having to be told. I try to look out for friends even when it takes more from me than I can really afford to give. The most enduring effect of my Roman Catholic upbringing was undeniably a poisonous lie. The feeling of guilt so intertwined with all christian theology has left a lasting impression on my personality. I am predisposed to self-doubt and self-loathing among many other personal failings but throwing an unnecessary weight of guilt onto my shoulders for things I don't even believe are wrong is a sin I find unforgivable.

For about a month or more I have been holding back a leaky tap that disguises a waterfall of existential dread behind the fossette. Incrementally, my words are drying up as my days spent in bed become more frequent. God can't help me. No-one can. Not that I am contemplating suicide at this moment. Maybe if I had the conviction that I really had nothing I wanted to stick around for or wasn't grasping at something I can't grip. Maybe then I might have gone ahead and done the job already. On that point however, the knowledge that when I am dead and gone means just that, and not an eternal sleepover at a celestial retirement village fills me up with excited certainty that life needs to be lived all the more intensely now.

All I really feel I know now is how much I dislike this improbable collection of genes and protein cells. I'm not sure what it is I wanted to be but it is not this. It occurred to me today that one of the most evil long-term effects of depression on me has been the absolute and final destruction of any shred of true inner confidence I might have had. The outward show is only an act. As it happens, put on more for myself rather than anyone else. If I decline further inwards then I return to a useless waste. I will cease to improve but regress. I won't be a good friend, although I am beginning to feel like I give more than I get anyway. My brain will turn to mush and I will return to the days of crying at soap plot-lines hiding in my bedroom. It's already started.

It was suggested to me that I don't want help. Implying my depression is contrived, I assume to exude pathos. It seems an unfair criticism to someone who has spent his entire life considering how to be at least contented. I have lost count of the number of doctors waiting rooms, anti-depressants and therapy sessions I have had. The number of self-help books I've been through to find the treasure map to confidence. You may laugh but I've even gone to the bible for answers (there weren't any). If I were in complete denial I might claim there was no truth to the charge, but we both know better.

It is a shame that we only experience the world from inside our own bodies cage. Perhaps if I could interchange the senses of others with my own I might find myself not thinking as I do. Maybe in a far off evolution. As it is I am stuck with myself. On the flip-side we should be grateful that no-one else is.

Anyway, I guess I have spilled over enough for one evening. It is approaching quarter past two in the morning and I want a cigarette.

I should finish by crediting Christopher Hitchens with helping to put a lot of these ideas in my head. Unfortunately his effect on me was posthumous but nonetheless impressive for it