Category: Depression
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I just want to be well again. I recognise a lot of this is self-inflicted bullshit (it would be silly to blame everything on mental illness – explanation is not an excuse) but still.
Maybe I should rephrase that as ‘stop being an idiot ‘.
On the plus side – I am always reluctant to talk about anything I am working on in case I jinx it – I wrote a large part of a script treatment yesterday and that was the first day I didn’t cry over anything. I listened to some of my favourite Queen songs, a joy that I suddenly lost last year when every single time I’d try even their upbeat stuff I’d burst into tears, thinking how fucking unfair it was that Freddie isn’t here, that he couldn’t see how he is still loved. The man whose last words to his fans was “I still love you.” The euphoria of BoRhap had worn off (not my love of the movie – I’ll die defending that movie just as i’ll die defending Christopher Nolan’s work that some have so gleefully misrepresented to outright lied about – just that I no longer found myself able to enjoy the fan side) Same with Nirvana and a lot of other bands and authors and films I love. Everything I loved was suddenly tainted.
I just couldn’t enjoy anything I used to. I’d watch stupidly camp movies because I couldn’t stomach anything else. Funnily enough, Candy (the novel) was one of the few things I could manage. Maybe it was the security blanket of experiences that I understood a little, but I had enough distance from it I could still get through it (I was skipping chapters though). One day I’ll get to the movie, but it still seems too soon. Yes, I know Heath has been gone 14 years, but that was a deep wound. I miss him everyday. People can think it’s stupid all they want. I’m beyond caring. I miss him. I don’t regret my tattoo tribute to Heath one bit. All the people I call muses have helped me through tough times, so people can take their judgemental crap and shove it up their ass.
That and Stephen King were anchors during a dreadful and lonely time. Movies, music and literature have always been my “friends”, and suddenly we weren’t friends anymore, just acquaintances that barely callled. Not the best comparison, but I’m recovering from a booster jab that knocked me back, the Christmas debacle (I may share that story one day, it was awful but also kind of funny) and blood samples I gave today. Cut me some slack. 😉
What I said in another post about my cemetery visits is true. I’ve always liked cemeteries – not for aesthetic reasons, but because I liked to imagine the stories of the dead.
I’ll never know anything about those people, and it is not my business to know then and now. I just felt a kinship with the dead because, to be blunt, I wanted to join them. In the past I could divert such feelings with whatever media I enjoyed. But I didn’t enjoy anything then. Maybe, as Jim Morrison sang with perfect morose inflection, this was the end.
am I glad I didn’t follow through? I don’t know. I feel I made a solid enough decision to “keep [myself] alive”. I guess that will have to do. Apologies to my family and friends if this is upsetting to read about. I love you all, but I can’t lie about what a struggle I went through either, and you had to put up with a lot of bullshit from me. I lash out sometimes when angry and unhappy. It’s not something I’m proud of. I hope you understand.
I originally wrote this on Instagram. I cleaned up the format, spelling and grammar but it is pretty much as is.
If you can possibly spare anything at all, my Cashapp is £SaferThanHeaven84, my ko-fi is:
https://ko-fi.com/emmaslens and my paypal is emmaconner84@gmail.com.
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I washed my face and hair
for the first time in recent memory
time seemed to have become like a dream
and I was unsure how long was long
(hours, days? Weeks surely weren’t possible).
A woman looked back, and her face pinched
in a quizzical expression because that woman
was not me. Worn, dark circles and eye creases
like train tracks long abandoned and leading to a station long gone.
But of course that was me,
that was who I let myself become.
I was the abandoned station. Forgotten except by the younger me
who broke the windows and scribbled obscene graffiti onto it
my mirror to the world. I hated her because she
let herself become derelict, and that’s what people saw me as
and I was furious that I could fail myself so badly.
I cleaned the stranger’s face with care,
it was time to start make repairs.
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When I woke up this morning – or, should I say, came out of my doze – I saw a beautiful white light painting the wall. I thought maybe – at last! – heaven had taken me home. Taken me to a kind, welcoming place where finally things are good, no more crying every day.
It was the dawn light. Because, as Hugh Jackman said in the The Prestige, the world is solid all the way through. Sometimes though, for just a minute, you can believe…
My life here is real, solid all the way through. My misery here is real. And I don’t know if it’ll ever change for the better.
If you can possibly spare anything at all, my Cashapp is £SaferThanHeaven84, my ko-fi is:
https://ko-fi.com/emmaslens and my paypal is emmaconner84@gmail.com.
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I wish I had kept the beautiful me. Instead I lost all of her. -
I destroyed one of my favourite dresses today. I was painting in it – my stupid fault – in the one corner of the bedroom I can work in. Our house is too small for anywhere else.
Thing with acrylic paint? It dries out. And when you’re depressed you don’t do much of anything. So my green paint dried so much I had to squeeze hard to get it out. All over my dress. I have an apron, so that was my fault. The small house, the careful savings of my benefits (for mental health issues)? Those are classist bullshit.
I just hate being so fucking stupid. Poor, stupid pathetic and thinking anyone wants to see what I make. All I make is pathetic rubbish.
Yesterday I found my first attempt at re-starting painting. I had printed out pictures of my “muses” to help reference from: Michael Carmen Pitt, Danusia Samal and Jamie Bochert. I hadn’t got to Rami Mslek yet. I looked at those accomplished and successful people and now I wonder what the fuck am I even doing?
I am a failure. That’s it. That’s all. I took a decent painting and ruined it because I thought I could make it better. I can’t even make my life better.
I don’t know what the hell I’m doing anymore.
I don’t know.
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I had my biweekly benefits interview today (apparently they tried to tell me to stay home and do it by phone. Oh well). These sessions are really more of a catch up and a subtle prodding at my mental state to make sure I’m not planning to take any baths with a toaster. Which several days ago was a not unattractive option for me. I was crying a lot.
(I know you are tired of hearing me talk about crying. Again, I’m sorry. I opened a mental Pamdora’s box and I can’t seem to find the lid).
Fortunately the mood passed. A good thing, I hope. The future can seem ominous, especially at year’s end. Suicide rates go up at Christmas for a reason
What I wanted to write about was a slight follow up from yesterday: little things. Little victories. I was seen by a work coach who doesn’t really know me, so we did the edited “this is what I want in life” chat. I don’t know what I want in life really, other than to create, so I usually stick to the one area of art I actually have some published work in: photography.
I had a photo used as part of an advertising campaign for the Sony RX100 MK2 model camera. It was a collaboration with hitrecord.org, a community I was a member of at the time (I still am, but take part in little of it anymore. My last check for my work from them was 27 cents. What can you say to that?)
Anyway, fifty of us were featured in their ad campaign. It was the most money I ever made from art: just over a thousand pounds. I bought a second hand Samsung laptop since my desktop was dying. It was the best computer I ever owned.
I gave the abridged story of this tiny triumph to my work coach. She did the politely impressed response. I shrugged, muttering I had done little since. I had a screenplay considered for broadcast here in the UK, and was featured in a few other hitrecord.org publications. It amounted to nothing in the end.
I know I sound ungrateful, and I don’t mean to seem so dismissive: I’m proud of my little achievements. That’s not the problem.
I’m ashamed thst I failed to turn them into anything but this utter mess, my failures. This life of emptiness and pennilessness. I failed. I am a failure, a loser, it’s that simple.
Little things can be good, but what we take (or don’t take) from them can be bad. Useless as I am in life, I took nothing but stupidity from mine.
So it goes.
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Burn away all the hate and rage. Cleanse my soul of all karmic punishment. Begin again.
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Written for a prompt on hitrecord.org.
I won’t tell you what my inner monologue has to say these days. That would seem to run contrary to the prompt, so I’ll clarify a bit: I’m not going into much detail on my current inner monologue because it is a dark place. Anyone who knows me will know what I mean.
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It wasn’t always that way. My inner monologue was full of movie ideas when I was six or seven – a child with a vocabulary of a teenager, an active imagination and few friends interested in hearing about any of it. That didn’t bother me back then. I rehearsed my lines in my head, rewrote my drafts, offered commentary on how I was doing. We had a lot to say to each other.
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I learnt quickly never to say it out loud though. I knew early on I was a bit different to the other kids, and certain behaviours wouldn’t fly with them, but it didn’t make me sad. Not yet.
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My monologue started to get angry when, once again, maths defeated my understanding. My flaws, my weaknesses, my deficiencies were starting to show and my monologue, like my teachers, hurled criticisms at me.
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Monologue, once my most jubilant cheerleader when teachers and other students loved my short stories, suddenly became a stranger.
Monologue, the one who had wondered if that man Stephen King (my dad was a huge fan, so he was the one “adult” writer I knew of) would like my stuff, called me stupid. A loser. A freak.
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Darkness crept in more and more as I got older and, it seemed, the world became ever more hostile toward me. Sometimes people would catch me muttering under my breath – monologue and I discussing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or dinosaurs or art or acting – whatever I had on my mind that day. What a weirdo.
Why are you always embarrassing yourself like this? Demanded monologue. I didn’t know.
You’re stupid, she said.
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As I sat on the classroom step alone during lunch break, a long time before things got bad, I asked a question monologue couldn’t answer at the time: why didn’t the other kids like me?
Later on, she had a whole list.
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Many years later, at 14, monologue asked me a question I couldn’t answer: why won’t you just kill yourself?
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She still asks. Sometimes I answer. But that’s between just me and her now.
Bloody Roses 