Category Archives: Depression

Tension

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I think my neck is trying to kill me.

For three of the past four days, I have woken in the early hours with a headache that emanates from my neck, rises through the back of my head and over the crown, descending into my forehead, where it comes to rest behind my right eye.  And there it stays for hours, impervious to any pain killer that I can throw at it. These things render me incapacitated with pain and sickness.  They make me utterly miserable.

Today’s was partly my own fault, but I’d like to place most of the blame on the tanker driver who exploded his load of propane on the M56 yesterday afternoon.  Having spent a couple of days relaxing in north Wales, we were in the car on the way back from a day of beautiful sunshine on the beach when the traffic report came on: M56 closed for several hours due to some twat exploding.  My stress levels started rising immediatley; I’d wanted to be home for no later than 8pm so I could pick up Otto from Mum and Dad’s, let him and Rocky have a few handbags before settling down to an early night.  As it was, I didn’t see the point in setting off on the two and half hour journey because the diversion routes would be so congested that it just wouldn’t be worth it with a stressy Tina and equally stressy Rocky.

Serena kept me calm on my journey, she knew the motorway was closed and planned an alternative route through Cheshire, where we were joined by many others following the same diversion.  The time ticked on, the light faded and the burning in my neck grew.  By the time I deposited Otto in my dining room, it was gone 11pm and I hadn’t had my pill.  

It’s still early days in my adventure with Sertraline, but I’ve found that they make me quite drowsy, so I’ve been taking them in the evenings.  It’s quite nice, the way I drift off to sleep for a few hours before waking at about 4am and I’ve not suffered any of the other potential side effects warned about in the patient information leaflet.  Last night’s lesson, however, was do not take just before bedtime because today, in addition to my customary, vomit-inducing headache, I just couldn’t wake up.  The stress and duration of my journey, the diplomatic intervention between Messers Hissy Claws and Gummy Snarling, the late night and chemically-induced neurotransmitter overload was just too much for me.

Poor, wrecked me.

The thing that I’ve found about these headaches is that, if I lie in a position that’s most uncomfortable for every other part of my body, i.e. flat on my back with no pillow, they don’t hurt as much. It’s just that the lack of sleep and back ache makes you feel and look like the undead.

I think the answer might be a neck massage, with prolonged, firm pressure applied to the anterior aspect.  I can imagine all the stress and tension escaping from everywhere, permanently.  Once the medication takes full effect, though, and with a little extra help, these days will be a long and distant memory.
Mac n cheese

In other news, I had a Marks and Spencer macaroni cheese for my dinner this evening and it was delicious. It was a remnant from recent trips to the hospital where I was visiting my dad as he was being treated for pneumonia.  With the introduction of Marks and Spencer Simply Food outlets to most hospitals, being sick or visiting the sick has never had so many upsides.  

Rocky… Rock! JESUS!!!

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Those three words, said with exasperation, are the ones that are heard most within these walls more than any others.

With the odd “fuck!” thrown in of course.

Not to mention: “I’m fed up” and “I hate my life”.

After a restless night last night during which I had to give in to yet another canine tantrum and allow him to sleep with his squeaky toy on the bed, the offending item had been hidden from him this morning. Now that it’s bedtime again, he has demanded his latex comforter; shouting at it, even though hidden from his view.

My dog acts like a retard, but is highly intelligent. He is pack leader in this house.

It was never meant to be like this. He was introduced into a home with two mummies (he being the idea of his other mummy), but homes with two mummies are doomed to failure because relationships between two mummies generally bring together women who are suffering from a spectrum of mental illnesses, otherwise known as lesbianism.

“You can keep the fucking house, I’m taking Rocky!”

What on earth was I thinking? I’d been his main carer for nearly two years and I still wanted to have sole custody. Mental illness, you see. But still, of all the souls I have encountered in the past seven or so years, and of all those that I have yet to be acquainted with, that little dog is only one who I know will love me unconditionally and will be a constant in my life.

I just wish he was normal.

Photo shoot
When I took him for his jabs and check-up the other month, I signed up to something that provided a discount on this and that, flea treatments, annual blood tests… and a free – get this – photo shoot! They phoned me today, the people from Venture Portraits: “So, you can come along with your partner and children, and our photographers are great with animals, so we can do some lovely shots and you can have some lovely photographic memories to keep and keep again.”

“Can I get somebody else to have their photo taken with him? I look like something that’s crawled up a railway embankment after a derailment.”

…Nervous laughter…

“I’m joking. Yes, it might be nice, but it’s just me and him, unless I can drag my niece along. That might be nice. Actually… can you just do him? After he’s had a hair cut? And a few valium?”

They’re calling back next week.

I remember when those sorts of family portraits started cropping up in people’s homes around 2005. At first, they seemed quite sweet, an innovative way to capture the family dynamic away from the staged “book of the dead” portraits that had gone before them. Then after the first few times of seeing another family pile-up shot (“Oh, ha ha ha! isn’t that a lovely and novel way of taking your photo, I’ve NEVER seen that before!”), it became at best tut-worthy and at worst, something that made me want to kill small animals.

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Right Move either had the obligatory Audrey Hepburn negative on block canvas or the Venture Portraits family pile-up shot adorning walls of houses that were being sold in all price brackets. [For a fun evening, I often go on Right Move and tally up the number of homes for sale in a particular area that have at least one Audrey Hepburn and/or a “feature” wall of hideous floral wallpaper.]

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This image will haunt your nightmares.

I am tired. I’m tired of life, of the struggles of having nobody to share the burdens of it with. So, I’m taking a week off work in an attempt to recharge a little bit. To help lift me from this autumnal gloom, I am going off to Blackpool and I’ll be staying overnight in a 1960s-themed guest house where the bar looks like this:

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Kill me now.

Sundays are rubbish

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Sundays are rubbish for so many reasons, but mainly because they mean that:

Tomorrow

= Monday

= Oh dear Lord please how much more of this torture?

= if you feel like that, you need a new job

= but there are fewer and fewer jobs in your field

= but you hate your field anyway

= you’ll have to re-train

= you’ll have to take a MASSIVE pay cut for a number of years

= you’ll have to see if somebody wonderful doesn’t mind supporting you for a while

= you have somebody wonderful, but she’s had to go home and you won’t see her until Friday because today

= Sunday
Still, at least I no longer have to endure Songs of Praise and the Antiques Roadshow on a Sunday evening.  Not like when I was a child and there was only one TV in the house and we HAD to watch BBC1 and this meant torture from crap like Last of the Summer Wine, Howard’s Way, Bergerac, Mastermind and, not forgetting, That’s life! (!).  Oh how the sombre tones of the Mastermind theme were perfectly in tuned with my mood as I sat in front of the fire, trying to get my hair dry without suffering third degree burns.

Back in the 1970s, nothing was open on a Sunday, there was nothing to do in terms of today’s options of going to the shops, the choice of cinemas, places to eat.  The only things that opened were bookies and churches and the odd corner shop (as in strange, rather than infrequent).  This meant that, in the afternoon, we were dragged out to visit old people, or they came to us and we had to be quiet unless spoken to.  You might think that a child would find this torture, but it was OK; old people are nice and funny and there was usually cake and biscuits.  I can’t remember what they used to talk about, but it was far more interesting than anything I could ever interject with, so it was worth listening.  We’d get taken for walks in the local woods and hear stories of the old mine workings down there as well as learn a little about the natural environment.  These days, such activities are the luxury of kids from middle class backgrounds, but for us, this was free and there was bugger all else to do.

Back then, Sundays were always bright and sunny or pissing it down with rain.

So back to now and Sunday evenings still fill me with utter dread.  The feeling starts at waking when I realise that the weekend is over, that there’s not much point making plans for the day because my girlfriend has to leave at teatime.  And then she goes, and the depression closes in.  Today’s departure was worse than usual for some reason.

Five more sleeps.