Tag: Depression

Black Octopus

This dark time of year can get into our hearts. Even if we are up with the light, as I have been, the cold squeezes our bodies and stealthily tires us out. Our muscles are constantly tensed against it. Also we make ourselves smaller to keep ourselves warmer. Our breath shrinks into us and we shrink with it. In this hemisphere we should be cocooned into little warm hideyholes for the whole season, waiting for nature to come back and shake us awake. We shouldn’t fannying around with a freezing cold van on the weekend. But, moan about it all I want, it’s fun. If it wasn’t so bloody damn damn bloody cold I’d be having a whale of a time. As is, just remembering to breathe fully is a full time job.

I’ve had the Black Octopus for the last few days. The weird many legged clever squashy sense that … everything is just slightly off kilter. Dread, and a bit of sadness. It’s hard to shake it once it gets its tentacles into your ventricles. I keep on just stopping, sighing deeply and moving on without really knowing why I’m sad. But that’s the nature of the octopus. It just comes and perches on your head. For its own reasons. Sometimes I find myself thinking of exchanges that took place decades ago forgotten by all involved except for me, pulled out of my ear by one of those sucking appendages. Other times today I’ve gone back on the groove of missed opportunities. What might have been. Then I remember my walk in the autumn and how all of that stuff fell into sharp relief. What does any of that matter? I’ve wrestled that leggy twat long enough that it won’t get its beak into me this time. But it wasted some of my time today camouflaging itself.

I went to try and work in the van, realised I’d left the cable runner at Gatsby last night in an almost heroically deliberate unconscious act of self-sabotage. Well done that octopus. No power would’ve meant another freezing day. No. Not three in a row.

But rather than stagnate, a change of plan: Mel went to the warehouse to get the cable, I took the van for a wash. We couldn’t stick things on it and expect them to hold as it was. The whole thing was grimed in crap. I wasn’t washing it myself in this weather. I paid someone even more damn money, and then spent some on a hot coffee and sat there reading my book while they worked. Perfect opportunity to get something done that needed doing. You couldn’t touch it without grease.

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Now I’m at Mel’s. I put myself to bed early because there are covers and it’s warm. We’ve been clarifying ideas and running scenarios. It’s a simple thing we’re making really, and it’s important to remember why we’re making it. Despite a million complicated forms we had to fill in, in the end we are just making a pleasant moment for people. It’s not even acting. It’s just responding. It’s just a thing. I’m just getting chased by my own darkness a little bit. I think I can feel the suckers popping off now though. I’ll make polpetto nero of the bastard like they do in Astorga. Omnomnom.

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Depression and biscuits

Tristan is in a show about friendship, love, depression and the human spirit. It’s on until the end of this week at the Tristan Bates, a studio theatre in the West End. Gin for Breakfast. It’s a two hander and it’s great. Stephen Fry is talking on a panel this evening after the show, so all the seats for tonight were sold on the first day. I was in the audience last night, and there were a couple of empty seats. If good studio theatre is your bag, you could fill them!

It’s good casting for Tristan, if not immediately obvious. He’s in a Stockport accent and he hates people that wear cufflinks, whereas in reality he usually wears cufflinks and sounds as posh as I do. But he’s the joker in the pack, and the embodiment of self destructive hedonism, both of which roles he understands well. The collision of Tristan and Stephen Fry in the same small room – that’s two people with a deep understanding and transcendence of self-sabotage. And his co-star, Jess, brings a poise and a deeply mined, complicated and layered humanity. I like watching both of these actors work, as they’re doing it for complicated personal reasons so there’s never any sense of smug about their power. Both of them are less “daddy look at me” and more “sod off and let me work, daddy.” My favourite type of actor.

I lost a lot of time to a depression brought on by grief so now I try to catch and derail it when I sense it rear its head. Despite watching that play, today has been one of those days. I’ve had to constantly remind myself to stay positive. After that threatening red sky day of the hurricane, the rain has blown in. My manager phoned to bring news that the job with the big buyout fell through. My bank is shouting at me. But all of this is about perspective. There’s beauty in a dark rainy night, there’s plenty of joy to be had without getting a ridiculous paycheck, and happiness is where you put it.

I’m catsitting this week. I just walked in for the first time to my friend’s home to find that Meg had pulled a jar of biscuits onto the floor, smashed it, licked the jagged bit to get to the biscuits and eventually, somehow, she’d totally broken the lid off, likely by rolling around with the jar. Then she’d spread biscuits and glass and bits of metal jar fastener all over the floor. She seems totally fine despite this. When I came in she was positioned geographically as far as possible from the evidence, as if to say it was all the fault of some other cat. I hope she didn’t swallow any bits of glass. I’ll have to keep an eye on her closely, as that’s a catsitter’s nightmare.

It’s the perfect antidote though to all these self reflective darknesses and indulgent concerns. Feeling weird about your own crap? Look after something that doesn’t think and licks broken glass to get biscuits.

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Meg and I have a lot in common. We both want biscuits. We both know the biscuits are there. We’re both willing to hurt ourselves to get the biscuits. But sometimes you get the biscuits, sometimes you just eat glass.