The Proclaimer asks if I'm happy and I change the subject or just laugh.
Never do I look at him squarely and say 'yes' because I'm plain terrified of tempting fate.
I've never considered myself to be superstitious but I find I'm afraid that if I relax and acknowledge that I'm feeling you-know-what, then it'll be whipped away and I'll be sent tumbling back down the well.
I've always suffered from depression and believe that's just my natural state, so I don't expect it to be cured. My only hope is being strong enough to force it aside each day. Unless I'm constantly occupied and busy and creative then I'll slump and my mind will cave in upon itself.
I said this to a therapist once - that I'm simply prone to it - and she waved a hand at me and said there's no such thing. Rubbish! For all the diplomas tacked to her wall, and the soft armchairs and floral fabrics and carefully placed boxes of hankies, she knew nothing.
But I couldn't challenge her because depression guts you, and it becomes an effort just to raise your head from the pillow.
I remember thinking with relish how good it would be to be scooped off the street and into a mental ward. Why can't those fabled men in the white coats just take me away? I wanted to be closed away in a dim ward, far away from the world, but how do you get to that hospital bed? You need to phone your GP. The line will be busy, so you'll need to scrape up the courage to make that phone call again and again. When you finally get through there's a nippy receptionist to deal with. Then there will be appointments and referrals and letters and waiting lists to navigate. I don't know how to get across that rushing river of bureaucracy to the calm safety of hospital with someone swinging the door closed and sliding the bolt shut.
Well, there was always suicide. This will sound grotesque to those people out there of sturdy minds, but the thought of suicide was a grim comfort to me: if things get too bad, I can just slip away.But then my mind would be so undone by depression that even death was too complicated to deal with. Seems you can't just slip away. With a paracetamol overdose you don't drift off into quiet shadow, you die on the floor from liver failure. Being a coward I would need another method, but what? And where do I do it? I don't want to leave a mess or be found by my sister, so I'll need to go off in the countryside. But then it's the police who'll find me and it was unbearable to imagine them at my gran's door, with gran saying 'my lassie'.
I have gradually and ever so slowly climbed out of depression, so when the Proclaimer asks if I'm happy how can I tell him it can never be as simple as that? Even when, for a moment, I feel a flash of happiness there is always the threat that it'll vanish and I'll be back in the dark again. The memories of wanting to die are still vivid, like some hideous wet paint which will never dry.
But here we are in North Berwick. He's brought me here to see the puffins on the Bass Rock and on the shore he asks if I'm happy.
I'm like those old Japanese soldiers, stranded on an island, who don't know the war is over, who don't realise it's perfectly possible to go home and live a nice, quiet life. For me, the war is still on. I'll always be skulking in the jungle with my rifle, suspicious of everyone and jumping at every sound.
But down on the beach with The Proclaimer, with the puffins clowning around and the air damp and fresh, there may be an armistice every now and then.
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