"I'm depressed." I shouldn't have said it, aloud, albeit only to myself. I was sitting on the front door step, cigarette in one hand, mug of cold coffee in the other, trying to blink the sleep out of my eyes. I would have given anything not to have to go to work.

I would have given anything to stop being depressed. Well, almost anything. (The last time I tried to rouse myself from the perpetual lethargy that ruled my life, I felt worse. I kept at it for almost a month, but only ever felt worse. I stopped, and felt much better, but only momentarily. Now things were worse again, though for different reasons. I had fallen out of touch with just about everyone, which was ridiculous as most of the people that I cared to see all lived within 20 minutes' walking distance. There were one or two who didn't, who lived a mind-boggling distance away, but it was foolish to even contemplate seeing them.)

I shouldn't have said it. The reality of it - excuse the cliché‚ - suddenly hit me like a damp, mouldy facecloth on a muggy summer afternoon. I went through a number of well-documented feelings; suffocation, dizziness, an extreme sense of desperation; all of which have been gracefully described before by others more talented than I, so I won't bore you with my own pitiful effort. There I go again - it's all so intertwined, all my reasons for grief, and to change one bad habit requires an almost total personality overhaul. I sort of like myself as I am, thank you, as long as I manage to fail to remember certain things with some kind of precision. I don't want to change that much. Not even to be happy. I can't remember the last time I wasn't hopelessly depressed for a week straight, or even two days straight. I probably don't know what real contentedness is. I probably haven't experienced any since I was in the womb; blissfully ignorant of anything and everything. So perhaps I wouldn't enjoy being happy.

Perhaps if you're one of those incomprehensible people who never feels so seriously sad that you suddenly realise just how small you are in relation to the universe, or if you're one of those near-aliens who think that depression is purely an attention-seeking exercise and a personal insult to you if the sufferer happens to be a blood relation, perhaps 'youse guys' ought to eff off. Right now. I don't want you reading this. This is for me, but it's also for people who may just understand what I'm saying. People like my former friend Kate, who is so incredibly superstitious that I'm amazed she hasn't died a grisly accidental death in some totally bizarre circumstances. To Kate, everything is 'significant'. To Kate, the whole world is sane, and won't let her in. She thinks this is ultimately very sensible of the world, but every now and then it gets to her, and she has mad rages in the bathroom of wherever she happens to be living. Exactly what happens during a mad rage I don't rightly know, but flatmates report crying and screaming, and a lot of squelchy noises which may be connected with the lumps of wet toilet paper which are later found on the ceiling. I have many "mad rages" myself, usually with a bottle of alcohol and a lot of tissues for company. I have found, through experience, that if I'm going to crack up, it's better to do it in my own home with the doors closed, because if I want to to pass out at any point during the proceedings, I can, without worrying about perverts or werewolves and the like.

So. I shouldn't have said it. I sat on the doorstep a while longer before I realised this was it, it was time to feed the cats, have a shower, get myself dressed somehow and off to work. I was fine about most of it, just the work I didn't like. No, it's not the actual job, the job I like fine, it's the travelling (2 buses each way), the people I have to travel with (mostly school children of indeterminate ages, all chirping away about bands they "discovered" on the weekend, but which have mostly been around for longer than they), the people I have to work with (my paranoia having got to a stage where every time someone at work is in a bad mood, I'm convinced it's my fault, and with my faulty memory, I can't recall half of what I'm supposed to, so I find it simpler to just take the blame for whatever and try not to fall to bits). So. The travel, the co-travellers, the colleagues (well, with one exception, but he isn't either of the bosses, and the bosses are the villains who make the rules), what else?

Hmmm, sadly, it's not too difficult to think of a lot of the things that bring me down. Like one of the women at the post office. She thinks it's her duty to comment on my appearance every time she sees me. She's not just being friendly, not at that decibel level. And the morons in the sandwich shop who still can't get it through their heads that the only sandwich on which I have salt is egg, and that I won't accept a plastic bag for my purchases but I will quite happily make a fuss if I'm given one. And the casual helper there who shrieks with laughter at my sandwich selections.

The other day I was bitten on the right index finger by a new margarine tub. It's left a wound 1cm long and about half a centimetre deep. It's more painful than it looks. One of the cats obligingly stuck one of its claws into it and deepened it without lengthening it. It now opens every time I pick something up. Band-Aids seem to be allergic to me. They pop off every time I put one on.

And what, I always seem to be wondering, do I actually do at work once I get there? Anything (almost) to avoid the filing. It's not that I don't like filing, I quite like filing - it gives me a false (and therefore very comforting) sense of being able to organise, which in truth I can't.

Okay, so I've established that it's not the actual filing I don't like, but I must admit that I haven't done any since I can't remember when. I did some the other week, but it was just client data, not the stuff that's in three precarious piles, the supplier info. That's what I've been avoiding, and I know why, but it's not an explanation that stands up to any kind of anything. I dislike filing for three reasons, basically: 1. There's never enough room to put the stuff and my fingers are invariably pinched and therefore less able to do things that I need to do, like dress myself; 2. I can't stand to be watched while putting things away (this comes from being watched too much as a child, I think - I love my privacy to the point of being very difficult to live with), thus I have been waiting for an afternoon when everyone has been out. There was one, last week, but the office was only empty for about 20 minutes, which was barely long enough for me to get into gear, never mind do anything. 3. Most of it is useless junk which ought to be thrown out. We never look at it, after it comes in. It just sits in the cabinets and contributes to my squashed fingers. Our bin is not big enough for me to throw it all out, unobtrusively, at the first instance.

Right, so I don't mind the job, I don't even mind most of the work, but I mind the travelling, the co-travellers, the colleagues and the filing. And the woman in the post office and the moron in the sandwich shop. What else? Isn't that enough? And the bus service, especially in the evenings. There doesn't seem to be one, some days.

Pieces of a life (or not?):

1.     The old man watched the girl in green. "You know," he said "you look just like my dear departed wife Irma." The girl wasn't listening. She was too busy giving birth. The new pink baby screamed. "He sounds just like my dear departed son." Wept the old man, and died.
2.     Baby crawl on floor goo aah shriek gurgle faces look arms reach pick up baby hold him tight big body warm soft smell beads grab beads grab glasses throw glasses granny can't see ha ha granny drop baby fall over baby hurt bottom and cry granny hurt head and die.
3.     "So I was standing on this hill, waiting for the monkeys to come home." She pauses, waiting for his reaction. No reaction. No, wait. He giggles. She smiles, knowing that she has said the right thing to lift the mood, although she has no idea what she is talking about.
4.     I hear my father's visitors approaching. I hear the gate being opened, and footsteps on the verandah, and the door chimes echoing endlessly in the long hallway. My father serves coffee and biscuits to his friends. The special iced biscuits from France. The ones I am not allowed to eat.
5.     Melanie would later say that it had been a difficult birth. It had not, but in comparison to the brouhaha of the pregnancy, the birth itself was anti-climatic. Graham came visiting. He glanced briefly at the baby, kissed Melanie's forehead, then spent the next hour visibly drooling at passing nurses.

Mostly not, I think; more likely wishful thinking (for such simplicity). I used to fancy myself as a writer of sorts, you see. Sad, really. I've had 'writer's block' for about 2 years, and I haven't written anything new (anything completely new, completed) for longer than that. It's getting to be a problem. I want to write, and I have the occasional glimpse at a bloody good opening line, but quite often I'm unable to write it down at the time, then either can't remember it later, or can't remember what it was meant to be about, and so nothing gets written. I've churned out some 'poetry', but it's pathetic stuff. It doesn't even say what I want it to, and certainly doesn't stand a chance of evoking anything in the mind of the hapless reader.