Writing my way out of depression

Now here’s the truth. I love the idea of healthy eating and being healthy but I am not. I smoke tobacco. It is the only solace I have. It takes precedent over everything. When I’m down, I will get out there and get that tobacco even if I want to just go back to bed. Everyone will tell me it is a death sentence and the fact is I KNOW. That’s why I smoke..

Deep down there is some knowing that smoking tobacco will eventually take me from this life that these days is barely tolerable, punctuated with the odd moment of hope. I know how to eat healthy, but in times of depression, that goes out the window. I have been overdoing the wheat, the sugar and the dairy.

For three days the juicer has sat there un-used as I rummage past the beets and carrots and lemons and ginger and all things good for me to get to the rich creamy blue cheese, butter and sourdough bread.  The box of chocolates I bought for my mother who is living on a diet of protein drinks and soup say ‘open me’ I do and eat the entire box. I weigh myself which only confirms I’ve been eating too much shit.

This morning I chose coffee and a cigarette over a pint of water, lemon and honey and a pint of juice.

I’m depressed and it comes over me in waves, and sometimes I’m not, but it never quite goes away. My mind takes me down the dark corridors of sadness and I have to find a way out.

I chose not to live this life that I am now living.  I chose to jump, illegally, for good reason, to the USA into the woods with my beloved, a crazy, brilliant amazing man to build  the kind of life I wanted. I hurt no one, I spent my own money taking nothing from the alien country in which I lived. I found joy in the simplicity – living on the land surrounded by forest, growing food, being with my man and my dogs and the chickens, singing gospel music in the little country church and being outdoors in nature. It was idyllic, but a dark cloud hung over me. I was there illegally and through my own doing, I lost it all…..

I was shipped back to a town adopted by my parents where they perched in their fancy apartment, never really becoming part of this seaside town on the South Coast of England.

I live in a kind of haze,at times inspired knowing that I have information to share and a mission to help myself and others embrace a ‘return to earth’ life.  I get involved in things, experiencing moments of joy and satisfaction, but feeling overwhelmed by doing things I hate doing and stressing myself and knowing no one else is either willing or able or has the time to do.  Sometimes I curse my multi-talented nature.   And despite the good times, I am aware of a bubbling darkness in my existence.

I don’t laugh much any more and I’ve always laughed a lot. I  miss the people with whom I laugh and I am alone without that special person I’d chosen to be with.  I have no close family. My dad died 6 months after I got back and my mother has dementia. I live in this rich person’s mausoleum, beset by rules and regulations and twitching net curtains [that we must legally all drape at our windows]  watching her deteriorate and cursing her for being such a drain on my already nearly flat battery.

In the lowest state of depression, nothing seems possible.  The work I did for years to help find myself and others do the same, with much success, is eluding me.

I am depressed and maybe twenty minutes after publishing this I won’t be.  In fact I’m editing this now feeling good about writing, but sensing the burden of forms unfilled, debtors chasing me, and an accumulation of burdens in one day that just seemed too much to handle.   Right now the boiler is broken, the car is broken and my mother is broken, and I feel broken too.  She sleeps and I don’t want her to wake because I don’t want to have to deal with nappies and shit and her need for much more care than I can offer her.

When you admit you’re depressed, even suicidal, some folk freak out.  It’s not easy to be around that energy.    Admitting to those kind of feelings in jail is also very dangerous.    I know, I learned quickly how to play the system.

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