(argh)

(…)

(argh)

(…)

(sigh)

(…)

(oh god)

(oh no)

(argh)

(…)

Say something, Mr Edwards. Go on.

This is always the trouble when going for a while without writing. I spiral into myself and become addicted to nothing. Even the things I normally do for fun seem like the hardest work imaginable. I can’t concentrate on following a TV show for more than a few minutes, let alone read a book. I feel like whole receptors have been switched off, and all that’s left to feel is dull annoyances and irritations. Noises off. And on top of which is the usual voice: ‘Why bother? What’s the point?’

Daily routine lately:

3pm: Wake up. Realise how late it is. Couldn’t sleep last night. Except, of course, I could – fell asleep circa 5AM.

Sigh heavily. Wonder what to do. Listen to sounds in the street. Listen to neighbours wandering about the building. My room is right next door to the shared toilet in the hallway. So every day I hear the rattle of the toilet door handle, the toilet door opening and closing, the pull-string light going on, the extractor fan kicking into life. Then: the toilet flushing, the door handle rattle, the stiff door opening, the neighbour going to their room, the neighbour’s door slamming shut. Repeat ad infinitum.

This has pretty much been my life most days: lying in bed, listening to the above. Listening to doors opening and closing.

***

You know, I’m sitting here and all I can think of writing is ‘Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.’ I can’t think straight. I don’t know what to do. Well, I do know what I want to do. Right now, I want to throw things, and howl, and cry.

***

I know I should really keep this more self-pitying fare for longhand notebooks when it comes to ‘writing out’ one’s depression. But I don’t like to go for too long without publishing an entry, and this stuff is all I can currently muster. So as this is really a placeholder against no entry at all, Dear Reader, I ask your forgiveness and forbearance. Hopefully it won’t last.

***

Tonight I’m off to a gig, because a friend needs company and she chose me. I wish we could just do the company bit without the gig. But between staying home and feeling annoyed and depressed, and going out and feeling annoyed and depressed, at least the latter might be more likely to shake me out of the doldrums. The concert in question is Adam Green at Koko. I have no opinion about Mr Green one way or another, which I’m sure he’ll be interested to hear. In fact, I’ve seen him before. He just came on stage, played a few songs, and went off again. Where’s the entertainment value in that?

I’m not ENTIRELY joking. Nothing to do with the music or acts in question at all. It’s just that right now I feel like one of those mums or dads who might tap their feet to a song on the radio, but would never in a million years go out to a ‘gig’. I feel more like 86 than 36. Would you ask an 86-year-old along to a rock gig? Yes, I would like to meet my friends. No, I don’t want to go to a gig to do so.

So what’s really going on here? It can’t be unrelated to my mixed feelings about my own band, Fosca, and indeed about what I’m meant to be doing with my life from this point on. I’ve had offers for Fosca to play Leeds and Bristol. We’ve also been asked to play Madrid. I haven’t agreed to any yet, still feeling exhausted from Sweden (after a mere 4 gigs!) and uncertain about Fosca as a whole, at least as a gigging entity. I’m still not sure if that ‘unusual venue’ London gig is happening or not, because I’m waiting to hear back from a few people. I don’t know. It’s all so… (gestures feebly in the air).

What is certain is that I’m in dire need of a change. A break. Something. People talk about ‘turning their life around’. I think others in my position would just get out of London for a week or so and take a holiday to get their thoughts together about their life. Well, I just can’t afford that. And anyway, I’d still be bringing ME along with me.

Having no money and still living in the same bedsit after 14 years is rather getting to me as well. So I have tried to get a job, out of risible optimism. One friend piped up with details of a library assistant position, where everyone is a bit bohemian, implying I’d fit straight in. I also asked another friend about their office shift work which seems to also favour those who live a little at an angle to the world.

Well, I filled out the form for the former, and didn’t even get a response. And my shift-y friend didn’t reply to my email when I asked if I’d be suitable. Which I’ve presumed to be a polite way of saying ‘Dickon, much as I like you, I really don’t think I could bear to have you around at my place of work.’ Can’t say I really blame them. Again, my own gut feeling was that it’d be a bad idea anyway.

Problem is, my gut feeling is that doing anything AT ALL is a bad idea.

I suspect the library people just Googled me, as employers are apparently wont to do these days, found this diary and made their decision at once.

I mean, who would employ me? On this diary, I’ve publicly admitted to being:

– irresponsible
– cowardly
– weak
– naive
– arrogant
– tardy
– generally late with finishing things
– unreliable
– poor at working as part of a team
– given to falling ill
– prone to depression and panic attacks
– clumsy, with a curious poltergeist-like history of breaking things and destroying databases
– generally inept
– unable to grasp the basics about much of the real world
– reclusive
– stand-offish
– insular
– odd

Roll up, employers…!

So I’m officially too dysfunctional even for those jobs which employ bohemians. I would like to say I took some comfort from this confirmation of my so-called otherness. But in fact I was more aware of being doomed to loneliness and penury and hopelessness till the grave. The result was a lot of breaking down in tears and wailing and feeling like ending it all. But not just yet – it’s be silly to commit suicide before – oh – the current series of Doctor Who ends.

It’s my becoming acutely aware of the dichotomy between my ‘functional bohemian’ friends – people who can get and hold down jobs – and my own towering sense of unemployable dysfunction that’s really pushed me off the rails lately. So much of my waking life lately has been spent, well, weeping with despair, frankly. And you know, I don’t like feeling unhappy all the time. I don’t know about you.

***

‘Oh God…!’

I sighed this out aloud at a complete stranger yesterday. While walking around Highgate avenues in the dark, circa 9pm, trying to get away from myself. Passed a pool of street light and sighed ‘OH GOD!’ out aloud, thinking I was alone. At which moment (of course), someone passed by, appearing from nowhere. Wonder what they thought.

Oh dear. I wish I knew what best to do about All This. This whole… Being Alive business. This whole Coping business. This whole Enjoying Myself business.

***

I mean, I know it’s so wrong to feel like this, particularly when I still have a perfectly lovely and enviable life compared to real suffering and real destitution. I know I should give CBT therapy a go. But right now I barely have the energy to sift through the ever-mounting piles of untackled clutter and correspondance on the floor, to find the relevant letters about the local therapy services. And of course, there’s still all the clutter boxes, stuffed with untidy unfinished business going back years, eating away at my mental well-being just by existing. Some of it is pure ephemera: magazines I didn’t read then and still haven’t read now.

It’s taking me an incredible effort to even write this entry, let alone start sifting through my ancient clutter. I wish I could… I wish it would all be done for me. That’s the main emotion I’m feeling right now: utter excoriating dependency and a yearning to pass my life into the hands of someone else, for someone else to take charge. Ever the guest, never the host.

***

But even if I’m absolutely dreading going to Koko tonight, I know I still enjoy music. Here’s a song I absolutely adore right now. Rose Melberg’s ‘Each New Day’. The recorded version I have is backed with an echoey piano, but this live guitar version on YouTube is just as good:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPIpPuy29Qs