I was depressed, but I did not know it. I thought I was sombre in disposition, that all my life I would be like this. I knew no better. I walked on with a knot settled snugly in my stomach, a nervous shudder around people and a leaning on alcohol, that was my one true release. I joked, ‘The answer is at the bottom of the bottle, it’s just a matter of finding the right bottle.’ But how far away was the truth. My friends laughed, this was the only me that they knew; macabre sober, alive drunk. I wondered – would they love me as a free spirit, would they love me if I loved me.
I walked on, every day a treachery counting down until the next sleep. I was not without smiles, on the outside at work, I would laugh along with the others, I would tease and I would snap. The snapping was what I loathed most – the irrational outbursts of a temper. My colleagues bewildered, and my true mania emerging. But, this was me and I knew no better. You accept me, or you can let go. So I thought.

It was the loneliness. Waking sprawled out in a bed, my body and my arms. Sad I would speak to myself or write in a journal. Happy, I would get somewhat hysterical – hyperactive. I was so used to spending emotions alone that I found it difficult, impossible almost – to let go of my thoughts to people and to share secrets. I thought that I had none – secrets, when in fact I was riddled with them. So engraved in me, a part of my psyche that I was oblivious to them. I thought for a long while, that perhaps the depression was due to my loneliness, never knowing love and to my ire becoming embroiled in self-pity and jealousy. Staring at couples, watching inane television and being bitter, jaded and cynical. I told myself, how can I be happy if I am to look forward to a life with just me forever? I told myself, I can’t – I can’t go on alone. There is no worse fear than the fear you know – loneliness, was my fear. I knew it and I knew that as time goes on the circle gets rusted, that it would only stand to get worse.

I didn’t think that perhaps my inability to emote, my dislike of touching and my eternal anxiety was perhaps a sense of something. That my loneliness was due to my depression – and my depression was from a place I had forgotten, I had shut out. I did not like feeling sad, I did not like seeing the downside to everything but it was the only way I could cope and it was all I knew. It was how I had made friends it was the way I found humour. It was where I settled. I listened to melancholy music, I watched depressing movies, I read tortured souls. In my dreams, I was a different person. I was the person that I suppose was there somewhere – I was confident, I called people ‘sunshine’ I danced the way I wanted to, I did not have a care in the world. In reality, I loathed that person.

Nobody thought I needed help. It’s who I am, they thought. Nobody except my flatmate, who told me – over beers, drunk, the only time I would be honest and then half near tears. She told me, ‘You need help, and you need to speak to someone.’ And I agreed. I did, most of all I needed someone to accept this and to agree with me. I could not go on living with myself forever. The week previously, as I was drinking with my flatmate and another friend…sipping on my third beer we talked about surgery and what we would most like to change. My flatmate said her hips, my friend her nose and they turned to me and I said nothing. Physically nothing. But I would love to change my mind – to be someone else. ‘That is a great thing to say’ my flatmate said. ‘That is not good. You need help!’ I felt a rare moment of happiness, I felt like perhaps I would one day be content. Even if on my own – but I had to get there. I had to be able to open my mouth.