Suicide, depression. And love.

This entry will be another peculiar mix of Quite Depressing and Visceral and then Strangely Optimistic. You have been warned.

Oh, the goddamn effort everything is when depression is bearing down on you like a vengeful seagull. Cheerful for a second as you watched the sunlight glitter on the 6am faces of weary commuters? I’ll have that, thanks. A fledgling little flutter in your chest that you might be able to leave the house today if you really really try? And that, thanks . All these little hopeful moments are stolen away. It’s tripwire for the mind.

I’m trying my best to pull the chair up to the desk and write here just so I don’t lie in bed all day staring at the ceiling. I’ve had cracking insomnia lately. I slept three hours today after I absolutely wore myself out. I woke up panicked in half light, reaching for the phone that never rings. The seroquel overdose sleep knocked me for a whole day but didn’t take away the depression I was trying to medicate out of me.

It’s not at that apocalyptic, suicidal level of Saturday but its peaks and troughs right now.

I have subconscious little rituals when I am down. I sever connections, reject affections. Tidy things away- scraps of paper, mementos that I’d normally worship. It harks back to when I lived at home in Belfast and suicidal depression would send me into a spring cleaning frenzy. I wanted to rid my room of evidence and slip away unnoticed. Stopping the clock would be the last thing I did. I couldn’t have those idiot hands drivelling on, telling time that nobody wanted. (Represent right back at you, David…)

But I am aware enough for the inner struggle that comes with my sudden sadnesses. There’s always a bit of a fight between Seaneen and Depression. So as I shrink my hand away from the touch, I use the other to write an e-mail inviting a friend to stay in a bid to create an event that I have to be around for. Can’t be letting people down, can I.

Of course, my invitations are usually rejected but I console myself that I did try, didn’t I.

Seaneen’s Suicide Attempts.

In the past, I have tried. Suicides are so romanticised but the waiting to die is quite boring and painful. My methods were overdoses- too afraid of hanging, too afraid of heights- obviously unsuccessful in anything other than making me very ill indeed.

I didn’t tell anyone and just puked quietly a lot. After one attempt, shortly after Vicky’s death when I was losing my mind, I had to go to school. The night beforehand, I held Vicky’s photo in my hands and howled to her, angrily cursing her for leaving me when I needed her most. At that time, I was being tormented, tortured, punched and pummelled by everyone in Belfast who had ever called me their friend. My ex boyfriend Robert succeeded in turning everyone against me, and my own rather obvious mental illness helped in his depiction of his “mad” ex. I couldn’t go out without someone walking up and just hitting me, and every single day I received a slew of texts and emails telling me how worthless and disgusting I was. You do kind of believe it, after a while. I was scared and exhausted and worn down with it, as well as having just lost my best friend to suicide and suffering from extremely dysphoric mania. I’d had it.

My mother, not normally militant in such manners, was in a fury the next morning and dragged me out of bed. I got the bus and jumped off twice to throw up blackened bile in the street. It took me three hours to get to school, feeling weak and shaky. In Drama, I received a text message from My Stalker, Emma. Telling me how worthless I was and laughing at my “stupid friend” for committing suicide. A whole wave soon followed, all from the internet, listing in flowery language all of my painfully exposed faults. I let out something like a squeak and threw up into my hands. I was asked to leave and sat outside, the phone on the concrete in front of me, vomit and tears staining my shoes.

I just spent days ill, as I had done before. I always took everything I could find but, being a Molloy, I had a hardy liver. A previous attempt was made with two litres of vodka in a diet coke bottle and all the pills from my mum’s wealth of prescriptions. I felt floaty and peaceful, the phone was ringing, far, far, far away. It was my friend in Wales. I passed out and soon there was a knock on the door from my dad, telling me there was an ambulance at the door for me. I sleepily informed him it was a crank call and drifted off, hopefully into blackness.

Of course I woke with vomit stuck to the side of my head and choking violently. Again, I spent days vomitting up crap and blood and finding it hard to talk for the pain in my throat. To this day, I cannot abide the smell of vodka. It tastes like suicide.

I did also do the old “down the street” method with one of my scapel blades. I promptly went into shock after the first wrist. When the terror had cleared, I flew into panic. I couldn’t actually use the severed arm to do the other wrist and it was swelling blackly. I went downstairs and sneaked some frozen meat to hold against the swelling. Then I blacked out and for months there was the smell of carrion in my bedroom from the forgotten meat.

There have been many times I have stood by bridges and watched the waters. I once ran away from home with the intention of killing myself. I spent one night in someone’s flat, manic and mental. Then I ran to the sea and lay down on the beach. At the time, I was violently hallucinating. I thought a lion was chasing after me. Please understand at this point, I had no idea I suffered mental illness so I was just petrified. I felt bad and afraid and I went back home.

I just went home and resigned myself to it all. My parents were frantic but I was a selfish fifteen year old brat who had a lot to cope with. I wasn’t in the mood and lived in my bedroom for a while.

Suicide- it ain’t all razzle dazzle. And let’s be clear here, there is no “happy death”. Camus is talking shite. And Dorothy Parker speaks the truth, as always.

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

I know a funny little poem isn’t enough to save the truly suicidal. But hopefully reading about crap overdoses does help clear up any romantic notions you might have about the reality of going the boring route and trying to take your own life.

The Anniversary Season

I know that depression is usually incapacitating so I guess people wonder how I can be up writing at all. I have “clear spots”- areas of the day when I am capable and I try to use them. The depression I am feeling at the moment is more annoying than worrying. It puts a negative spin on everything and leaves me paranoid and maudlin.

I sometimes wonder if I have reverse Seasonal affective Disorder as the opening bars of the summertime are when I tend to fall into depressions. In the past, not armed with medications and the knowledge that many of my mood episodes are in fact due to bipolar disorder, I spent some summers indoors with the curtains shut, sleeping all day and waking all night to keep the soundless dark company.

I’ve been depressed every April since 2001. I guess I have reasons, as April was when Vicky committed suicide. I am so used to speaking of her death that I have find I rarely speak of her life. I can’t help but commemorate these days. Anniversaries are so stupidly important to me. I always think of her on the day (the 24th of April) and I imagine what she would have been doing. It makes me half sick and half angry. May is another anniversary month, a whole new one. May is my dad’s first anniversary.

I am going back to Belfast for it, but not just for that. Two days after my daddy’s anniversary, it is my best friends’ wedding. Tracie and Andrew who I introduced to each other…well, sadly it was the day of Vicky’s cremation but six years on, I am glad there is something happy about that date.

June is my friend Andy’s anniversary. He was a vivid and wonderful man who talked me down many times from the proverbial window ledge. He was a fantastic artist, writer, musician, everything. He had an enormous network of friends who adored him and he somehow managed to adore them all back, with no lessening of love or affection. He made time for everybody. He was funny and wise. Two years ago he was killed in a hit and run by some scumbag who is still out there. And I hope they heard and I hope it haunts them forever.

I don’t have survivor syndrome. I don’t think, “I should have died, not them”. I do think, “I wish I had died, not them”. My death would not have caused half the sadness as the deaths of the above have. And life, no matter how swathed in splendour you think it is, is not much more than a balance sheet of human emotion. I believe I am less valuable than others because I am not as loved nor needed as others. Of course this is a dangerous way to think and it is a loophole for the suicides, but it’s the way I think and I can’t help it.

That said, my father’s death didn’t affect anyone much outside our family. Like a localised tsunami, it devastated everyone in its wake while the rest of the world slept on with the news muted in the background.

Now that my family have suffered so much I don’t want to add to their suffering. This is why I stamp upon the thoughts of suicide that raise their heads like buds in spring. I feel I am responsible for those I love sometimes, to protect them.

Love, love, my season

I wrote the other day about frontal lobe damage and the ability to love. If the day comes where I smack my face against a steering wheel, then you will see my sharp exit.

Love is the only consistent emotion I have. However I am feeling, however high or low or both or neither, I still love the people I love, y’know?

Some people see the faults in everyone and have a hard time making friends. I am the exact opposite. I see something good in someone and it shines like the grail. As a result, I tend to be quite blind to the faults of people sometimes and therefore am usually in a position to be Treated like Crap.

It is, let’s say, quite a big flaw of mine as it means I invest time and emotion into people who really don’t give a shit about me.

I do sort of hang onto it, though, as love saves me every single time. The smallest gestures pull me out of the deepest holes. Feeling horrible then finding a blog comment from my cousin Ceri or my sisters. A friend completely spazzing up her WordPress blog and asking for my help. A cup of tea placed next to me as I stare stonily ahead. A text, quick phone call, whatever.

I liked to feel needed as I do chunder on for other people. Even when someone has annoyed me, the desire to protect them, cheer them up is stronger than any of my Pissed Offedness.

People often ask me how I can love my parents considering…well, considering. The easy answer is that “They’re my parents, they made me”, but really, it’s because they both have traits that make me love them, despite our shitty lives and despite their more unsavoury traits (alcoholism and abusiveness in my dad’s case, complete insanity and pathological lying and malice in my mum’s). My dad was funny and sarcastic, intelligent and well read. He was proud of us for really silly things. If he was alive, he’d be showing his colleagues in work this blog, no matter how unsavoury the content.

He always had a go at Paula dyeing her hair a lot but told me once, drunkenly in his bedroom, that he loved the way Paula stood up for herself and that she was altruistic and honest. Paula was his sparring partner but also his closest confidante and the person he felt closest to.

My dad was the person who supported my move to London.

My mum, when she’s not being weird, is funny and she does try to look out for us. No matter what bad things she does, I can’t shake the memory of lying with her in bed watching Prisoner Cell Block H. And she has given me freedom and tolerance when I have been an unruly brat who took ferries to Wales at a day’s notice.

Likewise, I should hate Robert for the havoc he wrecked upon my life but I find that hard, too. When things were good, they were very good. And I have to give him credit for helpfully pushing me to form my own personality and style. He was hilarious and extremely clever and opened me up to a lot of new things. Some of my absolute worst memories are with him, but, so are some of my best.

The thing is, if I wasn’t all Oh Noes I’m Manic Depressive (with assorted BDD, bulimia and body issues) I’d be a ridiculous optimist. I really do believe that love is the greatest force on earth. With the people in my life I love, I love them completely, for everything. There are people in my life I know I could grow to love so I can be pushy, but that usually ends badly. Love is my bloodstream, it keeps me alive. Love of people and love of the trivialities- I do hold Blake’s words true to my heart. To see the world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wild flower…

Love of music, love of art and let’s face it, love of writing spin the machinations inside me and are the anchors I hold onto in the Bad Times. They don’t dispel the depression but lift it, even if just for a second. When I think that life will never be any better, I look to a friend, toppling, teetering, doing their own Thing, and think, “Well, so what”.

And

I start my new job on Friday.

Oh. Dear.