Read Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression for Free Online Page A

would break her heart.
    And so I struggle on. I drink some tea, retching against the taste, the monster tightening in my throat as if in sympathetic recoil. I pick up the sandwich to take a bite, but abandon it halfway through.
    There must be something I can do. Should do. I always did something. I was never still. There was always work to be done, a deadline to meet, a child to look after, a house to run, a garden to tend, books to read, films to see, friends to enjoy. There was never enough time.
    Now, there is too much. And there are too few people. And I feel that they have nothing, any longer, to do with me.
    I look at the sandwich, at the perfect half circle my teeth have formed. I must eat, I know, but it seems such a laborious process, to pick up the sandwich, to bite, to chew, to swallow.
    I get up and look out of the window. People are walking briskly up and down the road. I try to imagine what I would do, if I were out on the street. Where would I be going? I can think of nowhere. The newsagent’s, perhaps, to buy a newspaper. Have I read a newspaper today?
    I used to write for the newspapers. Almost all of the nationals, in fact. What was it I had to say? I can see myself, sitting at my computer, head bent, writing furiously, hands flying over the keys. I can’t imagine what must have been in my head to make my hands go so fast.
    I look at the bed. I can see no newspaper. Not that I ever read them. I can no longer read. It is the greatest tragedy of my present existence. By the time I get to the end of a sentence, I have forgotten the beginning. Words are no more than patterns on a page. Sometimes, it is better. Sometimes I can manage a few paragraphs, but later I can never remember what it is they said.
    It is like being bereaved, this lack of reading, like losing an old and dearly beloved friend. A lifelong friend. I used to read four or five books a week.
    I remember reading something by Goethe, about losing reading and losing oneself, and how it struck me at the time.
    My creative powers have been reduced to a restless indolence. I cannot be idle, yet I cannot seem to do anything either. I have no imagination, no more feeling for nature, and reading has become repugnant to me. When we are robbed of ourselves, we are robbed of everything.
     
    That’s right, I think. Depression is the great thief.
    When I was a child my mother was forever telling me to get my head out of a book and go outside and get some fresh air. Molly is like me. She reads all the time. I never tell her to get her head out of a book. I know the pleasure, the transport, the pure delight that reading brings. Before I was ill, I used to worry that I spent too much of my time with books, living in other people’s lives. I used to think it was, perhaps, because I didn’t much like my own. Perhaps that’s it then. Perhaps depression is simply inhabiting your own life. Or perhaps it’s simply too much reality.
    No, this is mad thinking. All my thinking is mad thinking, these days. Round and round it goes, dipping in and out of perspective but always present, never still.
    These days I only buy a newspaper because I want to be normal. I want to be a person who reads a newspaper. Besides, it gives me something to do, somewhere to go. Every morning, I go out to get my newspaper and cigarettes. This morning I didn’t. This morning was a bad morning. Or was that yesterday? I try to remember. No, it was this morning. I had a bath. I managed that but then I was shaking so badly with the medication I had to lie down. Or, at least I think it’s the medication. It’s hard to tell.
    Why do they call it a ‘mental’ illness? The pain isn’t just in my head; it’s everywhere, but mainly at my throat and in my heart. Perhaps my heart is broken. Is this what this is? My whole chest feels like it’s being crushed. It’s hard to breathe.
     
     
    I am sitting on the floor, in my bedroom, curled up against the cupboards. I have given up on the bed. I