Read Online Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression by Sally Brampton - Free Book Online
Authors: Sally Brampton
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relationship breakdown, the loss of a job, the death of a loved one or financial problems. Loss of any kind seems to be a significant trigger. Depression often runs in families so there may also be a genetic susceptibility—but it is a predisposition rather than a predetermination. It does not mean that everyone with depression in the family is destined to develop the illness. Nor is everyone who experiences difficult events destined to become seriously depressed.
My descent into depression was steady, textbook, even. I began to wake, every morning, at twenty minutes past three. My head was an alarm clock, set to the minute; to the not-so-sweet spot.
Early morning waking is one of the classic symptoms of depression, but I had no idea so I paid it little attention. I had a lot on my mind and anyway, I have suffered from insomnia since I was a child, although it used to be of the not being able to get off to sleep variety.
This was a new form. I fell asleep as if I had been hit over the head, too fast, too violently. And then, a few hours later, I was awake again and always at the same time. I began to dread the clock, my startled, suddenly awake eyes staring at those luminous hands that always pointed at the three and the four; pointing the way, I began to imagine, towards hell.
I felt odd in other ways. Food tasted strange, or dry, like dust. I lost weight quickly, about a stone in a few weeks. I was pleased in a vague, detached, way although I sometimes thought I should be happier about losing weight without even trying. In those odd moments of clarity, I was surprised by my lack of pleasure. I was thin and in my world, thin was good. I worked in magazines. I went to fashion shows. People told me how fabulous I looked while all the time I wondered who this stranger was who inhabited my skinny Earl jeans.
I lost interest, too, in everything that I had once loved. My garden deserted me. It grew, unwatched and unappreciated. I felt indifferent to it and it, in turn, seemed indifferent to me. It did not seem to matter whether I was present or not. After a time I became resentful, feeling that the flowers mocked me, blooming in defiance of my listless misery.
I did not pay much attention. My mind was on other, more important, things. If I could not sleep or eat or garden, it was for a reason. My ten-year marriage was dying and crawling painfully towards its conclusion. My husband, Jonathan, and I had begun to bicker destructively.
‘Does everything I do annoy you?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
He turned away.
I put my hands on my hips, addressed his reproachful back. ‘Well, that’s what you wanted to hear, isn’t it?’
He said nothing but I could hear, in his silence, the acid bite of my words.
We had developed our own sad pattern. I attacked, he withdrew. There was no war, more an empty sense of defeat. Our misery was played out in a sniper’s no-man’s land, and there seemed nothing we could do to change the view. Or perhaps it was that neither of us wanted to.
My life had changed in other ways. I had gone back to working in magazines, as the editor of Red , after a decade working as a writer in absolute peace and quiet. I was not used to so much noise, or the incessant, urgent demands of a staff of thirty, and found it, frankly, difficult.
I had worked in magazines before; I loved the drama and the chaos of them. It did not occur to me that this time it would be different. Perhaps it was simply that I was older or perhaps it was merely my state of mind but I found the consuming obsession with celebrities and shopping trivial and infuriating. It was fine, in its place; but its place, to my mind, was small.
I thought, too, that I understood the Machiavellian politics of office life. I thought, even, that I enjoyed them. I ignored the way they stuck, like the food I ate, in my throat.
My marriage finally ended. There was no real resistance, just the occasional flurry of emotion; as much out of politeness
My descent into depression was steady, textbook, even. I began to wake, every morning, at twenty minutes past three. My head was an alarm clock, set to the minute; to the not-so-sweet spot.
Early morning waking is one of the classic symptoms of depression, but I had no idea so I paid it little attention. I had a lot on my mind and anyway, I have suffered from insomnia since I was a child, although it used to be of the not being able to get off to sleep variety.
This was a new form. I fell asleep as if I had been hit over the head, too fast, too violently. And then, a few hours later, I was awake again and always at the same time. I began to dread the clock, my startled, suddenly awake eyes staring at those luminous hands that always pointed at the three and the four; pointing the way, I began to imagine, towards hell.
I felt odd in other ways. Food tasted strange, or dry, like dust. I lost weight quickly, about a stone in a few weeks. I was pleased in a vague, detached, way although I sometimes thought I should be happier about losing weight without even trying. In those odd moments of clarity, I was surprised by my lack of pleasure. I was thin and in my world, thin was good. I worked in magazines. I went to fashion shows. People told me how fabulous I looked while all the time I wondered who this stranger was who inhabited my skinny Earl jeans.
I lost interest, too, in everything that I had once loved. My garden deserted me. It grew, unwatched and unappreciated. I felt indifferent to it and it, in turn, seemed indifferent to me. It did not seem to matter whether I was present or not. After a time I became resentful, feeling that the flowers mocked me, blooming in defiance of my listless misery.
I did not pay much attention. My mind was on other, more important, things. If I could not sleep or eat or garden, it was for a reason. My ten-year marriage was dying and crawling painfully towards its conclusion. My husband, Jonathan, and I had begun to bicker destructively.
‘Does everything I do annoy you?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
He turned away.
I put my hands on my hips, addressed his reproachful back. ‘Well, that’s what you wanted to hear, isn’t it?’
He said nothing but I could hear, in his silence, the acid bite of my words.
We had developed our own sad pattern. I attacked, he withdrew. There was no war, more an empty sense of defeat. Our misery was played out in a sniper’s no-man’s land, and there seemed nothing we could do to change the view. Or perhaps it was that neither of us wanted to.
My life had changed in other ways. I had gone back to working in magazines, as the editor of Red , after a decade working as a writer in absolute peace and quiet. I was not used to so much noise, or the incessant, urgent demands of a staff of thirty, and found it, frankly, difficult.
I had worked in magazines before; I loved the drama and the chaos of them. It did not occur to me that this time it would be different. Perhaps it was simply that I was older or perhaps it was merely my state of mind but I found the consuming obsession with celebrities and shopping trivial and infuriating. It was fine, in its place; but its place, to my mind, was small.
I thought, too, that I understood the Machiavellian politics of office life. I thought, even, that I enjoyed them. I ignored the way they stuck, like the food I ate, in my throat.
My marriage finally ended. There was no real resistance, just the occasional flurry of emotion; as much out of politeness
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