Read Online Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression by Sally Brampton - Free Book Online Page A

or habit as regret. I found a flat and moved out. Jonathan could not, he said, face moving himself. He finds it hard. I do not, having spent my childhood doing it; or at least, I thought I didn’t, but that understanding came later, by which time I was drowning in an emotional backwash I could neither handle nor understand.
    I found a flat near the house so Molly could move easily between us. It was difficult, but curiously easy. We talked about it a lot. We stayed close friends.
    Jonathan went to see a therapist, about the marriage breakdown and other things. It did not occur to me that I needed to. I thought therapy was for other people but I was up to my neck in the denial that, as so many therapists have told me, I am so consummately good at.
    Jonathan reported back from his therapy sessions. ‘He says we’re so polite and considerate with each other, we’re like something out of the Guardian .’
    Yes, I thought, passionless. Dead. Beyond hope.
    ‘He wants to know why we don’t shout or throw china.’
    I laughed. So did Jonathan.
    ‘Has he understood nothing at all?’ I asked.
    Jonathan shrugged.
    At about the same time, I fell in love. Absurdly, insanely and catastrophically in love and with somebody I should not have been in love with. I had felt the pull of it for months, but had done nothing about it. I thought, even, that I might be going insane, thought that I was making the whole thing up. It was only, finally, when we came together that I knew that I had been right all along, that the hugeness of the emotion I was feeling did not exist in isolation.
    It didn’t help. I felt madder still, an insanity compounded by guilt and impossibility. Love, as the scientists tell us, is enough to change anybody’s brain chemistry. And I was in love, not just with my head and my heart but with my body and soul too. The connection was inexplicable, even to myself. And so I did not try to explain it.
    I was more lost than I have ever been. His name was Tom. It still is. When we met, he was with somebody else, in situation, but not emotion. We did nothing. It was like watching a car crash. There were children involved. We talked, we kissed, we made no plans. There were none to be made. There was just us, this thing that we could do nothing with, or about.
    We could not even ignore it.
    He sent me an email.
    Suddenly that mad email I sent you doesn’t seem so mad and incoherent, does it? I’ll find the quote…
     
    ‘But his flawed heart (Alack, too weak the conflict to support)
Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief, burst smilingly.’
     
    Whatever we do, whatever, will be completely WRONG.
One thing. I’m glad, no, not glad, delirious, that this has happened, is happening, will happen.
Love, come what may.
     
    I went to see my doctor for some sleeping pills. She told me that early warning waking was a sign of depression and prescribed antidepressants. I didn’t believe her, told her that I was not depressed but simply tired from getting so little sleep, that I had a few too many things on my mind.
    I was vaguely outraged by her suggestion that I was depressed. I am not a person who does depression. I am a person who always copes. I am strong. Or so my thinking went at the time.
    She listened to me patiently then suggested a counsellor. The NHS waiting list was, at minimum, six months. I let her put my name down although I knew that, in six months’ time, I would be better.
    I insisted, again, on sleeping pills. She refused, prescribed me antidepressants, explaining that as the depression lifted, so my sleeping patterns would return to normal.
    I took the pills. I continued to wake at three twenty every morning. I thought that she was wrong in her diagnosis. The antidepressants did nothing for me so I could not be depressed. I just had too much on my mind.
    Two months later, I started to cry. I woke, crying, and I went to sleep crying. In between, I washed my face, got dressed and went to work. It still