Life in Black and White

Imagine waking up in the dark. Not the usual darkness though this is close and black like there are walls surrounding you, shutting everything else out. Looking up you can see a small circle of daylight way above you and hear everybody else up there. The blackness is pressing in and you need to get out. You could call out but people may just point and laugh at the daft situation you’ve got yourself in, and anyway you pride yourself on your independence and resourcefulness. So you start to climb.

It is not easy, the blackness is cloying and sucking and you have no energy. Just moving takes a tremendous effort but by the end of the day you make it and collapse at the top, exhausted but glad to be back with your family where you belong. It was a strange experience, one that you don’t fully understand so you do not mention it out loud, perhaps it was just some sort of virus you think as very tired to go to bed early that night.

Next morning you wake up at the bottom of the pit again. And the next morning, and the next. Each day you climb out or attempt to, for some days you are so tired that you fall asleep halfway out and just slip back again as you sleep. Eventually the weariness becomes so great that you cannot climb, you decide to rest at the bottom for a day to regain some strength. That helps the next day and for a while things seem to be improving but the effort of constantly climbing day after day with no respite, no sun, no joy, gradually becomes too much again and you sit at the bottom wondering what is wrong with you . . .

“Go to the doctor” said Nicola, “And tell him how you feel, the truth!”

So I did and it seems that I am suffering from depression. It also seems that I have been this way for a long time, most of my life probably and because of that have become very good at hiding it from others.

But it can be treated . . .

The illusion of freedom and choice

Cattle trucks sadden me. Be it cattle, sheep or chickens, the sight of a truck load of them heading for the slaughterhouse touches upon a deep sorrow that lies within my soul. These creatures, the same as you and I that have hurt no-one and ask for nothing more than to live as they should do spend their last hours before death crammed together in an alien environment cut off from the natural world. And to what purpose? In all likelyhood to be minced up, smothered in tomato sauce and swallowed in seconds without a thought as to what came before.

It is not death that worries me. Death is part of life and will happen when the time is right. It is the inevitability of it all, the fact that it has been decided by someone else and once the process has begun it will run to the end no matter what I think, do or say. You can take your chance and try to escape, you may even get as far as to be able to get a glimpse of the green fields out there beyond the barbed wire, but there is no hope. Whether you struggle or go with quiet resignation it makes no difference - you will be taken back. In the scheme of things your life has already gone and that glimpse of the world outside is just an illusion born out of your desperation to be free.

Today I have briefly escaped. I can feel the anger and annoyance of those around me whose plans I have disrupted, and yes with quiet resignation I will go back, I will face up to things. But just now, just for a few more hours I would like to stay here in this illusion of freedom and pretend that I have a choice . . .

Memories

I have been looking at old photographs. I think it is good to look back occasionally to remember where I have been, the people I have met and the things I have done. I am lucky of course that nothing truly tragic has ever happened to me but even if it had I think like Dr Phil that we should still remember, should accept what has happened because it is these things that make us who we are now.

On the odd occasions when I do some digging in the garden I am always fascinated by the roots of all the plants growing down together twisting and mingling. One earth but a million different paths. We each have a taproot of experiences stretching back from now twisting and burrowing in and around everybody elses lives. We all live in the same world yet no two of us, no matter how close, share the same past.

Looking back I have also noticed that Nicola and myself are people that are not afraid of change. At least not afterwards! There are different kinds of people out there. We used to live in a small village and there were people that were happy to spend their whole lives there. Village life is special but it is not for me - I get the urge to break out now and again, to do something different, to go somewhere else. None of these changes would have been posible if I did not have a good root system of experiences stretching back through the past. It is these that have allowed me to grow up and out into the future each time . . .


I built a small shed once. It was painted green and had a roof of wild flowers and herbs. I have left it behind now but one day I’ll build another one.