More Notes on a Breakdown

This story starts here.

This is the story of my breakdown, in 2010...

Who could fail to be happy here?

I become obsessed with the idea of running away from my life. I want to go on holiday to Spain. At every available opportunity I get on a train or bus and spend the afternoon somewhere else. I want to move away from here and not tell anyone where I'm going. I imagine that I could go and live somewhere else, and miraculously none of my problems would follow me. If I lived somewhere else, I could be someone different. Happy. A person who doesn't need pills to be normal. A person who can talk to other people, engage in conversation, make friends, be loved.

When you're on pills to make your brain work, you don't know who you are any more. You never know if what you're thinking is you, or the pills. You don't know if your reaction to a particular event is how you would normally react, and whether this reaction is better or worse than what might have occurred, were you not dosed up with the psychotropics. You never know if your thoughts are really your thoughts, or just side effects. It's like when you spend a whole week wailing, convinced the whole world is against you, and then at the end of the week you get your period and realise it was just PMT. Only there's a danger, with the pills, that you'd never realise your reaction wasn't your own. 

I spend a lot of time staring into space, pondering this. I watch myself, as if in the third person, trying to figure out which parts are me and which are the chemicals.

I have also lost the ability to choose, to make even the most basic decisions. This started a few weeks ago, when I went to Waitrose on my lunch break to get a sandwich, and spent most of my lunch hour standing in front of the sandwich counter trying to decide which one to get. They didn't even have a very large selection of sandwiches; I just couldn't make the decision. At the time I thought it was just one of those things, but as the days and weeks edge forward I notice more and more than I can't decide on anything. If I decide to read a book, I don't know which one. If I want to watch a DVD I stare at my collection for an hour before giving up. On the rare occasions I decide I do fancy something to eat, I stand staring into the cupboard for half an hour trying to decide what to eat, before giving up and going back to the sofa, defeated and hungry. Is this a side effect from the Prozac, or a side effect from life that the Prozac hasn't managed to mask? How does one tell the difference?

On a whim, I ask my boss to give me a few days' holiday next week. He says yes, and within twenty minutes of making the decision I go online and book a short holiday in Spain. I like Spain; it is sunny and people are nice. I won't be depressed in Spain. Going to Spain will fix me. I tell a friend who works with me and she pulls a face that seems to say, You are mental. Normal people don't do this. I ignore her, and go to Spain filled with misplaced hope that this will be the thing that fixes me. And if it doesn't, I won't come home. I'll do a Reggie Perrin, lose myself. Or better yet, kill myself. Yes. If I don't feel better when I get there, I will kill myself. Somehow the thought of doing it in Spain makes it sound exotic and interesting.

Unsurprisingly, when I get to Spain I do not feel better. I get sun burn and wander aimlessly around the back streets, drinking too much beer in street cafes and buying fresh waffles and ice creams because that's what I did last time I was here, and then throwing them in the next bin I pass because I cannot eat. I lay in bed at night staring at the ceiling, thinking to myself, Come on, you're on holiday! You're meant to be relaxed, you're meant to be able to sleep! It turns out insomnia travels just as well as depression. 

I am in Spain for my 29th birthday, alone and silently panicking. The last year of my 20s, and what have I achieved? I'm single and alone, nobody loves me and nobody ever will. I'll never get married, nobody will ever want to start a family with me, I'm a burden to my family, who are all happily paired off. The only single one. Unsuccessful at everything, my life speeding away from me so fast I can't keep up.

I decide not to kill myself here. The ladies who clean the hotel rooms are so nice, I don't want them to come in and find a body. Someone from my family would have to come here to identify my body, and my sister had to fly here before, when my dad had a heart attack. It wouldn't be fair on them, and they can't afford the flights. I go home, defeated and decidedly not fixed.

The story continues here

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