The Fluoxetine Diaries

Hang on just one second, would you rather listen to this story? Dom’s actually recorded The Fluoxetine Diaries into a nice thirteen-minute audiobook, give your eyes a rest if you fancy it.

***

I walk the streets and they are dead, riding like a floating corpse upon the black dread of the canal waters. Surfing that iridescent black like a sea of dread, which bubbles and boils with the countless lost souls beneath its surface.

I hold my breath as I walk and reject the air, preferring the company of my own savoured silence. The air is cheap, commonplace, a recycled vessel which is used by everyone else. The gift of the trees which is abused and dumped out like the nauseating death rattle of the last man alive.

Twisted branches coil and collide like tangled veins that run a crimson string towards my heart.

And I see their faces at every window of every building, erect and derelict in broken slumber, melted features like wax in open flames as they curdle and dredge into the nothingness.

The world around me crumbles. Not the systems and the governments, the laws and measures but the very fabric of reality. The pulled material goes taught and rips, bleeding into my mind until I drown in that thick black blood of the world.

And I sit and wait, as the nothing consumes me again.

***

February 12th

Wine is a new level of depression. All levels of this illness can come down to alcohol. Beer is the depression you feel straight after a short and sharp event of woe, losing a lover or a bad football result, that sort of thing. Wine is next level, red wine, the dark liquid of your corroded, diseased blood, drank away for days as you struggle to deal with your own feelings. It’s the understanding that you can’t get out of this endless cycle of sadness, that the future is getting bleaker and is heading towards you at an alarming pace.

Things progress. Spirits are a sign that your mind is nearing the end of its path towards self-destruction whereas whisky is a sure sign that you’ve already reached that point. Or that you have more money than sense.

Absinthe is just for crazy fuckers. Some cunt who cut off his ear, doused in green fire, depressed at the sight of his incredible paintings. At least he had some talent to wallow in. I have nothing.

But I’m still alive.

One pill. Green and yellow. 20mg of Fluoxetine. Put in mouth, swallow with water. Down it goes, sticking to the throat as it descends, unwilling to be pushed into the stomach. Even the pills hate me.

February 14th

I woke up to the sound of a police car screaming past the house this morning, blues and twos blowing up the street in light. I hid under the covers until it had gone. They haven’t got me yet but better not leave the house today; just in case.

I don’t think anyone else noticed. I heard Brad come down from his room, laughing to someone on the phone about his latest conquest. Amy and James left soon after. I should have gone too, I had a lecture on Medieval Literature covering the work of Piers Plowman but I couldn’t leave, they would get me if I did.

In any case, if I had made it through Holt Park, past the lines of ambling students going to and from the never-ending slaughterhouse of knowledge, I would have had to make my way through the hordes of staring eyes that line the union and its adjoining towers. Then I would have had to contend with the Roger Stevens Building. The maze of endless lecture theatres, a lecture theatre multiplex, a multi-storey car park of rooms stacked one on top of the other.

And then I would have had to sit in that theatre, other people on either side of me, trapping me from all directions, keeping me hemmed in like a caged animal. The feeling of nausea would rise, a tide of panic attacks clawing at my stomach and I would have to stand suddenly, bumbling and apologising my way out of the theatre, only hearing half of what was said by the esteemed professor at the front of the room and pissing off everyone else.

Even if I had been present for the lecture on William Langland’s poem, the visions of Piers Plowman the fair field of folk and the rest of the medieval diatribe, I doubt I would have taken much of it in through the Fluoxetine haze. I hear the words but they come with a thin layer of static, the crackle on the rim of a badly tuned radio. I used to be able to take it all in. Now I can’t.

I slept and watched shit TV for much of the day. I hated myself for the waste of time and took no pleasure in watching but I don’t take much pleasure in anything these days.

Someone knocked on the door and I hid under the covers again.

How had they found me? Did they know where I lived? It had come to this, they were here, I was going to be arrested, I was going to be shut away, locked up.

It was the postman.

The paranoia mounts.

One pill. Still green and yellow, 40mg. I’m running out I need more.

February 25th

Party the night before and I’m paying for it today.

Everything levels out. Ying and Yang. The waves roll out and inevitably rush back to the shore, the old lover awaiting its return, crashing in a meeting point of white swell on the sand.

You pay tenfold for the drinks you consumed the night before, you regret the takeaway you drunkenly ate, you taste the acrid smoke and ash in your mouth but still feel compelled to finish the packet of cigarettes you bought on a whim. Endless, reckless, destructive cycles.

I used to play rugby three times a week, perform in plays, read books for pleasure and still come top in my classes at school. Now I can’t even remember the last time I brushed my fucking teeth.

All is waste, all is time slipping away on the edge of a beer bottle.

Two pills, one 20mg one 10mg. You guessed it, green and yellow.

February 27th

Made it out of the house today. It felt like I was climbing an ever-growing mountain just trying to leave.

Up, breakfast, shower, teeth, dressed, pack bag, remember keys, lock door, music in, sunglasses on. Return to house having forgotten book, or wallet, or water bottle or some other item I can’t leave the house without.

Without music or sunglasses, I get unwanted attention. Crowds of people stare at me, every window in every house is a fresh pair of eyes fixated on my form, every person walking by knows my failures and my foibles, every single bad thing I have done, the jagged rips in my soul are their specialist subject. It is their obsession.

I hastily walkthrough Holt Park, cross the small road between it and the fringes of campus and strut through that pedestrianised walkway of red brick buildings and quaffing private school students. Every one of them is looking, every one of them knows that I’m the worst person alive. If I know it they must do too.

I race past the union, escape between two blonde girls talking about a weekend of casual drugs, comedowns and essay writing. It’s a classic combination for almost everyone in the vicinity but they talk about it like they are pioneers on the subject, the first brave explorers into the unknown.

I pace towards the Edward Boyle Library steps and down, down the long walkway onto Roger Stevens, the behemoth of my nightmares.

I find the theatre, slip in at the back row, five minutes until the lecture begins. Dr Jenison is waiting at the front of the sloped theatre, her laptop ready, surveying the room of people, quasi teenagers, quasi adults but nowhere near grown-ups. I pray that no one comes in after me and blocks me in. If they block me in I’ll be sick.

Some cunt blocks me in.

Round, thick-rimmed hipster glasses, top knot, a crew-necked Adidas jumper you would find at the bottom of a wardrobe in the 1990’s and white Reebok trainers.

Oh, Christ, to top it all off he’s a laptoper. Sit at the back, laptop open, take nothing in, browse ASOS for new rags. Fucking fantastic.

I got notes on the first twenty-five minutes of Alexander II’s reforms but just as I was about to feel as if I’d beaten the pangs of strangulating anxiety I was hit with a solid wave of nausea.

It comes like a sudden harpoon through the gut, strong, resilient and cloying. I want to double over and puke, my head is a thousand different thought all scrambling to fight one another, grabbing bottles and sharp knives to battle it out in an endless war. A thousand negative feelings killing each other in my head.

I stand, shuffle awkwardly from my seat, apologise to the laptoper who shoots me a look like a wounded animal before reaching the door and bolting to the toilet.

Sick in the sink. Rinse it down. Don’t think about the acrid taste of bile and acid soaking my teeth and tongue, that horrible scent at the back of my throat and nose. Clean up.

Drink water. Deep breaths.

In through the nose, down into the chest, expand the ribcage, use that warm, recycled indoor air to stretch the lungs and cleanse the taut fear. And back, up the throat out of the mouth. Repeat until the heart stops racing.

Two pills, blue and yellow for a change. 20mg each.

March 3rd

There’s some kind of mental health day at the union.

It seems the people that shout the loudest about this crippling, mind-bending illness are the ones that get the most representation. It makes sense but still, that fact fails to quell my resentment towards it.

Mental health days, world mental health week, they are all meaningless displays of corporate bullshit for companies and celebrities to latch onto, for logos to be flaunted in your face at the next major Hollywood event for journalists to lap up and weave into dross online articles that aren’t worth the virtual memory that they inhabit. I couldn’t think of anything worse.

But don’t worry no one asks and no one cares about my life. And I resent them for that too. That’s the problem with depression and anxiety it’s the most selfish illness in the world, self-obsession gone supernova, a star imploding in on itself due to its own maniacal ego-centrism. People talk about it like it defines them, they talk like it’s their friend, like it’s part of their fucking CV, they talk and ask so little.

It consumes me. I might be silent about it, keep it away from my everyday conversation, refuse to broadcast it like everyone else does but it still consumes me and it consumes my altruism. It makes me vain, it makes me self-centred, it makes me fear the feelings of others as if by considering them my own feelings would be left unattended, free to roam about my head, scouring the worn battleground, killing the last few vestiges of my sanity with cruel, sudden strokes.

I came back from lectures and me and James played Fifa on his Xbox for a while. I won the first game 4-3, Lewandowski back post header. He beat me 5-2 in the next, Real Madrid.

It is such a mindless activity that it quells the thoughts for a while, a short while. It’s a reminder that I have one friend left, at least I think he’s still a friend. A daren’t ask or I might find out the ungodly truth that he secretly despises me.

I go back upstairs as he has a girl coming over.

Brad and Amy are busy in her room. I leave them too it, I’m sure they are discussing me, discussing my failures, my wrongdoings, my sins.

Still two pills, blue and yellow, 20mg each. Down the hatch with a bottle of diet coke and onto bed for another night of non-sleep.

March 10th

Talked to mum on the phone for an hour today.

I couldn’t really tell you what we even talked about. We just talked or, more accurately, mum talked at me and I tried to return the volley of questions.

It’s not her fault, it’s mine, I know that.

It’s not her fault I’m depressed, or her fault that she spent so much of last year driving up and down the M1 coming to find out if I was ok as I descended into deep sadness and fear.

She cares.

I know that but I still find it hard to talk to her when she asks so much.

What do I say? I can’t make it through a lecture without throwing up, I can’t sleep at night unless I have some girl I’m fucking with me, I can’t feel anything unless I’m drunk, I smoke every time I get stressed or anxious, I think everyone who messages me for a meeting or a coffee, or to talk wants to fucking kill me.

I can’t say any of that.

They say men are drilled and conditioned to not talk about their feelings.

That’s such a simple way of putting it.

Half the time we just don’t want to talk or the truth is so wretched, or embarrassing or self-destructive that the shame and guilt weighs us down. Sometimes we just want to fight, or fuck, or drink or self-destruct and that’s the sordid truth of it.

Doesn’t matter, it just doesn’t matter anymore.

Two pills same as.

March 14th

Lecture on Charlemagne and the end of his reign, pop to the Eddy B library to start research for my essay on Alexander III, Tsar of Russia, a meal deal lunch that always looks more exciting than it actually is, read the awful student rag, and into Michael Sadler for a seminar with Dr Hind, covering the persecution of Conversios in Early Modern Spain.

Dr Hind teaches history like no one else I know. Very little fact and yet so much detail, so much understanding, so much psychological, deep thought, so much analysis, a real, articulate dive into the psyche of past societies. He talks about history like it’s a patient. Each period a different ailment, or issue, each timeline a list of diseases and the possible cures that could turn the tide, he is a true genius. He’s an incredible teacher too; a rarity at University I can tell you that. Leeds is good for history but I’m sure most of the academics there would prefer to blurt out a quick lecture and fuck off back to their office for a wank, a shot of whiskey and an afternoon reading Polydore Vergil as they continue their “research.”

But I know Dr Hinds looks to perfect his teaching as much as his research. And I heard a rumour he tried to shag a student behind his wife’s back. I don’t really know what that says about him.

As modern men, we are all flawed.

Charlemagne fought, killed and pillaged his way across Europe, established the first Empire on the continent since the Romans, had twelve children, was crowned Holy Roman Emperor, lost just one battle and died atop a mountain of economic power, cultural significance and military might. He is the father of Europe, everyone who lives on this continent today is one of his descendants.

It is an impossibility that I will ever do anything as great as him. Every ocean has been discovered, every river plotted, each nation carved out of the land and each world conquered.

Henry V won Agincourt, Wellington beat Napoleon at Waterloo, our grandparents struggled against Hitler, eating corned beef sandwiches and homegrown veg. Smiling as their homes were bombed and their sweethearts sat in far-flung fields getting shot at.

We are the last generation. The children of the final heroes to ever walk the planet. That’s it. We were born to do nothing of significance and our minds are wasting away because of it.

I went home, played Fifa and went up after three lagers, I took the fourth to bed with me so I could sleep and take my two pills. Blue and yellow, 20mg each.

March 17th

Bed. Shit TV.

I can’t do it anymore.

It feels like my mind is dissolving in a vat of acid like a body in some cagey horror film.

Thoughts and dreams melt into one, distractions, guilt, shame, fear, anger, sadness all become a single emotion that fluctuates and pulses, an ever-changing beast ebbing and flowing like crackling electricity.

Not today.

Two pills, still blue and yellow, 20mg each.

March 20th  

I run out in two days.

Three pills, blue and yellow 20mg each.

March 23rd

I texted James from upstairs and told him I was ill so he could bring me food and sympathy.

But I’m always ill. I will always be ill. This will never go away. Ever.

Melancholy is a death sentence, an execution order that could be carried out at any point. You just don’t know when you’ll succumb to it.

James came up and gave me soup but couldn’t convince me to come downstairs.

No more pills left.

They were all that was holding back the tide.

***

I leave the house early and travel along Holt Park before crossing through the University and towards town.

I move quickly amongst the shoppers and through to the market. It stands close to a cobbled side street which winds its way down towards a path alongside the canal flanked by luxury flats on one side of the water and the tall elegant form of the armoury on the other.

I wonder along that canal-side path, that stricken highway beside the murky depths. I take the first bridge stopping halfway across it, overlooking the flowing currents below.

The world around me fades, the colours of the canal-side, the buildings and the sky running into the flowing water. The fabric of the world collapses into a crumbling mess. Everything is one bright shade of nothing, a mark on the blank canvas that opens onto the water.

I could throw myself into it.

Let it take my body under, pull me down to the depths where the slurry and the filth will take me in its tranquillity forever.

It would be such an easy release.

Or would it be? I hold my breath, remembering as a child that when you tried to hold your breath forever your body would not allow you to do it, you would eventually exhale.  There was some human instinct that forced you to take in the air whether you wanted to or not. Some inane primal urge forced you to breathe.

Forced you to keep on living.

I brush the thought away and bring one foot up to the barrier.

Time revolves and rotates, like someone rewinding the clock and pressing play. The colours retract, building the world around me again, each element falling back into place. The spaces and cracks are filled and smoothed over, leaving a plain white surface but with no gap left for me.

I don’t belong.

And the nothingness consumes me again.