Prozac and Whimsy

“Depression is a thief, it robs you of friends and self belief”

But what if you never had many/much, if any of them to start? It’s odd to start a review, if we can call these ramblings reviews, with  lyrics from the last track of an album but No Sunshine was how “The List” started and it is how 2018′ Cleave by Therapy? ends.

I dread to think what personal hells Andy Cairns was going through when he wrote the lyrics to the entirety of this album. From the opening salvo of Wreck It Like Beckett, Kakistocracy AND THEN Callow you know this album is like nothing that has gone before it. That this is their 15th album and a whole twenty years after Semi-Detached and that I regard it as their absolute best (so far) speaks volumes of the ferocity of self hatred and loathing and depths the man must have sadly found.

But as ever there are moments of beauty. They are brief moments of twisted, fragile, beauty, but they are there all the same. There is a line in Callow “And if you take my demons, then you’ll take my angels too.” That beats any inspirational Marilyn Monroe meme your wine drunk aunt posts on Facebook into to a bloody pulp. Callow is a hard listen for me at the minute it’s about depression (the whole album is) the inevitable resulting medication and suicidal thoughts.

I am currently on the maximum recommended dose of Prozac (technically fluoxetine but I’m an old romantic at heart) And there are days where it doesn’t feel like it is touching the sides of the void I feel within me. I feel like a bleaker version of Pooh Bear trying to steal the honey from the beehive. Just this colossal black rain cloud that doesn’t want any attention but is getting it anyway. I am panicky to the point of trembling at times and have taken to balling my fists to try and gain some control back over my body.

But, I am not suicidal. Not even remotely. Not one little bit. And there lies the problem. In 2018 I collapsed while walking the dog one night and to skip through a vaguely boring story that we have already told I now have a pacemaker to keep my heart beating. Those months and months and months where I kept collapsing. Where the hospital kept ringing to tell me my heart had stopped in my sleep but that is was okay because it had started again (no shit dickhead, I’ve answered the fucking phone haven’t I?) The feeling of fragility up to and a good while after the fitting of the device. The getting used to the clearly visible lump in my chest that I know is keeping me the right side of the grass beat “those” thoughts out of me once and for all.

And now I’ve lost my ironic safety net. I am sure I have mentioned her in the past but in my teens a neighbour hanged herself (for some reason I hate that hanged is the past tense and not hung, it’s a horrible ugly word) at age 13 as growing up wasn’t much fun. I can still hear her mums screams as they took her away and see the deadness in her brothers eyes that never left him after he found her. Rightly or wrongly (clearly, obviously, fucking, wrongly) I walked away from her death, from her life, thinking that I had found a cheat code, a trump card. That no matter how bad things ever got I had a way out. And I lived with that knowledge “happily” for over half of my life. When what I should have learnt is that if life isn’t fun right now. Make it fun. Go and have fun, be silly, laugh at things, laugh at everything. Be weird, be yourself and fucking enjoy it.

I don’t know what to do with these feelings that I have now now that I want to live and that I want to live for as long as I can (men in my family don’t see old age but I plan on breaking that mould) Everything just ping pongs round inside of me until I start to cry and then it feels like I’m never going to stop. Writing helps, this helps whatever this is. Music helps, music soothes everything and stops the noise in my head even if what I am listening to is declaring that “my heart is so heavy, my peace has gone.”

Cleave is a tremendous record. I’d like to meet Andy and shake him by the hand for having made it and having made it through making it. Kakistocracy tells us “It’s okay not to be okay.” And it is. It’s okay that I feel like this now because there will come a day when I don’t. And if any of this resonates with you I promise that day will come for you as well.

If you live in the UK and are struggling you can call the Samaritans at anytime on 116 123. They also offer a text service if you can’t vocalise your thoughts text SHOUT to 85258.There is also Tough Enough To Care, a text service I have used more than once text TOUGH to 85258. These services are anonymous, free and won’t show up on your phone bill. If you need urgent help please, please, dial 999.

There is no shame in any of this. There is no weakness in needing or asking for help. Because as Mr Cairns tells us “Success? Success is survival.”