People Watching Part 9 - Fall Down
As I think every citizen of Boomtown knows, the city isn’t
the most homely of places. Although to
some the metropolis might look striking – designed by a bunch of architects
coming down after the biggest bender ever – it’s far from the most practical
place to live. For most, home in the
city is a four-room flat: a kitchen, a
bathroom, a bedroom and a living room.
Outside those four walls there’s nothing that belongs just to you…no
path, no front steps, no patch of worn grass to care for. And nobody chooses to linger in the neglected
communal areas…..
Probably the cruellest legacy of the city’s architects is
the way the place toys with its citizens’ minds. With the featureless weather and only one outside
wall, it can be hard to know if it’s day or night. S.A.D. is something that all residents of
Boomtown have to deal with and I’m sometimes forced to abandon my people
watching exploits to peer into the depths of my own psyche. At these times, something inside seems to fall
asunder and it’s too much of an effort to drag my leaden carcass out of the flat. But I’ve learned that as the days of
confinement smear into one another, there are ways to fight back against my
progressive descent into darkness.
To tackle the shallowest episodes I need to close my eyes,
focus on my diaphragm and breathe….deeply to try to push back the psychic
weeds. Let it in…let it out…‘till it’s
over. But miss the early signs and I will
get dragged deeper and as my moods descend, I feel myself wanting to claw at
the walls, to storm and rage and thunder.
At my lowest point it can feel like my pitiless psyche is coming in for
the kill - really putting the boot in.
The worst part is the realisation that in the lonely void inside my
head, no-one will hear me scream. The
only thing I can do in the blackness is to fall down helpless …. and lie still
… and pray that this will pass.
It used to take days to shake off the deepest fugue states but
I have a powerful new ally in the fight against my demons. You………..
(to be continued).