Black Dog

My Black Dog has descended.  He’s something that I fight every day of my life but, perhaps twice a year, he moves himself in and I can’t, for love nor money, get rid of him. 

The world becomes a very scary and unpleasant place when he’s here.  I find myself sitting in silence and staring into space for hours on end.  When I’m not doing that, chances are I’m crying.  The sort of crying that physically hurts and feels like it will never stop.  My stomach becomes this tight ball of anxiety and anger...the anger is the worst part for me. 

I hate anything and everything – including you, probably.  I grew up in a family where anger was never expressed and it’s something that I now fear because it is such an unfamiliar emotion and I’m scared of the consequences of it bubbling over and showing its face.  I see everything as a personal slight.  Friends who are out and about having fun clearly don’t care about me at all...how dare they get on with their lives when I’m on my knees?  Everything makes me angry.

I know that I’m not being rational – clearly I’m being insane and unreasonable and unpleasant.  I know all of that.  I become this vile, bitter person.  So very bitter.

I am alienating everyone right now, including the person I probably care about most in the world.  I’m just being so bloody horrible to him and he inexplicably sticks around despite the fact that I’ve done this to him several times now. 

I’m not sure of the purpose of this post.  It’s not one that I’m sending to facebook or twitter, so it’s not one that I’m really putting out there to be read.  I think it’s probably just my way of explaining to my friends that might stumble across it, why I’m disappearing for a while and why I’m cancelling the things that we’re supposed to be doing together.  It’s my way of apologising for being like this.  Believe me, I don’t enjoy it.