DARK DAYS

Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, the words simply won’t come. This is an attempt to put down into words just how gut-wrenchingly bleak that feeling can be. It’s kind of in the spirit - if not the style - of the late, great Douglas Adams who had a theory that you can always try to turn the problem into the solution, and, in trying to come up with something that was highly improbable, came up with the “Infinite Improbability Drive”. This is nowhere near as witty, but it does have an angsty adolescent “leave me alone” feel going on which I quite liked.

Feeling very low today. A black fug has descended and everything seems pointless and worthless. Every word I find seems leaden and damp. Any sense of vim or vigour, or shine or sparkle just seems a long forgotten memory or something that only other people have the key to unlock.

The black dog is barking and only I can hear its roar. The endless grind of gears spinning and whirring and screaming in the dark. I look around, the simple secret of happiness seems known to everyone but me as they plod along - oblivious - through their sad and pointless days. Can’t they see it? Don’t they understand the emptiness of it all? The hollow core at the centre of the day? The nothing…? The nowhere…?

It’s inevitable really. Unavoidable. Every up must have its down, every yin its yang. Somewhere there’s a party, another place a wake. The darkness must chase away the light, the day must be swallowed by the night. The balance of the universe, the equilibrium of existence, an infinity of blackness divided by the light remains an infinite night. Every smiling face must be counterbalanced by another one which wears a frown. Every happy event finds someone holding back the tears. For every birth a death. For every death a birth. Only because of this can harmony be maintained, balance retained. The world always keeping its accounts in check.

I can hear the noise of others living their lives. Oblivious. How can I unpick the mystery? What is their secret? How did they find it out? This secret they all seem to know, so simple for them to find but still lost in a swirling labyrinth of the unknowable to me. Did they lower their expectations? Don’t they care? Or do they just not see it? Do they not have any perception of the yawning abyss or do they just choose not to think about it, get on with their lives? But how can they? How can they…? The empty hollow tunes blaring out of the radio of life. Popular, empty, meaningless. The three minute pop mantra they all sing along with until the words all lose any meaning, any value. The banging of the hammers and the chisels, toiling away at making the building someone else will tear down again one day. The familiar jokes and phrases they all share, and all laugh at, even though they’ve heard them all a thousand times before. Thing you say. Things you think you’re supposed to say. Things people expect you to say just so they can say back what they’re supposed to say. This hungry blackness is so all-consuming, so overwhelming, how can you carry on as if it simply isn’t there?

I need something to help me turn the corner, pep me up, bring me round… but there’s nothing there to do it, no bright spark to reach for, no silver lining to be found. I’ll just sleep it off instead and hope for the miracle of tomorrow, the something different, the change, the new point of view, the fresh start I hope for but which never actually comes.

Perhaps I’ll wake up and I’ll dash headlong into tomorrow with a mind full of hopes and dreams, and all the dead words of yesterday will dance and laugh and sing, until I hit that wall again and crash back down in flames and learn once again the pointlessness of chasing after those fragments and glimmers of joy that dance in the air like dust in a sunbeam but can’t be held in your hand. The black dog will still be behind me, howling with the thrill of the hunt, and in the end will drive me into another blind alley with no way to escape, and we’ll do our mirthless dance again, as we always do, one or the other winning the round, but the outcome of the game remains in doubt, with everything and nothing still to play for. All still up for grabs. Is the black dog blocking me, or can I block the black dog?

When the words won’t come, it’s so hard to tell.

Block. Block. “Tick-tock, still blocked”.

How quickly the mind unravels, how quickly the bitterness seeps in, how quickly the bleakness gives way to utter despair.

It’s unravelling fast now. Fast… faster still… This whole house of cards collapsing… the hope being swallowed by the emptiness and the darkness that yawns its way around me and swallows me… devours me.

Darkness falls.

I see a sea of blackness all around me. A thick, sticky blackness that clings to me no matter how much I claw away at it.

It’s everywhere. I can smell it… Taste it… Hear it… Feel it…

Feel it flooding my mind.

A void. An empty nothingness…

Nothing I do… Nothing I try…

Nothing has value… Nothing has point… Nothing has substance…

Nothing matters…

To nobody…

…and never will.