Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression by Sally Brampton Read Free Book Online

more, become me.
    I try, sometimes, but I look awkward, uncomfortable, as if I have put on a stranger’s clothes. So I take them off again.
    I feel frightened, suddenly. No, terrified. This is not fear. This is black, consuming terror.
    ‘Tell me,’ says my therapist, ‘what you look forward to in the day.’
    ‘Taking my sleeping pills at night,’ I say. ‘Oblivion.’
    Not that it lasts very long. I am awake again at three twenty. Always three twenty, never three ten or even three thirty. My eyes snap open and my mind clicks on, as if somebody has pressed a switch. And on it goes, on and on. And it repeats the same thing, over and over.
    I want to die. I want, so badly, to die.
    I lie on the floor in my bedroom and scream, as if the walls could hear me.
    ‘Will somebody help me? Will somebody please help me?’
    But there is nobody there. I don’t want anybody there. I don’t want anybody to see me like this. I don’t want anybody until the terror gets too much, until I know that I am a danger to myself.
    This is one of those times. And so I make a call, to Sarah, my closest friend. We have been friends for more than thirty years. We have seen each other through successes and failures, through damaged romances and unaccountable bliss. She has seen me at my best and at my worst.
    And so I call her. Poor Sarah. My poor, sweet Sarah. She gets phone calls from me weekly, sometimes daily. She gets calls when I can no longer contain the pain or the sadness alone.
    She must be so bored of me. I am so bored of me.
    ‘How’s it going?’ she says. She is at work; she is the deputy editor of a magazine. The office is open-plan. It is difficult for her to talk. Sometimes I call her and just cry, because I cannot speak.
    I imagine her sitting at her desk, the phone pressed hard to her ear as she searches for words to say to me, words that will betray neither of us in the busy impersonal world of work. I can hear the murmur of voices all around her, the shrill summons of phones, the lovely noise of life going on.
    For a moment, I can’t speak. ‘Not good,’ I manage, finally.
    Her voice is gentle, concerned. I hate that concern. I hate that it is me who is making her feel that way. ‘How not good?’
    I hear my voice, rusty from lack of use. It sounds slow, as if I am talking underwater. ‘Bad,’ I say.
    She knows from the sound of my voice how close I am to the edge. ‘I just have to clear something up here. I’ll be with you in an hour, less if I can.’
    ‘OK,’ I say, because it is all I can manage. I can’t even say thank you.
    I lie on the floor in my bedroom and wait. I can’t imagine why she would want to be with me, can’t imagine what she could do for me. She is even more powerless than I am over this thing. Today I can’t honour it by calling it an illness. Today it is just a thing that neither of us knows or understands.
    I hope she won’t be long, just the sight of her comforts me. I need her to be with me, even if there is nothing she can say. I am terrified she will give up on me, that this thing will drive her away. Every depressive has that fear. Why would anyone want us? We don’t even want ourselves. Sometimes, we try to drive the people who love us away. Not because we don’t want them with us, but because we cannot bear for them to see what we have become.
    She arrives, bringing life with her. I can smell it, sharp and clear, on her coat. Then, just as suddenly, it is gone, absorbed by the dull, dead world of depression. My bedroom smells like a sickroom, stale and sad. I wonder if Sarah can smell it too. Once, there would have been scented candles burning on the mantelpiece, a fire lit, lights shining in every room. Now, one solitary lamp casts a dim pool on the table by the bed. The rest of the flat is in darkness.
    Sarah is lovely, her cheeks pink and her eyes alive and sparkling. Her hair is thick and auburn, her coat black, soft leather. ‘Hello, friend,’ she says, crouching down