Depression

I wake up at midday and realise I am still tired, I try to go back to sleep but dark thoughts stand between me and slumber like an impenetrable barrier, the same dark thoughts that engulf my dreams and prevent real rest from ever occurring. I get out of bed and trawl the internet for news of my beloved football team, I look at pictures of celebrities, lusting over the women and admiring the men, I stand up and mentally berate myself for being shallow, and then I make a coffee with sweetener instead of sugar. I reminisce back to the days when I was considered handsome, when girls looked twice at me in the street, then I glance down at my now 38 inch waist and ridicule my body, my being and then I finally doze off again with thoughts of existentialism and the absurdity of life swirling through my brain. I wake up five minutes later and reach for my iPhone, iPad, iFad. I gaze absently at the time on the HD screen but I do not observe it, my eyes lack focus and I am drawn into the pixels like an enigmatic star sucked into a black hole. I imagine myself amongst the millions of other pixels, one small cog in a machine, but no, I am useless, I have no purpose, I am here because I feel so small that I may as well not exist. I shout, I scream, but from the bottom of this technological abyss nobody can hear me. I try to process my thoughts rationally, but I can hear the hum of the iFad processor, distracting me, leeching its way into my consciousness and I feel helpless. I resign myself to existing as a mere pixel for the rest of my life, anonymous and alien from the rest of the world, like a mere Island in a Swedish archipelago, unique and beautiful, yet isolated and lonely. I snap out of it.

I speak to friends on my iFad, the conversation flows but it is meaningless, I might as well read the Daily Mail, I read the Daily Mail. I feel lazy and indolent, I feel like this every day. I go on youtube and look up an old David Lynch advert, I temporarily feel at peace with myself. I feel can relate to this even if nobody really can, entrapped in a dreamlike state and engulfed by a liquid of meaning that doesn’t really mean anything, I am content to sit on a raft and flow through this beautiful gold river of nothing much, and then I arrive at my destination, a mahogany table attached to a tightrope. Suddenly everything turns black and white. I step on to the tightrope with heavy flat feet and fear, if I fall what will happen? On one side of the rope is Sunset Boulevard; on the other is Un Chien Anadlou, at the end is another table, this one pine, and there is colour. On the pine table lies an iFad, this is the now, the present. I tiptoe cautiously across the rope and then I fall, I think I am going to die, but my life doesn’t flash before my eyes, instead I see a scene from Eraserhead and then I hit the surface, an icy cold projector screen laid out horizontally, I smash through it like a buxom blonde in a cheap car advert and enter the world of Film Noir. Maybe this is where I belong, I don’t know. I snap out of it and return to the melancholy of my life.