Rock Bottom

As 2014 drew to a close it was time to take a long hard look – not at my manhood but at my impotent existence. I felt limp and powerless. My “Lust for Life” was gone along with every drop of get-up-and-go. I tried so hard to get up, but the heavy blackness of depression pressed me tight against the cold stone floor. I was at rock bottom.

The world had lost its magic and I had lost my sparkle. Sunsets and rainbows meant nothing to me. There were no colours in my world – I could only see darkness. I was slowly suffocating in overpowering self-loathing. I never wept – I wasn’t capable.

I once looked into the mirror and didn’t know who was staring back.

Only then did a solitary teardrop leave my eye and explode in the bathroom sink.

My broken body was still swallowing “Oxygen” in the land of the living while my broken heart continued to beat in the land of the dead.

The kids knew that I was extremely poorly but were blind to my inner pain because my gloomy depression was masked by a frozen warm smile.

Eugene was studying art and illustration at Blackpool Sixth Form College and Jo was doing fine at primary school.

I haven’t the foggiest idea how I had managed to cook, clean, complete the school runs, wash the clothes and get the daily shopping. We had days out at weekends, occasional trips to the cinema plus I ferried Jo to his swimming lessons and beaver scouts group.

Somehow, I did it, but I still haven’t a clue how.

I was a sick man in both body and mind. The voices in my skull mocked and laughed as they screamed death is the only escape.

I just lived one day at a time as a grinning automaton with my paternal instinct operating the remote control.