“Can I come out now?”

“Is it safe? Has everybody gone?”

At the entrance to the burrow,

A tiny furry nose appears, sniffs air

Whiskers appear beside quivering nose

Two eyes blink nervously

Two ears follow

Yes it’s me, poking my head up after a while underground.

In fact it is exactly like falling into a bloody great hole and walking across the floor of it until I come to the ladder. I know from experience that the ladder will be there, and that I’ll get to it eventually, and Patience is the only word worth remembering. The proper name for this stupid time–wasting life–baffling nonsense is clinical depression and it’s nothing but a Right Royal Pain in the Arse. Think ‘sitting in a pot of superglue’. Think ‘apathy of crushing proportions, like the weight of 1,000 atmospheres upon you’. Think ‘the whole world, and everything you love, has become one unidentifiable shade of grey’, and you don’t actually care, except that, while you don’t give a flying fuck, you know in your intellectual head that it’s not normal and you will come back.

I saw the danger signs when I didn’t give a monkey’s about the wonderful, beautiful snow I delight in so headily. I knew the very evening I took my mother from the hospital to the care home and, walking away four hours later, couldn’t believe I’d done it. If anything kicked off this particular episode, it was that. I spent that night, and days afterwards, in a state of total disbelief mingled with simple shock. She Should Be With Me. I felt I’d abandoned her. “No–one knows how to look after her properly except me.”  But she had thought she should move into a home, and I respected her decision. (And the hospital were laying down some rules, too.)

I knew it again with Christmas coming on, when my familiar rabbit-in-the-headlights act did its usual pantomime turn. Only worse, this time, with all the aforesaid stuff. I put my head out of the burrow to comment on other blogs here and there, but I was in no position to speak for myself.

Anyway. Hello. I’m back. Tomorrow is another day, and it’s a particular anniversary. I’ll see you later….

Oh, and Happy New Year!