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During my first wrestling match with depression about ten years ago, my doctor put me on Prozac. Prozac didn’t do much for me except make my hands sweat, and turn me into an emotional zombie. I stopped taking it. Nothing happened. It was as straightforward as that. During my second wrestling match with depression last year, my doctor put me on Effexor. I wrote about the debilitating initial effects on this blog some time ago, as well as the cavalier attitude of my doctor, who said “I knew I shouldn’t have given you that information leaflet. Just take the bloody pills”. Effexor has really been a miracle drug for me. It lifted me out of a hole, and made me feel normal. I was able to make rational decisions, and approach daily tasks like food shopping, and washing up,...

I’ve been doing really well for the last few months, as far as being depressed goes. By this I mean that generally I’ve been happy. There are some days, naturally, when the washing up glares malevolently from the sink as if bent on destroying my mental wellbeing, and just waking up turns me into a bitter, self-loathing witch. However, these days they are pretty few and far between. That said, there are a few reasons why I might have another appointment with my psychotherapist, who I haven’t seen since May. See if you can guess which one it is: 1. I have the fear about going home. I’m worried that I’m going to miss Namibia more than I have bargained for. I think sometimes that I take the vast blue skies, the balmy days, the hazy mountains and the...

I’m not sure why, but right now I have no words. Usually ideas for blogging just pop into my head uninvited, the words jostling and pushing, assembling and reassembling themselves as if they have a life of their own, until I’m ready to put them on the page. For the last two weeks, there have been no ideas. The words have migrated south for the winter. I don’t know when they will be back. I wish I knew why this was happening. I feel bereft without them, a little empty. I just don’t know what to......

I think I may have mentioned that I have been a little bit down lately (for ‘lately’, read ’since last May’). I have been trying very hard to ignore the insidious whisperings that emanate from the dark side of my conciousness, but recently I’ve needed a little help. I have tended not to talk about it on here that much, because let’s face it, whinging is boring, and god forbid people think I was that. So I enlisted a doctor, who gave me some pills. The pills made me sick for a while, and then they made me high. I am no longer high, which is occasionally a disappointment, but I expect it is for the best. My doctor’s bedside manner leaves something to be desired, though. Coming as I do from the UK, I would expect to be given some reason for...

She put the ends of the stethoscope in her ears and told me to lift up my shirt; she said she wanted to listen to my liver. I fully expected that my liver would sense an opportunity for salvation and would be screaming “Help! Let me out of here!” as soon as the stethoscope descended, and hoped that it wouldn’t embarrass me. Fortunately her attention was distracted. “Oh, dear, dear, dear no” she said, pointing an accusing finger at what I was about to discover is my manipura chakra, which controls higher emotion and energy. It appears that one of the problems I have been having in combating depression is that I have a metal object stuck right in the very centre of my spiritual being. If I want to get better, I’m going to have to remove my belly-button......

You awake from what was barely a doze, a disturbing dream of strangers seeing you naked, and laughing. You examine the strange ceiling tiles for damp spots, and mentally catalogue the bruises, the places that are stiff and sore from unaccustomed exercise. Your throat constricts, and you try desperately to swallow that itch, that rough morning scratch. Your mouth is as dry as dust, and tastes of smoke, and of stale beer. Outside the window, thunder grumbles, the clean smell of rain drifts in through the open window, moving the curtain and it makes you realize how grubby you feel. Beside you, someone takes deep, slow, sleeping breaths. You look at his smooth, soft back, his tousled, tow-coloured hair, and you try to remember what he looks like. He is less than a foot away, but the...

2.21am I awake after approximately two hours of sleep (it having taken me over two hours from the time I went to bed to actually fall asleep). I can hear something scraping ominously in the kitchen. I hope it is the cats, trying to eke the last of the gravy out of the cat food bowls. I start to ruminate on the nature of cat food. Why, for example, does it smell so disgusting? How exactly do they make the meat into those little pellets? Is it, in fact, made of tofu and sawdust shavings, with flavouring added? How do people in the cat food factories cope with smelling like the breath of Satan’s minions when they go home? 3.10am I try yet another sleeping position, but my feet feel like they are made of tin foil, and I can’t get comfortable. The lines “if you can meet with...

My colleagues Lesly and Charmaine seem to be less than confident about my ability to find my way in and out of places. Over the last couple of days, many jokes have been made, along the lines of “If she goes in there, she will never find her way out, hahahahaha.” Lesly asked me to take him to the location, where he is staying, promising to show me an easy way in and out.  I assured them that I have a remarkably good sense of direction, and would be fine, no matter how many twists and turns he wants to take getting home.  The way to the location was easy, but the place was crowded, largely with cheerful looking men in dark blue overalls.  Charmaine made a disapproving noise.  “Tsch, these Ovambos, they are everywhere”. I was mystified.  “How can...