Depressaholic: Part 3

Despite gaining a first and a distinction in the degree and master’s degree that Tony completed in the four years of his time at university, he worked now as a temporary office clerk. He didn’t really like the work, but the worst aspect of it was that it left you drained, unhappy and unable to relax, in what should have been the reward of your leisure time.

Nevertheless, on a Saturday he felt sufficiently relaxed and enthused by those good feelings the weekend engenders in us, to shake off the irksome stench and anger induced by his life at work.

He woke in the morning fresh, and sat for a couple of hours trying to learn German. But it was difficult. He wanted so much to speak a language, he felt it should be something he could attain, but his aptitude was poor, and the way he studied – ploughing slowly through abstract, dull, old texts on German philosophy, constantly looking up words he didn’t know and then forgetting them – was poor and Quixotic to say the least. He felt jealous that so many others, especially foreigners, could so painlessly master a foreign language, especially since they didn’t appear in any way as intelligent or studious as he. It seemed to require a certain cool, a certain nonchalance, a certain ease of person to become fluent in another tongue; introverted people like himself faired badly at it. But he wanted it all the same.

Then later he ate lunch with his family, and dispirited and sad in light of his family’s seemingly easy talk regarding the lap dancer and the footballer, he’d headed off to town.

Not that he liked town so much. He hated being in a crowd, he hated shopping. He hated consumer society. Yet he wanted to make something of his day, to get out and enjoy himself, and he had no idea what else to do.

When he got there, he walked around aimlessly amidst the crowds, scowling and unhappy. He never smiled and cut a miserable, drab and discontent figure, so that if people saw him they just felt annoyed and angry as if he spoilt the joy and pleasure, their lightness of being on their day off. He hated the masses. He felt hot, bothered and sweaty, he felt ill and had hot flushes, and in this respect he didn’t help himself by having such an appalling diet. He always skipped breakfast, then later on, he would eat a couple of bags of crisps and chocolate bars. It was a pathetic diet, and he knew no better, but that concoction of e-numbers and additives, all that unsubstantial stodge and the lack of anything wholesome, left him feeling utterly dreadful. It left him with a headache, low on energy and with an emptiness in his stomach; it left him anaemic and lacklustre and with a depression rankling in his person. And yet he had no idea. He always thought that when he was down and low and dispirited, it was due to feeling unhappy about his life, about the world in general. But his appalling diet at least contributed to this state. It left him feeling hot and bothered, ill-tempered and energyless.

He strolled around. He had no comprehension of things like fashion and consumerism and hated to see well dressed women, joyously, rapturously engrossed in shopping, buying yet more clothes and apparently unconcerned about anything else. He couldn’t hide his anger, his hatred of the mob and he walked around town with a look of anger and dissatisfaction on his face. When other shoppers saw him like this, read his thoughts on his face, and knew he was out of humour, they felt angry and annoyed to have to put up with his presence. He wanted to mow down the mob with a machine gun. He shouldn’t have come, knew he shouldn’t have come and yet, he had come. Why? He was so annoying. It was utterly impossible to have sympathy with one such as him. He was a hard case indeed.

With respect to all the posse of well-dressed, beautiful young women he felt enraged. They were alien to him, he didn’t know them, and at one and the same time he wanted to know them yet was painfully aware that he would never get near them; and despairing of ever being able to communicate with them properly on any level, he was beset by a deep, impotent rage. They seemed to be everywhere he looked, and in the crowd you were forever bumping into them and making accidental eye-contact with them. He wished at such times that he could’ve been alone in the countryside. Yet he also knew that had he have gone there then he would’ve felt lonely.

Eventually, unable to contain his rage, he displayed his dissatisfaction by deliberately walking in the path of a young, handsome girl out shopping with her mother. The sight of those two aliens, sated, consumed by their shopping, irritated him, and as the man in front of him did the gentlemanly thing of allowing them to pass through a narrow shop doorway, Tony intentionally marched past, blocking the way of the daughter, almost bumping into her and showing her scorn and disrespect.

The young girl saw all this, read the situation perfectly, and being upset, directed a contemptuous look of scorn at Tony, tutting at the same time. His action was so pathetic and silly, and his body language and facial expression had told the girl everything, how much he hated her and how unhappy he was. And she, with mixed feelings of sympathy, annoyance, but also wounded pride on her own part, had hit back with haughtiness and supremacy, dealing Tony a blow to his spirit and soul. He felt hollow and ashamed, desperately unhappy. He hated himself for being like this, and couldn’t understand why he, and seemingly only he, should be so dispirited, dissatisfied, so hateful, black and raging.

Walking through town that day he had seen a young man with a Bible in his hand, backed up by his prudish looking parents, quoting from the Bible and lamenting the lack of soul of the consumer society, decrying the worldly vanity of all those indifferent shoppers. Tony had looked upon him with contempt and hatred. Yet he at heart was exactly the same. He felt such shame to be so hateful and raging inside. He only wished to be in harmony with the world.

And yet the incident with the young lady had then been compounded by a second run in with another woman, this time at a burger bar.

Although he realised he must return home immediately he decided first to stop off for a burger and a milkshake in an effort to cheer himself up. Whilst at the counter he turned around and in the queue behind him saw a small woman of stunted growth. His eye lingered on her, as she stood there alone, vulnerable and exposed, and he was unable to hide feelings of revulsion at her ageing, feeble presence as well as a general despair that fate could be so cruel.

Though he would fain have it otherwise he couldn’t resist a second glance at the lady, and then when he desisted doing this he persisted in thinking of her; he felt guilty and depressed to find such feelings of cruelty and ruthlessness aroused in his breast when he would like to consider himself a good person; in his gloomy state of mind he was unable to live and let live, like the other happy people around him. The sterile, kill-joy bully in him came to the fore.

The thought of the poor woman, queuing up alone like himself, for the cheap but comforting thrill of some fast food, filled him with utter loathing and he hated himself for it. He felt the woman was especially aware of his behaviour and thoughts and later when he happened to see her again on the way out he attempted to smile at her: but she, annoyed by him had just looked back with a mixture of contempt and real hatred.

He took the bus immediately home, deflated and depressed.

That evening he tried to make something of his time. As a student he had loved Saturday evenings and would spend them drinking a glass of red wine, reading a good book, and afterwards, feeling happy and warmed through by the wine, and the after glow of reading, reflect and meditate, whilst listening to classical music. But now, as a worker, that was not so easy. Even though, he was equally free now, and at home, just as at university, the simple fact that he worked during the week, in a pressurised, not overtly intelligent environment, scarred his soul enough to leave a mark now, on a Saturday night. Somehow you never quite escaped the horror of work, and his soul was not really, truly released from the bondage that he bowed to in the workplace, the meanness that corrupted it as he submitted to the company. His soul was still uneasy, poisoned, injured, imprisoned, and it was impossible to unwind and relax as in former days.

Tied to that the books he was busy reading were proving to be dreadful choices: Moby Dick and Dr Faustus. It was his own fault, for the tyrant in him demanded he read such books from front to back, never allowing him to quit, even though they were impossible to read, obscure and unrewarding and stretched your nerves, till you wanted to scream. He should’ve been more well-rounded, at least here, since there were plenty of good books about that were easy to read.

So at ten o’clock that evening, after having attempted to force his way through a chapter of the great white whale, he gave it up, angry, bitter and deeply unhappy. He only got one Saturday night, he didn’t want to waste it dragging through these awful pages, he wanted something more, he wanted friendship, he wanted to live, to love and he also wanted to take it easy and relax. He didn’t know what he wanted to do, but it wasn’t going to be reading.

His parents having gone to bed, he watched TV downstairs, and was unable to help himself watch a documentary about a woman getting plastic surgery followed by another about the making of a porn movie. It was all wrong, he hated it, hated himself for watching it, for wasting his well earned Saturday night watching this car crash TV, knowing he was somehow doing it to punish himself, as it held his soul in antagonism, knowing he should be doing something better with his free time.

Inevitably he ended up late that night on the internet. He had a vague hope that here he would find a friend or solace. He attempted searching the words ‘lonely’, ‘depressed’, ‘Bronte’ ‘Christian’ hoping to find somebody out there who had a mind like his, a girl especially. But it was all so fruitless, there were tonnes of useless hits, and the internet seemed like a lonely place, the final false solace of the hopeless and introverted. In the end it was something else that peaked his interest.

It was a news item entitled ‘celebrities of the year’, unavoidable as he visited his homepage. Knowing he shouldn’t look, he did so however, to see photos of a beautiful woman, with huge plastic breasts in a bikini and another of a good looking footballer, strolling along the beach with his wag. He was so furious with everything that he just had to make a comment.

‘I’m sorry, but why are we forced to look at these endless pictures of celebrities? They get paid huge amounts of money, don’t do anything for society and are totally removed from the common man and woman on the street. Most people will never get anywhere near them or the sort of lifestyle they lead, so why bother looking at these images?

‘And they’re all fake as well. That woman’s breasts are false and plastic. She’s not real. How can any man seriously like her?’

He felt frightened as he wrote this. Never one to voice his opinion in public, the internet offered him a security, an anonymity that he wouldn’t have otherwise had. He imagined someone would see his comments, a girl perhaps, and be pleased to find someone of a sensible, intelligent mind in this tawdry, Godless world. There must be someone else out there he thought and this would be a springboard for a friendship. So he was pleased to have written it, Yet he went to bed feeling unhappy and regretful, sad, nervous and at sea, as if he’d started a fire. Perhaps he should have just kept his mouth shut.

He awoke the next morning, sad and worried, and with a headache. And when he saw the response to his comment he felt utterly crushed.

Andy said ‘Wanker! If she’s so fake what are you doing up at two o’clock in the morning looking at pictures of her breasts? Loser!’

Nicole said ‘Shut up, you miserable bore. These people are living the high life. They like being photographed and we like seeing pictures of them, so cut the lecture moron, and go back to being a freak.

‘As for XXX (the footballer) – he is absolutely gorgeous.’

Tony was deeply upset. His nerves were shattered. It spoilt his whole day, and that was bad news, since tomorrow was Monday and he hated it.