The moving men make a mess in my brain

And now they're off somewhere smoking cigarettes

Unlike the Three Act Structure, severe recurring depressive episodes have no beginning, middle or end. At some point, you know you’re in one but, because you’re feeling quite paralysed by the time you realise this, you can’t pinpoint when it started. There is no middle because to have a middle you have to know when it will end. It’s unfair. Life is unfair.

Even if you knew what time it was, you can’t leave, well not until the moving men get out of your brain. This episode began over 5 weeks ago. Normally I live at a low level of depression, say a 4. But, perhaps once a year, something changes. I begin to crave carbs and salt to crazy levels. I know it’s coming. And it is going to be heavy. The difference between your average depression and this: this one paralyses your body. Moving a leg or arm becomes a deliberate act. A half hour walk is an ordeal through a chest high wall of despair. I tried it yesterday and gave up. It’s hard to explain this physical effect. Unless you suffer severe depression and have done all your life, you think it’s a mental illness. All in the mind. But this is when depression shows its true ability to keep you on the ropes.

I am in an endurance test that has no time limit

None of this is simple. Why the moving men chose to turn up and rearrange all the furniture in your head at precisely this point in time, is anybody’s guess. It’s now piled up at sharp angles. And they’ve gone, probably in separate directions, since they don’t all speak the same language and probably got here on an illegal boat from somewhere. There have been episodes where they’ve gone off for months. Getting the furniture resolved is no longer the relatively easy operation it once was. For a few decades, a little tweak to the antidepressant library was all that was needed. Soon I’d feel like me again, ready to bounce back into the world. But this time it’s different.

Normally we give the moving men drugs, they put the furniture back and leave

We have a slight problem. The moving men no longer respond to drugs. They have tried them all in vast quantities. They have had layered SSRIs, they’ve had mood stabilisers, anti-psychotics. Then there’s all the sleeping tablets. We’re back round to A for Ativan now One psychiatrist suggested returning to HRT, but my GP isn’t listening. In fact, anything other than asking for a toxic booster of an experimental vaccine is ignored. It’s like doctors just put their hands over their ears now.

We’ve tried TransCranial Stimulation (TMS) but I think the magnetic coil would have been more efficient if my brain’s back catalogue was only a few decades old instead of six. Meanwhile, I do my best to take a philosophical stance and accept what is happening. A younger me would exercise it out, after walking it out in between bouts of cathartic crying. The latter is not happening now. I’m just numb. I wonder if this is because I’m no longer just fighting my inner demons but, like many others who are aware, I’m dealing with the external global narrative which is highly troubling.

The moving men don’t look like they want to help out anytime soon. And since they have no drugs as incentive, I don’t see why they would. I have to save myself, as we all must. Nobody else is going to do it. I think the next step may be a radical change in physical geography.