The Well of despair

Sliding down the slippery walls into the well of despair trying to grab on for dear life but the overwhelming feeling of depression comes over you like a wave at sea and your crampons and carabiners fail you miserably as you fall deep into the well and taste the dirt at the bottom!

Dark negative thoughts take over your mind and the struggle becomes unbearable with no light in sight at the end of the tunnel, Christ, you can’t even see a tunnel, you’re in the well miles away from it and all you can see is darkness!

The words “Stressed” and “depressed” are thrown around like “love” and “hate” with no real understanding of how it actually makes you feel and takes over you. No matter what anyone tells you, only you can pick yourself up.

“You’ll be fine” “you’ll sort something out” “it’s not that bad” “there are people worse off” are phrases used far to often by people who don’t truly understand how you feel, have never felt what your feeling or who blatantly don’t care. People have their own issues so you can’t always expect them to care or show any compassion.
You are in this alone. You are in the Ubliet alone and only you can climb your way out!

So it starts with googling the easiest way to kill yourself after you muster out of bed around tea time to smoke a cigarette and then climb back into said bed for the rest of the evening! Food isn’t an option as one of your options was starving yourself when you pressed search and you only have £3 so you need to use that wisely (and your running out of cigarettes)

Your head has totally melted and you can’t think straight. You wonder who you’ll leave behind but your thoughts are so dark you think they won’t really care anyway, so they continue, what if I did this, what if I did that, your thoughts are the darkest and the word positivity doesn’t exist in your head. Everything you have done equals failure.

Your so desperate to get out of the deep dirty well that you try scurry around for the crampons, carabiners and rope but it’s just thick mud around you and they are nowhere to be seen.

So you lay there in the pile of dirt still trying to find them and your finger touches the metal clamp and you grab on for dear life. You manage to lift up your head as a positive, yes, positive thought rushes over you and you think of new ways to rebuild your sorry, miserable life! Your phone beeps and it’s someone who cares, an email comes through from a potential job offer, someone hands you a tenner…….things aren’t looking that bad anymore are they?!

You find the carabiners and another crampon and prepare yourself to stand tall as the rope you were trying to tie into a noose around your neck suddenly looks more appealing to try to throw to the top of the well to get out! As you step into the carabiners and throw the rope high until it latches onto a solid object at the top of the well you pull out the crampons and start to climb. Step by step struggling to grab on ripping fingernails and wanting to give up on every step up, you continue because at the top there is life, a life worth living.

You may not have thought so, and still doubt it, but there is life. There are people at the top looking down at you wanting you to get out. Even if it’s just one or two people stood there, they want you out and that’s all that matters. Someone always cares. You never have no one. You can never rely on anyone or anything external to you for your own happiness but someone will miss you if you do stay in the well of despair and give up. I’m not going to tell you “things aren’t that bad” because they are. Maybe you have no real friends? You have no job? Nowhere to live? No money to feed yourself or your child? But when that one positive thought creeps up on you that’s what gives you some hope! Hope that you will regain yourself, regain good thoughts and see the light at the top of the well.

So, you’re right at the top and you’ve managed to get there all on your own as you roll over the top, breathless and take those first steps out as you see the daylight like your first steps as a child, off-balance but confident you won’t fall back in.

As your lips part, teeth start to show, dimples form and that smiles start to make an appearance, you look back down the well, gather your equipment and throw it back in. You walk away with confidence knowing that your walking free as a bird onto the next exciting chapter of your life and you will never let yourself fall back down again.

Life truly isn’t that bad there are ways out and you can find them. It takes inner strength and a strong fight but in the end you’ll wonder how you ever felt like that in the first place.

It’s like David Bowie said in Labyrinth;

“She’s in the Ubliet, she shouldn’t have got as far as the Ubliet, she should be out by now…………………She’ll never give up.