with flowers strewn
2003-06-22 || 2:22 p.m.

My brain feels like it is trapped in quicksand. That is not some heavy metaphor for depression. It is rather more mundane than that. I have this anaemia problem and I have not been able to afford my ferrous sulphate tablets for a couple of weeks. It makes me really ill. A few days ago my concentration levels were virtually nil, I was severely depressed (yes! even more so than usual) and I had pretty bad palpitations. So I asked my mum to buy them for me. Now I feel better in a way but it feels like someone has hit me over the head with a brick. The trouble with the tablets is that they give me back my iron but going back on them gives me a headache for a few days.

So I decided to stay in bed today.

I was thinking about when I remember dying. I was this golden ball of light and it was the strangest thing because I had the deepest feeling of heaviness together with the lightest feeling ever. Its actually impossible to put into words but it was like knowing everything but it feeling totally weightless. It was like everything about me was compacted into this tiny ball of light.

And then I lay in bed listening to the rain mixed up with next door's fountain and it felt like a childhood day, when you are ill and you lie in bed hearing the sounds of the house and you wonder if anyone remembers you are there. You wonder if anyone is going to come and bring you a drink or anything. And you feel like you should get up because your brain wants something to do, but you know you just can't so you stay lying there instead.

And then I imagined swimming at night, somewhere dark and cool. The feel of the water and silence except for night sounds. Someone beside me, also silent. And then lying on the ground after, looking up at the stars, knowing that I don't have to say anything because they just understand.