Treading time
Written by Aidan Tagg, a 38 year old unemployed male living in Kidderminster.
Diary Entry: 22nd July 2010
Today, like all my days in Kidderminster, are lonely ones. Not that it bothers me at all. I go to bed after midnight and wake about 08:30. I always record the many wonderful dreams I have. It can be anything from a silver alien probing my mind until I read text internally like a computer, to exploring grand, opulent houses or fighting the Devil for someone’s soul! I have to have coffee. I have it very strong and at least two cups. I feed my beloved tabby cat, Mickey, something fishy - aka ‘Mr most amazing cat’ - and turn on the TV to check if the world’s gone mad.
I give myself £5 a day to live on. It might not sound like much, but to those poor souls in other countries living on less than a Dollar a day - I feel rich. I like to spread my patronage. I am becoming weary of the plague-type domination of Supermarkets. I sort out market sellers and independent shops. I don’t work at the moment. I am 38 years' old and I have failed in a succession of community jobs since leaving university in 1996 due to depression. It grates at me every day and brings me down - even when I fight it. So my days are balanced between leaving people well alone and steering my own body through a life I frequently feel is not worth living. If, 100 years from now, someone asked what life was like on this day, I would have to say a world focussed on the obtainment of possessions and much more about money than people. This is our legacy and it makes us strangers from each other.
I am amazed how many people will pass you on the streets and not meet your gaze. Although I have to say it seems the opposite down on the canal tow path towards Wolverley, where everyone seems friendly and the wildlife truly abundant! I try to fill my day with a trip to Unique Fitness - a gym where I jump on cardio vascular machines and ‘beast’ myself of the calories I take in - and more. After, I stop and spend my £5 in Kidderminster on food for the evening and, maybe, something in Poundland or B&M. I have given up alcohol. I used to make it myself at home, but, with depression, the medication I am on almost becomes useless if I drink - so I don’t and I miss it less than you might think. I would describe myself as sentient and quite fragile. I see the families growing up around me and I wish them all well. But do I long for that myself? No. After I come home to my rented house I try to do one of my hobbies. If the depression holds off, I might play cello, write, paint in oils, turn wood, cook or sculpt in clay. If it does not, I will sleep in fits and starts or think for a long time. Mickey is always there and always magnificent. I don’t eat anything until late afternoon. Then I will cook if I can and I reckon I cook very well.
Life continues apace despite me. It has a momentum of its own - juggernauting along. To be beyond the turmoil and sheer effort of living a life on the earth in the 21st century seems to me an admirable aim! I envy those who find out who they are early in life and are young enough to enjoy it. Depression is not easy to explain. It is a veil. It hides the goodness from your sight. On a good day, a breeze of hope flutters the edges of the curtains and briefly lifts them aside for me to see a world I feel no longer a part of. My hope is that one day I will feel the breeze and be tempted to feel the air and want to know where it came from. In Hollywood films, a saviour eventually comes. But in the real world, there are no heroes - no heroines, just darkness; a silence, an emotional quiet that becomes all you know. Invariably the world leaves me well alone - and I it.
