N.D.E. epilogue

I went to the doctors with suicidal tendencies last August. I got a phone call about five weeks later with a really sympathetic voice asking if I wanted to meet up for a chat and a prescription for anti depressants. I wasn't particularly depressed, I just thought it was time to bow out and leave the stage. I am getting slower at my work, my eyesight isn't what it was. Though my last piece was one of the most sophisticated things I had ever done I had a feeling I had done my best work. The desk I have designed for the office in Chelsea is pretty special though so I may leave that as my last piece once I've paid off my debts and change job. Furniture is a young mans game and I take no pleasure in designing for another's hand to make. My sex drive is not wat it was. I can't run like I NEC did. Most of all I was disgusted with myself for picking up another crack habit. It only lasted a short while but each night left my heart pounding and my mind suicidal. My best days seemed past. I kept thinking of oak antlers. The dead branches at the tops of oak trees that stand gnarled, seasoned, strong, toughened, and looking down at my worn hands, the same. There's something I always find depressing about the match of the day football pundits, their days of playing gone, just sat around telling young bucks where they are going wrong. The critic is the lowest life form. Even the worst practitioner does something but the critic just criticises.
I'd just had enough really. Tired more than depressed. I love my girlfriend and Dook but when you get that darkness you believe they would be better off without you. Suicidal thoughts are not rational. I'd wanted to make a little home for us and I had succeeded. But then the pipe took it all and left me with paradise lost. How do others do it? I see the thickest glombies who manage to establish a stable life style and home but every time I try I fuck it up. Addiction is a terrible affliction as is bipolar. You make failure to fulfill your self image. You self destruct through a need to prove your own guilt. Somewhere way back in childhood someone told you you were bad. That grows throughout your life. The belief you are bad. Letters come through the post telling you that you are bad. Courts call you in to tell you you are bad. Your destiny is to feel unworthy.
I remember after taking all the chemicals I couldn't walk or control my body, just ranted about death. After four days I began to learn to walk and as therapy took Dook out a lot, (I still am doing our eight miles each morning). I talked to him none stop. Passes by must have seen a right loony talking none stop to his dog about how the people here didn't like us and wanted us dead. I was convinced as I staggered through the undergrowth that I would find a dead man face down, and when I turned him over it would be me.
On our early morning walks I still half expect to see a swinging form from rope and branch. I still hear the crows calling out "skree, skree" telling the village lynch mob my whereabouts. I can't do some simple things and tire easily. Whether this damage to the brain is permanent only time will tell. Doctors estimated two months till recovery but methoxphenidine is a research chemical. Recommended dose is 80mg. I did 1800mg. I doubt another human on The planet has done that so doctors estimates are guesses but I am much, much better. Not able to work a full day yet and some logic eludes me where it ought to be elementary.
That's the trouble with suicide attempts. One in thirty succeed. People damage themselves severely but live. People shoot half their heads off and live. Once the afterglow of survival passes, once all the amazing support and freinds who came out of the woodwork return to it you are basically back where you started. I suppose its like the addiction mantra of one day at a time, if that's too much, one hour at a time, sometimes it might be just get through the next minute. The overview is unhelpful. We are going to be dead a very long time and we are heading there anyway so stick at it.