It was the beginning of high school and I had no friends. Lunch would be ate with the people who bullied me the least and class was generally spent trying to be invisible. It's not a unique situation for a high school kid to be in but I won't pretend it didn't absolutely suck at the time. Even now at 20 I still have trouble dealing with life because of what happened to me during those five years.
So as a kid with no friends I used to have to make my own entertainment which primarily involved eating packet upon packet of crisps in front of the TV watch re-runs of Friends.
Then one day I decided to pull out this old Lego box, the sort I'd had as a kid and start building. There was no plan, I just built and built, higher and higher, until I had a tower which was almost the size of me (a slightly short 11 year old). I didn't take the thing down for days, it just stay in the middle of my room as I manoeuvred around it.
Then it collapsed. I can't remember if it was myself or the cat or just the intrinsic instability of it. But the thing collapsed and with a load crash it scattered Legos everywhere.
I remember being quite annoyed. But I immediately started rebuilding my tower, taller than before. This cycle of build-repeat-build-repeat went on for a few months until I gave up, packed the legos back in the box, and forgot the whole affair.
This is the best metaphor I have for depression. Something I've been trying to deal with since I was probably about 13 or 14. Depression, or whatever you'd call my issue, sucks. You spend months on end building your life up. I've had people before tell me how impressed they are.
"John" they'd say "how do you do all this stuff and remain so happy?". And then, once your tower has been built, a small perturbation occurs, and it all comes tumbling down. I'm in the midst of one of those.
Although the method may have changed, the idea behind the collapse remains basically the same. Hurt myself. This has come in various forms over the years but the most recent one, the one I'm going through right now, involves a shit tonne of cigarettes and a general decline in cleanliness of myself and my environment (I know, beautiful right).
It happens every month or two months. Not sure I've gone more than 3 without a major collapse. An implosion really. I've drank myself into the floor before now. My housemates don't really understand why I do it and to be fair, neither do I. These destructive episodes usually don't last more than a few days tops but when they're done, I have to start from the bottom. Rebuilding that tower brick by brick.
Because of this I've never held onto friends for more than a couple years. The longest relationship I've ever had ended because of my insecurity. I pushed her and pushed her and eventually she left, and who can blame her. I don't.
I'm both hopeful and fearful of this next rebuild. I've pushed out of my life one of my closest friends, and most of my family. It's just me now. They say no man is an island and I'd agree. We're all ships really. And every so often I decide to push mine out in the middle of the night. Burn my map and throw my ropes into the sea. No anchor, no crew, just me.
A few times someone's rescued me. But not this time. This time it's just me. I'm the boat heading towards the open sea.
There's a storm. And I'm alone.
