TOM JACKSON
A lot has been written about the impact of
lockdown on mental health. If anything my
own mood has been better over this past year
than previously, but I think that’s because I’ve
stopped drinking. Such has been the benefit
of giving up the booze, it has trumped the
deleterious effects of spending pretty much
23 hours a day within the same four walls with
the same two or three people and two cats.
I hadn’t, I trust, become a full-blown nasty
drunk. But latterly alcohol had left me
sometimes spoiling for an argument in a
way it never did in all the years before.
Apart from a few pub fights as a much
younger man, of course. Some of which
weren’t even my fault.
Mind you, while I wouldn’t want to
belittle those suffering more severe and more
warranted problems than me – I’ve got off
lightly, here in my big house with my well-paid
job intact – I’ve still felt the strain. As in, an
excess of irritability, anxiety, occasionally
something close to depression, despite the
medication I take to avoid it.
Although, while I’ve necked 20mg of
fluoxetine every morning for 15 years,
I do sometimes wonder if I’ve actually
got depression, as opposed to some other
condition. I do often feel downcast, but it
seldom lasts long. I’m much more of a peaks
and troughs man, up then down, manic then
catatonic. My daughter came home from
school years ago after a lesson on mental
health and announced, “I know what Daddy’s
got! He’s bipolar!” Perhaps she’s right. Although
maybe I prefer bipolar because it sounds more
glamorous than dull old depression.
Whatever you call it, the past year has
heightened the peaks and deepened the
troughs, while also pushing the waves closer
together, like when a polygraph starts pinging
in a cop show, or a seismograph goes haywire
in a disaster movie. High as a kite one minute,
I’m rushing around the house, energy and
optimism to burn, singing snatches of show
tunes (“I feel pretty, oh so pretty...”), giggling
with Sam, cavorting with Nicola as if we’re in a
Carry On film... Five minutes later I’m crashing
back to earth, and through the earth, into a
deeper, darker place of apathy or impatience.
It’s hardest for Sam. One moment he’s
bantering amiably with his dad, calling me out
for not stacking the dishwasher to his exacting
specifications, the next I’m sighing and
muttering I need time to myself. In an effort to
keep the mood light, he’ll start singing, “Can’thandle the bantz,” to the tune of Guantanamera,
and I’ll snap, “No, Sam. That’s f***ing right.
I can’t,” and strop off into the garden like the
teenager he was until not long ago.
Funnily enough, I’ve not been anxious
about actually catching Covid. That’s partly
because I’ve been careful, and partly because
I practise a hard-learnt que sera sera fatalism
which, within reason, is I reckon a useful
approach, even though I suspect it’s an
intellectually bogus philosophy. Still, if the
bullet’s got your name on it...
I’ve had more bad dreams than usual.
I won’t bore you with the details. Listening to
other people’s dream descriptions is super-dull,
up there with hearing about their ailments or
wading through their holiday snaps (plenty
of the former in recent months, not so much
of the latter). Plus, my nightmares are so
catastrophically awful – worse than the worst
horror film you’ve seen – I never recount them
to anyone, not even my wife. Especially not my
wife, given the outrages my unconsciousness
conjures up often involve her and our children.
But then, I can handle nightmares. Not
sleeping on my back helps. Also, Nicola,
not generally content to be woken in the
small hours (who is?), has given me special
dispensation to seek wifely comfort in the
event of a particularly appalling dream.
“Remember,” she’ll mumble. “It’s not true.
It didn’t happen. Now go back to sleep.” Good
advice, as always.
With a reduced range of stimuli, the ones
you are exposed to matter more. I heard Auld
Lang Syne in some telly drama and promptly
started crying. As I did during a recent episode
of Death in Paradise when Catherine the sexy
bar owner was hospitalised and I became
convinced they were going to kill her off.
“Oh no, not Catherine!” I kept mumbling on
the sofa. Sam and Nicola laughed until they
realised that, yeah, once again the silly old
fool was properly upset.
As for real (well, sort of real) life, various
ongoing feuds, disputes and grudges (all of
them entirely extant within my imagination)
I’m conducting against numerous shopkeepers,
acquaintances, colleagues and former teachers
have become magnified. And finally, street
beggars, of whom we have a profusion locally,
are starting to grate. Those special whiny
beggar voices are doing my head in.
The end can’t come soon enough. n[email protected]‘After the past year
I’m either high as a
kite singing show
tunes or crying at
Death in Paradise’
Beta male
Robert Crampton
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