The Comforts of Tea

Trigger warning: Contains some references to self-harm or suicide, if you’re having thoughts of a similar nature, I urge you to speak to your GP or another medical professional, they can help. If you live in the UK, then there’s also hotlines like the Samaritans.

They say that tea comforts in any situation and that time heals all wounds, so I came to the place I know best for both. I’m on my second cup, and almost an hour has passed, and I’m still not feeling any better.

A few years ago, a friend told me walking was a great way to think. A great way to clear the mind. So this afternoon, I had a shower, put on my jeans and t-shirt, threw on a jacket and left the house. It was the first time I’d left the house in two days. Before that, I’d only been out was for a meeting with a doctor, to talk about my mental health and state of mind.

I walked, without direction, without conviction, I just walked. Down the wide streets, cars quietly parked, blinds drawn shut, light seeping through. Down the busier streets with their buses and cars and traffic lights beating away, my head held in a low constant gaze the entire time.

I tried to think. I tried as hard as I could to make my thoughts clear, I asked questions and looked for answers, yet still I came to nothing. No thoughts. No ideas. Nothing. Within my head, a narrative was unfolding, it was a story about my life, the life that I’d want written down, to call my legacy. The story to share, if I should die.

It was a story fuelled by anger, anger at the people, companies and events that lead to this walk. Angry at the world for not being better for me, an anger that in a saner state of mind doesn’t even begin to make sense. I can’t even communicate what this feeling inside me was. I just focused on the path ahead, left foot after right, right foot after left, step by step to a destination unknown.

Passing strangers, I lowered my head, sometimes I’d hold my shoulders strong, wondering if this person I passed would actually be that mugger to shank me, steal my belongings and leave me bleeding on the sidewalk of broken paving stones. My blood forming a dark pool around me, my eyes slowly icing over as no help was to be found. No siren to be heard, no car stopping to get involved. Just left there alone to fade out of existence.

If that happened, then after my body was found eventually, identified and tagged with a name on a piece of paper tied around my big toe with a length of white cotton string, left in the cold room of some quiet morgue in the north of London. My next of kin would be called, notified and mortified. Her son will have died before her. His son not able to enjoy a drink and a share stories of success. After some time, the door to my cold cell, just bigger than the size of a coffin would be opened. My body placed in a coffin, sealed, and put on a plane, flown back to Australia, such that my parents could visit a grave where my ashes would be stored.

My story would end there. In a few years, people would begin to move on, my existence on this earth nothing but a dust. Everything I did, slowly expiring, would fade away. Maybe some days people would remember me, but mostly not. After a few years, my mother still wouldn’t be well, she’d still be sad, asking herself why she let her middle son go so far away, for so long.

Alas, this time my story wasn’t to end. It hadn’t yet before, and it seemed not to want to today. Maybe there was something more in store for me, maybe there was something I didn’t know, maybe there is a reason I’m still here. Maybe I’ll find out, and it’ll become clear.

For now, I sit here, my tea now just an empty blue cup, sitting next to a clock that doesn’t work, next to a lamp that’s probably seen more than me.

Footnote: I’m sharing this because I want to give an insight to the thoughts of a mind that is suffering with depression. Yes, I’ve found help and spoken with medical professionals about it. What people don’t realise is sometimes even though someone can’t actually bring themselves to self-harm or commit suicide, maybe they might subconsciously place themselves in path of harm.