Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression by Sally Brampton Page B

and her cold, unfeeling husband. I know that she cries all night, that she is half-blind with tears. I even know what size shoes she takes (two). But I don’t know how mad or sane she is. I try to picture her in the fresh veg section in Sainbury’s. She’s so small, I could fit her in a shopping trolley, like a toddler. And then I imagine losing a mad Spanish midget in a supermarket.
    I’m not sure I could cope with that. I’m not sure, even, that I can cope with myself. I have not been out in the real world for a week. I think it might be a shock. All those people, those lights, the harsh cold air of reality.
    ‘I don’t think so,’ I say.
    She is indignant. ‘Why not?’ She beats at the chair with her fists. ‘Why not?’
    I put on my coat, resort to rules and regulations. ‘You have to have permission from your psychiatrist.’
    Grace starts to whimper. I feel exhausted. My unfamiliar shoes pinch. ‘We’ll ask the nurses,’ I say.
    We walk to the nurses’ station. ‘Grace wants to come with me,’ I say, pulling wild please say no faces over the top of her head.
    They look at Grace. ‘Now, Grace,’ they say, ‘you know you’re not allowed. You know what happened last time.’
    I leave, without a backward glance. I don’t want to know what happened last time. I don’t want to hang out with mad people.
    The air is cold and sharp after the cloistered warmth of the ward. Everything feels big and noisy, too bright. Cars hurtle past me, heaps of jagged metal. I shrink into my coat. Even as I shrink I think, how odd. I am not, by nature, a shrinker.
    The people in the supermarket look strange, as if they have been recast to bigger proportions, painted in stronger colours. I choose a bunch of flowers, walk to a till, take my purse out of my bag, count out money, hand it over. As I do so, I marvel that I am capable of acting so normal. Except that I am not. My hands are shaking. Sweat is pouring down my back. The effort of being among people, among lights and noise is overwhelming. I want to sit down, right there at the checkout. I used to do this every week, with a trolley full of stuff and a world of recipes in my head. I used to do it and think about twenty other things at the same time. Now, it takes all my concentration to retrieve some money from my bag. I marvel at myself, at how competent I used to be.
    I want to cry. I want to explain myself to the people standing around me. I want to say, ‘This is not really me. I am not like this. I am like you. I am not a patient from a mental hospital. I am just an ordinary woman whose mind has gone temporarily wrong.’
    And that’s when I realise that all I want to be is an ordinary woman, in an ordinary supermarket, doing her ordinary, everyday shopping.
    And I understand how unspeakably wonderful ordinary, everyday life is and how I long to be back there.
     
     
    I grow to like group therapy. It is consoling, being with people who feel as I do. Sometimes, when the blackness eases in my head, I even feel bored. One of the therapists, let’s call her Meg, bores me. She wears crêpe-soled Mary Janes, toddler shoes with little buttoned straps, and bunched cheesecloth skirts. Her voice is very low, almost a whisper, so the group has to lean forward to catch her words.
    ‘Attention seeker,’ I think. I am picking up the jargon of therapy fast.
    Meg’s hair is clay red, abundant with henna. She is thin; a skinny, whispery woman with a squeaky little temper and a banal way with words. If I met her in another world, I’d get no further than hello. Now, I have to pay rapt attention to her every word. She treats us as if we were children, scolding and encouraging us in turn. I want to punch her. Cheesecloth does that to me. So does depression. I find myself stranded in sudden, almost murderous rages. I can’t keep still, am filled with a fierce, restless agitation. Then, just as suddenly, I am hopeless and helpless with despair and apathy. I can find no middle