Matt Haig

You can’t say mad people. So ignore that bit. Even though that is my point. When I am feeling utterly depressed I feel mad and I like people who say what it is I am feeling, sponsors be damned. But on my algorithm the most prominent people dominating and corporatising the debate around suicide are people who have never felt suicidal. They have lost people to suicide and they are wanting to help, and they are important voices, but the people at the centre of the debates around mental illness should be the mentally ill. Because when you are really at rock bottom the last thing you need to hear is look you have to stay alive because you will hurt the people who love you. That simply doesn’t work and it is a misunderstanding to think it does. It is a misunderstanding because it shows a fundamental lack of empathy. Imagine you are on fire. Your whole body and head is on fire. And someone sits next to you and says ‘look Sylvia you can’t do this to your sibling and your mother you will hurt them too much’. Would you not think ‘why are you talking about yourselves and not about the flames and what to do about them I am on actual fire?’ I don’t know. I feel guilty I suppose. When I wrote Reasons to Stay Alive o tried primarily to articulate the pain of it, as an act of empathy, but that book is often cited as starting this current rather sanitised mental health debate which strangely doesn’t mention the terror of mental illness as much as it should. The debate has become a bit tame, a bit safe, a bit individualistic, a bit SANE, a bit non-mad, a bit corporate, a lot neurotypical, and a little bit right wing in its emphasis on individual responsibility over social contexts. I don’t know what I am saying. This isn’t a video of a relative crying so it won’t go viral. This isn’t a paid ad for another bloody wellness app so you might not see it. But if you do go out and read The Bell Jar and understand the absolute unseen madness people who experience depression go through and the empathy needed to keep them here.

Depression tried to kill me at 24 and 25 and somewhere in my 30s but I am still here with half a century of birthdays, still flawed and messy and difficult, but with people I love and joy I can sometimes feel as real as fire so fuck you depression

Had an incredible birthday lunch @akokorestaurant. Five star West African vegan tasting menu.

Brighton it’s getting real

Time Machine

…human