1) You are persistently sad, anxious and feel empty inside. Invisible even – this, despite noticing that your nose turns a brilliant orange when thinking about sex.
2) You find yourself taking long baths and, during these baths, you push the water away from you so the water comes back in small waves. Despite sitting in small waves of your own making, you feel hopeless and pessimistic.
3) You visit the local swimming pool, and discover you can fly like a bird underwater. This should be amazing. Or at least petrifying. Instead you feel guilty and worthless. You take a hot shower for an hour afterwards, and later consider cutting yourself with a sharp blade, to feel something again.
4) You have a loss of interest and pleasure in hobbies you once enjoyed, like sex. Instead of masturbating to online porn, you find yourself pecking small herrings out of your next door neighbour’s pond at 3am.
5) You have decreased energy, fatigue and constantly feel slowed down. Yet, despite this, when you move your arms up and down you can flap them up to 400 times per minute, reaching speeds of up to 55 miles per hour. You hate yourself for this. And you hate yourself for hating yourself for this.
6) You have difficulty concentrating, remembering anything, or making decisions which cause blackouts. When you wake from these blackouts you always find yourself sitting high up on a cliff facing the wall, miles from your house, with rocks on each shoulder. Surrounded by seagulls.
7) Your sleeping pattern is erratic. You either can’t sleep, wake up too early, or can’t stop sleeping. When you can’t sleep you suffer from severe stomach trouble. When you wake up, you always find you are sitting on an egg and have strong urges to mother.
8) Your weight is impossible to control, you sometimes eat all the fish in your neighbour’s pond at 3am, other times you stand, pensive, trapped inside your own head wanting to eat the fish but not knowing if the fish want you to eat them. Their feelings are suddenly more important than yours. This period can go on for weeks, and ends with you squawking.
9) You think about killing yourself all of the time, but when you try taking a thousand paracetamol, you can’t because your mouth has become a beak and you can’t pick up tablets with wings.
10) You are restless and irritable; you don’t want to see any people. You hop out of bed and onto the window ledge. Look up to the sky, and launch yourself towards the sun, and in the direction of the Atlantic.
