The winter period has never exactly had me sparking into action, what with the depressing doom and dankness. I often wonder if I've got that SAD syndrome, but then I've always preferred Springtime to the Summer. This year I'm just going with it and not wishing the months away.
This week I was taken aback by the general response to the suicide of German goalkeeper Robert Enke. The general perception being that he must have led a great life and there was no room in it for depression. Since when did a state of mind restrict itself to certain occupations? The things that I picked up on were his fear of failure and drive to succeed thus setting himself the highest goals. It just struck a chord that he was somebody who had a perfectionist personality and it just took a stressor to put him over the edge and into a bad place. The numero uno stressor is bereavement and the loss of a child multiplies that one several times over. He did a good job of keeping his troubles from his team mates which is a shame. It was a very tragic story that played on my mind for days.
I even had a pang of sympathy for our unelected leader Gordon Brown. It's been reported that he too has been down in the dumps, and maybe that's why he has taken to pounding the streets. That's very therapeutic but he should learn to enjoy it more and control his own destiny as that too looked like a staged photo opportunity. If your minds not right I can understand the difficulty in stringing together a coherent sentence on paper, I do it all the time at work but still they spin about his disability. If he's a stress monkey then better out then in says I, and he should pop in here for a few tips.
Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised that I was going to have a week of death and mortality thrust upon me with all these thoughts in my head. A close friend received an unfavourable diagnosis and as much as you try and remain positive the realities of life hit home and have you reflecting on how much time they may have left. What do you say to them?
A dead body found in the street is always going to involve us and if there are no witnesses to what happened we treat is as suspicious. Never assume anything, but after a couple of hours investigation stringing everything together it looks like a suicide. Possibly a victim of this recession but definitely a victim of their own thoughts. I speak to the next of kin on the phone after a death message had been carried out personally by officers. It was an unexpected shock, but the deceased kept everything in and wouldn't speak about things troubling them. There was a BIG stressor involved in that death too. I explain our procedures and try to be as helpful as possible but what can you say to somebody who's just had the worst news?
Maybe sometimes people just need to hear the words "Everything's going to be OK".
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