Michael Harding: I can bear the winter but spring can be cruelest of all

I used to think that men had their worst moments of anxiety and depression in the winter. But sometimes it’s just around now, in the spring, when the heart sinks.

It’s the beauty of the world that makes me sad, as the poet said. I can bear the grim winter, but these spring months can be the cruelest of all.

And I’m getting addicted to the remote control again, which is a bad sign. It’s as if I can’t live without something in my hand, some sense of control, some assurance that the universe will not overpower me.

And when I go walking, I take a phone with me. It never rings. But I look at it every few minutes. Just in case.

And when I’m on the train I stick my face in the screen of the computer to avoid the world.

So I was getting worried that I might be reaching the danger threshold where anxiety turns into depression. Where the isolation game begins, the compulsion to protect the self against the universe.

Which is why I went to talk with my therapist.

“I suppose you think I’m being negative,” I said.

She looked back at me for so long in silence that I got uneasy.

“How long are we going to sit like this?” I wondered.

She laughed and said, “Probably 60 seconds.”

“Well at least you have a figure on it,” I said.

“When a client asks me a question that I think they should answer themselves,” she explained, “I just say nothing. And I can usually count to 60, by which time they have found the answer for themselves.”

Reminded of the Angelus

Sitting in uneasy silence with another person reminded me of the Angelus, when I was young.

Back then everyone in the world said the Angelus at noon and 6pm, or so I thought. It was a short dialogue between the Angel Gabriel and the mother of Jesus about Mary’s oncoming pregnancy, and apparently every good Christian in the bogs and fields of Ireland would bow their heads on the stroke of a church bell and recite the dialogue with whoever was nearest them.

Although my mother and I never actually said it out loud. She would bless herself and begin to mumble. I would stare at her.

“Say your Angelus,” she would command in a stern tone.

But reciting prayers with me was an intimacy far beyond what my mother could have coped with.

I just stood there, usually with a dishcloth in my hand, or with my teaspoon sunk in the guts of my boiled egg if it was evening time.

We both mumbled away in separate zones, but, because I had never bothered to learn the words, I would try to guess when she was coming to the end so that I could bless myself before she did.

Women in those days were notorious for praying fast, and my mother could complete the entire prayer, silently, in about 90 seconds, which is why I always counted to 60 before pretending I was finished.

My therapist smiled as she listened, and after half an hour I left with a lighter heart.

I wasn’t the only one suffering stress last week. The General almost knocked someone down as he was driving home to Mullingar. A man in a yellow tracksuit was running on the road between the roundabouts near the hospital, and the General had to slam on the brakes. He was so enraged that he shouted at the runner through the window.

“Why don’t you run on the pavement and not the road, my good man?”

That didn’t go down well with the runner. First he explained to the General that the road was made from soft tar whereas the pavement was concrete and then he told the General where he could stick his fancy car.

“So he runs on the roads because the pavement is made of concrete,” the General hissed. “Such nonsense. Imagine if I went into a room and found you banging your head on the table. And I said, ‘Why are you doing that?’ And you said, ‘Because the table is softer than the wall.’ For God’s sake. I’d have you put away.”

“Turn on the news,” he added, because it was 6pm and the television was on mute, and I had the remote in my hand.

But I didn’t turn it on. I waited in silence for the Angelus to finish. The bell calls me nowhere now. But the silence is always there, in every moment, waiting for me.