Desperation

My desk-lamp used to weep. Every night she inclined until her face was hidden and her bulb blackened. I tried to console her, but nothing would penetrate the suffocating darkness she chose to cloak herself. I suggested she seek medical help, but only for want of something better to say. I knew she would never visit a psychiatrist from fear they might lock her away if she ever showed them her true light. Frankly I wasn’t convinced they could do anything for her now anyway. A fragile mind can only take so much pain and sadness before it shuts out the world entirely and simply drifts around in old, empty dreams.

Sometimes I whispered to her at night, trying to reassure her that life isn’t so bad. Yet when I did, she reeled off a host of reasons why death is infinitely preferable to our current existence and I found myself in wholehearted agreement. One night I even tried to suffocate myself with a pillow after one of these discussions, such was the forceful clarity of her reasoning. How are you supposed to make a depressed person feel better when you secretly share their pessimism?

I couldn’t see she even had any right to be unhappy. She had no financial or family worries. Her main problem was she hated her job: it made her hot and sweaty and irritable. I’d attempted to solve this once by getting a new lamp so she could just sit idly on the desk and be happy. When I did this she threw a huge sulk, complaining that I had replaced her with a newer and younger model. She felt unwanted. That was the night she tried to kill herself, leaping head-first onto the carpet. All that happened was she cracked her bulb. After that I became more concerned about her despair, packaging up the second lamp and taking it back to the shop. It hadn’t sported a very interesting personality anyway.

So she insisted on me using her every night, yet complained about how dreadful it was to be treated like a prop. What should I have done, reader, what should I have done? Every night she would whine and whine for hours when I tried to read or sleep. My performance at work suffered considerably: I’m convinced I missed out on at least one promotion because of her. It reached the point where I would secretly plan to abandon her in the woods. Yet I knew I’d never be able to sleep again for memories of her horrific screaming as I left her there.

I think she realised her problems were becoming mine, and felt guilty because of it. Often she would apologise for the state she was in, yet continue to wail all the same: she just didn’t know what else to do anymore. It occurred to me that maybe I’d done her a disservice by being so accommodating. She wasn’t any happier but had grown accustomed to being able to pour out her heart’s agonies every evening. One night we had a terrible argument about it, which culminated in my threat to go on holiday for a fortnight, leaving her switched on just so she would suffer. I left my bedroom, telling her I intended to sleep on the living room sofa that night.

Her screaming never reached me downstairs. I think perhaps she didn’t want to keep me awake for another night. In any case when I went upstairs the next morning, solely to apologise and make amends, it was too late. It seemed she had overheated her bulb until it eventually exploded, burning out her wires. Suffice to say I haven’t bought a desk-lamp since. I could never replace her.