Depression: This Shit Just Got Real

I went to the doctor’s today. Told them I wasn’t coping. Suddenly everything feels very real. “Depression” was bandied around.

I haven’t been coping for the last three years, so it’s not like it’s a new thing. But I’ve had to cope, had to carry on regardless. I haven’t been allowed to stop and breath for fear of falling down and not regaining my foot hold. It’s not that anyone has told me I’m not allowed to stop. It’s just that there hasn’t been many people telling me I can stop or showing me how on earth you do it, and my natural inclination is to just keep going. There’s also been that small, but loud, issue of a little baby, now toddler, telling me that I need to keep my shit together for him. Depression hasn’t been an option.

I did sort of try once before – the asking for help thing I mean. It was about a year ago, or was it two? I have no idea anymore. My hair started falling out. I’d shower and come away with handfuls of the stuff. Luckily for me my hair is pretty thick so you couldn’t really notice it thinning out. Then small bald patches started appearing on my head, I tried to hide them but every so often one would peep through. I phoned the doctor, asked if it could be alopecia. Was I experiencing any stress, she said? Well yeah, as it goes I am. My voice was cracking under the weight of the words as I told her that my ex suffered psychoses, that I was filing for divorce and that I have a small baby to care for all alone. She said it sounded like alopecia but she wanted to send me for blood tests to be sure, especially as I was breast feeding. My bloods were fine. No-one ever asked how I was dealing with the stress. After time the alopecia went. The stress stayed. The roots of the depression took hold.

Ironically I’m not at my lowest point now. I’ve managed to block my ex out a lot more than in the past. I haven’t felt like taking my own life for a long time and feelings of self-harm are few and far between. Perhaps it’s because I’m starting to get some let up in my life that I can see the problem more clearly, see how depressed I really am. Finally it seems I have reached the point of enough is enough. I have known for months years that I need a break and some support, but life and work has been too manic to do anything about it. My days are either spent with a bouncy toddler, or at a crazy-assed job. It doesn’t leave much time to go to the doctors to pour out my heart. For someone like me who needs to build myself up to such an event, I couldn’t just cram it into a ten minute break.

If I’m honest, part of me had been planning this for a while. I’d gently set it up at work that I would be able to disappear for a bit and not cause too much chaos. I’d handed some stuff over. Busted my gut to ensure key things were sorted. Then yesterday evening I was walking home from the shop with my son in the buggy. Only he wasn’t properly in the buggy because the fastener on the harness has broken and won’t open so he was just sitting on the buggy. I crossed the road and forgot to tip the buggy up as it reached the pavement. It was the lowest pavement you could imagine, you know those really low ones that are there to ensure it’s easy for buggies and wheelchairs to get up. Only it’s not easy, not if there’s no harness on your little one. He fell face first onto the floor with an almighty thud. The screams were unreal. I picked him up, there was blood everywhere – gushing from his head. The panic was immense. It was everything I could do to keep myself calm enough to deal with the situation. I scooped him up and ran home as fast as possible (I was very close). To cut a long story short it looked a hell of a lot worse than it was. Once I’d cleaned up the blood I could see he didn’t need stitches and with some forced application of a bag of frozen broccoli the swelling went down. However, it was enough of a stress to remind me that I needed to do this shit. I needed to get that break and give myself a chance to rebuild my soul.

Later that evening I was so nervous, could I really do it? Could I put myself first for once? I don’t tend to do that. Many of us don’t. I kept putting off going to bed because it felt like morning would come sooner that way and then I would have to make that call. I’m not sure what I was scared of. It’s just that life has been so crazily hard. Making that call might signal an opportunity for me to relax, to slow down and deal with the shit I’ve been thrown and maybe I’ll find when I’m not on adrenalin-fuelled-deal-with-this-shit-mode, perhaps I won’t actually be able to deal with it. There have been so many bad things happen that I’m scared if I tell people all about it they might think I can’t hack it as a single mum. Will they think I’m not fit to be a mother? Not to be trusted with my own son? I mean, that was my plan right – tell them I wasn’t coping. But I am. I mean. I’m here. I’m breathing. I’m fed. My son is fed. That’s coping, right? Only there is a part of me that knows there is a whole other level to coping that most people take for granted. Like enjoying life. Like soaking in the sun and smiling. Like not thinking everyone fucking hates you. This shit has gone on for so long now I’ve no idea who I used to be. I seem to remember being thought of as the bubbly one at a party. Now I can’t meet up with someone without fearing what I will talk about. After all I have nothing to talk about. The fear is much greater if my son won’t be with me, when he’s there I know he will soak in the attention – his regular distractions ensure all meaningful conversation will cease.

I hardly slept last night with the nerves. My son rolled over in the night and cuddled me. Could he sense it too? Would I really go and speak to a doctor? Would I actually tell them what was happening to me? I knew if I did I’d be signed off sick in an instant so it wasn’t something to be taken lightly. But because I’d been thinking about it for so long. Because I’d been gearing up towards it, rather than it just being hard to do, it was now also hard not to do. I had imagined not going into work that week. I had imagined having a break. Now that either option felt difficult, it was easier to take the one that might eventually help me.

And then I did it.

I called the doctor. I went in and I saw a nurse practitioner. She was wonderful. She listened. She said quite clearly that I was suffering from depression. She signed me off work. She asked me about taking medication. I wasn’t too keen, I never have been. I’m just not in to taking medicine, any medicine (unless essential). I’m not all anti medicine and vaccines, it’s just that I don’t like putting crap in my body unless I need to. Or it’s vodka. I think after seeing how badly my ex was treated by the mental health team and how negatively the medicine he was given affected him I’ve always been a little nervous to go down that path. But somehow, in her office, it didn’t seem so scary. I agreed to try them for a month and see how it goes. I’ve been promised a referral for support and she’s booked another appointment to see me. I think that was the biggest (and nicest) surprise of the whole thing; not only was she going to help, but she was going to check in on me again.

She also handed me a leaflet. I cried as I sat there clutching it. I’d cried throughout most of the appointment to be fair, only this was a different type of tear. The leaflet was about a domestic abuse support project. She said I should call them because they would be able to help. I cried because although I have referred to my ex as having been emotionally abusive in the past (and in the present) I didn’t use those words with her. I just described things. Factual things of what was said and done. She defined it as abuse. It shocked me to hear someone else describe it that way. It’s hard to explain, and I’m in a place at the moment where the words are struggling to come out, but somehow my thinking that my ex sometimes used emotional abuse to control me and excuse his own behaviour feels very different to someone saying, here have a leaflet for this charity, they can help “people like you”. It felt like I was suddenly a statistic, a sad, pathetic statistic. I’d gone from working with these charities to needing their support and I hadn’t even realised it. It was surreal, yet simultaneously too real, this was not me exaggerating things, or my emotions getting the better of me, this was someone else – an expert – telling me her opinion.

The sick note was short and sweet, a one word explanation – depression. It’s there in black and white. It felt strange having it written like that. Like it made it real. I have always thought of depression as an illness, a chemical imbalance. It’s not that there is any shame in it, but it just didn’t feel like my experience. I have been low because of events in my life. I have been anxious because of my experiences. Where I thought my anxiety was subsiding, it seems it’s just been evolving. The panic attacks are rare now, in their place is what can only be described as an incessant gnawing away at my soul, a gnawing that tells me what a horrible person I am and how no-one likes me. I just assumed that was the truth. Apparently it *might* not be. Clearly when you experience high levels of stress and trauma repeatedly for so long it does something to your brain. My depression is a problem created by another, but it’s here to stay unless my some miracle I can overcome it.

As the day starts to draw to an end I’m feeling kind of hopeful. I’m under no illusion that things will change dramatically or quickly, depression is not easy to overcome – no matter what triggered it. I’ve been on an uphill trajectory before and thought this is it, I’ll be better soon. Only those upward sections often just provide a beautiful view, they are often followed by some intense falling. It’s not like I haven’t spend the last two years trying to sort my shit either. I’ve been pushing for change, not in some zealous, over-active manner (I have a toddler, I can’t do much beyond dress him and feed him most days), but somehow, in between all the mayhem I have tried to focus on the good things in life and address the bad. I’ve changed job to get away from a bully of a boss, I’ve seen a therapist, I’ve – finally – succeeded in breaking away from my ex (this is very different to merely divorcing him), I try to say yes to all possible social events – it’s not many, I’ve made new friends, I’ve tried to date, I’m doing (slightly more) exercise, I’m writing, I’ve gone on trips abroad to feed my travel bug, the list goes on and on. But none of these things have altered the fact that I’m not happy with my life. None of it has addressed the big gaping hole that lives inside of me. Now I’m sharing this burden of depression with someone else, it feels like I’ve made it their problem too.

Finally this shit got real. Maybe now, with help, I will manage to find a way to pull me out of the gutter of depression.

Support

If you are concerned about your own mental health there are a number of charities which you can contact in the UK. MIND, Samaritans and Rethink are some of the better known ones who can provide support and advice. This is a list of mental health organisations specialising in key areas such as the elderly, youth and people with learning difficulties.

Women’s Aid are the key charity in the UK providing support to people experiencing physical, sexual or emotional abuse in their homes.

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If you liked this, you might also like my post, How Mental Health Campaigns are Missing the Point, and my post on Missing in Action