How the Darkness Spreads

I’ve written a few posts now about how depression effects me but I thought this time I’d write how it affects the people around me. I kept to my word, next time Henrik came online I brought a few things up and the events that followed really highlighted how hard this condition can be to other people.

It turned out, the email I sent those many months ago explaining why I thought it would be best to cut contact for a while, the email I exposed myself and everything I was feeling, the email I had worried about every day since I sent it, he didn’t read. His explanation was, and I’ll quote:

“I meant to, but I had sort of this walls are coming down on me, felt cramped, like shit piled up on me, so I never did. Are you mad at me now? I mean, it sounds pretty egotistic, but I just didn’t have the energy to focus on anything but what I was doing just there and then.”

It hit me then, the amount of emails I had sent him in the past when I was at my lowest, the amount of times he had listened whilst I vented out and cried, the amount of times he talked me out of taking the pills that were beside me. This isn’t easy to deal with, he never asked for it, it had to reach breaking point at some point. What makes it harder is the fact we are so far away from each other. He has told me in the past that the thing he finds hardest about all this is the fact he can’t just take it away, he can’t even be in the same country as me let alone the same room.

He has been going through a very rough time himself and no matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t blame him for not reading the email, the ones he has had in the past have been hard to read to put it lightly. This condition doesn’t just emotionally drain you, it drains the people who have to see it too. They worry, they get upset, in some ways it becomes contagious.

I was pretty sure before that I would carry on hiding my depression, despite how much I know it doesn’t help me, and this has just confirmed to me why I should. I don’t want people to worry, to get upset, to share this burden, I can’t do it to them. What scares me now is that as Henrik and I’s conversation went on it became increasingly clear that with everything going on in his own life right now I can’t rely solely on him to get me out, it’s become too much. This means that either I find another person to share this with or I try and deal with it on my own and no matter how much my head screams at me not to, I know deep down that it’ll be the latter option I go for.

Back to Business

It’s about time I got back into this blog writing. I have been back home from my job for about a month now and I have to say the weeks since being back, I’ve been feeling, well...good. Getting constantly abused and knocked down by members of the public whilst you stood on the street in all weather for at least 8 hours a day, usually more, doesn’t sound like the best therapy for a clinically depressed person but surprisingly, for me, it has worked. I came back with better priorities, a new view on life, I still got down now and then but I thought about things differently, it didn’t affect me as much.

I guess that’s why I haven’t updated since I’ve been back, I started this blog mainly to come to terms with my depression and since being back I haven’t felt like I’ve needed to do that, but, as they say, all good things must come to an end. Deep down I knew it wouldn’t last, depression just doesn’t go away like that and the last few days I have been gradually feeling worse. Right now I’m still nowhere near the extremes I used to be but I can feel it coming, slowly seeping deeper into me.

My new way of thinking tells me that there must be a reason for this change of mood and I’ve actually thought of a number of candidates:

1) Since being back I have acted more and more like a counsellor for Amanda. Her hysteria about her weight, about food and even life in general is taking new extremes and naturally she turns to me. Getting messages late at night saying that she can’t sleep due to the fact she has just taken a load of diet pills, fat burning drinks, caffeine drinks, and all on an empty stomach so she feels like she’s about to have a heart attack isn’t exactly going to make me feel better. I have told her that when we go back to university (in about a week) I am taking her to see someone, that I can’t act as her counsellor 24/7, that I need to start taking care of myself for once. Whether she goes ahead with it, time will tell, but I’m definitely not going to be as lenient as I was before, for both our sakes.

2) Going back to university. I never thought I’d say it but I think I’d prefer to stay at home. My parents are arguing even more due to the impending divorce, my dad still wanting things to be how they were. My relationship with my dad even tenser because of this, he still can’t accept the fact that I’m independent, that I’m no longer his ‘little girl’. I constantly feel smothered when I’m at home and that never bodes well for my mood, yet I’d prefer to be here than at my house in Durham. I don’t know why exactly I’m feeling so apprehensive. A part of it is my course, I’m not sure it’s the right course for me anymore. A part of it is my housemates. I’ve come to realise during this summer how different I am to them. Apart from maybe two (out of five) of them, they are very naive about life, very innocent and if thrust into the cruel world on their own would never cope. I guess I feel there may be some clashes. Also if I happen to have one of my bad moments, they really would have no idea what to do.

3) Henrik. I hate to think this but I can’t deny there’s a connection. With me thinking my head was now sorted I got back into contact. He had been sorting his own life out and I gave him the chance to vent out about issues, just like he used to do with me. Now, despite knowing he finds it hard to get online as regularly as he used to due to his working hours, I’m finding that I’m waiting, willing, for him to come online. If he does, we talk about everything other than what we should be talking about, we’ll talk till early hours of the morning, decide to go to sleep and I find myself lying in bed wanting to talk to him once again. Exactly how things were before. He hasn’t mentioned the email I sent, hasn’t mentioned anything of substance and I think it’s about time I bring it up. It can’t be a coincidence that when I cut contact from him I started to feel ok again and after I start talking to him again my moods deteriorate. I hate to think that he could be affecting me like that, the thought that I would be better off not ever talking to him again...I’ve decided, the next time I get a chance, I’ll bring up everything we need to talk about, my feelings, his feelings, and get things cleared up once and for all, then, then I’ll decide what to do.

There are so many things I could go into that haven’t been mentioned but I feel this post is already long enough. I can almost guarantee that I will be updating more regularly now, things right now seem like they can only get worse.

Chugging Away at Life

I mentioned before about a job interview I had in London. Well it turns out I got the job. You cannot imagine how much relief I felt when I found out. Financially things are terrible back home and with me having to pay student fees and rent on my house back up at university...well things were getting a little desperate. It didn’t help with the fact that I thought my summer job was already arranged but I got back from university to find that the office that had accepted me were now un-accepting me due to budget and staff cuts. But now, starting Monday, I will officially be a ‘chugger’.

For those who are unfamiliar with the term, a chugger is the name given by the Daily Mail Newspaper to charity fundraisers on the street who stop passersby and try and get them to subscribe to a charity. The term, made up from the words ‘charity’ and ‘mugger’ is meant to convey the hard-sell techniques that some use. I’m trying not to think about the whole negative opinions held by people about this job and think about the positives. Because of the hours and the demanding nature of the job, I am going to have little time to myself, meaning for a while at least my mind will be taken off my depression and Henrik...hopefully. Also, I will be travelling around the UK which means I can get out of the house and away from the constant arguing of parents.

My contract states that I have to work for at least five weeks. Due to the travelling, I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to get online and update this regularly. I will try but I wouldn’t expect any posts for at least five weeks.

Sorry about the slightly rushed nature of this post, I was intending to go into more detail about the job and opinions and such things but tiredness is overcoming me. The lack of sleep is really taking its toll now and as I’m travelling to Oxford tomorrow for my training on Monday I really should try and regain some of it. Easier said than done of course.

Short Musings

I was away for a job interview in London at the start of the week and whilst I was there I decided to stay for a few days with Amanda....well, actually, she practically begged me to stay, not that it took much begging on her behalf. I am getting worried about her. After asking how she was, she basically reeled off every classic symptom of depression, yet she still denies that she has a problem. There are times in the past where I’ve felt like I’ve gotten through to her about this but give it a day and then she’s back where she was before; in complete denial. I can’t really blame her for it, it took me the best part of three years to accept I had a problem, but then I didn’t have a sufferer of depression telling me that I was suffering from depression. We made a deal in the end as she’s just as worried about me as I am her. She wants me to go see a doctor about medication and if I do that she’ll go see one about her depression. According to her, now that I don’t have Henrik to rely on, I’m in need of medication even more than before and the fact I pushed him away is a clear sign I need help. I obviously find it hard to accept. I don’t like the thought that I can’t get through this on my own, that I need medication or some guy...albeit one I’m very fond of...to deal with life.

Despite this, I’m starting to regret pushing Henrik away like I did, though deep down I knew it was the most sensible thing to do. It was far too dangerous to rely so heavily on someone who was so far away from me and who I could only contact through email or MSN. But remembering back to times when he was there and helped me through some of my lowest points, I can’t help regretting the decision. I can’t go back on it though, not now, so I guess things are up to him now, he can email back if he disagrees with my decision or he can get on with his life knowing he won’t have the burden of dealing with my hysterical moments. The latter just seems so much more appealing doesn’t it.

Yet Another Thing Stolen from my Life

“What do you do when the only one who can make you stop crying is the one who made you cry?”


I mentioned in my last post that the reason today was such a shit day was because I pushed away the one person in my life who has the ability to make me smile even when I’m at my lowest...Henrik.

He is still the only one I feel that I have told willingly about my depression and definitely the only one I can talk to about it without holding anything back, but today I sent him an email explaining why I think it’ll be best if we stopped all contact. It doesn’t make sense does it; I mean it is pretty obvious that I care for him, quite a lot. I’ll even finally admit that it’s bordering on love, but really, I feel this was the best thing to do.

Before I go into the reasons behind my decision I’ll fill in a little about our history. We have been talking to each other for about a year and a half now and our conversations, mostly on MSN, were always fun, completely random, carefree. We would spend hours talking, day after day just putting the world to right. When I finally accepted that I had depression I felt like I had to tell him and it actually came easy to me. We would talk about it, I’d release the emotion I kept hidden from everybody else, he’d listen and be there for me to vent out. As my depression became worse our conversations quickly moved from relaxed to tense. The things I talked about became more serious, I would talk to him while feeling suicidal and he would try and talk me out of it. This became more and more frequent until I realised I had become completely reliant on him. He told me that he found the situation hard, hated the fact that he couldn’t do anything to take this depression away, he said that the suicidal moments always upset him and I began to feel so bad for burdening him with everything.

Obviously he wasn’t online for me to talk to every hour of the day and I would start to send him emails while he was offline. I became this needy, emotional, insecure person and I hated it. Every conversation lately had been depression based and I had to stop it somehow. I don’t want to be this pathetic and weak person, I want things to go back to how they were when we actually had fun talking to each other but I can’t see it happening, so instead of bringing him down even further I’ve decided to stop completely.

My heart is practically screaming at me but it was something I had been thinking about for some time now. I do care about him and I don’t want to be responsible for bringing him down anymore. He’s better off not talking to me and so I’ve put it into action. I’m still feeling crap about it, it’s going to take a while to get over but hopefully it’ll help me move on with my life.

I had never told him how much he meant to me because I could tell that his feelings back weren’t as strong. I was, and still am, living in a dream world, hoping that he would say the words that I longed him to say. I need to get a grip, go back to reality and this is the only way I can see it happening.

I blame my depression for pushing him away. I hate the fact that it’s controlled so many aspects of my life and now it’s reduced me to a lovesick shell of a woman. But there is some good in all this. I now have an added determination to overcome this condition. If I can overcome it and become the woman I used to be then maybe I could get back in contact with Henrik. How long this determination lasts before the depression also takes that away from me, only time will tell.

Wake Up to the Delicate Sound of Thunder

“Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.”
- Steven Wright


Where to start...today has not been the best day in the world, in fact, I would go as far as saying it was actually a shit day, one of the shittiest of shit days ever to grace the calendar of completely shit days.

I woke up to the sound of my parents screaming at each other, or rather, my dad screaming at my mother while she stood there and took it, a rather frequent occurrence at the moment . I haven’t really spoken much about the divorce, if I’m honest, I’m not sure what I should be writing because my opinions on it are not the opinions I should be having. A year ago when my mother told me that she was going to have a talk with my dad and end things my first thought was what took you so long. Ok, so my feelings towards my dad weren’t exactly great at that time anyway, but still, should I really be supporting it?

Both said that they wanted to settle it amicably but my dad increasingly made things difficult and it became obvious that he wasn’t going to cooperate. Today was the day he received the legal letter from my mother’s solicitor saying that the case has been taken to court, an action my mother had actually put off for far too long in my opinion. Even though he knew it was coming, he still flipped. My mother in the end went out to clear her head, my dad became emotional and sentimental towards me for about ten minutes before shutting himself away again in his online world like nothing had happened. It’s then that I realised that actually this divorce does affect me, it does bother me.

Neil, my counsellor, likes touching on the subject in our sessions. He often brings it up and asks how it makes me feel and I always convince him that it doesn’t bother me, well I try to at least. He never believes me, tells me that it must be effecting me somehow and it’s only now that I realise that it does, but not for the usual reasons. It doesn’t bother me that my parents are splitting after 25 years, these things happen, what bothers me is the emotional turmoil that it’s putting them through and the fact that they try to act like nothing is wrong in front of my brother and I, though that is mostly my dad’s doing. I hate this indifference I feel towards the whole thing when it comes to my own feelings. It upset me for the first time today. A year on and it finally hits me, but still, there’s this coldness that I feel towards the whole situation, this unresponsiveness and that's what upsets me. I know that it’s still not affecting me as much as it should. Come tomorrow, I’ll probably go back to how I was before, completely indifferent, and I have to question whether this is normal. I feel that my depression is contributing somehow. Ironic really, the condition that makes me feel so bad about situations that shouldn’t trouble me is making me feel fine about a situation that should be distressing me.

This depression is controlling every aspect of my life right now. It’s crippling. As well as making me indifferent to my parents’ divorce, it has made me push away the one person who could bring a smile to my face, the main reason today was such a shit day and which I’ll put in another post to make things easier to read.

Birthday Dilemmas

“After all, what are birthdays? Here today and gone tomorrow.”
- Eeyore (from A. A. Milne’s ‘Winnie the Pooh’)


Another year gone. I’ve now officially been on this planet for 19 years and I’m trying to work out where the time has gone. This is the problem I have with birthdays, I can’t help looking back and reflecting on what I’ve done since the last one, and my thoughts aren’t sitting well with me. On one hand you could say that I’ve achieved a fair bit during the last year; I’ve finally come to terms with my depression, I’m getting weekly counselling sessions during term time, I’m slowly getting over my views on anti-depression medication, I’ve successfully completed my first year in university...all things which show that I’m moving on in my life, so why do I feel that the opposite is true?

My counsellor and doctors would probably tell you that my battle with depression has moved on immensely since my last birthday. I don’t disagree with them that accepting that I suffer from the condition is a big step in the right direction, but looking back, I can’t see what has changed. For example, I still can’t bring myself to tell people about my illness, I still have major problems when it comes to talking face-to-face with someone about my feelings; I hide emotions and hide my true self. I feel that the depression itself has gotten worse. Compared to last year, my general happiness is much lower; my depressive episodes are more frequent, last longer and are more severe. I am finding myself feeling vulnerable and considering suicide far more often than the previous year and I have found myself coming far too close to giving into these thoughts.

So here I am, on my birthday, sitting here desperately wanting to cry but my body, so used to hiding such emotion, is refusing to let the tears fall. I feel like a failure. I’m letting this illness take over my life. It’s making me lie to my friends and family, it’s causing me so much conflict in my head that I rarely get over six hours sleep at night, basically it makes me feel shit and I can’t see it changing. It makes me wonder, what will I be thinking in a year’s time? Will I be looking back like I always do and seeing an improvement in my life, or will I be seeing how my depression has taken over more of my life and be in an even bigger state of despair and worthlessness?

One question is even more prominent.

Will I even be here in a year’s time...?

Media Opinions; CBT and Depression

I read an article in the Independent earlier today on the effectiveness of CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) in treating depression. Here in the UK, the prescription of anti-depressants has been widely criticized, many articles have been written about the potentially harmful side effects, how they are overprescribed, and questions have been raised asking whether they actually work or whether it’s a placebo effect that causes people to feel just that little bit better. After such articles, doctors have been less willing to prescribe medication and now turn to CBT as their first choice of treatment. Now it seems that this shouldn’t be first choice treatment either.

CBT is a type of therapy which concentrates on behaviour and assumptions. It aims to get people to change negative feelings into more positive ones by suggesting new ways of looking at things, replacing the irrational thoughts with more rational and self-helping ones. According to the cognitive theory of depression written by the psychiatrist Aaron Beck, depressed people think the way they do because their thinking is biased towards negative interpretations. These negative thoughts follow a type of pattern and through CBT, a depressed person is helped to break these trends and change their perception on events in their life. According to the facts and numbers, it works. One course of CBT is likely to produce 12 extra months free of depression. So why is it getting criticized?

It was described in the article as a quick fix to the problems depression causes. Unlike other forms of therapy, it doesn’t look deeply into the cause of the depression in the first place. Also its effectiveness at treating major depression is put to question. Personally, I can see where they are coming from. Even though CBT wasn’t suggested to me, looking back, my school counsellor seemed to use those types of techniques. She focused very much on dealing with my feelings there and then rather than why I was feeling them. She would often tell me to try and look on the more positive side of things, try to tell me that I had more reasons to feel happy than sad. Now I’m not saying this is the best example of CBT, I decided long ago that my school counsellor must have gotten her qualification from a Christmas cracker so using her sessions as an example isn’t the most accurate thing in the world, but I’m not sure that CBT would be the best treatment for me. To me it does seem like it just treats the symptoms rather than treating the cause. But I can’t argue with the facts. CBT has been proven to work and I think for mild or moderate depression it should be considered a first choice, if it’s right for the patient that is. For sufferers of major depression and bipolar...in my opinion, no. If someone is having frequent suicidal thoughts for instance, you have to look into why they feel like they do, delve a little deeper than just treating the emotions felt.

Reading the article brought to light another concern for me. Depression is a hard thing to diagnose correctly and an even harder thing to treat. There isn’t a ‘one treatment fixes all’ solution. The media are very quick to point out problems in the treatment and diagnosis. Obviously CBT works, but just not for everyone. Anti-depressants work for some people but not for everyone. The first sign of a treatment not working, the media seem to jump on it. I’m not sure doctors know what the best cause of treatment is anymore and I can’t see how all these articles are going to help. For someone who thinks that they are potentially depressed, aren’t they going to be put off by all this confusion? I have to admit, when it comes to anti-depressants, I have been influenced by the media’s dislike towards them. After reading article upon article highlighting the down points of taking them, I’m currently stubbornly going against my doctors’ opinion and taking a substitute option instead which are anti-anxiety tablets. Anxiety isn’t even a major part of my depression. I know I’m slowly coming around to the idea of taking anti-depressants, after being told by my counsellor, my doctor and Henrik, I’m starting to accept that I may need them. But how many others have also been influenced? How many others are putting off seeing a doctor due to things written and reported by the media? I say they should start telling people how these treatments are helping people rather than concentrating on the negative side of it all. Personally, I think the media need to book themselves in for their own session of CBT.

Have you ever been alone in a crowded room?

“Sometimes when I say ‘Oh I’m fine’ I want someone to look at me in the eyes and say ‘Tell the truth’”

Nights are when I feel worst and these last couple of nights have been no exception. Right now I’m writing this purely to distract myself. It’s hard for me to describe exactly what I’m feeling; an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness, the lack of energy to simply go on, extreme loneliness despite knowing my friends are only a phone call away...

Maybe that’s the problem. I know how the conversation would go. They’d ask me what was wrong and the facade would go up. They’d hang up thinking I was fine, I’d hang up wishing they had probed deeper. This is where the hypocritical nature of my problem appears. I want people to know that I suffer from this, I want them to know that actually I’m not fine, I want them to see what I’m going through but at the same time I don’t want them to know, I want them to carry on believing that I’m a happy stable person. I’ve realised that I’m not going to tell them unless one day they decide to probe a little deeper, question me. Out of the four people who know about my illness, only one has been told willingly.

The first person to know was my mother, I told her that winter night after my early morning adventure. I couldn’t exactly deny that there was something up; I was in a complete state. Even though she suffers from depression herself and I’m very close to her, I find it very hard to talk to her about it. I never go into any detail and I have never mentioned how bad it actually is. I could never tell her that I consider suicide for example, and definitely couldn’t tell her how close I have actually got to it. When I feel like this, I can’t bring myself to go to her, I can’t let her see me because I don’t want to upset her.

Shortly after my Christmas episode I told Henrik, the only person I have told willingly. Now you can probably guess from the name, Henrik is Swedish. Being in different countries, we talk through MSN mostly. At the time, I needed someone to talk to. I had only just accepted that I had depression and he seemed the best person to help. Talking through MSN where you don’t see the person’s face and can’t hear their voice makes talking about my feelings so much easier. The main reason I hold back on telling people is because I don’t want them to judge me or suddenly view me differently. I don’t have that problem with Henrik. I put the fact that I’m still here purely down to him. He has saved me on a number of occasions though he probably doesn’t know it. There are many things I wish I could tell him but there are some things, even over MSN, I still can’t bring myself to say. The issue of course with MSN is I can only talk to him if I’m at a computer and he’s online. Lately he hasn’t been online as much due to work and other issues, meaning when I hit a down spell and he isn’t online, like now, I have to cope without him, something that is getting harder to do. Right now I would give anything to just talk to him; instead I’m left here feeling alone.

The third person to know was Amanda. I knew that when I went back to university after the Christmas break I would need someone up there to know, just so if I did try to do something stupid, someone would be there to look out for me and stop me. I told her because I felt I had to, not because I necessarily wanted to. I chose her out of all my university friends because I thought she would have the best chance of understanding. She suffers from anorexia and had confided in me a number of times. A lot of what she was feeling, I could relate to and so the decision to choose her came pretty easy. Actually telling her was another matter. In the end, she found out through a rather longwinded email (as you can see, I do tend to go on a bit sometimes). I don’t talk to her much about it, I still find it hard to talk to someone face-to-face when I’m in a state, but after Henrik being online less, I’ve had no choice but to rely on her a little more. I’m getting a little better at it, but now, me being back home in Wales and her living in London and currently jetting off to Zanzibar, knowing that she knows offers little comfort.

And then the fourth person is my counsellor. Not really sure he counts, but there we go. I’ve been seeing him for about six months now but as I see him through the university, I’m currently not having any sessions and I won’t start up again until October. Even though I find it hard to talk to him, still not over my face-to-face issues, he is easier to talk to than others. I don’t mind crying in front of him or showing how much everything is affecting me, and not having those weekly let-out sessions are definitely effecting me.

So I’m stuck with feeling alone, in need of a hug and in need of a shoulder to cry on. I often go through all the people I know and I wonder whether I could actually tell any of them. Some definitely wouldn’t understand, most would change how they treated me. Truth is I’m scared of letting people know, despite how badly I need it to happen. I guess all I can wish for is someday someone will see through my facade and that that day comes soon because I’m not sure how long I can take this loneliness.

The Slow Ringing of my Demise

These last couple of weeks since being back home I’ve decided that my new hate is the sound of a ringing telephone. My dad, having wrung up god knows how much debt, doesn’t exactly get his payments off in time. To be honest, I don’t think he can afford to, I mean he doesn’t work, he doesn’t earn anything apart from his pension and that isn’t much, all he does is waste his time on some online game and spend the little money he has on cigarettes. My mother has had to bail him out a few times, giving him some cash here and there, I’ve had to do the same. In fact, within two days of being back he had already asked me for money.

Well, after getting fed up of the credit card companies phoning him and demanding payments he has taken the very mature and adult decision to deal with it by ignoring the phone. No one in the house is allowed to answer it. The phone rings, we sit there, ignore it, and wait for the damn ringing to stop. It must ring at least 20 times a day now and I’m starting to lose my patience and sanity. The problem is, at first it just made me irritated, now, I’m getting irritated as well as terribly down. Every ring seems to get loader and sharper, each ring pierces right though me and now provides a nice countdown to a shit mood. And the phone rings every day, meaning it doesn’t matter if I wake up feeling relatively good, the sound of that telephone puts me right back down.

I didn’t get worried about it until earlier today. I was having coffee with my mother when someone’s mobile went off, the ringtone happened to be the sound of a ringing telephone. Even though the person answered the phone, and I knew perfectly fine that it wasn’t my house phone, it had the same effect on me. I felt incredibly down all of the sudden, everything seemed hopeless. I’m not sure what to do; my brain now associates the sound of a ringing telephone with a depressed mood, a depressed mood that hits so suddenly that if I was already in a vulnerable state, well, I dread to think what could happen.

To me it looks like I only have two choices. I either try and reverse my mental attitude by trying to associate the sound with something good, or, I throw the phone out of the nearest window after setting it alight into the path of an oncoming bus the next time it rings. No choice really, just need to find that lighter...

Depression: Life's Leech

“That's the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it's impossible to ever see the end. The fog is like a cage without a key.”
- Elizabeth Wurtzel

People often say that they are feeling depressed, that the weather is depressing, work is depressing, the way your neighbours’ cat jumps over the fence and makes your recently cut lawn its new toilet is depressing. I feel that the word is used so casually these days that it has lost its context. We live in a time where in some sense it’s ‘cool’ to be depressed, some teenagers actively wanting to be labelled as depressed and brandishing straight red scars on their arms or legs like medals. But what exactly is cool about this illness? Is it really the illness that people find attractive or the romantic notion of a tortured but beautiful mind drawing from its inner damaged self to spew out countless creative masterpieces? In reality, people forget the one simple thing, and that is depression is an illness. It isn’t glamorous, it most definitely isn’t nice, and it has the ability to reduce even the strongest person to a helpless and lifeless entity.

I have read many descriptions about depression, some putting it in very simple terms, some putting it in a more poetic way, but all seem to manage to vividly describe the feelings and emotions involved. I am not a writer. I am a science student, a physics student no less, I should be playing with numbers not words, but I feel it’s important for me to give my own take on it and not just quote a description written by someone else.

To me, depression is like a leech. Anyone who has been to a rainforest will know that these annoying, slimy, bloodsucking creatures latch onto you unnoticed and quite happily feed themselves on your blood. Depression is a lot like this but on a bigger, meaner, and more heartless scale. It attaches itself to you unexpectedly and sucks away on your very life-force. It drains you of all energy to the point that all you want to do is stay curled up in bed. You lose all enthusiasm; it hungrily feeds on any happiness until you just want to give up. Like a leech, once it has firmly attached itself to you, it’s a bugger to get rid of. You can’t just pull a leech off; you have to either wait for it to finish its feed and just fall off or you apply some heat (alternatively you could pour some salt on it and watch it combust but that would just be mean wouldn’t it). Depression does sometimes just go away, but you have no way of knowing how hungry it is, you don’t know how long it’s going to make you suffer or how badly. Like a leech, it isn’t picky about who it’s going to feed on, or when, but the earlier you catch it, the easier it is to deal with.

I regret the years of denial. By the time I came to dealing with it, it had attached itself so firmly onto me that in some way it has become a part of me. Now it seems that both roads scare me. If I let it carry on draining my life, what state will I be in say five years time? But if I manage to get rid of it, has it drained so much of me now that I would lose a part of myself?

How the Darkness Hit

Looking back, I don’t think I have ever been completely happy. Of course, things have happened which have made me happy for a little while, but on the whole, I don’t remember a period of carefree happiness. I noticed a turning point at the time of my GCSE exams, I was 15 going on 16 and suddenly it wasn’t just sadness anymore, it was a prolonged feeling of hopelessness, it felt like something was eating away at me, taking away all energy and enthusiasm until all that was left was an empty shell. At that time, I had no reason to feel as bad as I did, my exams were going well, my life back home was stable and it wasn’t like I didn’t have any friends. The only thing I could think of that was causing it all was the pressures of growing up and so I hid it away. I was embarrassed that I couldn’t handle such a simple thing as growing older and I learnt to hide these feelings, I managed to put a smile on in public and people believed it.

As time went on, the facade I had created was becoming harder to keep up. I found myself unable to hold back tears and would often have to come up with excuses to explain to friends and teachers. This came easy to me due to the fact that things at home were starting to get a little tense. It offered the perfect get out. My parents were arguing because my dad had been spending money we didn’t have on god knows what. He didn’t work and had slowly become addicted to some online game. He knew more about peoples’ lives on that than he did about me or my brother. Money was tight and I was drifting further away from my dad, but still it seemed like there was something else contributing to my miserable outlook on life.

It’s hard for me to pinpoint when the suicidal thoughts started but I guess it was around this time. Still I would hide away, now even more ashamed for thinking such things just because I couldn’t deal with a little stress in my life. By the time I was in my last year of school, things at home had gotten pretty bad and I was just waiting for my mother to tell me that she was going to ask for a divorce. My chemistry teacher kept me back one lesson and I knew what he was going to say;

“I know something is up. Last year you were smiling away, I haven’t seen you smile once recently, what’s changed?”

It took me a while to answer, in the end I told him all about what was going on at home, my feelings about my dad, everything apart from the thing that deep down I knew was the real issue. I think he knew I was hiding something, to be fair; he had been the only one to notice the slight cracks in my facade. He suggested that I see the school counsellor and after some thought I agreed. My counsellor was a rather plump woman with strong religious beliefs and would often say that all I needed to do was think positively about things. This began to make me feel worse. I still hadn’t accepted that depression was the issue, I still hid away behind the convenient excuses, and she seemed to willingly believe that my stress at home was all that was behind my negative emotions. One session I outwardly said that I just wanted to give up, to which her reply was “I want you to start looking at the positive side of things, thinking positively will help you control your emotions” How could I think positively when all I could see was this bitter darkness that was draining away my energy? I started to skip sessions. I felt like she wasn’t taking me seriously, I felt weak, belittled, and I had this sudden urge to prove her wrong, to show her that she had misunderstood me. I wanted to kill myself so she could see that her get a grip attitude didn’t work. It lasted months. I became obsessed with death, researching into different methods. By this time, my mother had asked for a divorce, and I had started my summer job. I think this new distraction in my life helped me snap out of my recent obsession. I was going to start university in a few months; I would be 300 miles away from home, away from everything. I still felt down, I still knew something was wrong but I had some hope, I thought as soon as I got away from home, I’d get away from this curse, but it didn’t work out that way.

It wasn’t until Christmas time that I finally accepted that I had depression. I was back home and one night I locked myself in my room and began to cry hysterically. I didn’t want to be there any more; I had such a strong urge to kill myself that I had already taken more than the recommended dose of painkillers. But something snapped, I didn’t want to do it, I knew that I needed to get out and so at 2AM I walked out into the cold winter street with no coat, walked for miles not caring where I ended up. Of all the places to go, I ended up at TESCO. The security guard gave me a funny look when I walked in. I didn’t buy anything, I didn’t have any money on me, so I just walked around before deciding to go back home, receiving another funny look as I walked out. I was greeted at home by my very worried mother and all I could do was cry. It was at that point I accepted I had a problem and agreed to see a doctor.

Luckily for me, my university offers a free counselling service. I have weekly sessions with my counsellor during term time who is just a little more competent than my previous one. Medication has been recommended to me a number of times recently and I have only just gotten over my stubborn attitude towards it. My doctor, knowing how much I don’t want to go on anti-depressants, has put me on anti-anxiety medication for now but I know it’s only a matter of time before that’ll change. I guess we’ll see how things go.

Who, What and Why

So here we go, first post...I never know how to start these things. I have been thinking about creating this blog for some time now, I know what I want to concentrate on further down the line, how to write it, but this first post has always eluded me. I have decided therefore to just type and see where it takes me.

I guess I should start by saying a little about myself. I am a student, and as students go, I would say that I would come under the category of your normal, everyday, run of the mill young person thrust into the world of university life. Friends play a major part of my life, as does music, art and sport. I play a number of instruments including the guitar, clarinet and piano. I enjoy the occasional drink, love to travel, probably overuse the wonderful British thing that is sarcasm, will often go into very random moods which have led to full on discussions about the wonders of plastic spoons, and inevitably, I’m currently making the most of my overdraft to pay the rent until my student loan goes through. I don’t have any problem with this side of me, no problem in showing it to anyone, but over the years I have managed to hide another side of me that I have a little more difficulty showing, and that is my depression.

Out of all the people in my life, four people know of my diagnosis with only two knowing the true extent, one of these being my current counsellor. After years of denial and feeling ashamed, I still haven’t quite managed to be able to express this side of me, even to my closest friends. It is one of the reasons I have chosen to remain anonymous. It turns out that I’m quite good at hiding all of this; in fact, I would even go as far as to say that I’m very good at it. I am often described by friends and strangers alike as a stable person and for this reason I often find myself playing the role of counsellor, people willingly admitting that they turn to me for support. I never asked for this role, to this day I still question why people hold this opinion, but then I guess that their opinion isn’t about me, but about the lie and facade I’ve created.

At first, I wanted this blog to focus purely on depression, but then I realised that there are so many other issues that I face in my life due to being exposed to a diverse range of people that it would be stupid not to talk about them. For the last year my parents have been going through what I can only describe as a ‘messy’ divorce which is still no nearer a conclusion and for this reason my finances are often grim at best. I have a friend who has suffered anorexia for the past six years or so of her life and is adamant on not changing her behaviour. On top of this she has shown clear signs of depression but even after I have told her about my own issues, she is still in denial. I have a friend who is still working out how to tell his mother that he’s gay, friends who drink too much, friends who take drugs, so many misunderstood issues. As I write my opinions and feelings I probably will still concentrate on depression as it is a major part of my life. I won’t shy away from subjects because they are controversial, neither will I soften a subject up to make it easier to read. Inevitably, when I come to writing about depression in more detail and about my own experiences, suicide will be discussed. I know it isn’t easy to read, it isn’t easy to write about either, but I have read so many comments, articles, blogs on the subject which are, to me, hurtful. Hopefully by writing it as it is, misconceptions will be cleared up and maybe, just maybe, people will start to understand that depression isn’t a weakness.