“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.
Showing posts with label divorce. Show all posts
Showing posts with label divorce. Show all posts
Saturday, 19 July 2008
Thursday, 3 July 2008
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.
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.
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