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.

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...?

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.

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.