Depression in real life
I have had mental health issues my entire adult life. Its draining because when I’m on form, I’m on form. When I’m not I can barely leave my bed.
Today is the day of the St George’s day parades in the UK. St George is the patron saint of England and the patron saint of scouting and so we have an annual service for it. My scout leader asks for very little in this life. In fact she only ever asks for us to go to St Georges and Remembrance services. So I went. Believe me for anyone else I’d have cancelled. But she does so much and askes for so little it inspires loyalty because I respect her. I had to take a taxi there and back because otherwise I wasn’t going. Depression is a real inability to move, to do anything or to enjoy anything. I have it and have had it to various degrees my entire adult life. As a result I started the first 4 lines of this post over a week ago and am writing the rest now. Depression means I can’t even write a blog post about…depression. Its not “feeling sad” its feeling nothing and having that nothing cripple your everyday life. I used to be pre-pandemic a 5am go-getter. A person in survival mode who would get up and do the things that other people wont to have the things that they don’t have. I now can’t get up at 5am to work on myself. The world outside is scary to my mind and it physically hurts to push myself. I’m also so depressed that I’m completely listless and forget to take my depression medication. I have support systems, a counsellor and a life coach. But the dad to day of getting myself out of bed is horrendous. If I didn’t have the habit of walking everyday 3 times a day I’d not leave my house, and I’d not do my hair or shower until something really got to me. Walking means I need to be decent. I can’t walk around in the street. “Looking like my problems” I used to do that, when I was a “go getter” I looked like one. Frazzled AF. I look back at my picture and I realise I started to look this way when dad got cancer. That was the effect it had on me, it aged me, stressed me. However I’ve had depression since I was a teenager. My main memories of 6th form in the UK was in the winters walking up and down Winchester station platform, because I’d have to wait for 3 trains to pass until the one that had my mum on it that we’d travel together to get home. I’d walk up and down the platform, and think to myself. “If I jump off this platform in front of the next train, the only people who’d miss me would be my parents.” I was so isolated. I had a mental breakdown in the summer of my A levels and it affected me physically. Then I got a boyfriend (my ex husband) and thinking that solved all my problems I went to professional college. More depression. I was completely isolated. Then I got married, when my husband started cheating, more depression. Back to suicidal ideas. I thank God I don’t have those ideas now. I have a lot to live for even though I probably have less people than I did back then. But I have me now. So its okay. Depression is a journey. I’ve had real problems with it for 2 months and I can only describe it as a blackness. When my ex was cheating, I “lost time” I lost 2 years of my life where I was alive but technically dead. I have so few memories of 2 years of my life (mostly bad ones) because I had blocked out the pain of day to day living. It also meant that I achieved nothing. The most I achieved was not being dead. Showing up for work everyday even though I was hollow. Not using my illness to strike out at people or as an excuse to act badly. This has an affect on your self esteem because I linked my sense of self to what I was achieving. Not my being. I was being incredibly strong at the time, but I hadn’t achieved anything major in 6 months, especially when I got signed off work for 7 months so I was just “being” and I was punished for being because my ex husband used this time to abandon me and treat me poorly. So being was not something desirable to me. In my current bout I can identify it as doing too much. I need to get my driving test done, my holidays booked my exams passed all before I turn 31 in 4 ish months. I lost time because I got overwhelmed and exhausted. I lost 2 months, and you can only see it in retrospect. But people think I’m doing okay. I’m an extremely private person, so if I don’t specifically let you into my world of how hard it is facing work, driving lessons, studying, crippling loneliness etc… You’ll never know.
So remember the old adage. Be kind to people, you have no idea what they are going through.
Grace and courage.
Annetta Mother Smith.