I am going to blog my depression here, I am hoping that it will help me because its something I never talk about and somewhere I can refer to if I feel it descending its claw into me again. My depression has been caused by life's experiences and although I have never read or studied a lot about depression I understand there are many different forms some of which are considered to be chemical imbalance. I will not be condoning or critisizing any treatment methods for depression, or offering advise, just blogging my own experience and what did or didn't work for me may have a very different affect for someone else.
My first experience was just as a teen, I hadn't had a very easy childhood anyway but still there were the most fantastic moments I can always remember too. At this time though it seemed that so many things happened all in a short space of time. I was witness to a most horrendous scene, also my parents were divorcing and I was with one of my best friends when she was killed in a road accident. I came home that day and I had stuff in my hand from school, I remember putting it on the table and as I did so, just collapsing to the floor in a heap and weeping so much I thought I might never stop. Of course it was quite natural for me to react like this after what had just happened but days and weeks passed by where I was just incapable of doing the most basic things like motivating myself to get out of bed. I didn't want to be around anyone at all and I hated everyone for walking around smiling and being happy when I was so desperately sad. I refused all the friends invitations to go out and got extremely nasty when they pushed me, I lost a few friends because of it. I stopped sleeping then, I could go almost 48 hours without any at all. I hated everyone and everything and thought if there had been a God then he was not this kind almighty being at all and I hated him too. Then I started to smash up my room, I mean everything I owned, my furniture, my mirrors, my music, my television, everything I could pick up and throw or push over was smashed. I was just so angry and felt so guilty about the way I was feeling. My mothers first reaction was hitting me several times but I think she was as shocked as I was so took me to the doctors. The doctor gave me some sleeping/anti depressant pills and sent me on my way. I spent the next few weeks feeling almost nothing at all and sleeping most of my time away, making no progress to get out of this at all. Then one day, I had been sent to the shop and on my way back I saw the brother of my friend who had died. We started chatting and I thought how well he seemed and started to think about how bad I had been in comparison and yet this was her brother. He joked about the funeral saying "you did make me laugh all squashed in the back of the car like that" and continued joking about things that she had done and all the fun the three of us had, had together. I suddenly realised then that in life there are no rules for how we each feel in same situations, its odd that I had not realised before but I hadn't. I realised that it was actually ok for me to feel the way I did and that somehow made me feel a bit better. I also knew that there was something a bit more going on with me than grieving and I started to think about all the other stuff that was going on around me and kind of gave myself some sort of forgiveness for all the hatred and anger I was feeling. I spent a lot of time with my friends brother after that, he was always so positive and happy you couldnt help but be influenced by it, I slowly came off the tablets and returned to life again.
My depressive episodes returned periodically after that and each time I was given short doses of medication and sent on my way. I wasn't offered counselling or any other form of treatment just the tablets. I met my first boyfriend then who turned out to be extremely violent, we were only young. One day I just couldn't take any more, so I took a painkiller, then another, then another till I dont know how many I had taken and the phone rang it was my friend who knew from my voice something was very wrong. She was there in minutes and told me I had to make myself sick straight away, which I did. She begged me to let her phone an ambulance but I told her that if my parents knew they would have me put away in a hospital or something so she kept my horrible secret. I was so ill afterwards, there was no part of me that didn't hurt in some way or other. My stomach was not right for weeks and my back hurt so much. The mental anguish was the worst, I just knew it was so wrong afterwards when I realised what I could have done, there would have been no going back. Though by taking the tablets I was seeking to remove the mental pain and not really thinking further, that was to be the first and last ever attempt of what could be seen as attempted suicide for me after an experience I had a few years later.
So some time passes by and the same for me, my depressive episodes come and go but I start refusing to go to the doctors now because I dont want their meds anymore. I just got through the depressions by whichever desperate means possible and went about my life the best I could. I am a very fun person outside of the depression, I love to enjoy my life and have fun and like nothing better than laughing and joking with friends. I was a bit of a party girl, I liked going out and getting out of my head, never out of control but I liked that racey feeling and would stay up all night dancing in a party or club if I could. Friday to Sunday was party time for me and that was exactly what I did with a huge group of friends.
At this time I was still in this violent relationship, I know people think why stay with this, well believe me these men are manipulative but I am not going in to that here though I may in a later blog but not here. So my friends brother starts telling me how stupid I am to stay with this guy and through many conversations starts helping to build my confidence and giving me back a little self esteem and self respect I had been lacking so much. I ended the relationship and after a while got with my friends brother, awesome ......
So there I was, popular party girl, invited everywhere, had my own place, (I left home at 16) feeling content and getting on with life. Then life starts its never ending torture yet again. Within a short space of time, I had so many things go wrong in my life, its quite unbelievable really. My closest and dearest relative that I grew up with and was my best friend disappeared after becoming a drug addict and has still to this day never been seen again. I supported and helped care for a very close terminally ill family member and because I was "so strong" I was there for all the other family members who were going through all the emotions of dealing with this aswell. I gave up my degree course and thought I would return to my future later, I had started late anyway so a bit more time wouldnt hurt. It was at this time I lost my beautiful Gran too, one of the two people in my life I knew I could depend on and trusted wholeheartedly.
Meanwhile, I had found myself once again to be in a violent relationship. Actually violent is too mild a word to use for this guy he was an expert in mental torture and I was his punch bag. I took a phone call one morning saying that I needed to get to the hospital because my sick relative was extremely ill and I should be there. My so called boyfriend decided to stop me leaving the house, I had a call an hour later to say that the man I had looked up to for so many years, who had been my advisor, confidante, my protector before he got ill and the person I had respected so much in my life had died and I wasn't there for him. I was completely and utterly destroyed, words do not express how much hatred and anger I had for everyone and everything. But I had to go on for everyone else, so I picked myself up and carried on, I couldn't allow myself to sink right now.
Time passed and I fought with all I could to not allow the depression to take hold, I just had to go on, without the sleep, without the peace, with all the torturous thoughts that were going on in my mind I had to carry on. I was reading a lot then too, about spirituality, various religions and I was watching all the horrendous world events and human depravity and torturing myself that I couldn't do anything to help stop it all. I was blaming myself for everything that happened to anyone I was close to because somehow I saw myself as some kind of bringer of bad luck to anyone I came in contact with. I was attaching signs to anything and everything and allowing my life to be run by the most random signals. I had got OCD then too, it took me about 2 hours to ensure my place was secure because of something that had happened to me, I had to do this in a specific order.
Then one night me and my ex went out and that was to be the night that changed my life forever. It was horrible and I won't blog it but I had the most immense experience I have ever had or expect to have ever in my life again. I nearly died but was given the chance to feel something so amazingly true, suicide would never ever be an option or even a thought for me ever again. I will not detail this further.
So my friend came and helped me get away from this guy and he is gone from my life now and forever. I was stuck then in the deepest, darkest depression I have ever been in. Still I had to go on, I needed to be there for other people, I was the strong one they all called on I had to carry on. Then one day, someone quite innocently said to me during conversation "well its always better to be safe than sorry". That was my final trigger I think because my body closed me down almost like "ok you wont deal with this, so I am on strike now" lol I could not move a limb, speak or move. I thought I had a stroke or something. The people I was with called my friend who I can never thank enough would not let the doctor commit me to hospital and offered to care for me until I could get back on my feet again.
I had a total nervous breakdown, I was in the deepest pit, with walls of earth that however much I tried I could not pull myself out of. I cut myself off from my family and friends totally because I didnt like the random crazy nonsense I was saying and my phones went off and I didn't answer my door to anyone, which, I realise now was the worst thing I could have done. I took my meds for a short time, I was just so desperate for anything to help lift me. I had a counsellor and a pyschiatric nurse that came out to me because I was almost agrophobic and couldn't leave my place. Nothing made sense in my head, I couldn't see a future, I could barely form a thought let alone a sentence. My mind was like a map of paths that just didn't connect, I could just cut off mid thought and couldn't follow conversation. I look at the Mary J Blige "No More Drama" video now and everytime it brings tears to my eyes because I can relate so much, especially at the end when she stands in front of all those images of disaster and she is screaming and begging for it all to end. I just wanted all these horrible thoughts and images to go away, I wanted to get out of my own head, I couldn't bare it. I felt abandoned and desperately useless and worth nothing to anyone but just felt like a burden and kept myself to myself. My mind was just overloaded with all this thought that I couldnt make sense of. I wondered what I had done so very bad to deserve so much pain and so many years of horrendous bad luck. It made me physically ill too, my stomach was always painful, I ached physically and I had a constant headache.
After a couple of months, I slowly stopped the meds, I told the doctor and he was against it but I couldn't take them they were not helping me. The counselling helped me a bit because I think by talking I was kind of answering my own questions and helping myself. I wasn't completely honest with the counsellor though so that would have helped much more I think if I had. Mostly though I helped myself, once I got a bit stronger, I started to use some relaxation, I remembered reading something about positive thinking and used that too. Sometimes I would just write down 10 positive things about my day or myself every morning or every night. If I didn't do that then I would have to add to the end of any negative thought a positive one however hard that was for me. I had one friend and one relative that I could speak to and I did that. I surrounded myself with positive music and comedy, if sad music was around then I would block it out. I started to meditate and in my pit I started to place rocks that I could reach and stand on. For every positive thing however small I would place a rock in that wall of earth, that rock could not disappear whatever happened because it was solid and I remained lifted. I slowly started allowing people back into my life. It was a very long process over several months and took everything I had to get there but I used whatever I could to do it. If I slipped I would refer back to my rock and stay there for a bit then aim higher again. Eventually I reached the top and climbed out, the darkness lifted and I finally saw the daylight again. I am still the person I was but a lot changed.
I had much more going on than what I have blogged here but this is about my depression not my life and I have learnt so much now. I will never ever be in a violent relationship again. I express what I feel when I feel it and dont keep it inside where it festers and grows. I have no signs attached to anything I see or hear or do or read and there aren't any, they were only signs because I gave it to them. I totally accept how I feel whatever way I am feeling and its fine our feelings are part of us and I have learnt to forgive myself for the things I have said and done because I was ill, it does not mean I am crazy, if I am then we all are, and whose definition do we go by anyway? There is no such thing as luck, bad stuff happens and I have to deal with it and move on, its not about luck its just life, it doesn't just happen to me. It can and does happen to anyone it cant single me out, it was me only seeing the negative and not seeing the positive because I was so low. I always need to see the good and the positive in life because my depression will try and deprive me of that. I can not hate all of humanity, there are some good people out there. I could dwell on my past and allow it to beat me and ruin my future but I won't because life is worth more than that. I don't party like I used to, I was with the wrong people, doing the wrong things, I still have to go out and find my fun if I take a knock but just more sensibly now. I am not to blame for what has happened to me but I am in control of how I deal with it and what I do with it in the future, I now say leave it where it is in the past or destroy it completely like I have recently with a couple of the more serious things that happened to me. So if that dark, heavy fog of depression decides to sit itself over me again, I am armed now with a barrage of tools that I will use and fight it every step of the way. One thing for certain, I will never be dragged into that pit again, that pit has been filled in and will never be re-opened.
I could take every bad thing that happens to me now or in the future and say well this is how my life is going to be so I may aswell stop tyring but that would be a lie because I have to go and seek what I want and make a life for myself. I will be happy eventually, it won't be handed to me though, I have to work on it and go and make my own happiness, life is worth it even though I forgot that for a while, my experience has proven to me that it is.
