World Mental Health Day 2011 - Depression

[As my contribution to World Mental Health Day 2011, I hope you don’t mind if I repost this re-edited version of a piece I did back in July 2010, which was about the very unsexy subject of depression.  I’ve recently seen in the media, some commentators suggesting that manic depression, and bi-polar disorder are actually “designer mental health issues” that suffers enjoy talking about at parties.  I can say through my experiences that at no stage did I ever feel like talking about it to anyone, let alone in public, and never ever did it feel very “designer” or cool.  For a long time I felt like a freak, and still – even now - feel embarrassed to talk about it.  It seems to me, slightly dangerous, and backward to go down a path where suffers are ridiculed as attention seekers, just as society had started to talk openly about mental health issues.  Having said that; I still have reservations about posting this publically onto this blog, where people I know might read it, which possibly gives an example of how ashamed suffers really can be.]

Depression.

It’s not hard to imagine that a few of the lovely readers who keep returning back here, have just seen the title of this post, and instantly clicked onto another blog. 

I don’t blame them; it’s hardly a very sexy subject is it? 

It conjures up images of a miserable scruffy individual, who lives in a bedsitter and spends his days listening to ‘Love will tear us apart’ by the Joy Division.  Maybe he looks like Neil from ‘The Young Ones’?

I hadn’t realised until late last year that I had been suffering from depression for most of my life, even though I had always known, that I had these terribly dark melancholy moments.  Even when I was a teenager, and my whole life was still in front of me, I would withdraw, and hideaway from the wider world.  Sounds about normal for a teenager perhaps, but I also had a thing about running away from home, which to be fair, still crossed my mind until not that long ago.  I would regularly think about packing a bag and walking out the door. 

Draw as much out of the bank as possible, go to the airport and fly away. 

Don’t worry about the consequences; just get away from the problems that are here and now. 

Don’t worry about what happens when the money runs out.  And definitely push from your mind the people who care about "you," which you’re leaving behind...

As I got older these black periods came along maybe 2 or 3 times a year, when I would feel so very low.  And when I say low I don’t mean "that Monday morning feeling," - rather that I’d see nothing good in anything at all.  I would gradually withdraw until I barely spoke to anyone for 7 to 10 days.

I used to wonder what would happen if I died. 

I would imagine people at my funeral and who would turn up.  What music would they play?  And when I was at my absolute lowest I would image that no one would turn up because no one cared.  

But the spell would eventually break, and I would return to my normal self.  I could even feel my black dog leaving.  I would be sitting on the edge of the bed one morning, after a bout of despair and know, that for no reason in the world, that I felt better.  A week ago I could be in the midst of depression:  Today everything in the world is rosy.  I thought of myself as generally content and happy most of the time, with occasional bouts when I would be a miserable git.  It was no big problem for me, but it was probably hell for those who cared about me.  My ex-wife used to call them my "Quiet times" and during them she would just ignore me until I came through the other side.  It must have been so very hard for her. 

Life for me carried on like this until autumn last year,  when after a series of black periods- which struck one after the other in viciously quick succession – I was left at rock bottom.  After problems at work one day I found myself squatting on a cardboard box in a little used part of the building that I work in.  The box had sunk into a "U" shape where I had spent so much time sitting on it.  The huge space on the top floor was silent apart from a giant fan slowly whirring in the grey ceiling.  Above me in the dimly lit room was a beam just out of reach; but not if I stood on a few boxes.  Surrounded by the pointless messages of marketing material offering "free this" and "free that," I thought about ending it.  A blue nylon rope lay untidily on a shelf like an offer to a way out.  I must have sat staring at it for hours.  I know I cried like never before and never since.  This was it; the moment was there, on offer to me.  This would teach them.  They would find me after a few days, hanging and stinking the place out. 

I think the Black dog had, that afternoon won control, and I’ll never know for sure if I would have gone through with it, but I can tell you this:  If the devil had appeared in that room and offered to sling that blue rope over the dusty beam for me, and maybe just slip the noose over my head, and then kick away the pile of boxes that I was standing on?  Well I think I would 
have taken him up on the offer.

My girlfriend was the person who decided that maybe I was suffering from depression.  She had painfully watched, and lived with me through some dark days and realised that something other than the blues was to blame.  So I wrote down the symptoms that I suffered from, and waited a few days to go and see my doctor.  Had I not have just come out of a black period, I would never have gone to see my doctor then, I would have found a way to put the visit off. 

Shortly after the doctors; it came that one afternoon, I found myself sitting talking to a couple of psychiatrists, and at that moment, I knew how bad I had been for so many years.

I’ve been very lucky with my medication as the first thing I tried worked.  All those years suffering from sorrow of the soul, banished by a simple pill.  How I wish I’d known before. 

The depression is still inside me somewhere, because I can still feel it occasionally.  I’m struggling to try to find the words to describe it, but try this and see if it makes sense:   

I’ll have a worry on my mind or a bad day at work.  Over a few days, things will start to get to me.  Before the medication, I would gradually start to tip over the edge.  But now there seems to be a block that stops me from going into a severe depression.  I can almost physically feel it and at times I even resent it - how dare it stop me from sliding downward.  Whatever the problem is, just never gets that big, and I get round it somehow, or I just don’t worry about it so much.  I just don’t get that low anymore, or can’t.  It’s altered my character and the very foundation of the way I feel about life and most importantly, myself. 

Without trying to sound cheap, if you feel the same, my "advice”  is to “get some advice.”  Everyone I spoke to, from the doctor onwards, was nothing but kind and caring.  At no stage have I ever felt like a freak, apart from maybe just in my mind.  It’s only recently that I’ve realised how many people suffer from, or have suffered from depression at some stage of their life.  It would have help me immensely to know that first; something was actually wrong with me, and secondly that I wasn’t the only person on the planet who felt that way. 

[In the course of re-editing this blog post about depression I found an excellent website with tons of great, really useful information called storied mind.  If you think you need to, please have a look at it because it contains lots of really useful information:]