I don’t know what I’m doing.

I’d love to answer your questions but obviously can’t do so privately. I’d rather not post your messages publicly on my blog and have no way of contacting you but I appreciate your kind words. You are not alone.

My experience of depression is unique to me, but may resonate with you. I don’t know.

It has been helpful to me to discuss it with other sufferers (and I find that word very apt) but it may not be helpful to you. Maybe this blog post will make your day, maybe it will make you sneer and roll your eyes.

I am mostly posting this to de-stigmatise depression to myself, but also so I have something to link people to if they don’t seem to have a grasp on my behaviour or are curious, bemused or frustrated by it. I wrote ‘de-stigmatise depression to myself’ as opposed to ‘de-stigmatise depression to others’ because I don’t presume to think that I am influential enough to do the latter, but also because my attitude to my own mental illness is part of the problem.

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I first felt depressed at the age of 14. I remember the day and the feeling vividly. I knew what depression was, because it runs in my family, on my father’s side, and because I was one of those irritatingly precocious children who strives desperately to be wise beyond their years. (By that age I had already read The Bride Stripped Bare, a brutal erotic novel I’m not sure I have the experience to relate to now, let alone as a 14 year old pubescent virgin).

I managed to distinguish it from your garden variety sadness or upset by virtue of the fact that, that day, there was nothing I could possibly think of to make me feel bluer than a broad well of blood under the skin. My life wasn’t perfect, sure. I’d even experienced a glut of horrible bullying, that I’d escaped by moving schools, but overall, up to that point, I had felt positive about life. There was no problem I couldn’t surmount, or so I had thought.

Fortunately I was still young and that feeling was fleeting. Depression came back in large crashing waves and shorter, more surreptitious stints, but because I was going through some other shit (bullying, struggling with my sexuality, sexual dysfunction, sexual abuse, self abuse) after that first day, I always managed to identify a reason that I felt like hurling myself into the sea or melting away into the air, in that melodramatic teen way, never to return. I kept telling myself that I wasn’t depressed, I was just dealing with adolescent life issues, and this sort of thing would clear itself up. I’d see. As soon as I was an adult and my career was off the ground and everything was going my way, I’d be fine.

Of course I was wrong and perhaps I shouldn’t have tempted fate (not that I actually believe in fate, but my mother is Spanish Catholic, and I am unreasonably superstitious, it is ingrained in me) but I couldn’t help being optimistic despite or in spite of my waves of depression. At that age, living in a tiny village and being unhealthily ambitious, I always felt that there was something better out there, as soon as I moved away to the big city. Again, of course I was wrong.

Perhaps ironically, my depression returned full-bodied and determined not to budge when I was 17 going on 18 and moving to London, at the exact time that I thought it would leave forever. That first year in The Big Smoke was the worst whole year of my life. Perhaps my expectations were too high, but nothing happened the way I imagined it would and I suffered an enormous lapse in self-confidence.

Whereas previously I had felt as if the world were mine for the taking, and my waves of bleakness were a temporary stop-gap, I then felt as if I’d botched my only chance at success and was watching my lifeblood swirl (agonisingly) slowly away out of sight, bubbling back in weak hopeful whorls, before vanishing again down the proverbial drain. I felt unable and unwilling to do anything about it. I felt paralysed with depression for no identifiable reason, and completely out of my depth.

The only thing that prevented me from walking into oncoming traffic or fusing myself to my mattress and wasting away, was my incredible boyfriend who visited me constantly and encouraged me to engage in activities that would distract me and improve my confidence. We’re no longer together, but parted amicably and I still love him and owe him a lot.

Throughout my three years at university, I continued to feel depressed, but again, I told myself that as soon as I started to make more friends, find a job, experience some career success, I’d feel fine. This, to cut a very long story very short, has not been the case. As a recent graduate (I finished my degree last year, aged 20) I have, at the end of 2011 and the start of 2012, felt the worst in my life, as if my body is droopy and heavy with misery almost every single day.

“Of course”, I can hear you say, “you’ve graduated during a double dip recession with little to no job prospects and you’re suffering the post-uni blues!” But if only. If only that were the case and I could put a name or reason to my constant, incessant suffering.

In actual fact, things are fine. More than fine. I realise this next paragraph could come dangerously close to smugness/rubbing it in, but I think it’s necessary to explain: I have it good, and I know it. I live in a beautiful, cheap apartment with my best friend of almost 11 years. My career is not off the ground yet, but I can feel it and see it on the horizon (*touch wood*) (see, told you I was superstitious to a fault). I have a loving, understanding, supportive family and despite being single, I have always been the kind of independent person who enjoys being alone and thrives on it. And I have a dedicated and loving set of friends who appreciate my dry sense of humour and my refusal to smile like a joyous drone, and have never tried to change me, or judge me. There is uncertainty in my life but it is exciting.

I feel like I’ve never ‘had’ it better and yet at the start of this year I suffered a nervous breakdown. I shaved my head, Britney-style (because if there’s a cliché to enact, I’ll enact it!). At one point, on my way back from seeing family in Spain, I actively willed my plane to crash (killing me but leaving everyone else unhurt) and was irritated when it didn’t because I genuinely wanted to die. As the airplane hurtled at impossible speeds towards the terminal in that way it always does just before it brakes, I leaned into it and made peace with death. At another point I became so stressed out over the simple task of getting my passport done, that I started crying and hyperventilating and tried to lay down outside the post office minutes before I was supposed to be at work. I was two streets away from my former work place and yet I was so panicked and wracked with anxiety that I couldn’t find my way and forgot where I was. I had to ring up my then boyfriend and ask him for directions. To find a place in an area I knew like the back of my hand. Two streets away.

What was most horrifying about this breakdown was that it came out of nowhere. Or rather, it came out of a great, dark nihilistic whirlpool of self-doubt, low-self esteem and negative energy that seemed to come out of nowhere. More frustrating than anything was the fact that I felt I was unravelling, with no way to stop myself and the breakdown was spooling violently from an unknown place. I knew my life was going great. I knew everything was going to be ok. I knew that humans were ultimately good and that I would find my way in life no matter what. I told myself these things and somewhere in the deep recesses of my brain I even believed them. But still this liquid, spreading half-insanity was pouring out of me and I felt split and ready to be put out of my misery.

I only ‘came out’ about my depression about a year ago, which is very late considering how long I’ve suffered. I told my (then) boyfriend and best friend first, and then slowly become open about it to friends I work with and then, now, on the internet. It felt good (or at least like progress) to put a name to it and make the first steps towards seeking treatment (which is ongoing), but unfortunately, my fears about expressing it to others were not totally allayed. My biggest fear was that other people wouldn’t believe me, or else they would tell me I was just looking for attention. I haven’t been totally proven wrong.

As well as enduring insensitive ignorant clots telling me to “cheer up, it’ll never happen”, to “get a grip” or to stop ruining social occasions with my miserable countenance, I have also experienced a former work colleague and friend telling me to “shut up and fuck off”, because I didn’t smile politely when he asked me how I was as well as various people (with no medical training) attempting to diagnose me or recommend useless treatments (“try exercise”, someone unhelpfully offered). Telling my manager at my former place of work seemed like a good idea at the time but it set in motion a series of events that ended in me leaving the job, almost exactly as I’d feared.

On the flipside, I have also experienced many, many people offering their support and advice, and for this, I am extremely grateful. In the intervening months since my breakdown and with the help of a great new friend, I have somewhat made peace with my depression and despite no cure, I feel at least that I have found a way to cope and prevent it from colouring or affecting my work life or social life as much as it did for the foreseeable future. This - considering I spent the majority of almost three years mostly alone, eating my way to chubby, crying, miserable, unable to find the motivation even to leave my bed, let alone the house, for no discernible reason followed by a breakdown where the stress of deciding what I needed to buy first at my local shopping centre made me want to choose death - is an achievement.

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I know it’s the convention to finish a blog of this type on a positive note, in order to give the reader a feeling of closure and comfort and emotional resolution, but I feel that I should also point out that I still suffer with depression and despite my progress in becoming more open/comfortable with it, it still pains me on almost a daily basis.

One of the most common misconceptions about the mental illness (and my god, there are thousands, I could write a whole book on them) is that a good dose of quality time spent relaxing and doing healthy, wholesome things that the sufferer enjoys (if they can think of anything that they actually enjoy), will clear it right up for good. A lot of people (myself included) find that this is not the case, and even if they are able to enjoy short periods of happiness and time away from the tedium of every day life, depression is always there in the background like the great roar of the ocean, or the hum of the refrigerator. Don’t make the mistake of assuming that because you have noticed small amounts of positive behaviour, that someone is cured or that they feel great. You can’t see feelings, obviously.

(In fact, when it comes to depression, best not to do any presuming or assuming at all, considering the vast number of misconceptions surrounding it.)

I have mostly written this for myself, because catharsis. But if you enjoyed it or found it helpful or take issue with any of it, or managed to read it all without rolling your eyes in that internet-too-long-didn’t-read sort of way, that’s great too. I have tried not to concentrate on my experience with medication or treatment, as I am definitely not a doctor (or at least wasn’t the last time I checked) and don’t want to offer ANY advice on how to go about dealing with it, medically.

If, like me, you feel miserable and want some advice about coping, talk to your GP or a medical professional. I can’t and I won’t recommend medication or treatments because I’m not qualified to and I don’t know anything about it. I know what works/hasn’t worked for me, but everyone is different.

Artwork by Natalya Lobanova

A goth in summertime~

Me being a teen queen in Camden tbh. Picture by LDNPA