Depression and Me – This is MY Story

I started this blog to remember a good thing every day. 

It might be painting my nails it might be finding a wonderful new product or it might just be that the people close to me gave me that hug right when I needed it.

But let’s be honest, not everything is sunshine and roses – so this is my story with depression and mental health. 

Depression and Mental Health.

No one really knows if I have been suffering from some kind of mental illness all my life, in my mind I think I probably have been. 

I can remember at primary school not wanting to go because I was sure someone had implanted a chip into my brain that could read all my thoughts and they were going to tell everyone.

Emotionally I have always been very unstable and could switch from being really happy to so unhappy in a matter of seconds.

I was lucky though I had the most amazing friends and a wonderful family around me and I muddled along through it all until I was 12 when we made a big move from Kidlington, Oxford to Lichfield in Staffordshire, about 100 miles.

There I had no friends I knew no one, bar my parents, although I made friends at my new school, I always felt the odd one out, I spoke differently and dressed in a different manner.

Things slowly started to go downhill, I refused to go to school I got an awful temper and was forever running away from home, or shouting obscenities at my parents.

Now this might sound ‘normal’ behaviour for some teens but my parents were always persistent that it was more than that, I wasn’t just being a teen; there was something more to it.

However, no one listened, everyone told them I would grow out of it just let me play it through. 

This was until I became ill with the flu and tonsillitis I was bed bound for probably more than 6 months when I was 14, and at this point, I began cutting. 

I remember keeping a broken can in my draw and when that was found just using the clip from my watch to scratch at myself till I dug a huge hole.

It was finally at this point, someone said, yes she does have depression, and I was put on anti-depressants.

I went back to school at the beginning of year 10 but by October I had come down with the flu again and I was once more off school.

I Just Didn’t Care Anymore.

My temper and outbursts weren’t getting better, I was even running away in the cold and rain with just my t-shirt and jeans on, no shoes no coat, I just didn’t care about myself anymore.

The worst part was seeing what it was doing to my parents, it was tearing them apart my Mum cried a lot, my Dad would get in the car and drive away, that’s when I hit rock bottom, in my mind I thought hey everyone would be better off without me and I should just kill myself.

And believe me I tried, I tried so hard, to the point even the doctors don’t know why I am alive.

I would get hyper after overdosing and would be running around like a madwoman while the doctors told my parents I was attention-seeking and hadn’t done anything…

I couldn’t have, I would be in a coma at least if I had done what I had said.

In the end, they would take the blood tests just because my parents begged them and found out yes I really had done it and would look at me strangely and keep me in for obs and to see a psychiatrist.

I did have one of my own, but his answer was oh she’s trying to kill herself because she’s getting better if she wasn’t, she wouldn’t be trying to kill herself (now I don’t understand that and I never will.)

But anyway as they differed in opinion on me that meant I had to see 3rd person, who agreed with the 2nd, and I was rushed quickly into a psychiatric hospital for inpatient treatment when I was 15.

I spent 10 months as an inpatient. Did it ever help me I don’t know, but I did meet some wonderful people who I hold very dearly in my heart and always will.

I Am Not Alone.

It was then I realised I wasn’t alone.

I wasn’t the only person in the world to feel as I did, until this point most people had pointed and laughed, there is the mad girl walking by again!

In the end, was realised from the hospital just after my 16th birthday just over 9 years ago now.

I left the hospital and threw myself into work, I was being homed school of a morning and would work in the afternoons.

Sadly I had picked up the habit in hospital of doing aerosols I’d often do it before I went to work, how I was never caught I don’t know.

Once I finished school I took another full-time job and worked every hour given to me so I didn’t have to think about anything, just get up, eat, go to work, eat, work more, come home, eat, and then sleep, each day was the same.

And as with everything something, in the end, had to give.

I asked workers to take down my hours but they wouldn’t so I left, got a voluntary job at the local charity shop while I looked for a new job, I was lucky back then I just fell into another job, but it didn’t give me the hours the one before and stupidly I kept working my voluntary job, around my new paid one.

Of course, I broke down, everything I had been hiding from came back to bite me, and again I ended up trying to kill myself, and again my parents had me put into another hospital.

By this point along with depression I had been given the diagnosis of Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder, one symptom of this is being overly receptive to others emotions (aha! tell me now! As my parents have told in recent year they never knew who would come home from hospital when I had a weekend leave the first time).

Back To Hospital.

As the doctors weren’t keen on me being in the hospital, I was there just 2 weeks before being moved on to a 1/2 way house.

My first real taste of freedom, I had my own little bedsit, and lived with other people who had mental health problems.

Looking back now it wasn’t the best idea. I still tried to commit suicide a lot.

One scary time I had been taken to hospital the day before and declared fit to go home, but the next day I started getting spasms my neck bent backwards and my whole body went into something like a fit like state but I was awake all the way through.

I remember thinking this is it finally I am going, and then drifting off to sleep after hours of agony caused by the fits, of course, I woke up the next morning and had a chat with the nurse who was looking after me.

I had been put on a senior ward and we had a laugh that I was looking very well for my age!

I’m going to skip a HUGE part of my story here, but I really believe it’s for another day, and another topic, I went through 4 years of domestic violence, and it’s a huge part of my story because I came out a stronger person I now LIVE because I won’t die like he wanted me to.

It might not be the best reason to live but it works for me.

Ever since I got out of that situation I haven’t taken an overdose or tried to kill myself, don’t get me wrong I struggle with the feeling of wanting to, I still self-harm and cry, I still sometimes pray on a night I will die while I sleep.

But I won’t take my own life.

This blog shows my up moments, and shows that even on the worst day I can find one good thing that has happened, as silly as it might seem to someone else they are my rays of sunshine, they are my light within my darkness, as are my friends, family and wonderful boyfriend who always holds me when I cry and for this I love him more than words can say.

He never fights with me when I get angry for no reason, he tries his best to understand my demons and for this, I love him but do not deserve him.

Look Out For Others.

To end this I guess I just want to say if your sad, depressed and or contemplating suicide PLEASE ask for help.

And if you know someone who is depressed don’t laugh or make fun, don’t tell them to cheer up life can’t be that bad, remember to them it is!

They have an illness, the only thing is you can’t see it, don’t judge us or jeer us we are just like you, we just need a bit more support, we need your ear we need your hugs and love, don’t leave us alone…

We are just humans. We just can’t cope like others.

Please take a moment to think about how others might feel, take a moment to maybe try and understand.

Take a moment and tell someone you’re there for them that you love them or maybe just how much they make you smile.

Learn more about depression here: https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/depression/. 

Edit August 2019: 

It is interesting looking back on this post now 8 – 9 years later. These days I have written about the full extent of my mental health, from depression to borderline personality disorder, something which I hid from all but those closest to me. 

I truly believe that if I hadn’t started Life in a Break Down, I probably wouldn’t have started talking as openly about all my health, both physical and mental. 

I hope that in some small ways my tales of BPD, abuse and everything else along the way have been a help to someone. 

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