Depression - My Story

When I was twelve years old, my world began to shatter.  I imagine that when most people think of when they were twelve years old they think of the beginning of a new kind of world.  A world that invokes memories of independence and high school and assignments piled so high that you wonder if you’ll ever get through it all.  My experience, however, was very different.  Through my eyes, the world was slowly drained of all its colour and everything I once enjoyed began to bore me.  Slowly, I pulled away from the rest of the world and into myself.

My family didn't really notice any of the changes, the withdrawal, the quietness and the isolation I inflicted upon myself.  I’m sure that they probably thought it was hormonal, at least initially, and so I was left alone.  In that moment, it was good for me; in hindsight it was the worst thing that could ever have been done.  You see when I was allowed to be left alone for a long time with no distractions or people to talk to I began to over-think; and all this silent thinking lead to me beginning to pull myself apart.  I started to question myself and my actions, looking at myself far too deeply and focusing on all the negatives that had happened in my life and dismissing the positives as flukes or misinterpretations of the actual message.  It was then that the final shred of colour was drained from my vision.

If you've ever lost a family member or close friend, you can come close to understanding the emotion that took over me in that moment.  Before the grief or the sorrow sets in, there is this long period of numbness, where you just stare into an abyss until you can comprehend what has happened; until someone shakes you awake and you allow yourself to feel.  That feeling of complete numbness is what washed over me at twelve years old and there was no-one there to shake it off.  And so it seeped into my blood and consumed everything I knew.

Friends and family are always the people that care the most about you, but they are also the people who are most likely to ignore when something is wrong.  Not because they don’t care, but because they don’t think it’s possible that it can happen to the people they love.  This chosen naivety is a protective mechanism for them and it allows them to get through it, but it didn't much help me.  It seemed to me that each time I tried, in my blind, subtle ways, to reach out a hand for help, they turned their back and ignored it; pretending that I wasn't begging to be saved.  Perhaps they didn't notice any sudden change or perhaps they didn't want to see them.  Perhaps I’ll never know.  But I do know that after a short while, I stopped reaching out.  I stopped asking for help and I let myself sink further into the abyss.

As I fell further and further inside my own head, I began to convince myself that this was my own fault and that I deserved this.  In my head I repeated every negative comment, every bad word or warped idea that someone had about me, and soon they morphed into an image of myself.  Every feature, every characteristic, every action I had fell under my own scrutiny of myself and nothing alive could live up to the standards I’d set; and I believe myself to be the lowest of all people, deserving or torment.  I’d look into the mirror and hate the girl I saw standing there because she was who I wanted desperately to be, but never could.

Self-hatred is something that grows so easily in the soul.  I suppose it’s always there and, in small enough doses, it can be motivating.  However, when your soul turns black with it, it begins to corrupt who you are.  The numbness remained, always there in the back of my head, but sometimes I would have flashes of emotion, short and sharp, that would leave me wanting it all to stop, until I sunk back into numbness and hatred, the two becoming the most familiar things I had on the earth.  It was about this time that the self-harm started.

Before I was thirteen, I was scratching and biting and cutting at my arms, legs, neck and torso.  I only rarely drew blood; I was careful and I knew people would be able to see blood.  People would recognise the signs of self-harm and they would make me get help; but I didn't want help.  I wanted pain.  In my mind, I deserved pain.  And that, I suppose, is the most dangerous though a person can have.  That want for punishment and believing it to be just was the single most poisonous thing I could ever have thought because you can escape almost anything, but you can’t escape yourself.

This continued, this silent punishment I inflicted upon myself, for a long time and no-one noticed; or at least, no-one said a word.  I suffered endlessly and I hated myself and everything I was.  I also hated everyone else around me, because I blamed them, in the back of my mind, for forcing me into this.  I blamed them for all the negative comments and actions that I had warped into a reality.  I think, in the back of my mind, I knew what I was doing was wrong and horrible but I didn’t care because I thought no-one else did.  This, however, was the furthest thing from the truth.

You see, people in that state of distress and agony, as a generalisation, are phenomenal liars.  Not because we want to be, but because we have to be; because our survival within ourselves relies on everyone else’s obliviousness to our suffering.  And so we smile and tell the world that we’re fine and that it’s all alright.  We pull lines like ‘bad day’ and ‘don’t worry about it’ which are both valid – but not for three months straight.  And every time we say it, and tell the people we love not to worry, they always look the same.  They always look like they want to help but don’t know how.  So they purse or bite their lips, and furrow their brows but they remain silent.  Maybe they don’t want to know or maybe they’re scared we’ll push them away.  Both are correct to an extent.

It took three months for someone to have the courage to break this pattern of silent acknowledgement.  After three months of telling people I was perfectly alright and to just forget it, someone called me out.  A friend had asked me what was wrong and I fed her the usual line.  ‘Nothing, I’m fine.  Just let it go, alright.’  For a moment she gave me the same face the others all did; that silently concern worry, before her eyes filled with angry tears and she just said, ‘No.’  She grabbed both my shoulders and she said something to me that I still remember word for word two years later.

‘I know there’s something wrong.  Don’t argue!  I’m not going to force it out of you because I know you won’t say anything, okay?  I know you and I know you won’t just spill your guts but just stop lying to me.  I don’t care if you don’t answer me but don’t smile and pretend I don’t see straight through you.  I've known you too long for that.  Stop doing this to yourself, please.’

The entire time she was speaking, I felt like someone was slowly breaking away my facade.  In that moment I realised that I wasn't fooling her and she knew the depths to which I was suffering.  But the fact that she’d said something, that she’d told me to my face that I wasn't okay, just broke that final layer and everything I’d kept in the back of my mind came flooding forward and I remember just whispering to myself that night, ‘I need help.’

I’ll never forget telling my Mother that I wanted to talk to a professional.  I remember she just looked at me for a long time before nodding.  For a long time I’d seen that same look of uncertainty on her face but now that I’d finally come to her and asked, without any facade, that I needed her, I could have sworn I saw a smile, just for a second, but it was there.  She wanted to think that this meant I was getting better but, in a way, acknowledging the need for help just made it worse.

The first time I met with my psychologist she just asked me a million and one questions.  Why was I there?  What did I want to achieve?  How was I feeling?  All of the routine questions and I answered them all, some with varying degrees of openness, as needed.  Then she put a piece of paper in my hand and told me to scale myself based on my mood in different scenarios.  Again, I did this as asked.  Finally, after a seemingly short hour, she stood up and let my Mother into the room.  That was when she said the word that had hung over me like a dark cloud for months.  Depression.

I remember my Mother gasped a little, just a slight intake of breath, but I didn't do anything.  They both looked at me but I didn't respond.  I just sat there emotionlessly because this wasn't news to me.  Ever since my friend broke me out of my deluded haze the word had been haunting me and I knew that, in asking for help, I’d probably be hearing it sooner or later.  What I wasn't expecting was the list of other diagnoses that coupled with it.  Anxiety Disorder.  Mild OCD.  Sociaphobe.

For a few weeks after that first meeting, every time I saw her she asked the same questions.  How was I doing?  How was I feeling?  Was there anything happening?  After a long period of negatives and resistance, she finally told me this.  ‘I think you might respond better to medication as well as therapy.  But I need you to understand something.  Just because I prescribe you medication and just because you keep showing up to appointments, doesn't mean you’re going to magically get better.  Your Mum and I can give you everything we've got but unless you want to get out, it’s all for nothing.’

Within a month, I was started on antidepressant and I was actively trying to pull myself out of the dark hole in my head.  I’d accepted that I needed help and I was trying to climb out of that abyss in the back of my head, but there was one problem.  At the start, the drugs terrified me because they seemed to make things worse.  I still wanted to hurt myself, to kill myself, but the feelings just stretched on for longer.  This went on for a long time until finally they settled into my blood and, with the right dosage, the world managed regained a little of its colour.

It had taken a long time, but I was getting better.  My psychologist and I had found ways of minimising my self-harm and hatred and I was slowly picking up the pieces of myself I’d thrown away.  However, it wasn't always getting better.  There were some moments when I felt worse; when I was provoked into feelings of anguish and pain and I’d revert back into who I was, trying to escape.  I’d hurt myself again but this time I had people who knew and could help me.  If I cut myself I had no fear in telling someone after the fact because they knew it wasn't my fault, not really.

It took over a year before people noticed any change.  I suppose after being introverted and quiet for so long they had come to accept it as who I was.  But once I was on the mend, people started to ask me why I was smiling.  They’d furrow their brows in confusion when I started to laugh but then they’d laugh with me anyway.  My friends were happy that I was me again, and not who I had convinced myself I was.

And so, three years after it all started, two years after diagnosis and a year after happiness started again, I've been given the all clear.  My depression, as well as my anxiety, was in remission and that I was almost in the clear.  I’m being slowly taken off medication and I’m getting further away from anything that causes me pain.  I've stopped hurting myself and I can laugh with my friends again and be me.

But with all of this said and done, I have to accept that it’s not over; that it’s never really over.  As dramatic as that sounds it is true.  I have to live my life rather like a recovering cancer patient; in constant fear of remission.  I know that I could be triggered back into that dark hole that still waits in the back of my head, but I’m not afraid of it anymore.  I have looked down into that abyss and I recognise every crevice of it.  If I feel that numbness and anger ever again I can nip it in the bud before it spreads and I know I will have people to help me.

This is the message I wish to pass on.  I want people to know that there is never any shame in asking for help.  It shows a degree of strength in accepting that you can’t do this alone and that is the first step on the road of recovery.  No matter how familiar and comforting the pain may seem, it is never something that you deserve.  Because I know if it wasn't for that one friend who grabbed my shoulders and said ‘no’ I would probably still be in that dark phase or lie six feet under.  But because of her and everyone else who loved me and held my hand, I can look in the mirror and see myself for who I am.  Imperfect, but who I’m meant to be.