Depression

And I was coming home from work one night after what had been quite a stressful day just because I didn't know my way around stuff, and you know, the stresses of a new job. And I suddenly became aware that I didn't think I could stand up out of my seat on the bus. I was just aware. It was like I felt this massive chemical change take place in me and completely debilitate me. And I kind of thought, "I'm having a breakdown". It's almost like I knew what was happening to me.  

And I managed to get off the bus and I was saying, "Please God let me get to a phone box somewhere'. Because I knew [Husband's name] would be home. Otherwise it was a fifteen minute walk which I could not have done. I found... I got to a phone box and I just said to him, 'Can you come and pick me up. I'm in such a place. I don't feel very well.' And he came and got me into the car and I was just shaking and I was just weeping and I just said, 'I can't go into work tomorrow. I just feel so completely anxious and ill'. You know I didn't know how to describe it.
 

I can remember particularly bad days. I would only take the day in ten minute chunks because that was it. I couldn't bear to think oh I've got all day at home here not feeling like I can do anything, yet feeling bored and feeling bad about myself. And thinking all these negative thoughts all the time. Everything in my head was negative. And that I couldn't feel anything. I couldn't feel anything for [Husband's name]. I couldn't feel anything for the children. It was like being inside a very, very thick balloon and no matter how hard I pushed out, the momentum of the skin of the balloon would just push me back in. 

So I couldn't touch anybody, I couldn't touch anything. And I know in my head I loved my husband and kids but I couldn't feel anything at all. My emotions were completely dead. And I was just very frightened. It was the most frightening, terribly frightening experience, and it looked like it was an unending one. I didn't know where it was going to go. And I thought seriously then about suicide. 

Because I just thought I can't bear another day of feeling the way I feel, and thinking there is no end to it. And I think what stopped me was that I couldn't figure out....I mean I'd worked out how I could kill myself. You know, I knew I'd got enough tablets of various sorts in the house for me to easily overdose. And if I did it just after the kids had gone to school, I would certainly been gone by the time they came. But I didn't want them to find me, and I couldn't work out how to do it without them being the ones that would find me. That I didn't want to happen.
 

I mean I....certainly suffer from loneliness and isolation, I often feel cut off from the world. Which is not, you know, that pleasant or nice really, because as I've probably said, I don't have any other family, like brothers and sisters, and I don't you know have any other family around like aunts and uncles, well I do, but they're not in our area, or in my area. And so I feel, often feel cut off, and so I've got no one else to talk to or turn to, - follow what I mean.
 

I couldn't cope with, with other people at all. And also I developed coping mechanisms. I had managed quite well to, to hide it. And if someone sort of, you know at work sort of said, 'Well how's everything going?' I could snap out, 'Everything's fine thanks. It's great we're doing this, this, this and this and we're doing that.' 'That's good' and they would go.  

And boom. I'd go back and staring at my feet. So you know I could sort of put on a front at times and it was, yeah I think it was mostly, mostly a successful front. Until one evening, I remember, I was putting my eldest daughter to bed and trying to read her a child's story, and I actually found I could no longer read. I no longer had the concentration to read the book, a four year old's story book and I couldn't read it out loud. 

I couldn't follow the sentences to actually read it out loud. And that was a point where it was clear that yeah I had to, I had to seek help. And so I made an appointment with the doctor the next day. So that was, that was about three months after I, after I started feeling, feeling depressed.
 

And.... your brain sort of leaps to conclusions about things and you think, well all my friends haven't phoned me, it's because they don't like me anymore. Rather than my friends haven't phoned me because they're busy, or because their baby's sick. or they're busy at work or what have you.  

You just think, you... you leap to the wrong conclusion almost every time. And I think that just sort of makes you become even.... a little bit paranoid, certainly I was. I'd think, oh why aren't they ringing me? Why are people looking at me like that? I'd take my baby to be weighed at the doctors and I'd think, everyone's talking about me, that's not ...That's very.... sort of a strange feeling. 

And on the one hand, it's like your mind's racing because I had so much to think of, you know.... I've got to this or that for, for the baby or I've got to get to see my Mum in the hospital, or I've got to do this or I've got to do that. But on the other hand, it's almost as if you're going in slow motion. If you've seen these films where you're standing still and everyone's going around you, it was almost like that.
 

Four or five years ago I was diagnosed as having cancer, and I made comparisons between having cancer and having depression. And cancer is [pause] there is so much help and people are so kind, particularly the professionals because they are geared up. They know the emotional problems people have. And there's a lot of backup. And I've received kindnesses beyond words [pause]. 

But with depression that's a different ball game really. And [pause] its'The two are so different. One is at one end of the scale, and one at the other. It's the loneliness and the feeling of being utterly down and out with depression. With cancer you can say, "Oh, I've got to have a treatment, lets see if that does any good.' And there is a sort of progression. 

But being involved inside the depression, you can't see the wood for the trees, and you depend on people close to you to point the things out that you are unaware of. So you are sort of running in blinkers with depression, which isn't the case with cancer. And I've found that people, not everybody, but lots of people involved in helping people with depression can say quite hurtful things. And that you're in a pretty low ebb when you've got it anyway, so I've found that much more difficult.
 

And I was also very restless at one time in the hospital I'm'..I later found that I was'I'd been diagnosed as manic depressive, and that was a bit of a surprise to me. But I can remember being so restless [papers rustle] during my stay in hospital that I couldn't sit down, I wouldn't sit down for a meal. I would just have it on the hoof sort of thing. I wouldn't sit beside anyone to talk to them, I can remember that.  

And that may have been part of the manic thing, I don't know, but it was partly because I felt I was such a horrible person that I would contaminate anybody somehow by sitting, even sitting beside them, they would somehow be able to tell how awful I was if I sat beside them. 

So it was something to do with that sort of feeling of self-hatred and it was so painful. I had a feeling if they did talk to me, they'd only be doing it because they were sorry for me, I was absolutely convinced. So that, that period in hospital was, it was like being in hell.
 

I remember during those 3 weeks everything that you seemed to look at was a way, you know, you looked at it from a suicide aspect, when you went over a bridge and you thought, that might be an idea, or a knife in the kitchen, yes, that would be a good one. All horrible sort of thoughts, looking back. 

And then I got the... I was sort of like a zombie at that point, probably from medication partly, also because I was I felt I'd let everybody down' But yeah, during those 3 weeks at first I was sort of very uncommunicative and very obviously, people say my eyes just looked totally dead. And then, I was being quite closely sort of protected during that stage'. Yeah, and at times I've resented the fact that I wasn't allowed to die, as I had made it very clear in my intentions that I didn't want to be kept alive. But, as I say, that's in, you know, some of the lowest points, which I've never got to again. Although I have, you know, been depressed.
 

So, when I was in the union job I definitely had some periods of depression and possibly the first periods where I had what I called my deep depression. My mild depression is being generally pissed off, having a negative attitude to life, thinking that things will go wrong, but generally functioning reasonably well. 

The deep depression, I feel physiologically different, I have this sort of pressure around my brain, you know I feel that someone's got their hands inside there. I feel confused, I don't function properly. One of the worst periods I had about 5 years ago I went to the supermarket where I normally get my fruit and veg and I get my petrol on the way out. 

And I came back and I got my shopping and there was no fruit and veg, I mean that's where I get it for the week. I hadn't any petrol for the car. I came back and I thought' Where was I for the last hour? You know I was sort of in this other place where I, I bought some stuff but I mean, I just knew then I wasn't functioning properly.
 

I felt more, I didn't seem to be able to enjoy any of the things that I tried at first, and I was just feeling very low and very lonely, needy. I was aware I needed something, I wasn't quite sure what and I was, I think, probably about 4 or 5 months after starting my first year, I did become very depressed, actually, and just took to moping around. 

I think people could tell from just the way I was looking, the way I, not looking after myself, the fact that I spoke in a low monotone. The, my posture, I tended to stoop and just looked generally dishevelled and not at all, not really able to cope, actually, quite despairing.  

Despairing of being able to do something for myself, despairing of ever being anything myself, despairing of being normal which, you know partly, I would like to'. 
 

Yeah, I was bulimic, yeah, definitely. I still am now a bit.... see when I gets... when I gets down in the dumps I start doing silly things again. But yeah, I chatted to my mate.... my psychologist as I calls it, and I said, "I've got problems with my stomach" and she won't tag on what was happening. 

And also, as well, my, I was, because I wanted to overtime but, and because I was depressed and not realised it, I was having problems sleeping. And they knew that I was.... like the core money-grabber. They could phone me up at 12 o'clock, 1 o'clock in the morning and ask me to go in, and I thought, yeah, I could have a cup of tea and I'd go straight into work because I couldn't sleep properly. 

And in the mornings, when I come to work, excuse the way I speak, but I'd go to work and I'd be yawning and when I'd be getting my ID I'd be yawning, "God, bloody hell, [name], you ought to go to sleep when you go to bed." And I'd go in the toilet and start crying and also my eating habits as well, but it weren't everything, it's just chocolate. In all the years I, since about 11 or 12 I won't eat chocolate and all of a sudden I was chucking it down my neck so my mate said to me, "You ought to go to the doctor" so that's what I done. And she was brilliant.