What I want to talk about is the subject of depression. The photo I have as my profile picture is what I remember of a happy time. What I remember when I was reasonablly 'normal' even though I hate that word.
Even though I am under mental health services, see a CPN, social worker, phyciatrist, all that jazz, everyday is still tourture for me. Im not doing this for people to feel sorry for me, I'm doing this as my story might be able to help someone else out there to get the help they need. I wrote this a couple of weeks after my worst episode as anyone who has ever been in the grips of this incidious fucking awful ilness will know, when in the throws of it you are utterlly powerless.
This is my story:
The way I feel at the moment, I feel like I am in some sort of paradox. What I mean by that is, I don’t know what is real and what isn’t. What is reality and what isn’t? I will regularly go out, lets say into town, and later on I don’t know if I’ve actually been there or if I have been dreaming that particular chain of events.
It’s a horrible feeling, not knowing what is going on around you. Not to quote music, it’s like being a ‘puppet on a string’. You feel at the mercy of other people, that other people are controlling you. As a homosapian, you thought I was going to say something else then, come on admit it!! One of the most powerful things we have is our mind.
The thing that separates us from chimps, our closest relatives, is our minds. Our ability to think, our imagination, the wonderful complex being we have called a brain. So thus, when you don’t feel in control of your own mind, you feel very powerless. Feeling powerless is one of the worst feelings I think you can ever have. Another one of our great gifts we have as humans is freewill. And, obviously when you believe, truly believe that there is someone in your mind, controlling your thoughts, telling you what to do, determing the very basic actions of your day to day routine; you lose freewill, control and power.
I think the worst part of this whole dichotomy, is not knowing what’s going on. There is an old saying, ‘knowledge is power’ and that is indeed very true. I can’t speak for others, but I myself, if I don’t know what’s going on or happening to me, and furthermore can’t explain it, I feel extremely powerless.
I suppose that last sentiment, is just something I’ve got to grin, bear, and get use too. One of the absolute buggers of psychosis as it were.
Another problem that I find very hard to come to terms with is on certain occasions, the lack of answers from those who should be ‘in the know’. There is a certain expectation that CPN’s, social workers, phyciatrists, should firstly understand where we are coming from, and secondly magically have all the answers we desire.
This is of course is an impossibility, no one, even an expert in there field can have an encyclopedic knowledge of every branch relating to that particular topic. And, what makes an expert? In my mind there is no such thing as an expert, everyone, it doesn’t matter who they are, is always learning. So, I suppose on that perspective I have just answered my own question. But, unfortunately, it still does not stop the feelings of anger, annoyance and sheer deprivation becoming a regular reoccurrence, at the lack of answers
I also feel like, why the hell should I even bother? If other people can’t be bothered and don’t seem concerned, then why on earth should I care? Maybe other people do care about how I feel, and what I have to say, maybe it’s me being paranoid, but like anything in this life, from sexual partners to politics, you can’t help the way you feel inside, we all have our own opinion, that’s what makes us so unique. Dear God, imagine a world if we were not and everyone was like everyone else! What a tedious, monotonous, repetitive existence that would be! Yes, it doesn’t take a genius to work out from that last statement, that, I have a very low self-esteem. Part of the hindrance of having fucking depression.
I think depression is probably the worst of any ailment you can have. In that, I include both physical and mental. I have often heard both doctors and nurses say ‘He’ll/she’ll pull through, if you’re a fighter and strong, the body seems to know somehow.’ I think there is a lot of truth in that. You hear all the time of people who were literally at death’s door, ‘pulling through’ and ‘toughing it out’. ‘Oh you know our Johnny; he won’t go without a fight!’
Of course, on the flip side of that I’m not naivè. Both my partner and I have chronic conditions, and I know that it’s not just a case of your ‘state of mind’. If it was, Sean and I would be cured, because, I assure you now, I would not wish either of the illnesses that we have on my worst enemy. Having a strong mind will not cure you, no, but it certainly does help.
The word depression, like a lot of other things, is branded around by people who don’t really understand that word; I don’t think you can till you have been there an experienced life in the depths of the abyss. ‘I’m depressed, I’m so white! I need some fake tan!’ See my point?
When you have depression, true depression; not moving out of bed for a week, two weeks, sometimes even longer. Even walking to the fridge to get a drink is a monumental effort, wetting yourself as you don’t have the motivation to get out of bed, or move from the sofa. Nothing matters, not paying bills, not bathing, not shaving, not eating, no social interaction, doing the same menial task over and over and over and over again. That, there, is my perspective on depression.
For me, when I get bad depression, everything goes out of window. There is no such thing as time; everything is just a haze and a blur. Everyday life just ceases to exist. Basically, I just lose all self worth, self respect any sense of pride I might have. I could have a bailiff knocking at my door, not that I would get up to answer it! Taking all my worldly possessions. My beloved could leave me; any tragic number of events could happen, but when I’m in that mindset all I can see is black and darkness, I have numbness of the world around me. I think the Rolling Stones did a pretty good job to explain my last sentiment. ‘I see a red door and I want to paint it black, all I can see is black’
That, in essence is why I believe depression to be the worst ailment you can have, your life basically ceases to be. You aren’t living, you are merely just ‘surviving’
Wow! That was a tangent and a half! I apologise profusely to any poor bugger who happens to be reading this, why on earth you would want to; but that’s a story for another day! I tend to go off on random tangents, and, unfortunately sometimes these can last for hours! Anyone who knows me will be able to verify that fact!
I also feel like finding the nearest tall building going to the summit, and either jumping of the bastard or just screaming at the top of my voice, ‘Will someone please, just fucking listen to me’ When I sometimes talk to my CPN, phyciatrist, I feel like my comments are ‘falling on death ears’ that everything I am saying is ‘going in one ear and out the other.’ It’s like they are hearing what I am saying, but not listening to what I have got to say. Listening to someone is a great skill. And, unfortunately very few people have that particular skill.
I often wish that these people could live in my head, just for one day. Truly understand, feel, and think what I do. Alas, I know that, that will never be possible. I suppose I have just got to battle on and hope that one day someone will take me seriously. People might not be able to understand where I am coming from, but having empathy, interest, even someone saying yes and no and nodding their head in the right places, even that would give me a certain amount of self gratification.
Maybe I am being paranoid, wallowing in self pity. But, these are the thoughts that go through my head on a daily basis. I just know anymore. I am perplexed and bewildered, annoyed and severely fucked off. I don’t care what anyone say’s. I am not ‘normal’ at the moment, even though I despise that word. I know what is ‘normal’ for me and what I feel at the moment isn’t it. Wanting to mow the grass at 3am in the morning, build a bonfire outside my house, barricade myself in, board all the windows up, scrawl my thoughts in big black marker over my walls, delusions of grandeur, not knowing who I am, thinking half the time, am I dead, or is this real? Feeling like the world is spinning around at three hundred miles an hour and all I want to do is tell everyone to slow down so I can catch up, contemplating suicide on a daily basis. I don’t see that as mentally stable. I see that as going out of my mind, my head feeling like I want to stick a power drill into it, to get all this shit to ooze out, All in all I just feel like at the moment my head is fucked up and I need help.
I often think that one day, when I have finally had enough and I am lying on the slab in the mortuary with the pathologist ready to start the post mortem, then maybe someone might think, ‘shit, maybe we should have intervened sooner.’ Morbid as that may sound, that’s the way I feel, that’s the way I think, that’s what goes through my head, it’s the only annexable chain of events that makes any sense to me.
I often rehearse for hours and hours and hours what I am going to say, when I see the ‘professionals’ next time round. I never get round to saying what I intended to though. I’ve given up on that score, it never gets me anywhere saying what I feel, and so what is the fucking point of bothering in the first place? Consequently, I only see one way out of this dilemma, if I wasn’t here. It’s the only way I can get the pain, the anguish, the torment, the sheer deprivation to end for good.
So my CPN has finally been in touch, she is coming next Wednesday, time is irrelevant, these people are never on time I use that as a general consensus! I know it’s probably because they’re busy, just me being cynical, yet again! Now I’m faced with yet another dichotomy, I seem to have a lot of them buggers!
Do I tell her the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the fucking truth? Just like I was in court? Or do I censor my meeting. I.e. tell her the bits I want her to hear and omit the rest. There are several reasons that I am saying this. Going on past experience, I could be convinced that I was Vlad the Impaler and if anything I said was perceived as it has been in the past, it would firstly go in one ear and out the other, and secondly, be seen as ‘normal’. I’m not allowed off days you see, I’m allowed to be depressed, but categorically nothing else, especially psychosis!
On the other hand, it could go totally the other way and back fire on me. I bare my soul; tell all, expose the truth, say what I was thinking and feeling, and the ‘powers that be’ deem me not to be mentally stable. The lesser of two evils this one is. It seems like I’m stuck between a rock and hard place, in a real catch 22. Could I have got more clichés in that sentence!
What annoys me the most is when I have to think in this fashion? When I do bare my soul and leave no holes bared, no fucker believes me, and if I act like all is merry and rosy in the world of my head, well nothing is going to get done. It feels like hard work just telling others what’s going on, never mind getting bloody treated. And, there is part, if not all of me, that thinks, that is downright absurd and well………….wrong, after all I’m the fucking patient! Surely the aim is to make my life easier, not bloody harder!
I don’t know, I’m probably rambling on and talking crap, I think I’ll just play it by ear. I’ve been in this pointless situation for three months, I’m sure another week or so wouldn’t make that much difference, or maybe it would, if I hadn’t gone past caring.
The other week I got a really weird reaction. I went into Wickes and well to cut a long story short, I asked the lady in there if she had a drill her reply was, ‘Which one would sir like? We do a normal drill or a hammer-head one.’ I just said to her, ‘I don’t care; I just want one that gets rid of all this shit in my head.’ She looked at me in a very strange fashion, and told me to get out, then proceeded to laugh at me. I wasn’t fucking laughing; I was being deadly fucking serious. Story of my bastard excuse for a life though, people either laugh at me or ignore me, one of the two, whichever takes their fancy.
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