Tag Archives: depression

April 8, 2011 · 10:39 am

The First Time I Told My Mom To Back Off When She Didn’t Understand My Depression.

I’d had a rough week. Each morning I woke up morning devastated. About nothing.

These mornings everything I had to accomplish for the day seemed like looming, overpowering feats, completely unaccomplishable. Even small things: having breakfast, getting dressed, filling the hours with minor distractions until more hours came along. I wanted to exit this whole thing; this whole world of mine. Quietly take my leave without anyone noticing. Just quietly disappear and sleep and not bother anyone for a long, long time.

This month I’ll have been on antidepressants for two years and this was an uncharacteristic tough patch. My mum phoned just for a catch up, brimming with excitement about going to see Neil Diamond that evening with “the girls”, her three best friends who prided themselves on belting out songs and dancing with reckless abandon even though they were in their sixties. I sat bristling, waiting for her voice to slip into inane sympathy and concern and ask that ridiculous question she always asks, her code for enquiring about my mental state: “So, who are you feeling in yourself, love?”.  I mean what the hell does that even mean? How are you feeling in your self? What am I supposed to say? Answer truthfully? “Oh you know, I can’t cope with my life of absolute privilege and comfort, which millions of people would give their eyes for. I am incapacitated with grief which has no source in reality, I’ve been brought to my knees by feelings which don’t exist, a figment chemical imbalances in my brain. I don’t wish to carry on with this life. But hey, enjoy Neil, Sweet Caroline and all that!”

My real answer was blurted out with all the fury of a misunderstood adolescent: “MOM! You can’t just ask that kind of stuff on the phone! What am I supposed to SAY? Ja, I’m not doing well, OK? I don’t know how to talk about it and you just ask that same thing all the time!!”  She said she was worried about me and enquired if I had spoken to my brother and his wife whose son, my beautiful three-year-old nephew might be my favourite human on the planet. I didn’t speak to them about that kind of stuff, I kept my fun-auntie-self separate from this dark, ugly self. While I responded that I don’t like to bother them with this stuff and that they haven’t been through it so it’s tough to talk about, a courier package arrived at the front door and my mum had to deal with the signing etc. In the middle of all this she said that she wanted me to go and have a chat with my GP (who is fine for a doctor but I only see her for my script and we don’t really have a spilling-my-guts-out connection). I was angry that she could talk to the delivery guy while I was trying to actually articulate myself, a rare occurrence on this subject. I was angry that she hadn’t asked if my boyfriend was helping out because he was. He had been there every single step of the way. He sat next to me and held my hand while I screamed and shouted pure bile at him; he coaxed me back when I tried to ignore him and pretended to fly far, far away in my mind, he never, ever left when things were bad. He was on the front lines with me. And where was she? Asking her stupid question on the phone, taking a delivery, sending me off to the doc and going to Neil Diamond, that’s where.

She asked me to listen very carefully. She said that she was worried about me and that she want me to go book an appointment with the GP tomorrow and that I should up my dose if I wasn’t coping. I gave several noncommittal grunts. She reiterated several times but she had lost me, I was only saying things and had no intention of going to the GP whatsoever. She said she would phone me the next day.

I sat there, fuming. After a few moments, a sinking feeling grew in my gut that she was right, that I wasn’t coping. But then I was angry again. She wasn’t there, with me, planning baby steps each day. 1. Breakfast, 2. Get Out of the House, 3. Some Kind Of Thesis Work, Perhaps Easy Reading, 4. See Some Friends, 5. Make Sure to Buy Groceries. She wasn’t there, on the front lines, choosing to get up and get dressed instead of sleeping through the day so she couldn’t send me off to the doc like some fabulous Hamptons mom. Just then a text came through from her:

Mum

I’m   always with you   Love    Take good care    I Love you with all my heart    Speak tomorrow  Ma x

Before I could let the touching words settle on my burning mind I was feverishly texting back. I knew that you couldn’t go wrong being honest so I lay it down:

Me

I love you too ma but you can’t just try force me to go to the doctor every time your approach with talking to me doesn’t go well. I tried to change my dose with [family doc at home] last year and he refused and gave me tranquilizers and the whole thing made me feel like even more of a crazy. I’m working hard at it and I don’t have R270 to drop every time I don’t want to talk to you about it. I work at this every day and I’m not going to the doc because of one phone convo that didn’t assuage you enough.

“Shoowee”, I thought, “assuage”, that’s a big word, I definitely mean business”. But after that, the effects of the words didn’t concern me then. I just knew I had to show her the storm behind our conversation. I wasn’t actually concerned about how my mum would take it. Not in a callous way. I just didn’t have the capacity to juggle both of our feelings. I had to prioritize mine. Suddenly I felt stronger and started making breakfast. Feeling like I had to defend how hard I had worked every day made me go back to the basics and work on the small steps all over again: 1. Breakfast. Then suddenly, a response came through that I didn’t expect at all. It left me feeling startled, light, strong and loved:

Mum

Understood    I  respect you and hold you very tight x

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November 10, 2010 · 11:01 am

The first (and hopefully the last) time I was diagnosed with depression

My grandmother passed away at the end of my second year of University. It was the first time I experienced death in my family. She was my Granny Ruth, and we were so close. She used to come visit us at least once a week, usually on Sundays, laden with groceries from Checkers, trashy magazines and chocolate. She was a tough and stubborn lady, but also as soft-hearted as could be. She was there for whenever my mom couldn’t be, and she made sure my brother and I never wanted for anything. While I was away at University, she was having our double garage turned into a granny flat for herself, and she was going to live with us permanently. While the flat was being built, she stayed in my room because I wasn’t home to use it.

During this time, she complained to my mom of stomach pains, and when those didn’t go away my mom urged her to go see a doctor. But, the stubborn thing that she was, she refused to go. Until one day my mom came home from work and found my gran doubled over and crying from the pain. The doctor sent her straight to the hospital and they scheduled her for surgery right away. She had bowel cancer.

The night before her operation, her bowel burst and they had to rush her to emergency surgery. They removed the cancer but she developed septicemia. She was in ICU for 6 weeks before she died. She did manage to hold on long enough for me to come home and be with her at the end, and I at least got to say goodbye. But her death hit me hard.

I couldn’t sleep because whenever I closed my eyes I saw the nurse closing her eyelids and pulling the sheet over her head. I couldn’t eat because my stomach lurched at the thought of food. All I could do was lie in bed and cry. At one stage I thought I could feel my gran’s presence, lying beside me and comforting me, letting me know it would be ok. That just made me cry more because I knew I would never truly feel her presence again.

My mom eventually took me to see a doctor and he diagnosed me with mild depression. I was put on anti-depressants and it was recommended I see a psychologist. When my third year of University started, I packed my things and went back to pick up my life again. I got back into my studies, went out with my friends, all the things I did the year before, but this time I was only going through the motions. Every day was a struggle to get out of bed. I had no energy for anything – I didn’t want to get up, I didn’t want to shower, I didn’t want to eat, I didn’t want to see people, I didn’t want to go to lectures. But, I also didn’t want people to know I was depressed, so I did all those things without ever really being there. The anti-depressants made me numb. I couldn’t feel anything, and it was horrible.

I don’t think I could have gotten through that time without the medication though. Even though it made me numb, this enabled me to forget about my feelings. I was able to put the emotions aside and get my head into a better place. Once my head was in a better place, I was then able to deal with the emotions. It took me a long time, longer than the doctors initially thought because I had another major setback later that year (another story for another topic), but I eventually got there. I got to a point where I was tired of feeling nothing – I want to feel something, even if it was grief. So, I took myself off the anti-depressants and finally started to deal with all the emotions I had pushed aside for the last year.

That was a very dark time in my life, and I never want to go there again. Sometimes I feel myself slipping again – when something bad happens, I can feel the darkness come over me. It literally feels like I am falling into a giant hole that I don’t know how to get out of. The difference is that I now recognise this feeling, and I know that I need help to get out of it.

I have a loving boyfriend who may not understand how I feel because he has never experienced depression, but he knows enough to listen when I tell him I need help. And I do ask for it – I know I can’t get out of that hole by myself, and I know I don’t want to be medicated again because I would rather feel the grief than feel nothing at all. And I think recognising that is the first step in making sure I don’t go back to that place again.

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August 11, 2010 · 9:36 am

The First Time I Cut Myself

Image from audreyhepburncomplex

The first time I cut myself, it was over something very trivial. I was 16 and in the midst of my GCSE exams. I was stressed out over some inane subject and had had an argument with my mother. I was feeling caged, out of control and overwhelmed. I reached for the stanley knife I had been using for my art prep work and made three superficial cuts on the inside of my left arm. Relief came quickly as the small, bright beads of blood rose to the surface of my skin. I buzzed with adrenaline and the sight of my own blood, drawn by my own hand, had my complete mesmerised attention. That buzz was for me one of the key appeals to cutting myself: that for those few seconds I could think of nothing else, that my mind was taken over by feelings of relief, control and contentment. Any stress, self-loathing or depression I might have been dealing with in the hours beforehand was washed away – albeit very temporarily. As, in a few moments, I would return to feeling just as anxious and depressed, and now guilty about the cutting as well.

I cut myself for four years, with increasing intensity and frequency as time went on. It went from being a last resort stress reliever to something I clung onto to survive the day. I managed to keep it under wraps for two years, and I mean that literally. No swimming in bikinis for me, no shorts, no dresses. I often had to wear long sleeve shirts and jumpers in 35 degree weather as I had fresh wounds on my arm. Yet for a long time no one even suspected, and I liked it that way. (This goes against one of the main myths around self-harm: that self-harmers are attention seekers. Quite the opposite: I completely stressed out when I was found out – something that had been my secret method of calming myself was now being looked at with disgust and horror. People panicked, thinking that I was at risk of suicide. I felt even more of a freak, even more repulsed with myself and my behaviour.)

Image via gatekeeper.com

Why people willingly hurt themselves is something that outsiders struggle to understand. I myself still don’t completely understand it. From the outside, I didn’t look like someone who had any reason to self-harm. I was raised in a big, bustling family and had been protected and sheltered and loved all my life. My cutting had nothing to do with how the outside world had treated me, but instead everything to do with how I felt about myself. I was brimming with self-loathing, and was inexplicably disgusted with who I was.

I can’t explain it any better than I did in my diary that I kept during my first year of university:

‘I have such self-hatred towards my body, my personality and my lack of self-discipline. I feel fat and useless. I don’t care about clean clothes or shaving my legs. I am at my happiest when I am sleeping under the covers and don’t have to look at my any part of my body. Self hatred so strong that I feel nauseous when I think about myself.’

‘Cutting has become my only outlet for my stress, self-hatred and guilt. I can’t control how much I eat, what others think of me (or for that matter, what I feel about myself) but I can control the cutting and it makes me feel a little better. Often its the worst when I can’t cry and so have to express my emotions using a knife instead.’

Image from imgfave.com

‘I now have scars on my arms, hips, thighs, knees and calves, as well as my ankles. Some will fade, some are set for life. I thought I had it under control. But last term was awful. The one night I came home drunk and broken and slashed myself on my lower leg five times. I wasn’t in control of it anymore: the rage was in control of me. Two weeks ago I did the same thing, except this time I cut myself so deeply that I needed stitches. Except I was too scared to wake anyone up to tell them. So I bandaged it up as best as I could and slept with my leg elevated. Two weeks and two days later and it still hasn’t properly formed a scab.’ (I still have this two inches long, one inch wide, angry scar on my lower leg)

‘I have zero tolerance for my own behaviour. If I overeat or slack off studying or don’t tidy my room I have such a guilt trip that I feel sick. I don’t know whether it’s a form of self-punishment but I get an urge to cut. I don’t ever manage to change my behaviour – but if I can cut myself I can deal with having to live with myself.’

‘All of this depression seems to overwhelm me when I’m in my room alone. Most of the time when I’m with my friends I am genuinely happy, if only for the distraction. Yet even when I’ve had the coolest conversation or a giggly girly night I will still sometimes hit rock bottom when I go back to my room and try to go to sleep. I’ll lie in my bed and shake because I can’t take being in my body anymore.’

Re-reading these extracts I hardly recognise myself. I sound like a self-involved whiny teenager. That was a large part of my self-harm – I felt guilty for feeling so depressed and so depressed with guilt! I knew full well that I had nothing to be depressed about: I had been born into a loving family, had everything I needed materially, had a fantastic set of friends and was a well-liked, intelligent woman. But I couldn’t help it, I was utterly wrapped up in my own self-hatred and was thus also selfish, self-involved and very often, a self-pitying pain to be around. After almost four years of self-harm I had broken my mothers’ heart, worried my little sister, hurt my friends and destroyed my first proper relationship. My father came to my university on a rescue mission to book me into counselling. I was diagnosed with high levels of anxiety which were contributing towards clinical depression.

To cut (no pun intended) a long story short, I underwent therapy alongside anti-depressant medication and within a miraculously short period of time I had stopped cutting. I have never relapsed, and no longer have any urge whatsoever to harm myself in any way. I am now in control of my emotions and refuse to hand them back the control over my life they once had. I also have a much higher regard for myself – in fact I really quite like myself. My scars have faded, apart from the odd one or two that will never go away. But that’s ok, I actually like having a physical reminder of my emotional pain and how I have conquered it: its like having part of my life story literally etched on my body.

Image from imgfave.com

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