Drama Llama Ding Dong

Friday’s little drama of me having run out of antidepressants and then bleating on about it on Facebook made me think I was pretty much just a show off.  We all know if someone posts a ‘woe is me’ Facebook post, it more often than not elicits responses from your lovely chums that are jokingly referred to as ‘u ok hun?’ replies.  The genuine feelings of care, compassion and worry are there but on the other hand, the original poster could be fishing for these responses and so will post further drama about their lives.  This was genuinely not what I had in mind, and in fact, it was sheer desperation and frustration that I posted my status.  What overwhelmed me was not only the amount of people who responded with love and care (you’re all marvellous), but the amount of my lovely FB chums that have or have had experiences of antidepressants/mental health issues.

It now no longer seems taboo to discuss if you’re feeling a bit shitty but you can’t explain why, or that you want to die so as not to be a burden to others (both experiences I’ve had in the past).  Depression and anxiety seems to be much more accepted nowadays.  There’s a storyline in Coronation Street at the moment where Steve McDonald has been suffering with depression and not told anyone about it.  Discussing it with a close friend who also suffers on and off with depression, he said that the way it is being handled is pretty much spot on.  I’ve seen a lot of tweets supporting the storyline and how depression is being portrayed, some from folk who suffer it but some from charities such as MIND. 

A lot of people simply can’t cope at the prospect of having to get up and go out to work, or just leave the house in general.  When I suffered my last severe bout of depression, it was traumatic moving from the sofa – nothing could hurt me there… I could sit under a duvet, with a cat (usually Lilith) on my lap, sobbing, drinking tea and watching trash TV.  That was my safe place, and it still is to some extent.

To think that so many of my friends have been through something very similar is really quite upsetting, when I think about it… I mean, it’s great that you’re all powering through with or without medication but for you to have been so low down that you didn’t know where to turn to next genuinely pains me. 

I accept my depression is part of who I am; there’s no use trying to think otherwise.  I can’t bottle it up anymore, that way madness, pain and possibly suicide lies.

Basically, thank you everyone.  Thank you for accepting me as I am, with my black moods and my good days.  Thank you all for the support you offered me from Friday last week and over the weekend, the phone calls, the texts, the FB messages.  It’s nice to know I mean a lot to so many; and you all mean a lot to me.

Remember me? I'm the one who had your baby's eyes.

Blimey.  It’s a while.  Tara’s blog of despair and anxiety.  Here’s more rambling on anyway…

So, as some of you know (mainly folk I have on Facebook) 2014 has not yet turned out to be The International Year of Tara Court as I predicted in my final blog post of 2013.  In fact, the first three weeks saw me plunged into more work based drama and despair.  The Union got involved and all kinds.  And I’m still not really free of it as there’s one issue that’s still rumbling on.  But do you know what I learned?  I learned not to care.  I learned to not give one single flying fuck about it all because, quite simply put, there’s more to life.  

Yeah I had meetings where I had been in floods of tears and had had to ask them to leave the room instead of just sitting and watch me break down. 

I’ve also had meetings where I’ve been berated for the most insignificant thing that if I told you, you’d go ‘What the fuck? Are you kidding?’ (to which I’d go ‘I know right.  Fucking STUPID’).  And all through it, my resolve was getting stronger and stronger until I’ve now got to the point where nothing really matters where this is concerned anymore.  If only I’d felt this way back at the start of my depressive episode in February of last year…to be able to laugh at the ridiculousness of some situations, but then I guess everything we go through in life we learn from.

I learned from that last depressive episode that I absolutely do deserve my place on this earth.  Yeah, I might still have self esteem issues and be hung up about how I look and my weight etc, but that’s what the human race do.  We’re never happy with how we are and are always seeking to look and change ourselves in some small way (dyeing our hair) or some big way (changing jobs, retraining, getting surgery because you’ve never liked your nose).  Sure, I’m not necessarily comfortable in my own skin, but I’m coming to terms with being comfortable with who I am.  And how I am.  And my funny ways that wind up the people I love.

It was said to me last week by someone that sometimes you have to hit rock bottom to claw your way back up, and in some respects this is quite true, although given that this was one ofthem who gave me a hard time over the past six months (the one who decided I didn’t need my psychology sessions anymore), I declined take it the way that this person had intended it.  But in my anxiety and despair, my suicidal feelings, the whole blackness of my condition, I’m hoping I’m clawing my way back up, cos I’m sure I hit rock bottom… I had to have…there can’t be anything more.

Another big ole post about depression.

Seems that all this blog is good for is me discussing my depression.  I’m sorry chaps, here’s another blog post on the very same thing.  I promise to try to blog happier stuff in the future but after yesterday’s psychology session, I had to write something.

I went along to my appointment wondering what I could talk about because I was feeling relatively good, my office nemesis has begun actually acknowledging my existence and has begun talking to me again (I’ve not forgotten what happened though and I keep myself closely guarded now, not just from her but all my work colleagues), nothing massively terrible had befallen me since our last appointment. 

RAAAAARGH!  Write something cheerier next time!!

So, over the course of an hour and a half, I felt such pain and despair, a gnawing blackness of hopelessness.  I sobbed, I bawled…I thought that dark place inside me was shrinking but in these sessions it seems to gape, dragging my good feelings and emotions deep inside.  We discussed my poor body image and low self opinion (Henry Rollins was not mentioned once), and ultimately what it boiled down to was I am fat so I am a failure which ultimately led to no-one would miss me if I wasn’t here.  I haven’t felt such raw and powerful emotion since I was first diagnosed back in February.  It ached deep down to vocalise my thoughts…and the thing is, if I wasn’t fat, I could find a million and one other things to blame my failings on.  It’s just fat comes to mind because society and the media dictate that to be fat is offensive and hideous. 

We are conditioned to believe that if you are fat, you cannot be beautiful, you are looked down on, you are worthless (the horror film The ABCs of Death shows this in the segment X is for XXL – it’s maybe a little extreme).  People judge you if you are fat, it could be glandular, it could be cakes and pies and Guinness, it could also be that you are concentrating so hard on trying to get your head back in the right place that actually you haven’t been watching what you eat, and let’s not forget that some antidepressants can make you a big ole tubster.

I was in pain yesterday, horrific terrible inner pain.  A pain not felt for months…the session preyed on my mind for the rest of the day and evening.  It left me feeling out of sorts; David had to constantly ask me if I was okay.  It was just such a powerful thing to experience and to think that I had been feeling that virtually every single day, well even before I was diagnosed and signed off work, it truly is amazing that I didn’t kill myself.  No one should ever have to feel like that, go through the pain and anguish that your mind can cruelly put you through.

I am hoping that this is a turning point for me.  I wish to not go back there ever again.  It’s painful and it’s raw and it took me aback yesterday that I could still feel that.  I thought I was getting better…seems it’s a long road. 

I know there's hope at the end of here...