A new year calls for a new blog post.

I'm not quite sure what to make of 2011. As I'm writing this I'm still being held hostage by one of the worst depressive episodes of my life. (That's what I feel like a hostage, I can't escape, I just want to be free from the pain and the darkness.) Which is a problem as it clouds my vision of what the year has held for me.

I should be remembering 2011 for the fantastic friends I've made, the friends that have always been there for me and the amazing things that have been achieved by the students' organisations I'm lucky enough to be a part of. But I can't. 

All I can look back and see are the stupid things I've done, the silly things I've said and the regrets I have. I think it's made even worse by the fact that I know that I should be looking at the good rather than the bad. It's something that I've been struggling with for a while; my ability to step outside my own depression and see things with clarity. I just wish I always saw things with such clarity. 

But for a moment I will consider my year with clarity, 2011 was the year I:

Realised and accepted that I'm ill

Found out that being open and honest will show you who your true friends are

Made me more grateful than ever for the fantastic people I have in my life, even if I am not good at showing what they mean to me

Understood that it will take time for me to be well enough to do certain things, and it's ok to take that time, the jobs and degree can wait

Realised that sometimes it's ok to put myself first, even if I still struggle to do this

Found out that social networking can both mess you up and save you 

So my hopes for 2012:

That I'm well enough to complete my degree

I find a way to always see with the clarity that I sometimes manage

That I'm always there for the people that mean the world to me when they need me

That I'm able to tell people how much they mean to me

That I can continue to be honest, because it helps me and hopefully it can help other people

To be able to better see myself as others see me

And of course:

That the Tigers bring home some silverware 

I manage to finally perfect my Pimm's cupcakes

For Team GB to meet their medal targets, and I fall in love with the Olympics all over again.

So here's to 2012, may it be the best year yet!

I may be depressed but I am the SAME PERSON

I have had a really bad week, and its been made worse by the fact that a number of people have "unfriended" me on facebook after I made a status update openly talking about my experience with seeing the psychiatrist and about how at that moment in time I was feeling very suicidal.


What I don't understand is the way that some people treat you very differently before and after knowing you have mental health problems or are suicidal.


I am the same person, I am the girl you met at the party, the girl you played football with, the girl you know through your friend, the girl you worked with and the girl you went to school with. I am still her, I have always been her and I always will be her.


Yes I'm evolving as a person but everyone is, so why should it make any difference now that you know a tiny bit more about my medical history. For the record I've also had my tonsils out and I'm also having an echocardiogram soon if that makes any difference to your feelings on me as a person. No? Didn't think so, so why does it matter that I'm clinically depressed?! 


Also it's not like I've become depressed over night, the majority of people I know I have met, or at least got to know a lot better since I've been on antidepressants. And for long periods before I was prescribed any kind of medication I was experiencing many of the same symptoms that I experience now, so chances are most people I know have not known me when I have not been unwell.


The thing that I don't like is that sometimes I feel that I can't be the open honest person that I am, because of how other people will react. I hate altering myself because of other people. I will dress how I want. I will say what I think. And I WILL talk about my depression, because I'm not ashamed, and it shouldn't change what you think of me. 


(Also I would like to say that I am incredibly grateful for the wonderful kind words that I have received over the last few days. I have some truly amazing people in my life, that I feel most of the time I do not deserve and even though I say this you do not give up on me. I am, although I frequently cannot see it, extremely blessed.) 

It will get better.

"It will get better" that's what I have to keep telling myself, it's difficult to believe at the moment, and that's the problem, you can't listen to reason when you feel like this especially when the voice of reason is coming from you. 

It's even harder to believe that it will get better when you've been so low that not being alive has truly seemed like the best option, only to get better to a place where you can function on a vaguely normal level before being plunged back into shear darkness. How do I know that this episode will not be never ending? I can't even guarantee that I will never be back hear again. 

This abstract idea (that I will be better again- it really does seem completely abstract, right now n dimensional cubes seem far less abstract), that I seem to be grasping for seems so far out of reach that I don't even know why I'm reaching for it. It doesn't seem worth the effort, it really doesn't. But I know I must, I must. I want to be well and logically I know that other people want me to be well (rather than dead, but yes, since when has depression been logical?!). 

I'm going to the psychiatrist on Monday, and I'm guessing they will alter my medication. I can only hope it helps, because right now I'm scared, fed up, feeling lost within myself and frankly exhausted. Oh and awake at gone 3am, it's nice that insomnia has made an unwelcome return along with a bad episode of trichotillomania. 

This is poorly written, but as I say it's gone 3am, and yer I'm not at my best, but it needed to be written. Or at least I felt it did. 

On realising and then accepting that I’m ill.

For a long time I’ve accepted that I am depressed. I also have accepted for a long time that I am disabled, as I have multiple invisible impairments. But for some reason I never really thought of myself as ill, despite the fact that I’ve been trudging back and forth to the doctors with quite alarming regularity over the last few years, for some reason I saw my depression as something other than illness, as just a part of me of who I was.

That was until this summer, it wasn’t until I started living in a house with people other than my parents and talking more openly to some of my friends that I realised that a very large number of my thought processes are atypical. I just assumed as I had always felt like this, that lots of other people had also felt like this and it was completely normal to do so. So here are a few of my atypical thought processes that I assumed normal:

Self hatred:- I’m not just talking momentary passing self hatred as I’m reliably informed of the normality of that, but total and sometimes overwhelming self hatred. And I don’t ever remember not feeling like this, I don’t ever remember liking myself.

Wishing I were dead:- This goes hand in hand with the above, but I guess slightly more severe. Again I’m informed that not everyone goes to bed wishing that they won’t wake up in the morning – who knew?! But I wouldn’t say for me this is feeling suicidal, for me being suicidal is actually wishing to act on these feelings. And I don’t think I’ve been suicidal my whole life but I have thought the world would be a better place if I were dead.

The fear of the worst when people aren’t where you expect them to be:- So if someone is late, or not in the house when I expect them to be I fear the worst, that they’re dead, that there’s been some kind of terrible accident, that someone they love had died and they’ve had to go and sort things out, ect, ect. I’m told that doing this isn’t completely atypical it’s just the speed at which I get these feelings, it can be within seconds, and I can’t focus on anything else whist this is going through my mind.

The belief that my friend’s aren’t my friends:- I believe my friends are part of a big conspiracy and they’re all just acting, and one day they’re all going to simultaneously turn around and leave me as part of one big practical joke. I’m going to log onto facebook and have no friends but have 800+ messages just saying “AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!” I don’t think that as I’ve gone through life I’ve made better friends, I just feel like I’ve become friends with better actors.

A complete inability to accept compliments:- compliment me on anything and one of a few things will happen: I’ll pull a face, I’ll laugh it off, I’ll ignore it completely or I’ll come up with a some kind of self deprecating retort. I just don’t believe any of the compliments that people give me, so I bash them away as quick as I can.

So putting all of these things together has made me realise, I’m ill, and I have been for the majority of my life, but with these and certain other situational things (I’ve recently been told I have PTSD amongst other issues) right now I’m really unwell, and it’s unpleasant, and I want to be better, it’s just I’ve been ill for so long that I don’t know what it’s like to be well.