Personal

I’ll probably regret this.

Picture this.

June 10th, somewhere in The City. One arrives, sparkling, healthy, eyes dancing; the next, smooth as silk, no hint of the rush she’s had to arrive on time; lastly, grace incarnate glides in, walking on imported air.

Air kisses, bise-deux, mwah mwah. And variations on ‘How are you?’ To which I will answer: “Fine”.

Bollocks.

I’ve been crap.

Not all the time of course. There are moments of intense calm. Moments of real pleasure that will stay for ever. But I’ve not been ‘fine’.

I fight every day against the curse of Depression. It haunts. It corrodes. It never stops. And some days are worse. Not just worse in a not-feeling-so-good-today way but worse in an oh-my-god-this-could-become-very-nasty way. Being inside a depressive episode is unpleasant in ways which are difficult to describe.

But a challenge like that has never stopped me before.

Ask a hundred people with this condition to describe it and you’ll get a hundred different answers. Here is mine.

I just want to crawl into a corner. Somewhere dark, where time stands still, where no-one can get to me. I want to disconnect myself from the world. And then I realise that this leaves me alone with myself. But I hate myself. I hate everything about me. My past, my present, my thoughts, my feelings. The very last person I want to be with is me. So I uncouple my soul and withdraw further.

Physically, emotionally, everything shuts down so that self-hatred, fear and confusion become isolated in the no-mans land between everyone else and me, the inner me, the soul of me.

All this can happy very quickly. I’ve gone from a normal state to a massively depressed state in a matter of hours. Actually the switch can happen in seconds but it takes a couple of hours to settle and solidify. That’s scary for me but scarier for those around me.

The effect this has on others is terrible.

I look the same. There is no outward sign of illness. Eyes don’t water, skin doesn’t itch, and there isn’t a twitch or limp to spot.

I act differently. Speech is quiet and terse. Monosyllabic. Reactions are quick and unthinking and usually hurtful. Or I can be slow to the point of inert. (But it’s not slow in my head, just the opposite. Remember time has stopped for me. Your time means nothing).

At this point I am a ‘moody git’ and people give up on me. Quite right too.

I withdraw. If I’m lucky it’s to a real place, a room; often it’s just in my head. A place where I can shut out the world. I want nothing to do with the world. Phone calls, letters, emails, visitors are hideous ordeals. No matter who they are from. I want to get away. In my mind I go further. I plan where I could go if I really had to. And sometime that means planning a terminal exit.

Suicidal thoughts are common. How would I do it? What would it feel like? At what point in the process would it be painful? Would I regret it? Would anyone else regret it? These are thoughts of great clarity. Cleansing thoughts. Honest thoughts. Suicidal acts are rare.

But those around me see me yet can’t connect with me. Normal rules of social interaction have gone because what they see isn’t who I am. I’m somewhere else and have left a shadow, a weak cypher to run my body while I escape. No wonder this is so painful and destructive on those nearest to me.

Inside this timeless, disconnected self things look dark, sound dark and thoughts become obsessive. Thoughts from the near past, the distant past. Thoughts of shame, of guilt, of embarrassment. They gang up on me; they come in waves, endless waves. Everything repeats and repeats and repeats and repeats. It is a kind of madness. It feels pointless, endless and hopeless.

And yet I survive. I will live.

Medication helps. The tightrope remains the best analogy. I have to walk the high wire and the medication is my net. I may fall but the net will stop me from hurting myself. The net doesn’t help me walk the wire. I still have to do that myself.

The really scary thing? The last psychiatrist I saw said that major depressive episodes become more frequent the more you have them. In other words, it’s a slippery slope. Or wire.

And the really perverse thing? It’s people that help. Straightforward decent people are an extraordinary antidote. The very people that are shut out of my world when I slip and fall are the people who help restore my reality. Therein lays one of the great paradoxes.

Am I fine? Yes, mostly. I love, I laugh, I live. I give, I receive. I learn, I grow. What’s not to like?

How am I? Fine.

Most of the time.