This much I know

Today, in my counselling session, I was reflecting on how much better I have been feeling lately. And it was a real eye-opener. Because right through this process, I’ve had this niggling feeling that I’ve been faking it. That I wasn’t really depressed. That I was attention-seeking, feeling sorry for myself for no good reason, just needed to pull myself together.

Therapy has helped me to understand why this is. My denial of my own feelings is buried deep in my history and runs through every aspect of my life. I feel I have no right to be anything but okay, and feel guilty when I am not. I end up hating myself for having emotions. I apologise for them. I apologise for myself. I feel single-handedly responsible for other people’s happiness. I don’t deserve anyone’s love or support or attention.

That, I think, explains a lot about what has been going on with me in the past six months or so.

This much I know now, though, now that I am – please God – coming through this episode of depression.

I wasn’t faking it.

I wasn’t attention-seeking.

I couldn’t just pull myself together.

Only now do I realise how unwell I have been.

For months, months on end, I struggled to speak to people in the playground, at church.

I spent hours lying on my bed or the sofa, trying to make myself move.

I couldn’t make eye contact with people.

I cried hysterically, disproportionately at the smallest things.

I avoided making social arrangements and cancelled the ones I had made.

I lay awake at night in a barely suppressed state of panic.

I couldn’t get my contact lenses in because my eyes were so tired and swollen.

I couldn’t summon the energy to cook for the children, and relied on freezer dinners.

I couldn’t be bothered to help Tom with homework or read to Katie.

I turned down work and quit my governor role.

I let the house fall to pieces around me. I didn’t mop a floor or change a bed for months.

I didn’t shave my legs or paint my nails, didn’t colour my hair.

I didn’t read.

I didn’t listen to music.

I didn’t laugh.

I cut myself, for goodness’ sake. To the point of addiction. To the point that it wasn’t enough just to scrape at myself with a dismantled razor or a kitchen knife any more, and so I ordered a box of brand new, shiny, single razor blades from Amazon just for that purpose. I locked my little daughter out of the bathroom while I was home alone with her so I could self-harm. One night, her cries disturbed me in the middle of a session. Reflexively, I rushed into her room. I dripped blood all over her carpet, her bed.

If I couldn’t cut, I pinched my skin hard enough to bruise. I deliberately burned myself on the overheating power outlet of my laptop and pretended I’d caught myself on the oven door.

I wasn’t faking it. In fact, I think I was probably a lot more unwell than I realised at the time, a lot more unwell than I admitted to anyone, to the doctor, friends, my husband.

The past week or so has seen me feeling calmer, more positive, more normal than I have in a long while. I’ve enjoyed work. I’ve shaved my legs and bought new nail varnish. I’ve begun a total spring clean of the house, stripping all the beds, sending bags of stuff to the charity shop and sorting out the disaster area under the stairs. I’ve immersed myself in books and rediscovered that ‘can’t put it down’ need to keep reading even though I know I have to be up early the next morning. I’ve cooked from scratch, defleaed the cat, found a cheaper home insurance quote and packaged up Katie’s pre-school photo to post to Ian’s senile grandmother.

None of these things are a big deal. But just a few months ago, none of them would have been possible. I was too depressed. Too ill. I realise now that for several months, I was only just functioning. I realise now that I was probably far closer than I, or anyone else, knew to not functioning at all.

I wasn’t faking it.

Of course, recovery isn’t going to be a straight-forward thing. I know I will have dips. I know that, having now had three periods of significant depression in my life, I am at high risk of a future relapse. But I have something that not so long ago, I didn’t have at all. I have hope.

I am savouring this time of energy and enthusiasm and positivity. I am appreciating all the ordinary stuff in life that ceased to matter in the depths of my depression. I can get pleasure again from the smell of my line-dried washing, the satisfaction of a piece of work finished and finished well, even from having the strength to mop the kitchen floor.

With the benefit of hindsight, the self-awareness I’m gaining from counselling and the biochemical stability induced by my anti-depressants, not to mention the love and support of my dearest friends, I am recovering. And although I didn’t know how ill I was at the time, I know now that I am so, so fortunate to be coming out of this depression in one piece. Changed, scarred, but okay.

It could so easily not have been so.

And I thought I was faking it.