Sometimes it just feels so very hard to keep going.
Most of the time, it’s just a matter of gritting my teeth and getting through it.
But today it’s feeling incredibly difficult not to just give up.
Today I’ve learnt that although I can go back to organising craft for Hotshots, I can’t be considered a part of the children’s team.
Diocese policy, apparently. Despite the fact that the social services investigation has been closed with no action required, and despite the fact that nothing has changed my DBS clearance, I’m too big a risk.
I can be there, I can cut out bits of paper, but I can’t tick people off on the register any more, I can’t welcome people (and where does that end, exactly? If I’m there first and say ‘hello’ to people, is that welcoming, or just being polite?), and I’m absolutely not allowed to be on my own with kids or have any responsibility for them.
I understand (sort of). But I feel completely heartbroken about it.
I’m not allowed to serve in one of the few ways I know. I’m not considered safe around people. And I feel even more marginalised in church terms than ever before.
I don’t consider myself a risk to my own children, let alone anyone else’s. But in the eyes of the Diocese, clearly there’s a sliding scale of how sinful we’re allowed to be (despite the fact that all sin is equal, in Biblical terms) and I’ve passed the cut-off point.
I feel like a freak.
Tomorrow, we’re meant to be spending the whole day at a wildlife park with Ian’s family. I’ve told Ian how difficult it’s going to be, and apparently he’s spoken to his mum and she will understand if I don’t come.
But I spoke to her this morning, and I don’t think it’s quite as okay as he made it out to be.
I feel under massive pressure to be there. I’m the ‘problem one’ of the family anyway, the one who doesn’t fit in, the fat ugly daughter-in-law, the one who’s not good enough. I don’t think I can cope with providing another reason to be hated – but I don’t think I can cope with a whole day of being smiley and sociable and pretending to be well, either.
Ian says ‘if you really can’t come…’ and that piles on the guilt even more. Because of course I ‘can’ come. There’s nothing physically wrong with me. There’s no reason why I can’t take all the anti-anxiety meds and paste a smile on and be there, even if I feel like complete crap for the entire day.
But introducing that word ‘can’ makes it very clear that he, they, everyone thinks I have a choice about this, and if I’m not there, it’s because I’m choosing not to be.
Both of these cases – the church thing and the family thing – have made me realise even more clearly how big a difference there is still in the perception of physical and mental illnesses.
If I had recently been in hospital with a diabetic crisis, no one would consider me too risky a prospect to be involved with church work.
If I woke up tomorrow hypoglycaemic, no one would judge me for not being able to make the family day out.
But because it’s brain not body, it’s different. It becomes risk. It becomes choice. It becomes not trying hard enough.
It was kind of validating yesterday when the psychologist described me as severely depressed; it reassured me that this is real and it’s serious. But today, that diagnosis feels like a millstone.
I want to stamp my feet and cry and say IT’S NOT MY FAULT! Just because it’s in my head rather than below the neck, it’s not my fault!
Oh, and just as a little added extra, the CATT doctor decided to increase my antidepressant a couple of days ago. But for the past two days, my blood pressure has been high, so I’m now not allowed to increase the meds.
It’s a tiny thing, but I was clinging onto that medication increase as a little bit of hope, something that could possibly make a difference to how I’m feeling.
Now that has been taken away, too.
So yes, everything feels bleak right now. Seriously bleak. Hard to keep going bleak.
It’s becoming more and more difficult to have faith in things getting better.
Lucy's Depression Diary 