I once bled onto a Flintstone sock for four days in a Ballsbridge bedsit ’til it was hard enough to slash through human flesh or qualify for a Garda weapon’s seizure. Another time the man I was sleeping with just plain refused to crawl into my bed: ‘June, I can’t…there’s a phone in there and a half-eaten plate of pasta, beer cans and what looks like a piece of an ironing board.’ He was very sweet not to mention the month’s worth of dirty clothes, unread books, loose wires, odd shoes, an upturned lamp and decorative wooden salad fork set I bought as a present but was too lethargic to pass on.
While not very apt descriptions of prototypical depression, these two scenarios sum up the cloisterphobic clutter and superglue awfulness of an internal mood shift that can recalibrate your customary life into a bizarre orgy of silent dislocations. So much so that if you turned your head slightly to the left and saw your severed arm stuck rigid to the wall like a haphazard slot-machine handle, you wouldn’t bat an eyelid. Human voices become sloppily muffled, the tiniest of bureaucratic tasks: a crippling run between two lines of people facing each other and armed with clubs…days shadowed by sincere lack of interest in anything that breathes, moves, shivers, while all is accompanied by chronic tiredness the likes of which only a cat by a coal fire in January should ever experience. Here’s something your €75 an hour artificer of niceness in open-toe sandals won’t tell you: life is a throbbing bore. Inbetween the obvious bouts of anthropoid beauty − falling in love, exciting sex, University, babies, a glowing career, warm-hearted friends, laughter, cream cakes, awesome holidays, general milestones, packaged peace − there’s incessant stress, tragedy, ill-health, violence, sadness, rape, heartache, unworkable families, emotional abuse, lack of opportunity, dreadful dysfunction, absence of love: an entire giant wheelie bin of dispiriting melancholic glupe. Even just coping with people constantly is a colossal pain in the arse.
When I’m on top of things, in good form, I’m pretty good at sifting through the annoying bits, being diplomatic or even at times, being nice/kind/functional! But when feeling low, the prying bag at the bus-stop demanding all kinds of insights into my life or the wanton perv in the pub who refuses to let me sit and drink a pint & read the paper in peace (this happens a lot if you’re a woman out in public alone) can be a dreadful chore. ‘Why don’t you stick your hand down my knickers, it might be less intrusive’, I feel like roaring, sometimes. Come to think of it − now that I’m being randomly honest − I don’t think I’ve ever had a boss either who wasn’t a complete megalomaniacal gobshite. Relationship embroidery is pretty much set up this way. Predisposed patterns for sibling rivalry, petty jealousy in the workplace, power play, naturally opposing or defensive positions (“I can’t stand the mother-in-law”), competitive friendships, family feuds, what seems to be a natural urge for unflagging conflict both big and small, raining down around us all the time, with no hope of a brolly for protection. Layered on top of this is the earthly tendency for chaos and all that we can’t control, from tsunamis to car crashes, redundancy, breast cancer and beyond. I would argue that if you didn’t find life sporadically tough, tormenting, dull, painful and bleak, you’d be a complete and utter moron. You’d belong to the Louise L Hay School of Grinning Cliché and you’d probably find yourself dancing up O’Connell Street wearing a salmon pink sheet or belonging to some other sesame seed based cult.
The Irish Times this weekend published a heart-rending and beautifully written piece by Carl O’Brien on suicide. Phyllis MacNamara’s personal story about how she lost her best friend, life companion, lover, hubby, soul-mate, was so incredibly moving because it was also the re-telling of a 24-carat love story running parallel to a desperate man’s clamorous attempt to understand what was happening to him. In the terrible business of do-or-die, solicitor Michael MacNamara could not negotiate a way out of the extreme debilitating emotions he was experiencing. Although his symptoms were at the ‘severe’ end of the depression spectrum: ‘In the final three days his speech deteriorated badly. His words were jumbled…When he went to the supermarket he looked through a hand-written shopping list, came to the word “rosemary” and stopped. He didn’t understand what it meant’…he felt too ashamed to seek psychiatric help and his wife never thought for a nano-second he was capable of killing himself. He told her she was the best wife any man could have, that he loved her completely. Then he went to the barn and hanged himself.
Phyllis MacNamara with her late husband, Michael, whom she met at Trinity College © Irish Times
We are as ill prepared to deal with deep/severe depression as we are with tackling the current economic crisis. Except worse. The entire linguistic system girdling mental anguish is wholly redundant. When was the last time you saw a ‘pit’ for real (in a Gulag or Paddy field maybe) or craned your neck skyward to look at the always mentioned ‘dark clouds’? People all along the chromatic spectrum of off-kilterness need to be able to recognise where they’re at and to talk about it. In the early stages of depression, a navigable ear or a gesture of simple kindness, can pull a person back to where s/he is capable of being well, far better than any faux-pharma offering. In the mid-stages even knowing there’s plenty of functional sad folks out there getting on with life very well, with just a smidgen of guidance, could be a massive relief. At the late stages, recognising that intervention is needed and is not a contender for any kind of shame game, is the difference between life and death. We need to shear off the shite language and start expressing our sad selves for real, and know it’s just as ballsy to do so as it is to rant about our flagrant successes in the gilded good times.
Ten years ago I sought the help of a psychotherapist when I was in a bad way. The experience was an unfettered disaster. I was so solidly depressed I could barely speak or monkey-perform to his humanistic-integrative liking. I was totally incapable of crying into the plentiful supply of tissues like the ‘here’s a seashell for your window-cill’ attendees before me. He was clearly gifted at his job and incredibly intuitive and talented but that meant nothing, given the state I was in. I sat pulling the loose threads on a small black button on his Freudesque leather chair, week after week, boring him rigid. He battled long to get any reaction out of me at all. He also ate too many rashers and burned essential oils like a crazed hippie. There was a biography of Bruce Springsteen on the shelf and a book on iChing. If that wasn’t bad enough, I had an overwhelming urge to unzip him and star in my own private Flake ad. In between the imagined sex and the approaching breakdown he said some interesting stuff. “You’ve turned self-abuse into an art form…anger & sadness are on the same axis as fear and love”. When he did eventually begin to defrost me for real, it was all a bit nuclear-horrific. “I can’t help you anymore, there’s a lot of transference [and counter transference], it’s too difficult for you, it’s not working,” he said. Off I raged, unravelling to the level of Hitchcock’s Marnie for too long a time. An experience I hugely regret, on all levels. However, I still recognise the benefit of seeking professional help and would always encourage anyone dipping a toe into Dante’s Inferno to do so. Being alone isn’t worth the torture rack when everyone around you is similarly alone and creaking too.
June Caldwell is a writer, who after 13 years of journalism, is finally writing a novel. She has a MA in Creative Writing and was winner of ‘Best Blog Post’ award at the 2011 Irish Blog Awards. You can read this post on her own blog here:
Amazing. Thank you.
Terrific piece. Depression is a non-physical cancer. You take care of yourself, missus …
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Charlie Taylor, John Finn, Eleanor Fitzsimons, Alan Moloney, Alan Moloney and others. Alan Moloney said: RT @junecadwell Hurrah, the first frosts of winter out the window! Meanwhile here's my take on the depression game: http://bit.ly/deUVr7 [...]
Brilliant..moving…funny…illuminating.
I tell myself happiness is fleeting; like real hunger, emotional hunger will always return, bringing its gnawing emptiness, even though we were full a few hours earlier.
I tell myself it’s imperative that this is so from an evolutionary perspective, or we’d sit back in contentment and the species would die out. Striving, wanting, discontent — all of these are to spur us on. There’s a hierachy of needs, and once hunger, shelter, water, and basic survival are all met, all this other stuff floats to the top.
Or so I tell myself. But then I read stories like yours, June, and I realise that all the glib explanations in the world, all the crap psychobabble, all are nothing and useless.
I had a ream of treatment once during the worst time of my life, but it was an endless circle of grief exploration. After one session, I turned my car towards the mountains and drove, tears pouring down my face. I stopped the car by a stream and sat on a boulder in the water, eyes screwed shut, hearing the flow, feeling the stone huge and solid beneath my palms, aeons-old, and I gradually realised on a whole new level that all of this was fleeting. Me, the world as I knew it, all my torment, it would end with me, and the world would continue and this boulder would barely erode during my lifetime. For the first time in forever I felt at a vague peace, and I understood the truth of the proverb: “This too shall pass”.
I also understood tree-hugging and moving to the country and yes, even those salmon robes. But not the sesame seeds…
As we say in South Africa, “vasbyt”.
And thank-you for daring to share.
Wow, thank you so much.
What Colin said.
Your closing sentence is perfect.
Excellent piece, very eye-opening. Having never suffered from depression it’s something I find hard to understand. But your piece certainly helps.
Fair play to you for writing this. Very honest piece, It’s a pity it is nearly always us women who bear our souls.The more depression and suicide are discussed openly the better. Often people think they are suffering alone (or going crazy), but when you have the strength to say you need help often people say ‘I’ve gone through that, I go for counselling or I have taken medication’
Boys need to know it is ok to cry. This crying and opening up may well keep them falling down the abyss. I feel more men need to be interviewed for articles like the Irish Times one. They may find it easier to relate to another man’s feelings. I did an interview a while back for The Irish Times. It was very difficult to do but I felt better emotionally for having discussed it. It is good to see that newpapers are starting to give more column inches to the issue of suicide. The article on Saturday was very powerful and moving.
Well done again June.
June thank you so much for writing this beautiful, illuminating piece. There is so much silent suffering in the world. Yet we chose to suffer alone rather than reach out to tap into the universal darkness and find some solace in a shared experience. In the depths of the darkness perhaps we feel unworthy of being loved and helped and cared for. There is a history of depression in my family – it has haunted my father in particular and cast a shadow over his entire life.
I have had my own brush with this hideous, debilitating condition, after the birth of my first child, and I recognise all too well the overwhelming tiredness that accompanies it. In my case I also experienced crippling panic attacks that convinced me I was dying and were so severe that I frequently threw up. I struggled on alone for months. The strain of pretending all was well was all-consuming and simply not worth the effort. What was I trying to prove by pretending that I could cope? I wrote about my experiences in the Irish Times recently with a view to helping others who tumble into this pit of despair and just can’t find the handholds to climb out.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/health/2010/0126/1224263110727.html
Just read this now, brilliant and totally frightening as well. I find it incredible what women go through having kids and how so much of the experience is written off as ‘natural’. Such an honest piece. I can’t imagine that type of tactile stress.
June
This is very brave of you. The suicide of a loved one is the most terrible of experiences for inevitably you blame yourself. It is common to feel low but as you know it is not uncommon to sink into a life-threatening depression and for those around you not to recognise the signs. After two such experiences I evolved my own detection guide and I made it an issue in the work place. The one golden rule, I think, is that anyone who is depressed and speaks of their possible suicide must be taken very seriously indeed. I can think of a situation when early detection most probably saved someone’s life.
June, your use of language and forthright approach is incredible. There’s something in the way you describe, the details, the candid way you don’t flinch away from your own pain that makes your writing extremely powerful. You’ve always struck me as such a strong person with plenty of history but it’s the way you face things head-on and brook no lily-livered, eggshell-stepping around issues that is really impressive.
I’ve dealt with depression all my life, it’s hardwired into my brain from something that began before I was born. My Granda used to tell me that when I was a baby I would often go for days without making any sound, not even crying to be fed, but there were days when I’d gurgle and smile like a normal infant. And there are so many more examples that I don’t want to clutter up this comment field with but I have to say, something that gets to me is that if you try to accept it and deal the rough with the smooth, you’re not taken seriously. I take that black kernel everywhere I go but choose to find always search for a positive rather than face the negativity. It sorta marks you out as not taking your illness seriously, the one time I really couldn’t cope any more and spent every day for a year wrestling horrendous desire for self-injury and suicide, I sought help. After weeks begging my GP for a referral instead of antidepressants, I finally saw a psychiatric team, who told me that because I countered every desperate statement with some hopeful remark, there was no point in helping me and I’d figure it out on my own. Pretty useless and as a result, I still struggle to maintain equilbrium in my life but I’ve learned that there’s an untold power in embracing your weaknesses with an inner hug of strength.
Weird rambly comment, sorry. You’re a massive inspiration to me. I’m going to try and channel some of this fantastic, creative resolve into my own work!
That’s incredibly shoddy (the psych team) – I think there’s also a huge amount of arrogance attached to the whole ‘helping’ professions per se – they often don’t listen and instead are screamingly prescriptive which can be the very opposite of helpful. Psychiatry, out of the lot – seems to be a glut of pompous guesswork with some meds thrown in, while the psychotherapy field seems to be an awful lot of angelic hippies nodding, chin-scratching and not so subtley reading your body language (while trying not to yawn). All the better if you’ve a leather chair to squeak in and some Ylang Ylang! It can be helpful if you’re up for it or have the slightest inkling what it’s about or what’s expected of you. If you’re into having a paid friend for a while who’ll be artificially gentle with/to you (at least in the room, for 50 minutes). It can work great for people who just need a listening ear. I found the endless ‘no agenda’ bizarre and confusing. What do I do here, etc? I asked the guy I went to for a book on psychotherapy in ‘week one’ and he simply replied, “I’d prefer if you didn’t.” [Hmmmm, power play?]. That immediately had my back up. And yet, he was a really lovely person too who was very passionate about his work, and I could see that. But I hadn’t a clue what the actual process was about – either at the beginning – or at the unpleasant, cold end. It can be a dreadfully obscure journey and I think it needs more transparency and candidness. Counsellors, well, I still don’t know what they are: “how does it make you feel?” merchants. Listeners. Subsidised mirrors. I also think you have to have a certain amount of workable sanity about you to go through it successfully which is errrrr, contradictory, if you’re clogged with depression. Yikes, I have no answers!
Beautiful, June. Your honesty is absolutely fearless. This is how the dark corners get lit. Well done, Jxx
It’s a relief to read this today. Thank you.
Such gifted graphically insightful and selfless writing. Thank you. I was also moved by the surgical analogy for grief in the piece in the IT on Saturday.
Jesus, just out of my Monday morning writer’s group at the Irish Writers’ Centre and am totally overwhelmed at the response to this post. Honestly. Thank you all so much! I felt ridiculous even covering this topic so it’s truly warming to know that other people are affected and/or feel it’s a taboo topic. In the past I never felt it was OK to broach ‘depression’ one iota: with family members, friends or in the workplace. Some truly shit comments too when I did – “when are you going to ride the bike without the stabilisers?”, a family member said. Another: “When you get a man and a job like the rest of us, you’ll forget this kind of stuff” [a friend who's married to a severe alcoholic and must be going through reams of her own secret shit] and so on. Colm/Declan/Henry/Ally/Fiona/Justine/JK/beatingmyselfintoadress
: thanks so much for the vote of confidence! Jennie: those experiences are so frightening, you describe it very well. Laura: ‘boys need to know it is ok to cry’, it’s so true and so overlooked in our society. We still expect them to shoulder the burden and be caveman strong. Horrible too is the fact that so many men don’t get that all they’re feeling is normal given the stressful situations they find themsleves in. I’m overly conscious that so many people in Ireland are totally terrified right now and we need to look out for the signs and reach out. Eleanor/Nay: brave to admit being affected as well. I think so many people in our profession (who write…creative types, etc.) also bear the mark of having been there. A shrinky friend of mine once told me that writing is a form of mental illness! I was appalled until I got what she was saying, that even the act of writing, expressing, trying to explain the world to yourself is a form of necessary escape more often than not…escape from something painful. Charliechops1: this is the first time you have resisted arguing/being devil’s adocate on a post!! I don’t quite know how to respond to that. I tend to express myself in a volcanic manner, sometimes it works, other times it makes me look barking mad. Happy that this time it reached a few hearts! It’s cheered me up immensely.
Having had three phone calls from three severely depressed friends last week, this is the right thing at the right time. People need to realise how important their help, their phone call or kindness can be to others who are at the frayed edges and hanging on by their fingertips.
Paul, missed your comment earlier today, not intentional at all. Greatly appreciate it.
Extraordinary, generous, honest…. I could go on. Thanks for writing it.
Fantastically and graphically written piece, thank you June. There are so many people I wish to share this with, both those who completely get it, and those who never have!
Brilliant. Just brilliant. Thank you.
Someone told me once that we read to find our secret selves, and it’s open, honest writing like this that constantly restores my faith in words and in us.
A beautiful piece and brilliantly written.
Uiscebot, Adoubleg, Liz, Frances, Paul: thanks again! So grateful. I actually thought when I was writing it that I wasn’t even managing to be coherent! So these lubly comments are shockingly cheering! J x
It is a gift to be so articulate about something which, when people are in the middle of it, cannot explain. Everyone knows someone who is depressed. Offer them help. They might say no, but they could well say yes. They won’t be able to ask for help themselves
It’s a bizarre truth that when you’re through it, out the other side, you don’t even have self-understanding of it, so yes, I agree. Offer help if you can.
Really great piece, approaches the reality of depression in a way few articles seem able to.
Great to get such amazing feedback!
A stunning piece of writing on so many levels. I could see the bedsit in my minds eye and can feel the despair which so many of us are loath to admit we have suffered from. I am not sure people even know how to accept help at the time as they have no concept of anything but a large black hole swallowing them. The Irish Times piece was moving and this was its equal or even better.
The Irish Times piece had me in tears over breakfast. Such a tragic sad story…I really cannot fathom how a person can cope with a situation so deeply shocking and Phyllis came across in the piece as very humble. Ta for your kind comment too.
Amazing June and brutally honest too. And to think of the times that we laughed through some of that crazy stuff – the silk kimono period, cats giving birth under the bed, etc. You should write more from the heart, this is excellent. xxxx
Oh yes Ro! Remember how ‘sick’ I was that you found me one day combing my hair with kittens!!!? Leaving my clothes on the washing line for four months and heading to Herbert Park to avoid the landlord and/or the rent. Ahhhhh the halcyon days!
Even when you’re writing about despair you never lose an incisive sense of humour.
‘sesame seed based cult’ produced guffaws over here.
Gorgeous prose, as always, June.
Thanks Megan! Looking forward to seeing you in December!!
Just this morning, I said to a friend of mine “if the world is round, why do I feel so flat?” and she responded “you feel flat because we all do from time to time and its winter – short, dark days”. She then told me to eat a good lunch (which must include a kitkat) and signed off with a dozen kisses.
I became depressed after my mother died, eight years ago, when I was 24. At first, I was okay, not great, but I kept telling myself how lucky I had been to have my mum around for my whole childhood. I kept reminding myself that other people were caring for their mothers and losing them, without falling apart. My grandmothers had been through wars, for goodness’ sake, so what did I have to cry about??? But the harder I tried to hold myself together, the more broken I felt. I quickly began to distance myself from everyone who knew me and soon felt overwhelmed by a sense of shame.
My head told my heart that it was weak and rotten to the core. I didn’t feel that I had the right to an opinion, the right to even exist. I was certain that I was abnormal; I knew without any doubt that everyone around me was wonderful, invincible, and that I was letting them down by being who I was. And I felt sure that, if I talked to anyone about it, they would simply agree with me, hate me for my self-absorption and be unable to help. I had no idea how normal I actually was, in feeling the way I did.
I now know that the majority of people in my life have tried a form of therapy and that the people who have never experienced a period of uncontrollable rollercoaster emotions, at some point in their lives, seem to be in the minority. Lots of things helped me to realise this, including Gwyneth Lewis’ Sunbathing in the Rain which made me see that “once you start throwing yourself away, it becomes easier with practice” and, although I still get caught out by random lows, they don’t last too long. This is partly because loved ones, with their kisses and kitkats, let me talk about them and support me when I am trying my damnedest to stop throwing myself away.
Thanks June, for a great post. I wish I had written it. I suspect that it will be someone else’s Sunbathing in the Rain….
Elizabeth, thanks so much for this wonderful [and heartbreaking] comment, the detail in it really got me. Losing your mother so young is an enormous wrench. Under such difficult circumstances don’t you think everything you felt, no matter how graphic, was normal? The ‘uncontrollable rollercoaster emotions’ can be life-crushing. Great that you seem to have ovecome so much and can speak so candidly and so maturely about it. You’re brillo!
Thanks again, June.
I think my biggest problem was the fear that I would be branded as permanently incompetent if I admitted to any kind of emotional distress and I made the mistake of believing that my friends and family, who knew me, would see me this way too. I would love to see this kind of discussion taking place in every school because these stereotypes, prejudices and fears bed-in early.
Antonia’s John McCarthy interview is a very good listen. The BBC have a site called Headroom which has some information, links and videos that may or may not also be helpful to someone:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/headroom/mental_health/depression.shtml?rubysroom02
One size does not fit all and drugs, therapy, counselling, lifestyle changes, and whatever else suits you, may make a difference. Personally, being “prescribed” yoga, homeopathy, meditation, sobriety and rice milk felt like a punishment rather than a “cure” and I liked doing some CBT (with a very sharp, very dark-humoured therapist) partly because it allowed me to remain a questioning, beer-loving shades-of-grey-type who prefers a long walk in the sunshine to a stretch on a mat, but everyone is different. As long as you try not to hurt yourself or anyone else, do whatever the heck gets you through the night.
Sound advice! You’re a true inspiration.
A remarkable piece of work. I’m delighted you wrote it and that I read it. Your honesty is, as always, uncompromising. Thanks. Padraig
Thanks Mr Padraig!! We must grab a coffee soon.
Beautifully written. I had actually just got around to reading the piece about the McNamara’s in the Times this morning, and was very glad to see substantial coverage on the issue of depression and suicide. Reading your piece, then, was a bonus. Because it is necessary to speak out! While media has a certain responsibility in making peoples’ voices heard, I think we, as human beings, have a personal responsibility. As you so eloquently pointed out, one would have to be a moron not to succumb to the toughness, bleakness etc of life, which can manifest itself in different ways (clutter, social isolation, anxiety, eating disorders etc…), but all represent a form of depression. So if we all experience depression at some point in our lives, why is it so seldom talked about? I know we all wear masks from time to time, but there is nothing so alienating and cold as having to bear all of this alone. My closest friends are those with whom I feel comfortable talking about my feelings (good and bad), and who reciprocate. Surely, that is what connection is about. Sharing experiences without fear of being judged, or without fear of renouncing your power, is a truly honest thing to do, and is progress away from the superficial smiling masks, towards sincere, heart-felt truth. Well done June!
Martha, it’s still perceived as a massive weakness/fault-line in the same way that perhaps excess weight is seen as failure and impending death is too vulgar to talk about. Depression is a murky word with mustard-murky associations. Other people barely getting by don’t want to hear about it as it unsettles them. A lot of people glide along on the ostrich-head-in-sand notion, that if you don’t talk about something, it doesn’t exist. Superstition mixed with ignorance. Plus we have no ‘emotional education’ as such, which is bizarre if you think about it…going through life feeling everything [often] strongly and being told to keep stump about it. A lot of Irish households were riddled with secrets (even dull ones), resulting in the “don’t say anything” maxim. Years of not saying anything evidently takes its toll on our need to express what’s really happening in order to cope with our environment and hey presto: we go mad, in varying degrees.
Brilliant piece June!
Cheers Clodagh. PS. I found the stash of Lindor at the IWC!
I was having a grump today June, a real blue Monday, and this post reminded me to get a grip. Thank you for your always fantastic honesty and ability to call a spade a spade and make that worthy.
I used to think (and not even naïvely, I hope) that most people were great at handling day-to-day life and any moods they’d find sneaking in…that I was just a shite coper, a person with a leaky head and a maimed heart. Out there in the workplace, in bus shelters, at shop counters, queueing up in the smear test clinic, people seem so cheerfully able to cope with just about anything. Maybe I’m just a bad liar! I’m so amazed at the reactions to this post as I honestly felt like a dick writing it. We’re just so inured to keep the so-called ‘bad’ feelings hidden at all costs in all hues. Thanks so much for your comment. J x
Very brave piece, and so many touching responses.
The volume of comments is telling, high rates of suicide here are ever present in but rarely addressed, like the miserable children of yore seen and not heard. Our national condition points to a rising tide: the only positive aspect of this is that our society will by default have to confont it, so i think through the carnage of the next few years we will at least witness an evolution in how suicide is acknowledged, understood, treated and prevented.
(i hope you don’t mind my pointing out that with suicide, it’s always hanged, never hung. that distinction has always great carried emotional weight for me. Again, great piece, well done.)
Oh God, yes, I appreciate that (grammar pointer: I’d no idea, will change it now) as well as your lovely comment. I was genuinely shocked to hear recently that more people kill themselves than die in car crashes….and yet and yet and yet, in terms of even TV ads. It is both shocking and revelatory just how powerless the entire thing is, from the people who believe they’ve no other choice, to the families and friends and wider public, dealing with it. It’s happened twice on my dad’s side of the family (no surprise: history of depression) though we never really knew the people anyway. Every story in its own right is so incredibly sad. And part of me also understands that life can get too painful for some (and often quickly, minus the signs or hunches), so let’s not dare judge. But why is it still such a taboo topic? I think an awful lot of people in Ireland are thoroughly freaked out and scared right now. We need to look out for each other and just keep an eye open when we can.
Wow, June. Wow. Thanks for posting such an honest piece – and for managing to pull off the funny bits without diluting the effect.
One of the few pieces I can applaud Newstalk for over the last number of months was an interview with John McCarthy, the founder of Mad Pride http://www.newstalk.ie/programmes/all/breakfast/john-mccarthy-of-mad-pride-ireland/ (not specifically on depression and suicide, but on how to cope with mental health issues). In fact that’s overpraise, because it’s not that it was a particularly good interview, but that he was a good speaker. He talks about the normality of madness, a word he uses deliberately and positively, and the necessity of dismantling the fear and ignorance around it. Not everyone will agree with what he says, and he talks in vigorously dismissive terms of most of the psychiatric services he came into contact with, but the first necessity is to pull off the wig and start the discussion, and perhaps with what he does, with the fantastic Carl O’Brien series this week, with pieces like June’s, it is starting in earnest.
The strapline of Mad Pride is Celebrate Difference Stop Loneliness. Everyone churns, and too many people think that other people don’t. So many people just look as if they are gaily carrying life off, but we’re all just a struggling mass of scabs, stumbling about in the dark, really. Well, I am.
I hope, as Elizabeth said, your piece will be someone’s Sunbathing in the Rain.
‘Very Normally Mad’ (!) – I love it!!!! So, a lot of crazy men in Cork then!? I did have my suspicions after meeting one or two. What a lovely man, really refreshing to listen to, seriously. ‘I went to college for a year, learnt how to drink, have sex, play poker, fail’. The interview made me laugh as well. Just saying it as it is can be a reminder of just how much we’ve let go of simple honesty. Gorgeous how he talks of his wife too. Interesting that he didn’t have a traumatic childhood but just experiencing his Ma & Da not getting on, over a prologned period, set him up for mental health problems later. Lack of nurturing, etc. He also explains the adult ‘lack of focus’ and how depression and panic sneak in, very articulately. The whole problem with our ‘diagnostic culture’, being labelled as having ‘psychosis’ (when you’re just stressed out), being told you have a disease and being shoved into a cosy compliance. Of course any reaction you have against this labelling results in being dispatched unmourned to the madhouse. I had one counsellor who told me I needed to notch up and see a psychiatrist because I didn’t get on with the first person! One woman (who is still practising, at high expense) told me I had feelings of grief about the first guy because we’d had a child together in a previous life! For a while I was living the bad novels instead of writing them. This interview on Newstalk, the guy, is bang on. ‘I drank like a bastard because I needed the artificial high’. ‘Excellent interview and brilliantly honest. John McCarthy is a genius and an inspiration. The best thing I’ve listened to in a long long time. Ta so much for linking it!
I’m glad you liked it. Very tender about his wife, very clear in his message of the importance of love in it all and that the best way of supporting someone close to you when they are suffering is to love them. Not as easy as it sounds, of course.
That phrase stuck in my head for some days actually, “I drank like a bastard”. Not sure exactly why.
One of the strongest arguments, I thought, was the one he made about compliance, that often the treatment people receive is treatment designed to make them compliant, because that’s just easier for everyone else. I’ll never forget being in St John of God’s in Stillorgan in my early twenties – maybe 15 years ago – visiting someone staying there, and seeing a big nurse using her greater physical bulk to corner a patient and persuade her to do whatever it was she was meant to be doing, or go wherever she was meant to be doing. It was subtle, not a finger laid, not a threat murmured, but there was no doubt that she was intimidating this small elderly woman with her physical superiority. Making her compliant. But she was a patient, there to be helped. It just gave me the chills, that tiny incident.
I don’t get it. I’m taking meds and using a rent-a-friend and now I just feel like I’m not even being depressed correctly.
Please don’t take it personally!! I just didn’t have a pleasant experience with the whole ‘helping profession’ thing and am only giving my personal perspective. I also make sure to mention (a few times) that getting help is a good thing, a clever move. Beats the hell out of being alone with it. I hope you’re doing well. Antonio, in the comment above, posted this to a radio interview, which is one of the most refreshing things I’ve heard [about mental health] in a long, long time. The guy from Mad Pride Ireland is an unsubtle angel!
Sure, of course. Thanks for replying.
Lol Nickd, me too! Isn’t that just plain mad that when addled, we can still think shit I’m not even properly addled. Good luck with that, whatever works, even a little bit, is good enough.
Absolutely whatever works for ye, I totally agree with that. Problem is most people don’t know what help they need, at least in the beginning. I found some self-help groups better than private therapy and I also did some courses (I’m good at theory and living in my head!) which helped me understand what was happening. I hated being on anti-depressants, they were numbing and odd. Whatever is good for you is good for you! It’s a help to take any step at all.
Absolutely amazing piece, well done.
I’ve had a close family member go through a frightening experience recently with depression that shocked me to the core. The most frightening thing was the lack of help they got from so called professionals. My family felt completely left adrift and helpless. Finally, we did find help from the absolute angels in Pieta House. Wonderful, amazing, selfless, generous and caring….. I can’t begin to thank them enough.
I could write a book on what the family went through, but I won’t (for now). But it is great to see that more and more people are sharing their experience with depression; I cannot emphasise enough how much people need to talk to one another about this.
Thanks again.
Look what’s just happened today/tonight with the Butler family in Cork: kids strangled by a young man who was being treated for depression, before crashing his car to exit life in flames. Another family in Limerick: two young women and two kids stabbed to death. Depression is a very serious condition and people can find themselves in desperate situations way too quickly. Annie, that sounds awful, having to stumble around to find the help that you needed for the family member you talk of. It amazed me when I was in a bad way how hard it was to get the right help or any help at all. I kept being told because the first guy “didn’t work” that I was the problem. “You used up all the trust on him,” said one repetitive muppet as if it was an oil supply I’d despoiled! In the end I found ‘good enough’ help in freebie groups, the likes of which Aware or Al-Anon organise and used any spare cash to attend courses that gave me a better insight than the silent nodders achieved. For me I needed to know the mechanics of what was happening. Sometimes even just sitting and listening to other people’s stories can be enough of a salve. I found the ‘private’ psychotherapy scene exceptionally middle-class and up itself (the training costs alone per year for the four years required mean that only those with a glut of spare cash can do it). The IACP is a well-established organisation (some other good info here: too) with an up-to-date list of counsellors and psychotherapists who more or less regulate themselves under their own umbrella group. Aside from these, errrr, self regulated lists, GPs can also refer a person to the relevant services but also tend to prescribe anti-depressants very quickly, which may not be the best solution. Training institutions have ‘cut price therapy’ which is affordable but (in my opinion) not that good as it’s counselling students nervously acruing some experience and is only useful as a listening ear…don’t expect insights. If someone is in a ‘dire’ state, there’s even fewer quick (or affordable) choices. Family and friends are often the first source of help and not everyone wants to face the fact that someone they’re close [or related] to has a mental health problem. I had a friend from teen years who was severely depressed, very clear to see, but her family kept up the carousel of denial by constantly saying she’d be “grand” and would go on to achieve great things in her own time if everyone just left ‘it’ alone, blah blah, rather than dealing with the facts at hand and encouraging her to get the help she obviously needed. She never got over her depression and is still depressed today. So even recognising that someone has a problem and being there for them is a gift. As is not judging or poking at someone to “build a bridge and get over it”. I hope your situation worked out OK in the end and the person is making good progress and has found some peace.
Lovely funny piece June thank you! I did get something out of therapy but only when the meds were defrosting the big frozen lump of solidified terror. it’s nice to have someone who is unquestionally on your side for a while. Once I was a bit better and didn’t need it so much I realised I was trying to be a good therapee and fit the ‘i only have to do this properly, get the therapist stamp of approval and then it’s happy ever after’ narrative. Those feckin fairytales do a terrible disservice. And then they realised they were all barking mad and were barking mad ever after.
And therapists are very often quite barking mad and/or shifty themselves. Jesus! Your comment is important though…that whole ‘expectations’ thing and the natural power play that is inherent to the situation, needs to be worked through and debated. It’s appalling to be told it’s ‘OK’ to express anything but find yourself being shown the door when you do, or feeling, as you describe, that you have to be a good therapee! FFS! They are just fallible people who often have a history of depression or trauma themselves to have wanted to train in the first place. Bouncing from one stranger’s essential oil pot to the next is totally unhelpful and I would argue, corroding & crippling. In my case it was lousy because the transference (an essential component of psychoanalytic theory and practice, so we’re told) was never finitely dealt with by the therapist, which had a profoundly debilitating aftermath. If someone takes you on they should stick it out ’til the bitter-chocolate end. They are failing at their job otherwise and should take up landscape gardening as an alternative. They are also not adhering to their own ‘ethics’ by leaving a person in dire straits (3.8 of the IAHIP’s own code, for example). Perhaps there should be a ‘Rate My Therapist’ website – which isn’t self regulated by the industry – but client led? After all it is a retail/consumer service and an expensive one at that.
in my opinion talking is the best therapy, if this is with a trained professional so be it. i’ve gone for counselling under the hse since the suicide of my husband two years ago.
i’ve been lucky that all my sessions have been free of charge. i would not have been able to afford to pay for weekly sessions. i’ve suffered greatly since my husband’s death, panic attacks/anxiety, depression, insomnia, guilt, anger, etc. i know i will suffer on and off for the rest of my life, i just have to accept that i will go through difficult patches and ride them out. hopefully the intensity and length of these bad patches will decrease over time.
for me pyschotherapy is the fact that you are not judged. of course you have to build up a relationship with your counsellor and this takes time, hard work and commitement. counselling is like going for driving lessons, if you don’t like/listen/talk to the instructor you are going to get stuck down the cul-de-sac.
sometimes your friends/family don’t have the emotional strength or experience so they aren’t in a position to give you meaningful support. if this is the case go for counselling with a good therapist.
for anyone thinking of going for counselling i would recommend questionioning your therapist, psychatarist. in my experience the psychotherapist in the hse do work under extremely difficult circumstances. they can get moved around quite alot. i’m lucky that i’ve had consistency in attending only two therapist in two years. my husband saw four different counsellors in ten months which really is not good enough in my opinion. the money needs to be ploughed in at grass roots level. look at all the money that is spent on drink driving campaign’s. there is a theory that some of the deaths by dangerous driving are in fact death by suicide.
my advice when really low, cry if you want to cry, hit the pillow if angry, stay in bed for one day if you need to, get some exercise, write down your feelings/thoughts each night before you go to bed. most important of all try be your own best friend. we all deserve it… pity i don’t always heed my own advice.
well done again for writing this article june. you are a brave and funny woman.
Laura, thank you so much for your compelling honesty and willingness to share this personal info. It must be woefully hard for you at times, such a sad shocking thing to happen. I agree with all that you say above, it takes work and it also depends very much on who you work with. Some people find themselves so deeply depressed that they can’t open up or talk much. Terrible that your husband had four different people to deal with in a year. More resources are needed. I think it’s marvellous that you’re able to talk about it. ‘Be your own best friend’, such great advice and wisdom in that snippet.
Thanks June. I find it inspiring that you’ve written this. I think it instils hope. I know so many people who’ve been torn apart by depression. It isn’t talked about enough and it’s treated like a terminal illness. Except there’s no national campaign to deal with it like there is for road carnage. I think people feel an awful sense of futility like nothing can ever change so it’s great to hear from an amazing woman who blows that fallacy out of the water.
I failed the therapy thing a bit like maths exams at school! I was a no-grade: the least I can do is be honest and try to laugh at parts of it, but it wasn’t a pleasant experience at all. It unravelled me entirely and caused major damage. I trusted the person I went to and felt devastated by being shoved in the wheelie-bin when I wasn’t gliding fast enough. He also held onto ‘stuff’ I had written/given him that I needed back, which sent me flying. I actually still don’t understand what exactly happened. Depression and its far-reaching slimy tentacles are pestilential and septic. It stops you getting on with life, achieving, feeling any kind of stable joy and at its worst, stops you feeling anything at all. A clumsy, indiscrete mess, smelly stew of internal rot. As a condition, it’s also surrounded by embarassment, shame and notions of failure, which is probably why it doesn’t get the same ‘attention’ and campaign welly as something like loss of life on the roads. We seem to be able to deal with the idea that car crashes are somehow random & faultless (even when they’re not) but something like depression is the person’s own fault or inability to ‘get on with it’. It’s a hideously misunderstood condition. What happened in Limerick and Cork today is testimony to just how misunderstood and unpredictable a plight it is.
No, that must have been very hard to think you failed at therapy. I think objectively, when someone leaves therapy feeling a failure, it is clearly 100% the therapist’s (the professional of the piece) fault. If you paid that much time and money to someone to teach you any other skill or understanding, and you came out ‘failing’, you’d blame them, not you.
Whether that is wholly true or not doesn’t matter. I wear my self-responsibility like a tight corsetted hair shirt, very martyr, most often blaming myself. If you’re the same, it’s okay to let yourself off the hook – makes no odds to the other person really and if it helps make you feel better all to the good. Sorry I feel like I’m commenting a little bit too much – I’ll stop now. I just couldn’t leave your comment about feeling a failure at therapy go. You’re so clearly not (bearing in mind your brilliant writing, I don’t doubt who is missing out the most by you leaving the therapy (it’s not you)).
Add me and virtually all my friends who have dealt with depression to the list of therapy failures. I really think some fault must lie with therapists and psychiatrists.. The six or so I’ve had dealings with varied in their approaches from the sweetly smiling, candle-burning hippy type, to the aggressive bitch who decided that all my problems were based on hatred of my sister (the original exchange went something like:
Me – Sorry I was a few minutes late. My sister takes forever to leave the house *rolls eyes*
Therapist – So.. you feel a great deal of resentment towards her.
Me – What? No! She’s a pain to wait around for sometimes, but we get along really well.
Therapist – *frantic scribbling* I’m hearing denial.
..continue for several more weeks, until frustrated by paying to be ignored, I dumped her.)
The one psychiatrist who helped me was happy to acknowledge that psychiatry is an inexact science, if you can call something based on self-assessment a science, and was the only ‘caring professional’ who acknowledged that perhaps there is a great deal in the world to worry or depress. I only had a few months with her before she accepted a research position, but she did more for me in three months than years of other therapists.. I think a lot of it simply comes down to finding someone who shares a similar view of the world to you. I don’t think all therapists deserve the time it takes to develop a ‘relationship’ – some of them are simply not any good at their jobs. There is a little too much of a temple-like aura around therapy for me to go back to it any time soon, but if/when I do? I will be a lot quicker to realise when the problem isn’t, for once, me.
Thanks so much for your article – the more depression is talked about in everyday conversation the less of a paralysing hold it will have on people who suffer from it. For me the most difficult thing is feeling like it’s something I need to conceal.
This is such great detail and terribly familiar! The guy after the first guy I went to waxed a lot about house prices and the different nationalities that moved into the area, even an auld sly: “I’m not racist but…” hopped from his comely gob. Regularly told me to get a mortgage and join a dating agency and various other inane snippets of NLP nullity. His behavioural approach basically entailed contradicting everything I said or suggesting actions to counteract any depth of feeling. Do this, do that, what about this…etc. You need someone bright and intuitive you can genuinely engage with who also knows when to shut up. Another woman after that talked endlessly about her failed love affair in New York, a self confessed psychic type ranted about me having had a child with the first guy in a previous life! She could see the child and said the therapist had remembered me deep in his subconscious and this is why he needed me *gone*. This is a woman who’s registered with all the usual umbrella groups and totally barking mad, even her website is outer planetary – too much dope back in the 70s, sister! The old lady in Phibsborough who sang songs from the Life of Brian to cheer me up (no, I’m not making it up and yes, I still pinch myself). I was also told there was little hope of normalcy as I’d been ‘wrenched away’ from my family as a baby in hospital (yawn, bloody yawn)…I spent about two years on this Snakes & Laughable Ladders, before doing a foundation course in psychotherapy to see what the whole thing was about from the inside out (definitely worth doing) and attended some freebie scenarios where at least the people knew they were pleasantly bonkers. There’s a great book on this exact topic by the way I’d recommend: Folie a Deux by Rosie Alexander. There are oodles of books and academic papers discussing the difficulties of transference for the therapist and its effects on the progress of the therapy: few deal with the suffering of the client who is experiencing the full force of the blast during it, or who is unable to dissolve it and pick out the shrapnel after it’s over and return to a normal life. Or indeed, any other problems that may occur that we never get to hear about. In the end I no longer had the energy to care but I regret ever bothering with it at all, to be brutally honest. Also, with the exception of the first guy who seemed to be genuinely working class and the NLP racist who wasn’t very good, the rest were stained glass middle-class, not very intuitive people. In reality you cannot cook up the skills needed that easily. I have also met some incredibly gifted people too (one woman on the course I did in Galway was utterly mindblowing). I wish I didn’t think it was a crock of shit because I understand that people need help (and should look for it) rather than imploding inwards but I’m very conflicted about what’s out there and just how much ire is piled on the ‘client’ when things are not working to a textbook blueprint. It’s nuts too how much it ‘costs’ shopping around and it just adds to the distress and prolongs reaching the underlying problem. There should be some kind of ‘reference’ system to ensure you don’t end up with someone wholly unsuitable to your needs. I suppose it depends on personal expectations too. For a lot of people, a nodding dog on the counselling dashboard is enough. I firmly believe there are gifted good people out there capable of real empathy and fantastic insights who are not judgemental but traumatised hippies who want to mother/father/head-ride you, to make themselves feel good about ‘helping’, are detrimental. Regardless, it’s pretty much wrapped up in terms of culpability as the ‘industry’ is ever so handily self regulated. If you complain, the problem is handed straight back to you. It’s as tentative and iffy as any other close relationship in life. It’s also subject to chemistry: something else that’s not often discussed. You have to have emotional chemistry with the person for it to work well. Conclusion: more research about client experiences is needed as opposed to being dexterously disregarded by a sub-culture too frightened to face its own flaws.
Thanks again June and your further comments on so spot on. For all the ‘your not a moron’ to experience depression or that depressives, in my experience, are thoughtful, sensitive folk, I’m not sure that’s consolation enough for the dislocation, pain and wasted time of it. At least it’s not much consolation when I think my individual life and the impact on my family only. When I think about what you wrote there June, the only good that I’m certain is a really good thing that comes out of it is the sharing and the connectedness of realising there’s a gang of us, the irony being that realising (when well) that it’s through the shared experience of dislocation that we’re not alone. Hard to realise that when not well though. Maybe we need little reminder cards on posters at bus stops to remember – don’t feel bad alone.
It’s really good you mention the free self-help group support out there.
I like reading to understand too. The Bell Jar was the moment I realised ah, this is what is it is that is happening to me – it is a thing in itself. Would anyone have any recommendations of good ‘depression’ fiction (preferably with happy – at least happyish – ending
)
Depression fiction! A new genre! There’s a good few offerings on Amazon (for example: http://www.amazon.com/Trick-Keep-Breathing-Novel/dp/1564780813) but I can’t say I’ve read anything recently that fits the bill. I’m an awful lazy reader too which, for a writer, is dire! I liked The Bell Jar too, Catcher in the Rye, Camus’ Outsider, Ian Merrill’s She Eats Souls, Kay Redfield Jamison’s Night falls fast, Bela Zsolt’s Nine Suitcases, Amos Oz: To Know A Woman; but for being cheered up, the likes of Marian Keyes’ Rachel’s Holiday made me holler when I first read it way back when. Although there’s a tendency in literature for unhappy endings or at least incomplete ones, rather than the happy variety. There’s lots of poetry books on the subject and buckets of non-fiction ones: http://bit.ly/ata6FN (and misery memoirs!). Let me know if you come across anything good.
Hi – thanks for having the courage to write something like this. Astoundingly honest and much appreciated. D
Much obliged! I was cringing writing it, such is the jaundiced eye surrounding all this kind of ‘stuff’. Cannot believe the amount of people on here and on Twitter who wrote to say they or a loved one have been through similar. Ever evading the issue just gets us nowhere. Maybe we need an emotional bailout in Ireland too!
here here!
Wow….For long I haven’t read such an informative and interesting post….you gave me a lot of food for thought. Thank you.
[...] http://theantiroom.wordpress.com/2010/11/15/being-depressed-just-means-youre-not-a-moron [...]
Spot on June x
Thanks Emily!
I came across your blog post via the irish blog awards.
What an incredible piece, real and un self pitying.
Especially in Ireland, where there is such a stigma attached to depression and a reluctance for people to tell their real story.
I wish you well with your blog awards nomination and admire your courage, your writing style and the glimpses of humour throughout your blogpost, a truly refreshing read.
Warmed through by your remarks Brigid! Thanks so much. Just happy to get the topic ‘out there’. It’s something we’re gob-shut about but so many people linger alone with. Stigma is a bore.
[...] Being Depressed just means you’re a moron [...]
Yes!
Hug.
[...] Caldwell picked up a very well deserved Best Blog Post award for her piece on depression – Being depressed just means you’re not a moron – dedicating the win to the other writers at the excellent group blog The [...]
Hiya June
Congrats on your award huni. I love your writing in all areas but especially on the topic of ‘Depression’. Very difficult subject to write on June. It’s amazing when you find yourself on that road to self-destruct how easy it soon becomes an obsession riddled with fear. You can only see the darkness of ‘The here and the now’ and refuse to even peep at the optimistic future that lays ahead and that can be attained, even just by chilling with positive thinkers. It’s a horrible ‘Errie melancholic merry-go-round’ you’re on just jumping from one scary pony figurine to another feeling stuck in that terrible polyphonic state of mind with no escapism. I have firsthand experience of where depression can bring one. I’ve been to the mental Institutions X4 (on my last admittance ‘Dec 07′ I was committed) also at the age of 17 (now 42) I spent 3 days and nights compliments of the Central Mental Hospital for the Criminally Insane. I truly love your writing June you have the ability to add humour to the most tragic of hard stories. I love reading you. Alan x
And look how much you’ve turned your life around! You’re a gem. So looking forward to your novel Alan. J x
Congratulations on your award, you captured depression in a way I’ve never been able to describe…I live permanently between early and mid stage depression… Thing is, no-one knows because I have a good job and a nice home but I’m dead inside mostly. At least now I know I’m not the only one….thank you June
I’m really gutted to hear that (about how you feel inside). No-one deserves to feel that low. Go easy on yourself when you can…or get angry, that takes some of the nastiness away! What gets me is that life is packed full of yack we can’t control so anything we can control deserves attention. Thank you for being so honest.
Congratulations on your well-deserved win! More June on The Anti-Room, please!
I am terrifically late in reading this but thank you, this is amazing.
Congratulations June (and antiroom). Very well deserved.
I’m dying to read your novel in August! Great to see it’s getting a lot of press already. Thanks so much for your kind comment too.
Congratulations! Fantastic post.
[...] Expect a fork through the post soon. Heh. Well done to the other winners, especially the wonderful June Caldwell, The Daily Spud, Nialler9 and Arseblog. Thanks also to Eolai for my Fidel painting. And finally [...]
Many congratulations to you for your award!
[...] new band. So after hearing Nialler9 had won Best Music Blog for ninetyhundredth time, cheering for June Caldwell’s win for Best Post Of The Year, a too-swift swig of the Europa Hotel’s £5 per-glass red wine and dread feelings of [...]
Belated thanks to Harmless Noise, sonámbula, Lyndsay, digitaldarragh, whiterabbitni, belindamckeown and well done fillet for the good wishes! X
[...] new band. So after hearing Nialler9 had won Best Music Blog for ninetyhundredth time, cheering for June Caldwell’s win for Best Post Of The Year, a too-swift swig of the Europa Hotel’s £5 per-glass red wine and dread feelings of [...]
[...] It is the home of this years winner of the Irish Blog award for best blog post: ”Being depressed just means you’re not a moron“- this is an excellent blog post and is so well written it almost made me a bit [...]
i only read this because of the celebration of the 500th post, could so have done with reading this in november! simply thank you and congrats on the well deserved win
Thanks so much aoife! Difficult subject to write about and I nearly didn’t. Winning the award was a lovely surprise. All down to the anti-room open-minded/hearted brief of course because let’s face it, you’d never get to write it in a newspaper unless you were an Oirish c’leb or had some other ‘worthy’ credentials. That’s what I love about writing for this site, anything goes and nothing is too difficult or controversial to broach.
June,
You are a beau.ti.ful/jolting writer. Quite the combo.
Your puppet master words tweaked the edges of my lips upwards, sprung tears to the edge of my eyelashes, rose my left eyebrow and made me gulp and then gasp.
Keep doing what you’re doing. It really matters.
Hey! Sounds to me like you’re a writer yourself! Ta very much. X
The first time I read this article it was because people close to me were suffering. Since then I’ve realised/figured out that I am also suffering with anxiety at the very least, but almost probably depression. As I write I’m worried I’m going to ruin the relationship with the man I’ve loved since I was 20 because of my inability to make a decision, see good in others or admit that it’s ok not to be perfect. I’m also struggling to understand that someone else might actually having a better idea than me doesn’t make me a loathsome person, it makes me the same as everyone else. Ironically this man has had his own demons in the past, but he’s on the other side now. I just hope I get to that side intact, and still with him!
I could go on and on, but depression is something that can bring you down if you don’t step in, and the idea that it should be brushed under the carpet and seen as a weakness should be challenged head on. Some of us, like me, are born into families where it’s almost hereditary, but more and more people, with no familial history of mental illness, in this difficult world we’re in at the minute are succumbing to it too. Well done, June – for making it ok to be a sufferer and for winning for this wonderful piece.
I agree with you in that life is super tough at this juncture for a lot of people. The country’s in shock [still] and being burdened with debts and worries and fears for the future is a normal reaction to all of that. So too is grieving for the loss of a loved one or a relationship or a breakdown in friendship or having to leave a job you enjoyed, etc. But it’s the prologned nature of sadness or worry or hushed introvertedness independent of what’s going on around you – that points to a deeper more unsettling problem – and admitting it can often trigger a nebbish type of guilt. This guilt then leads to even more self blame, bad conscience, over responsibility, etc., which handily feeds back into depression. It’s a veritable Mousetrap game that can be set up by the player over and over infinitum! And let’s face it, there’s so much out there of the callous-horrific variety that it’s all too easy to write off our mini-despairs (that may not even be so mini). I think one easy thing to do is remind yourself of your right to feel ‘joy’, to put a day aside to just indulge in silliness and have a laugh, to get a bus to somewhere gorgeous, walk in the park, watch 8 films in a row, pig-out on white chocolate, log-off the internet (and mobiles) and breathe easy for a while. I’m still of the belief that people who are permanently grinningly happy are the worst kind of mad! Writing things down can be a great help too, a good clarifier at least. Also, unburdening yourself by talking to someone close or someone going through similar. It’s hard being with someone who also glides the fine dusty line between being dispirited and craving oblivion (creative types, beware!). But also a relief to put all your cards on the table and do a spill-all, knowing that person really understands what you’re talking about. My beau gets malignly down but skulks about and says little (until asleep and dreaming and then it’s often a remake of Reservoir Dogs). Talk to your guy, sounds like you’ve been with him a long time and that he’s worth it. You certainly are. J x
Startling post, just came across it now on Google by accident and am so glad I did. I wish half my therapists had June’s insight and heart. Amazing piece of writing.