There. I admitted it.
I have suffered with mental health problems for the entirety of my life. When discussing my ongoing (and never ending) battle with my mental health with my mother recently I rather profoundly said I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t anxious or depressed – a pretty sad thought, huh? But it’s sadly true. I was an anxious child, I was anxious and depressed during my entire school life (not helped by the bullying I endured) and have found my transition into adulthood to be blighted the same, so much so it has affected my ability to work.
I’m no expert at mental health and nor do I claim to be, but suffering from both anxiety and depression (and more recently OCD), I understand fully the war we sufferers must wage against it. And I say war because it truly feels that way some days and my anxiety is the victor every single time – it knocks me around the head with an Acme mallet and sits on my chest so I can’t breathe, laughing, because “did you really think you could cope with today?”
My ability (or inability right now) to work is what has triggered me to create this blog and just type out how I’m feeling (that and writing being the only thing I feel I’m actually any good at). In a nutshell I’ve made the decision to resign from a job due to my ongoing battle with mental health. For the second time in 12 months. To say I’m feeling like an utter failure is the understatement of the century. I’ll certainly go into this topic in more detail soon.
(I should probably make a disclaimer here and now that I can’t promise this blog will be entirely sweet – the reality of mental health is far from it – but I hope with a dose of my self-deprecating humour it will help the contents go down.)
For a long time I’ve been ashamed of my mental health struggles. I can remember when I first went to my then GP about how low and sad I was feeling as a teenager I wasn’t taken seriously – I wonder now if I had been and the treatment give to me then would my adult life be spiralling as badly as it is now?
But it doesn’t do to dwell on what could have been and should have been – even though I do it constantly.
I am lucky now my current GP has been extremely understanding and supportive but the damage has been done and it’s going to take a lot of work and patience to unravel my problems. (A further visit to my GP is on my immediate to-do list when I am once more unemployed.) Now, don’t get me wrong. I know my anxiety and depression is never going to go away completely but to be able to wake up in the morning and not be terrified of the day will be something.
I say that – I am actually terrified by the prospect of not feeling anxious or depressed anymore. It’s why I’m so scared of taking medication. To suddenly feel OK and able to get on my life is a concept so foreign to me it just doesn’t compute. But I know to start feeling able to cope and begin my long needed journey to recovery I will need to start taking my medication (venlafaxine if anyone is interested).
The purpose of this blog? I’m not entirely sure. I am not sure if anyone but myself will ever read it. But if you do stumble upon this post and this blog and the contents make you think “that’s me!” then know you’re not alone – a cliche and terribly overused phrase but I know from personal experience that reading online blogs/posts and knowing other people have been or are in a similar situation to me makes me feel a tiny bit better.
I know this post in particular hasn’t hugely addressed my own problems or experience (and is probably a jumbled and disjointed load of garbage – a good way I would describe my mind right now) but I figure no one particularly wants to read a wall of text of my self-published autobiography. So I’ll reveal these matters as and when feels natural in future posts.
(I also thought it might a novel thing to rate each post with how well I’m coping with that day. I’ll of course make it up as I go along.)
she who worries 