VLOG: FEELING DOWN

LOOKS CAN BE DECEIVING

Mental illness can be covert and concealed. You may not be able to know that 

                             someone has depression when you meet them.

INTO ADULTHOOD WE GO..

It is the hardest thing, for me, to realise that I have grown out of my childhood- or that childhood has left me- and irrevocably entered the dominion of the adult world. It occurred to me today, although not for the first time, that my problems with mental health such as depression and anorexia are quite regressive in their own ways. They both express a dissatisfaction and denial of the 'self' and put one in a state of acute, child-like vulnerability (anorexia physically embodies this). They are backwards-looking, forestalling adulthood and acceptance of the present or future- pulling you in one direction while life goes in another.

This struggle can threaten to tear you apart, lest you begin to accept the direction of life, which inevitably leads to responsibility, maturity, and sometimes pain and anguish. I feel caught in a binary position, as I find self-acceptance a very unpalatable choice and constantly battle against it, simultaneously being aware that this is also a first and essential step to recovery.

CAN ANYONE GET DEPRESSION?

I wish I had a lucid answer to this question. Perhaps it would be more pertinent to look at what exactly do we mean by depression? For although this illness of the mind is both widespread and diagnosable, it also has an ambiguous side to its nature with various symptoms and levels of severity.

Depression to me seems to exist on a sliding scale. Its impact can be mild, moderate or life-changing. I have been up and down on this spectrum, the latter leading to my experience of psychosis, whereby my mind could not cope with the intensity of the depression and consequently lost contact with reality.

I think vast swathes of the population experience something along the gradation of the depressive scale. However I do not believe (fortunately) that everyone has the capacity to develop the kind of severe depression which turns your world upside down. I always found it peculiar how some people, in circumstances so destitute, could also possess such an animate and positive nature, whilst others such as myself, despite my auspicious situation in life, struggle on a day to day basis.

This is where I think genetic variables come into play. As a child I was never as quiet and even-tempered as my sister. I displayed signs of erratic and difficult behaviour. I had many fits and tantrums and a different way of looking at the world, and also, critically, at myself. It feels almost innate- like a seed of depression was planted in me at birth, and over time I have given it the right conditions to grow and strengthen, to sprout its perennially destructive branches into all corners of my mind.

I wish I had a naturally ebullient character and optimistic way of looking at the world, but I 
fear that even with persistent training and much willpower I will forever remain a bit of a cynical and scornful soul. This also means I will always have to watch my steps, as I have this inherent propensity to fall into entropy and depression. In some ways I shall consistently fall under the moniker, 'depressive'. Despite time moving forwards, I live much of my life backwards, haunting myself with my own memories, looking over my shoulder and agonising. 

However, the darker periods have made me more conscious and appreciative of how wonderful life is when the sun is shining and things seem to be going my way. Then, suddenly, life seems to connect, or I connect with life, and I am able to briefly understand and experience for myself the happiness of others. 

What are your thoughts on this topic?

VIDEO BLOG: MENTAL HEALTH AND MEDICATION

MY SUPPORT

This post is dedicated to my gran, Barbara, who is the most amazing woman. She has generously given up her own time to live temporarily in our home so that I am not alone and have support throughout the day. She has helped me in so many ways and constantly encourages me to live life outside the parameters of my own existence. For this I am eternally grateful. And to all my grandparents, who have been there to pick up the phone at times when I am in need, I love you lots. 

At one of our daily M&S tea breaks

The City of Winchester

WORDS OF WISDOM

Only by acceptance of the past will you alter it's meaning. T.S Eliot

Hell is empty, and all the devils are here. William Shakespeare  

In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o'clock in the morning. F. Scott Fitzgerald

What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it. Antoine de Saint-Exupery

One must learn to love oneself with a wholesome and healthy love, so that one can bear to be with oneself and need not roam. Friedrich Nietzsche 

We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us. Marcel Proust 

If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life. Albert Camus