A Year Has Passed Since I Wrote My Note

As the line goes from the Police song "Message In A Bottle", but in this instance refers to how long it has been since I last posted anything.

It's been an odd year. But as it was 2011 that would make sense. This is 2012 so should be an even year.

I've now been diagnosed with Bi-Polar Effective Disorder. Manic Depression to you and me, but mine seems to have more emphasis on the depression than the mania. Still, after referrals, different medications and testing by various doctors, I am signed off from looking for work for the minute. I have new meds - the sixth different lot I've been prescribed - and they seem to be working so far.

I know I'm not cured and it's likely I never will be. I am more aware of when my depressive episodes are coming and some tricks to try and pull myself out of them.

I've come a long way, but there's still a longer distance to go.

I've been to Luxembourg twice, Botswana once and nowhere far too frequently.

I've had theories regarding how Geordie is actually the finest of all languages and that its importance in Modern English is sorely overlooked. Some of this still appears true now, but some seems quite fanciful in retrospect.

I've learned more about sewing machines than I thought I would ever know and it still isn't very much.

I've realised that my mother had some very good tips for life and some that were utterly insane. I am still learning which is which. I've also realised that she made words up. I'm not sure if she realised they were made up ("instricated" for example, meaning to have gotten yourself into a situation - physical or otherwise - from which you have difficulty getting out of because you and the situation have become one. I like to think of this as being a contraction of "intrinsically implicated", but suspect she was just a little bit mad.)

I've discovered the joy of an Ouma Rusk and where you can get them in the UK.

I've argued with Emirates airline, various banks, the DWP, my family and my demons. At the moment, I would consider my record to be less than convincing, but if I can manage to only win the one with my demons, that would be a fine result.

I've realised just how ill I actually am and that my depression is not my friend. It seems odd to say that, but up until very recently, I thought my depression was actually responsible for keeping me alive. Being too negative to attempt suicide (because I thought I would do it wrong and end up being paralysed from the neck down) seemed benevolent until I considered that the reason I was feeling suicidal in the first place was down to the same depression.

I hope I'm through the worst of it, but if this is just the eye of the storm, I'll be better prepared for the tail end of the hurricane when it comes.

You may struggle to understand what goes on in my head at times. Imagine what it feels like for me when I can't understand it either.

You may think I am ignoring you because I've not contacted you or haven't replied to a phone call, email or text. I'm not, I'm just having a major communication breakdown in general and can't stop the conversations in my head long enough to be able to speak to anyone clearly.

You may think I should just cheer up & snap out of it. So do I. Sadly, it's not quite that simple and will require medical and psychological intervention. Which is not easy for me as my illness has helped me build a huge distrust of psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists and practitioners of CBT.

You may not be prepared to wait for me to be back to normal & this is fair enough. However, unless you were romantically attached to me or lived in the same house as me, what you consider to be me being normal is probably me being manic.

You may want to write your own note to me. I will try to reply. It may take me a while though.

Spiralling Into Madness And The Death Of Others

It has been suggested to me that my depression is linked to the death of my father when I was 10. And it seemed quite plausible to me, until I saw photos taken from before he died, where I looked unbelievably miserable. Once I'd reflected on this I started remembering that I was a thoroughly depressed child from a very young age, well before my tenth birthday.

I have pictures of me looking frankly annoyed to be in Bergen, pissed off to be in North Cape, genuinely distressed to be in Norfolk, and many, many other places around the world. Despite the fact I had - as far as I recall - a fairly happy childhood. I was nurtured, encouraged, supported and taken to all these wonderful places and I was, for the most part, deeply depressed about it.

You may be thinking "the word you're looking for is ungrateful, not depressed" and I can understand why you'd think that. But I was genuinely grateful to have the opportunity to travel and spend time with people I loved and loved me. The problem was I just found everywhere a bit "meh". I was jaded and world weary before I was 8. There was nowhere I felt happy, not even at home. There were lots of nice places, wonderful views and experiences, but did I enjoy a single one of them? No.

And while I was annoyed at myself for not enjoying these things when they were happening, I was even more annoyed at myself when my Dad died and I realised I'd never do any of them again with him. Which made me more depressed and inward. And also began my hated of other children. To see them running around, blind to the worries and concerns that filled my head, made me bitter.

Again, it sounds like I'm an ungrateful bastard and I should just pull myself together and appreciate all the good things that have happened to me. I do appreciate all the things that have happened to me - good and bad - as they make me remember I am actually alive. My depression keeps me in such a state of almost suspended animation that when good or bad things happen I sometimes don't notice them. The date my mother died? Not a clue. It shames me to say that as I love her dearly, but I have no idea when she died.

So when the depression comes in and tells me that I could be in the most wonderful place in the world and not actually take pleasure from it, I believe it. That I could be doing the thing I most wanted to, and I'd just find it boring or I'd be useless at it, whatever you say my little black dog. I have analysed to death things that I have an interest in. I've made things I enjoyed so utterly unenjoyable that I take no further pleasure from them. I'm not sure if that's depression or me just being an idiot, but whatever light relief I had, I stopped it and got depressed about doing it.

And then annoyed at myself for being depressed when there were people who were much worse off than I was and had something to be genuinely depressed about.

My worst experience of depression so far (at least I think it was, others may have a different opinion) was in Exeter when I very nearly killed myself. I blame the anti-depressants I was on filling my head with serotonin when my head was not used to such happiness fuelled drugs. It could well have been the general unpleasantness of the shared house I was living in, who knows.

What I do know is that it was the murder of Tom Brown that made me snap out of it. Tom was one of my ex-staff from when I used to run a Students' Union bar in Enfield. Some mutual friends came round to tell me when it happened. I was utterly stunned. I was even more stunned when another friend of mine told me later that when she'd been phoned and told that there was some bad news, she assumed it was me killing myself.

I resolved to do something about my depression, my situation and my life.

I'm still trying to, and often still failing.

My Depression And Me: An Introduction

This was going to be one post, but I think it would have become too long and rambling, so I'm going to split it into parts.

This post is quite difficult for me to write. Firstly, it's talking about me and my feelings - rather than just ranting - and secondly, it's talking about what many people consider to be a mental illness. I am personally of the opinion that an abscence of depression is more indicative of mental illness and that if more people actually acknowledged that they too were sufferers, being depressed would be seen as the statistical norm.

Some of you who know me may be aware that I suffer from depression. I say "suffer", I'm not usually the one who suffers from my depression. In many ways I used to quite like being depressed. It is quite possible that you've known me for decades and not realised I had depression. This is either because I find your company so utterly exhilarating or you too have something akin to depression. Or you just thought I was moody.

This isn't a recent thing: I've been doing it all my life. I remember being told I used to scare the other kids at Primary school by telling them how we could die in a nuclear assault and have no warning whatsoever. To me, that threat of nuclear oblivion didn't seem scary, just inevitable. So I accepted it and didn't worry about it. The kids I told about my (to them) terrifying world view thought about how they'd never see their families again and started having panic attacks.

To me I was doing them a favour. I was explaining a situation they hadn't thought of and what would happen to them and the world they knew. That didn't terrify me. Not knowing - or at least not considering all the possibilities - terrified me. Once I knew about the likelihood and the potential outcome, I could accept it and not be bothered by it.

Leading up to my exams, I think I spent the best part of three months at home. It wasn't that I had any fear of going to school (or of the exams), it was just that I *couldn't* leave the house. And not in an agoraphobia way either. It was just a debilitating mental block made physical. And it's not like I did anything interesting or exciting while not being at school. I'd sit in almost perfect silence just thinking negative thoughts.

And once I'd thought all the negative things I could imagine, then I'd be able to progress and do something positive. This is kinda where being depressed appeared to be quite helpful. In my head, I'd think that the exams would concentrate entirely on parts of the syllabus I hadn't revised. So instead of revising everything, I revised nothing. Not a single thing. This would - in my head - increase the chance that I'd know the answers, as there wasn't any part of the syllabus I knew any worse than any other section.

Brilliant. Obviously I do not suggest this approach to anyone who isn't me.

Surprisingly, I did quite well at both O Level & A Level, despite never revising for anything. Driving test, didn't revise. First Aid qualifications, never revised. Degree finals, no revision whatsoever. Any other single exam I have ever taken in my entire life, not a minute of revision.

And I continue with the same level of madness in many other parts of my life. If I watch a game of football, the team I am supporting are more likely to lose than if I am not watching. In my mind, this is a fact. I haven't actually done an analysis of the results as I don't want to break my intricately constructed world view. But even as I type this, I still think that it's probably true.

The effect of me listening to the game on the radio would reduce my overall ability to cause the team I was supporting to lose, but it would still be there. Following the game via text updates or on Sky Sports News also counts as me watching it. The only guaranteed way of getting my team to win is to not have a team. I'm like a jinx; Newcastle United have never won anything since I was born specifically because I was born.

This does not lead, you will be unsurprised to learn, to me having a joyful life.

With the depression I have - not the sexy bi-polar one, sadly, there's no days of ecstatic highs for me - and the length of time I've had it (I think it's probably been with me for about 35 years) I've come to expect never feeling competely happy. Not in a pessimistic kind of way, it's actually more pervasive than that. I have come to believe - not suspect, believe - that if I am actually happy about something, that something will fall apart spectacularly.

If I am very happy about someone, that someone will leave me in some way (die, move, get abducted by aliens). If I am very pleased with something, that something will stop (break, get stolen, burn down, fall over and sink into the swamp). So I moderate my happiness to stop bad things happening (no, really, it's all down to me). Despite being incredibly pleased with my relationship and my home life, I try to not become happy about it so that it doesn't all come to a crashing halt.

Now there's obviously a problem doing this: I remain ambivalent and my partner doesn't think I'm happy with her. I end up in the same situation as I fear being in from being happy, and I've never had the benefit of unreservedly enjoying any of it.

And I am fully aware of this. And yet I still do it.

This will continue. Probably tomorrow. Maybe not. I'll see how I feel.