Overcoming Mental Illness

So here we are, after nearly 6 months, over two hundred posts across three different web addresses, the end is here. So what better topic to write about than what is, in my opinion, the greatest treatment for depression. I should point out that all names in this post have been changed and may or may not reflect gender, aside from mine of course!)

For a moment I would like you imagine what it would be like to have no friends. Now I know there are people out there who already know what this feels like so I’m not trying to rub it in, but for those of you with friends, think for a moment about what life would be like without those special people in it.

Think about what it would be like to be completely by yourself.

No one to share smiles with.
No one to share laughs with.
No one to share happiness with.
No one to share drinks with.
No one to share moments with.
No on to share to share problems with.
No one to spend time with.

Are you imagining it yet? No? Try thinking about:

What it would be like to spend your birthday alone; no presents, no cards, no Happy Birthday.
What it would be like to spend Christmas alone; no presents, no cards, no Happy Christmas.
What it would be like to spend New Years alone; no drinks, no laughter, no midnight kisses.

Any closer?

Never any hugs.
Never any giggles.
Never any lunches.
Never any anything.

Just you
Yourself
Always
Alone

Living your life with no-one to share anything with. You get up for work alone and come home alone. You are excited and happy but have no-one to share it with. You receive bad news and have no one to talk to, no one to give you comforting hugs or words of advice or wisdom. You are by yourself, isolated and alone 100% of the time. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine what that might do to your mind? To spend day after week after month after year in complete isolated solitude? Well, let me tell you. It fucks you up.

Isolation. Loneliness. Solitude. Three of the most painful words in the human language. And to someone suffering from depression or another mental illness, they are potentially words which could be written on someone’s death certificate as cause of death.

Over the years I have tried everything I can think of to combat, control and overcome depression:

Alternative therapy
Chinese Remedies
Herbal remedies, such as St John’s Wort
Counseling and psychologists
Self Help books
Russian Therapy
‘Overcoming Depression’ workbooks and audio books
Relaxation therapy
Yoga and Alexander Technique
Massage
Meditation
Anti-Depressant medication
TV and movie therapy

None of them worked!

I have spent the majority of my life alone, in fact I can count on one hand the number of true friends I’ve had in my life.

When I was but a teenager I didn’t really have anyone to talk to. I knew people but I wouldn’t say I had many friends. Not friends I could talk to, not friends I could share my self-harm, depression and social anxiety with. Teenagers are some of the cruelest people in the world anyway, so the likelihood any would have understood any of these things was slim. Thus I was forced to fight all of these things alone, and through determination and at times painful agony, I was able to get the self harm under control. Nothing was working with the social anxiety and depression and I was falling ever further into the abyss.

Once I felt I had the self-harm under control I tried to find ways in which to combat the depression and social anxiety – and my option was to go backpacking. I had discovered hostels during my period as a runaway and wanted to travel Scotland, a country I could afford and loved passionately. The months I spent traveling the country is one of my fondest memories, but I would the evening sitting in the hostel lounge reading books or scribbling in my journal, too anxious to meet and talk to the people I was writing about, giving them obvious nicknames because I was too scared to even find out their names. The SSLWCB or the SFLWCB were, like most people in my life, untouchable and untalktoable – is that a word? When I arrived into Inverness I looked into getting a flat in the Castle Heather part of town where I could settle, find work, and live life alone. My self harm was kinda under control, despite some lapses in focus and frustration along the way, but I wasn’t really making any headway with the rest. So instead of moving into my own flat, I opted to stay at the hostel where I could try building my ability to talk to people alongside the SCLWCB. It kinda worked. Sure, things got heavy in the old mind from time to time, and it was here I began smoking full time as means to keep the self harm under control but the people I met during that period became the first “friends” I’d ever had, more than that, they became my family.

It felt good, but depression and social anxiety continued to infect my actions and I was unable to be – a continuing frustration in my life – the person I know deep down that I am. Episodes of deep depression struck, especially just before Christmas and in early February. A depression which lasted and threatened to debilitate back into self-harm but I kept on with the whole backpacking-to-combat-everything assault and traveled back and forth across Canada for three months. I caught up with a few people, the SCLWCB being one of them, and even met other people I for a while called a friend; Rachel being one of them, as well as another whom we shall but call the SALWCB.

Everyone I met during this time, especially three outstanding, could, given other circumstances, have become true friends. The SALWCB and I had an instant connection which has only been rivaled on two other occasions since, and the other faces of that era still burn bright in my memory.

This period helped me get my self harm under control to a point I wasn’t even committing it any more. Friendship.

Then along came Lucy, who without doubt was the first person who I can call whole heartedly a true friend. Not because others in my past weren’t true friends, but because she was the first person I ever told about my depression, suicide attempt and in a way, my social anxiety. Lucy would have such an impact on my life unrivalled by anyone else I’ve met. Our friendship grew as well as our relationship; I lost my virginity to her, she was my first proper kiss, she was my first everything really.

For the first time in my life I had someone in my life who I could talk to, share thoughts and feelings with, experience my life with. In the first twelve months of our relationship I learned more about life and who I was than I had through the six/seven years of pain, loneliness and frustration which had been my teenage years. Sure, talking to her was difficult, this was the social anxiety and I would often weave in and out of being able to communicate well and not knowing what to say but in a way Lucy understood and would support where needed or give a metaphorical slap on the ass if I needed a wee push.

Because of our friendship, our love was strong. My emigration to Australia was due to this relationship and I worked hard to continue battling my illnesses whilst setting myself up in a new country. Something not easy, let me tell you! As our relationship grew so did our trust, and as our trust grew, so did my confidence. I never told Lucy of my self harm though, still hesitant to the power of the stigma of mental illness. My last moment of self harm had come a month or so before I met Lucy, so after meeting her and through her friendship I had got it under control. The longer I went without self harm, the less I thought about it, and over time it never felt right to bring it up. If I had, it would have just got me thinking about it again, and that could have proved devastating to the progress I was making.

Throughout the six years I spent in Australia I never stopped trying to make new friends. I had dreamed of having close friends since I was a teenager, all of the stories I wrote were about friendship, and I craved it more than anything else on the planet. I never believed having friends would cure me completely, only I could do that, but having lived so long by myself, I was enjoying sharing my life with others.

With Lucy’s help, sometimes even unknown to her, I made huge leaps with both depression and social anxiety to the point that at times it wasn’t even an issue. I met new people and my new life was underway. Sure there were periods of depression and social anxiety, as mentioned here, but I was working my bloody arse off to overcome it all.

Four years after being in Australia I was actually starting to make new friends, and as time slid on I made three of the best friends I’d ever had (Lucy aside); Grace, Tara and Kathy. With them came a potential new social network which I was slowly starting to matriculate myself into. Unfortunately, at the time, things between Lucy and I were strained which – if you’ve all been keeping up – was around the time when everything fell apart and of my second suicide attempt in March 2006.

(It was friendship that saved me. As I explained here, a singular text message reminded me of people who may miss me.)

The collapse of Lucy and I’s relationship and friendship was painful, but after months working hard to rebuild what we’d once had we knew that it was over. There was nothing we hadn’t tried. I blame myself for the breakup of our connection and knew in my heart that it was my depression, which had been severe throughout this year, which had made it so difficult to reconnect. I’ve never blamed Lucy for anything. I’m not afraid of admitting to my mistakes; my depression, self harm and social anxiety cost me the greatest friend I ever had. I think of her often and hope she is happy now, something I was never able to bring to her.

(The last time I thought of Lucy in depth was in fact last night. Whilst taking a stroll along the River Ness, through the islands where we shared so many walks, moments and memories I witnessed something I knew she had always wanted to see. Otters ran through our relationship and I’d always hoped to see one in the wild with her, however it was never to be. As I stared out over the fast flowing river thinking off those days I glimpsed something which I first thought was a duck – but on closer viewed was an otter; in the very river we spent so much time walking along. It made me wish she was still in my life, as I desperately wanted to tell her of this moment. Something I know would have brought a smile to her wonderful face.)

As a result of losing this friendship I was determined, once and for all, to beat all that I’d been fighting. Things were tough though, with the relapse into self harm and my social anxiety taking a thrashing because of the collapse of this friendship.

Moving in with my new housemates I made every effort to be more social; attending parties, heading to pubs and clubs, chatting in the lounge – all things I would never normally have been able to do, and this helped so much in keeping myself under control and though I was still self harming out of addiction was finding it much easier coping with everything else. I was rarely out of contact with people, which was a whole new experience for me. I even organized my own party, for the first time ever! I was slowly but surely overcoming something I’d been fighting since my teens!

My friendship with Grace and Kathy, so often mentioned on this blog, were also strengthening and I was becoming much better at talking to them. Actually sharing information without an interrogation taking place, and this was such a lift for me. Just being able to spend time with people, having other souls to talk to and have fun with, was key.

Grace and Kathy, the slow building acquaintanceship with Sally, and my continuing connection with my housemates and Tara – in addition to the whole new network which was opening up through college and the people I was getting to know through all of the above is what helped me kick depression and social anxiety squarely in the ass! This is how I was able to overcome depression; this is how I was able to beat something I had spent years fighting.

All those smiles, hugs, laughter, tears, times, moments, quizzes, conversations and so so much more is what finally helped me overcome everything. I wasn’t alone, I had people in my life, the solitude and loneliness I knew so intimately was no longer an issue. When I needed to talk there were people there, when they needed to talk, I was there, we hung out, laughed, smiled, had fun; and my confidence was increasing every single day.

Then came the earthquake of February 2007 and my life was never the same.

It was losing all those friendships which hit me the hardest, which made it so very difficult fighting the glandular fever, breakdown, depression and CLL. It was losing my new networks which fucked up the work I’d done with my social anxiety. It was the solitude, isolation and loneliness which I found myself drowning in once more that made everything so much harder to fight.

All those quizzes which I had to avoid, all those sing-a-longs I couldn’t partake in, all those conversations I now couldn’t have…the solitude consumed my mind, bringing back the hallucinations and self harm on a vicious level. It’s what solitude does, you need someone; so Meadhbh made her comeback and everything was lost. I couldn’t hold on or pretend I was sane any longer. Solitude, then loneliness then isolation. All that work for nothing. The abuse was the nail in the coffin.

All those smiles and laughs, drinks and lunches, parties and drunken nights – all of the times I shared – all of those friends and acquaintances. They inspired me. The strength they gave me from just touching and sharing their lives with me. They are what helped me to finally overcome my depression.

So many people take friendship for granted.

You have all your Facebook friends, your MySpace friends, your Bebo friends…you have all your uni, school and pub mates…if you lose one or two along the way it’s chalked up to just being life. Even if that person is someone with whom you have a huge connection with, few people work hard on friendships in today’s society. It’s kinda the same with relationships, if there’s a problem, chuck ‘em, plenty more fish in the sea. Maybe because I’ve experienced true isolation I have come to appreciate friendship, the joy of having someone in your life to share all those good times and bad times with, how important it is to have people there. I appreciate friendship with as much passion as I appreciate all that I have.

But as I’ve written in the past, depression also destroys friendships because of the burden – so I blame only myself for losing my friendships with those five true friends. If only depression wasn’t such a destructive force, if only it were understood as the illness that it is. If only people could have seen past the symptoms at who I am. If only, two of the most powerful words in the English language.

So, for the love of all things sacred, never forget what it means to have a friend. Just pick up the phone RIGHT NOW and call one of them for a chat, don’t take them for granted, don’t think they’ll always be there, because trust me – when they’re gone, you will miss them more than anything in the world!

Forget all your therapies; if you want to beat depression, you need to beat the isolation.

Friendship; the best cure for depression I know, and from personal experience, it works. If only a GP could prescribe it.

For Lucy, Grace, Kathy, Anna and Tara;
Thank you for all the good times,
I think of you all often and hope you’ve all found happiness.