I think it was an aspidistra (My Experience of Depression)

Member Name: Celandine

Product:	My Experience of Depression
Date:	02/06/01 (132 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: I think, in the long run , there were some

Disadvantages: many

Once upon a time, about seven years ago, there was a girl who wanted to Not Be. She didn’t want to kill herself, as that would seem too dramatic, it would be wasted on her, she simply wanted to slip gently our of this reality without anyone noticing, maybe just to cross into another world where things might be better, or just to stop existing in this one. She finally decided that the best thing to do would just be to concentrate on an object, and try to become it - for in this way she might become it, and no-one would notice her any more. What followed was this:

My year as a Plant.

Well, it wasn’t a full year. But it started this way. I was just 21, and starting work after three years of study at university. My job wasn’t that great, and I’d had a couple of really nasty experiences in my final year. I hadn’t told many people about them, so that was fine. I just pretended that they hadn’t happened, got on with the job, was Brave, was Strong. Told myself that I was Brave and Strong and could deal with anything, and went to party with my friends at the weekends. I drank too much, I partied too much, and I didn’t sleep. But I was Brave and Strong and could dealwith anything so that was OK.

But something was wrong inside. The mornings didn’t feel bright and fresh anymore. There was always a grey taste in my mouth, and I started to avoid talking to the people who loved me. Everything was always ‘fine’. I started to hide in a cupboard when people came calling around, as I didn’t really want to talk to anyone about anything. If I hid in the cupboard then maybe they’d forget all about my existence, and I could just stay there on my own, being Brave and Strong. And the cupboard was quite nice, really. It was Safe.

The morning I decided I wanted to become a plant was following a particularly heavy spell of partying. I’d crashed over at a friends house, but had to
get up to catch the six ‘o’ clock train to work. And I woke up, saw a plant, and thought that this was way, way a better thing to be than me. Altogether nicer, greener and easier. And then I’d never have to think, or be, any more.

So, at around ten o’ clock, I sat in the Doctor’s surgery, having been dragged there. And I had to explain why I didn’t want to be me any more. There weren’t any plants here, but there was a brick wall, and that would do. The doctor opened and shut her mouth and words came out, but I heard them as if from the bottom of a well. You know
those fish-eye lenses? It was like looking through one of those. On a later visit I remember seeing a picture, drawn by one of her children on the wall. On the first visit I only looked at the wall.

I was prescribed Valium ( oh yes, they still do, but only four tablets at a time). I was told that this would get me through the next few days, and then they’d look at something else. I was having an ‘acute psychotic crisis’. And I’d been depressed, and was depressed, and the depression had blossomed into this.

So...I’d been depressed, although not clinically, on and off for some time. It had started at secondary school, got better at uni, then lurched into that clinical overdrive during my final year. The reason I know when it started is that I’d created my own defences around it way, way back. Whilst at school I’d created a little imaginary world, that I could go hide in when things around me got nasty. I’d developed this wonderful way to avoid things, to not look at things, or to look at them glancingly, not straight in the eyes where they might hurt me. And I’d a happy homelife, pretty much, but hated school, and when things went through a bad patch at home ( not a terrible bad patch, just one of those that families go through) I’d found this way out. So that was the real sta
rt of it all.

Antidepressants. I started a course of those. And Counselling. Not Behavioural therapy or anything, but plain, honest counselling, with a matronly cardigan-wearing lady. I saw my GP every week for an hour to let her know how things were getting on. And, emotionally, things started to ‘get on’, although financially and socially things were descending into chaos. More on that later.

It all got worse before it got better. When I started to talk to the counsellor, I lost my defence system. I started to have panic attacks as I couldn’t go to the little world in my head to escape. I started to feel worse, not better. And the counselling was hard work. Every time I talked about anything, I’d not know how to deal with it, or myself, and I’d end up so dog-tired I was incapable of sorting anything practical out. And I wondered how I’d ever be able to deal with all this stuff as myself. And I felt guilty. Terribly, terribly guilty. Guilty because I couldn’t deal with it all on my own, guilty at wasting NHS resources, guilty because I wasn’t Brave and Strong any more. I think the guilt was the hardest thing of all to deal with. That, and the fact that I just couldn’t deal with all this by myself any more.

No man is an island? True. But it doesn’t stop you wanting to be one. I didn’t want to pour out my heart to a counsellor, however nice her brooch, and however comfy her cardigan. But I did. And that helped me deal with the fact that I couldn’t be an island any more (or a plant).

I’ve been reading the ops in this category, and the thing that keeps running through my head is how much braver and stronger these writers are than I was. To talk about depression, when you are depressed, is, to me, the hardest thing of all. This is partly why I’m writing this. To say ‘bravo’ and really mean it. I could never have summoned up the
sheer
guts to write about this dreadful thing whilst I was going through it. And everyone’s experience of depression is different. That’s what is so difficult too. People say they ‘understand’ when they can’t. I can’t ‘understand’ anyone else’s depression. It took me two years of medication and counselling to understand my own.

I’m not sure if I ever really did ‘understand’ it; but I did break free of it. With help. Lots of help. My GP was fantastic. I will always remember her with not just thanks, but real fondness. My counsellor was also wonderful. She just let me talk, and helped me make sense of the world by myself, and learn a bit about who I was, and that I wasn’t a nasty, weak, cowardly person because of what had happened.

When you start to shake off depression, it’s like the day after a migraine. The world seems awfully bright, and shaky.
Everything seems unbearably light. Then you have days when you go back into that snug little desperate world of self-loathing ( at least, that was what I was like). And gradually, the ‘good’ days get more frequent, and you lose that sense of lightness, and things are, well, more like normal. Prosaic, boring, and nice. Then, you start to pick up the
pieces of your life that you thought had gone down the drain for ever.

When, after about a year, I started living again, my finances were in a dreadful state. I’d not been able to pay back a loan from uni, and I couldn’t go back to work. But something really good had happened because of all this counselling, and thinking. I decided that rather than get stuck in a horrible job, I’d try to do some of the things that
I’d always wanted to do. I think your priorities must change when you’ve been a plant.

I worked for a year, paid back some debt, then worked my way through Art College. At last, after all these years o
f doing what I ‘should’ do, I was doing what I wanted to do. And I knew a bit more about what I wanted to do. And I let people help me do it.

I lost friends because of depression, but I gained some too. Somehow, I was more capable of being a proper ‘friend’ after it all, although I wasn’t quite such a whiz on the party scene. I lost other things, too. I probably lost the chance of a ‘good’ career. It’s hard to explain a year’s career-break on your CV - but I’m not sure I wanted a ‘good’ career anyway. I made a living as an artist, and that made me very happy indeed.

There’s one other, really important thing. I’m married now, with a beautiful daughter and lovely husband. If I’d remained a plant then I couldn’t have ever had those. The picture I noticed on the wall of my GP’s surgery on my seventh or eighth visit to her was a picture drawn by her two-year old. It made me cry. I thought then I’d never be a
nice enough person to ever have children. But here’s the really important thing. If I’d never faced up, gone through
all that counselling and work, then I might have been able to block out all those nasty things for the rest of my life. And I might have unconsciously visited them on my child. Being well-balanced and happy, is more important than my spurious sense of ‘brave’ and ‘strong’. The real strength, for me, lay in admitting my own weakness, and taking the consequences.

I’ve come out of depression a happier person, I think. Although my ‘crisis’ was caused by definite triggers, which gave me a starting point in dealing with it, my depression had its roots back in my schooldays. Everyone is different, this is just my experience, that’s all, and, with lots of help all those years ago, I broke free. Talking, That’s what, I think, gave me a happy ending.
And I wanted to tell this story because it did have a happy ending, and I’d never have thought that possible while I was depressed.

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