Hopefully, this is rock bottom for this particular visit from the Black Dog. At least I think and hope so. Beyond picking up my new reading glasses from SpecSavers, and speaking to the Old Bill about someone I believe is being cuckooed, I’ve not been able to do anything today. So this is my apology for today’s blog.
First, apologies to those of you who have been kind enough to support me by buying me a coffee (see on the right of this page). You deserve something better than this in exchange for your hard-earned cash and I thought you deserved an apology as well as an explanation. Second, this is what depression does to you, or rather me.
I’m not writing this for sympathy because I’ve had issues since 1969. The only difference these days is that I no longer feel the need to hide it. I didn’t tell anyone why I was leaving school every Tuesday afternoon for two years to see a psychiatrist, not least because no one told me the person I was seeing every Tuesday afternoon was a psychiatrist. That way, I suppose, I could never reveal where I was or what I was doing because I didn’t know. If I had, well, can you imagine it? It was bad enough when family told me to pull myself together, stop fidgeting and to stop feeling sorry for myself, never mind telling schoolchildren I was mental.
Would I have got a job in the civil service had I told the truth about my ragged mental health and managed to hang on to it for nearly 40 years? I don’t know, but I have the feeling I might not have. Best to bottle it all up and not tell a single soul when I was 24 that I was off sick with severe depression and the drugs I was on were so strong I couldn’t get off the floor. That happened lots of times.
It comes and goes and at the moment it’s here, there and everywhere and it’s been here much longer than usual. I’ve got stuff to do in the coming days and I will get through it and I’ll probably enjoy getting through it, too but tonight it’s a little overwhelming and I think you should know that.
A GP is phoning me on Friday afternoon after my ‘Ask My GP’ message sent first thing Monday morning, which tells you a great deal about the pressures in the NHS. This is the earliest day he can call and they have no idea what time he will call. I’m adopting the old expect nothing and I might be pleasantly surprised attitude, which cuts down on disappointment levels.
I’ll say it again: I honestly don’t want everyone to say how sorry you all are. I’m writing this because I can, because I want to, it gives me something to do and you never know, someone might benefit from reading that someone else is feeling as shit as they are.
