Waking up and down again :(

1st January 2015

On the face of it my life looks good I'm happily married and will be for 25 years this August, I have 4 beautiful children, 2 girls and 2 boys; they are grown up or nearly there, the icing on the cake is that I'm a grandmother and love my grandson more than anything. 

So you may ask what is wrong with my life? It looks good and I suppose it really is, however I suffer from sometimes crippling depressive epidodes, I'm in the grip of one right now and have been since September 2014. I know the triggers and being a generally anxious person anyway I fought this one until the beginning of December, I then had a nervous breakdown at work and had to admit to everyone what I had not admitted to myself I was depressed. 

The thing is I'm still on antidepressants from my last episode when my husband had testicular cancer (he is good and in remission) I guess I bottle everything up and then wait for the breakdown to tell me its time to admit it and let it in!

So I suppose this blog is my own self indulgent way of telling how it is. (I've been told by people depression is a self indulgence, I hope these idiots never have to suffer).

So it's 1st January 2015, I woke up this morning feeling stale and not from drinking last night. It's hard to describe depression because its so individual but mainly I feel I have a lump in my chest, a sigh that I expel and isn't because I'm content, I have a fear of crowds and even small family groups have lead to me running up stairs tearful at my inability to cope. This more than post Christmas, new year blues which most people have in a cold January, grey, with scudding clouds and what the Scottish call the gloaming I call the murky murk. I just can't shake of the lump in my chest, I try the suggestions my GP has given me, walks outside in the murky murk, not staying in bed, phoning a friend, visiting a friend. They all fill me with fear and all I see is a darkness around me, crippling me, the lump becomes a cannon ball weighing me down, making me feel worse. I know I'm waiting for the antidepressants to kick in, but I've still spent whole days in bed, not spoken to friends, the cannon ball growing.

The fight against this depressive episode is a little grain, under the lump, I need to nurture it, it needs to grow, I'm grateful it's there at all, I just need to listen to it, so with a wry smile it begins, my writing it down is a sort of therapy, its there to see in black and white, the fear, anxiety, the lump, the sigh, the murky murk, the noir.