can't get no sleep

Still in bed at 12.43 pm GMT

The worse thing about feeling the way I do is that I'm either very sleepy or can't sleep st all. It's the worry going around like the proverbial windmills, the what ifs the must remembers. Then I get hit by the exhausted big sleep in which I can sleep for up to 15 hours, only to be woken by a worried husband. 

I should be back to work today it being the first Monday after the Christmas break. I'm still on a sick note from my GP, I don't feel anywhere near really to go back to wotk yet. My job is very full on, it's working with people and you have to well in your mind to cope with it all.  I'm going to get up in a minute and make sourdough breadsticks for my grandson,  and then cook a stew for the evening meal. I still find it hard to concentrate on tasks such as cooking and baking, relatively easy tasks which when I'm not depressed I find calming. 

The black black cannonball lies heavy on my chest dragging me down today,  I feel very low, I'm going to hide from the family because I can't cope with the noise. It's so sad I can't cope with all, I love them so much, but I have to protect myself and them from myself and the pit I feel in today. They all understand how I'm feeling and know that it isn't a reflect on them.

This grey, gloaming January day is shitty, the grey cloaks me, the cannonball sits there, I need a good shake.....

education has it's benefits.

I have a degree you know...

Back in 1999 when NATO was bombing the hell out of Serbia, my husband was working his last year out in the British army. I was also in the grip of what the GP called postnatal depression,  my youngest child a boy was 16 months old at the time,  we had moved house and taken on a mortage the previous year, my beloved Gran had died 6 months before. I was alone in a new town, far from family, had no friends to speak of and husband was working 20 hour shifts to make sure those bombs got delivered. Is it any wonder I was in the middle of a depressive episode! 

This time the doctor put me on the antidepressant citalpram, http://www.patient.co.uk/medicine/citalopram-cipramil-paxoran and during one visit to his office I had had to take all 4 of my children (ages 7 to 1 years) he told me I was an intelligent woman but very overwhelmed with my responsibilities. What do you mean? I asked, the doctor explained that depression often hits those who are high achieving, clever but also find their coping mechanisms lacking. I was overwhelmed alright, I was grieving my Gran, worrying about my husband,  worrying about the world in general. Ok I admit it I couldn't sleep with worry about the Balkans, I was obsessive, and on the verge of being delusional. I was very ill. Then the doctor suggested the Open University. He said to get better I needed something for me, and 4 children and a house to run wasn't enough, it wasn't something for me alone. I went out thinking, ok yeah like I've got time for that!

But the antidepressants kicked in, I began to feel better, the worry about the situation in the Balkans seemed silly, (though of course not silly to those who lived there), husband finished up his last stint in the army, my youngest 2 children grew a bit and slept through the night. I still grieved for and missed my beloved Gran, but I had my coping mechanisms back, these antidepressants worked! So I remembered what the doctor said and applied to read social science at the Open University http://www.open.ac.uk it's a great way to distance learn, with regular tutorials, tutors who are only a phonecall a while and you study at your own pace. I did a Bsc in 6 years rather than the normal 3 years. I'm proud to have letters after my name Bsc (hons) and like the doctor said it was all mine, something for me. I also made 2 wonderful friends who I'm still close to 15 years later. And yes that depressive episode lifted. 

So in short maybe I need to look back at myself 15/16 years and revisit what the doctor said. The same overwhelming feeling I had back then is here now, but what to do.....

1993

The first time...

When I found myself pregnant for the 2nd time in 1993 I was overjoyed to say the least, the first pregnancy has gone smoothly, no depression before or after and there was no indication this 2nd pregnancy would be any different. 

I lived in Bielefeld Germany at the time because my husbsnd was serving in the British Army, it was a beautiful summer that year and in the August my brother came over to stay for a month. We visited the local safari park, went shopping, had barbecues and talked long into the night. I having so much fun being pregnant. Then one evening as I was going to check on my 1st child my daughter I lose my footing on the wooden steps and fell on to my growing bump. Water leaked out of me....I calmly sat down in the lounge and pointed out a hedgehog in the back garden before saying to my husband we need to go to the army medical centre. We rushed there, I was scared but not so much it was a weird feeling. The medics checked me and I was lucky the water wasn't from the baby it was from my bladder which had leaked when I fell. Husband took me home, put me to bed and that is when the first ever grip of depression took me.

I had also slipped a disc in my lower back very early on in the pregnancy,  it pained me before but suddenly from that evening on the pain was worse, a gnawing ever present pain that matched the blackness that was now creeping across my heart. The other day my GP said backache and depression go hand in hand making both hard to treat. That year I can testify that it's true. Day by day I went down, I worried and obsessed over news items convinced it was going to happen to me. At my worse I developed a morid fear of death, I was going to die having this baby and I was only 21. I only mentioned how bad my back was to health visitors,  doctors, my midwives convinced that if they knew what was really going on in my head I would lose this baby and my beautiful toddler daughter. Looking back I still did all the mum things, still loved and nurtured her, a small nugget in my mind told me she was going to be ok.

So looking back what happened in the end? My health visitor concerned about my back pain, lack of sleep (in hindsight I believe she could read me like a book, she knew exactly what was going on in my head) gave me a new friend, this friend came from a wonderful organisation called Homestart http://www.home-start.org.uk/, this wonderful woman came 3 times a weeks to listen to me, take me out and importantly talk to me,. I remember it seemed harsh at the time and indeed I remember crying buckets but she told me to face facts, the baby was healthy (he weighed 9lb at birth) I was fortunate to having a beautiful daughter, a lovely husband, live a tax free life in wonderful Germany. At the time I don't believe it really helped, looking back it helped enormously. I took stock and even though the blackness of depression still gripped and terrified me I wasn't alone anymore. But still I never until years later told anyone even my husband how severe the depression that year really was. And so in the November after a short 3 hour labour my son was born.

The moment he was born and given to me was like an ice cold bucket of water was poured over me from above. The depression that sat on my chest had lifted. I still had a bad case of the baby blues over the next couple of days, but the army hospital staff looked after us splendidly and after a week I was ready to go home and begin again, to take up the life that I'd left behind 4 months previously in the summer. Yes I still worried and obsessed but life felt lighter, cosier, more real. Life at 22 was good. Now looking back at the end of 1993 beginning of 1994, I wish I ther now, instead of being here in 2015 feeling as low as I do. The first experience of the black black cannon ball was awful, but it shows me there is a flickering candle at the end of the hard granite tunnel.

it runs in the family

My Dad has it too...

I grew up in a small town called Bewdley in north Worcestershire UK. It's the sort of quaint little town tourists flock to in the summer because of the charming little shops, the river views,  the quiet. As a teenager it was to me the place I ran away from, I wanted more out of life; urban culture, theatres, music. But now I'm older Bewdley is the place I want to run to, my parents still live there and probably always will.

My Dad it seemed to me when I was 9 or 10 was born miserable, he was grumpy, he shouted, moaned about everything. I thought this was the default setting for most hard working unreconstructed men, but looking at other's fathers this wasn't the case, their Dads were happy with their lot, they loved their wives and kids. Mum told us children Dad's moods were down to his childhood (divorced parents, domestic violence, latch-key kids, one child loved above others) and this certainly contributed to my Dad's depression. But looking back at the family tree, I remember his father my grandfather as the same. Grandad has been dead for little under a year, he was 95 when he died and that's a fine age to live to! But grandad was miserable most of the time too, my gran (his divorced but long suffering ex wife) told me stories that would upset me too much to reveal here so I won't.  The long and the short of it was grandad was a hoarder, he had approximately 14 cars rusting on his front lawn when he died, a year on from his death and my parents are struggling to sort out the house such is the volume of stuff he hoarded; 2 metric tonne of newspapers, crockery, tobacco tins, the list goes on! Grandad had an obsessive personality, the hoarding is part of this, a branch of OCD. No wonder my Dad was like stuck down with depressive episodes! I do believe grandad had episodes of depression too, he would get obsessed with something while depressed and then become too depressed to do anything about it. The familiar link to all this is I'm a hoarder too and I get obsessed with things, at the moment it's sourdough, but who knows what else is around the corner.

I can see looking at my family depression, is in our genes in the same way I have my Dad's shape face, my grandad's eyes. I wonder if they too had the same black black cannon ball in their chests, the same murk I wake to every morning. I love them both my Dad and Grandad and not out of obligation,  in looking at their depression it helps me to understand mine and why I have it. Inheritance is more than what you are left in an elderly relative's will,  it's also what they give you physically as well. I have depression, as does my father and my grandfather. 

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.