Descriptive stuff - some of it plagarised

I was nearly twenty before my family and I found that there was a name for the strange feelings sometimes happened to me. Later, I learnt that it has gone by many names -black dog, bell jar, noonday demon, malignant sadness - but in my teens I just assumed that my panics and days of disproportionate, isolating despair were part of every teenager's repertoire -how else would various bands have sold so many records?

The medical profession calls it a ‘major depressive episode’ but I’ve been knocked over by a multitude of feelings, sensations and symptoms. Not just depression but agitation, anxiety, terror, panic, grief, desperation, despair and an almost irresistible desire to be dead (despite my fear of dying). And it’s been going on for a VERY long time. Every single day for at least six months I’ve felt like I’ve had to battle to stay alive. I’ve literally gotten through each day minute-by-minute and hour by long hour trying to hang on until it’s time to go to bed. And when daylight savings came in and the clocks went forward I felt worse – an extra hour of daylight to get through.

Wave after wave of thick black tarry agony has been sloshing around in my head - surging through my limbs and gut and I’ve been powerless to stop it. Some people describe depression as feeling like they are living in a gold fish bowl - where you can see everyone around you carrying on as normal but you’re stuck swimming around in circles behind the glass. I feel like that but add to that a feeling of being poisoned by my own body. My brain is squirting out toxic chemicals that poison and kill any positive thoughts. Sometimes I feel catatonic – others times I’m so agitated – awaking early (3am) arriving into the day with a sickening jolt and tremulous with anxiety. I feel then that I want to take a benzo to go back to sleep and shut it all out again. Sometimes the damn panic demons get me in my sleep and I wake in full nocturnal panic – needing to shit myself and feeling unable to catch my breath.

Sometimes I am so agitated and desperate to escape how I feel and how I’m thinking that I’m like a hamster on a wheel – feverishly pulling at my fringe, clawing at my head in my hands. Digging my elbows into my knees. Sometimes I start to talk with someone and I get stuck – words won’t form. Reading is often impossible – by the time I’m at the end of a sentence I forgotten what the start said.

Oh when will this God-damn awful buzzing through my body stop? This really is in the words of Elizabeth Wurtzel - something akin to getting an unavoidable visit from my least favourite relative; an exercise in superhuman endurance. Depression is solitary no matter how many care for you. It is blacker than any psychological thriller. It is NUTS! You don’t know what to think, what to do.

I can’t eat, sleep, write, read or talk to people. The worst thing is that I feel this will never end. Depression is an illness, but unlike a broken leg no one can see it and you don’t know when it’ll get better.

“That’s the thing about depression. A human being can survive almost anything, as long as the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it’s impossible to ever see the end. The fog is like a cage without a key”. - Elizabeth Wurtzel Prozac Nation


If you are going through hell, keep going - Winston Churchill