The present

The Present

I went back to work after those two weeks. They were incredibly understanding. I have never had support from all levels of a company, as I had then. I know people who had gone back to work and had so much trouble with their work over their mental health. I had completely the opposite. 

  Some of the decisions I made during those two weeks were this. I stopped drinking. While one or two don't hurt, I have been quite a regular binge drinker since I was 14. I have always been a happy drunk and able to take my alcohol well for the most part. I actually thought this was going to be the hardest problem. habit of a lifetime and that. It was surprisingly the easiest one to make. 

  I decided that all the goals I was trying to achieve was also a problem. I decided to concentrate on one big goal. My health. Stopping drinking was part of it. I weighed 25 stone at the beginning of the year. I lost a stone that January and in February I started Slimming World. I had done this before, but didst really feel committed to it. This time I did. It made a helluva difference. I am writing this in June 2019 and I now weigh 20 stone. I can't even begin to describe how my well being has increased through this. I stay to group, which is an important part of slimming world, and I feel is invaluable.

  I told my family I was suffering from depression in January as well. They have been supportive. I will hear from one of them if I go a few days without contact. Whereas in the past it was because I was depressed and just didn't want to talk to anyone, now it mostly because I'm either busy, or actually feeling my introverted nature. lol. 

  I withdrew from many of my friends during the last few years. Some I am getting back into contact with gradually. Some I find hard to connect with, because I feel inadequate for why I just drifted off the radar. Hopefully they may read this blog, and in time, it will make it easier for me to do so. Some friends actually made the effort to keep in contact even as I withdrew away and refuse to respond. I even made a new friend in spite of my depression, and probably because she never knew me when I was more outgoing and myself, she keep in contact with me and somehow managed to get me responding even when I didn't want to. It strange what life can do. All I can say is, thanks for being there, and pineapple does not belong on pizza. Period.

I am now actually on holiday and due to go off to Centre Parcs soon. I had a day off where I was just doing washing and I was kinda just drifting between the different social media, when I happen to notice someone on instagram who I had followed, who also is going through her own battle with her mental health. Every so often, she will pop up with something on there, and what she posted today, got me thinking. and thinking. I not been able to explain myself that well. People probably have this image of me, that I tend to project. But it not the real me. 

  Who is the real me? Well that a good question. In time we might even find out. I know some things about me. But I'm really confused on other things. and maybe this is normal. maybe not. All I know is, I'm gonna live my life. and at least once a week, I'm gonna try and update on here. It might just be a bunch of statistics for that week. It might be a story. It might be a rant. It might be a combi of it all. 

   But I find myself looking forward to sharing what I can about myself. I'm always willing to answer questions. But I would advise you, you probably be better off typing it out to me, rather then voicing it to me. :) This is my journey. the road I have taken. it made all the difference. Good or Bad? well. There are always more branching of roads to take. maybe I find one more to my liking.

Recent Past

Recent Past

So. While I was at my previous job, the depression started coming back. At the time, this wasn't to do with my job. In fact, my job was going well. The problem was, I was becoming frustrated with my personal life. It seemed any time I started to make progress with that, I kept making one step forward, two step back. I became to become very discouraged about this. As a result, I withdrew on myself. 

  Now here something you have to understand. I am a bit of a paradox. I can seem to be a social person. In reality I am quite a introvert. However, my extended family as a whole, are a bunch of extroverts among themselves, even if they are not with other people. As a result, I have learnt how to deal with this. My family know that I am a quiet and private person and I have pretty much learned how to deal with them, and reassure them that I am fine, that I am for the most part fine with little contact other then family dos and meet up. (My family have always done a lot of those.) As a result, they pretty much leave me alone, and trust that I will contact them as and when. Which I do, and when it comes to the family do, the questions come out. It joked among the cousins in my family that the final test of the bf/gf is the family gathering, that if they go through that, and don't get arsey about it, they are a keeper. We are a typical British family. We love to take the piss out of each other, particularly at family dos. So we tease the newcomers and if they can take it, they are good. If they can give it back, we love them.

  So when I withdrew on myself, family and friends just assumed it was my introverted nature asserting itself. which it was to a certain extent. But I was also beginning to have problems with depression, and I was damn unwilling to admit this. I thought, 'well I felt like this before, and I can beat it.'

  However, life was dealing full on body shots. People I knew and loved were dying. I have attended over the course of about the last decade quite a few funerals. The last five years have been particularly cruel. That depression I felt? it began to feel normal. and that was the problem. because I got caught in rut. I withdrew even more. 

  Work however, had always been a source of pride for me. While my personal life had pretty much gone to shit, my work life was good, gotten a new job, was doing good at it. But the personal aspects started to bleed through. I was giving up on shit. I was gaining weight rapidly.Drinking lots and lots of takeaways. Now this job was quite physical and it was starting to be affected. I was also getting ill a lot. The depression was piling on. Then things started to come to ahead last year. 

  When I started the year off last year, I had made a list of personal goals. Quite a few of them. and I tried to do all of them. I pretty much failed at all of them. Which made me even more depressed. Things were started to get to me at work. come December 2018, I was ill as fuck. worse time I ever had illness. I spent most of Christmas in bed. My uncle was dying. I kept putting off seeing him, because I was mostly ill with viral shit, and I was worried about basically finishing the guy off. Then he died.

I started taking days off of work. I was doing shit at work. Honestly, with the way things had gone for me the previous six months, if they had turned round and sacked me, It wouldn't have surprised me. I was feeling really low about myself. I was at work and had an awaking. I went to my boss, explained how I felt, and that I was going to the doctors. I had a meeting and they prescribed me pills and two weeks off. 

  My immediate family. (Dad, Mum, Siblings) have never liked medication. in fact, my sister had nearly been killed a couple of times due to being allergic to local anaesthetic, and people using them on her. I have also been in and out of hospital so much as a kid. As a result, we tend to just struggle through being ill. using home cures and basic stuffs.

  I can't begin to describe how I began to feel as those pills started to kick in over the period of two weeks. Everything seemed more achievable and just generally not as bad. I was able to clearly think on shit. All I can say is, those pills really do make a difference. I was able to sort out my mind, and my thoughts and my head. and make some changes. Which brings us to now.

Precis - Part 2

Precis - Part 2

  So, the year I did my knee. Up to this point, I have done quite a few different jobs. Mostly because I liked the variety. Also because like most young people, I was not prepared to settle down. I went from mostly doing office work to factory and processing work. This was for two reasons. 

  

  One, I was partially deaf. Mobile phones were becoming a big thing then. Phone work was important in office jobs. and I hated it. So that started to put me off of office jobs. I started to do physical work. which brought me to the second reason. I am quite short, (around 5ft 7in) never been that thin, but due to a weekly paper round I had with one of the friends mentioned previously, I had gotten quite a big build physically. and the physical work was only improving that. So I decided to find a job doing something in a warehouse or factory. and I found something permanent. got offered the job. on the Saturday before I was due to start the job, I injured my knee at a 21st birthday party. Stupid, funny at the time, funny when I think back now, utterly changed my life. Strong statement that last yeah? well, it true.

  I went to the hospital, where they prodded and looked at it, said that I was gonna spend some time on crutches. and that I wouldn't be able to do any physical work like I had been doing for at least two years, probably more like three. wow. that meant I couldn't do my new job for a start. in fact, there wasn't much I could do. Boredom set in. I started to hang around two guys. drinking with them, and generally just spending time with them is what I did. I was depressed at this time, but well, it wasn't heavy, I was confident that I would be able to rise from the ashes in time and make a comeback. Little did I realise, I started some issues from that time.

  in time, I signed on with the job centre and was referred to the disability advisor. This was the first time I ever really been to see one of these guys. He looked over my CV, and all that, and then said to me, There wasn't much he could do for me, as I was a cut above his usual clients. I don't mean that nastily or anything, but my disabilities for the most part, allowed me to live a fairly normal life with few disruptions. Other people are not so lucky. However, one thing he could and did recommend was that I could attend a residential college for the deaf. looking in the prospectus, bearing in mind I still had physical limitations laid down by the doctors I chose to learn about how to build computers and repair them.

  This was a wonderful two years and bit for me. I learned so much. Living in a house with other people in a property off of college, this taught me a lot of life skills. I felt part of a proper community for the first time, as many people had the same issues I did. There was still a division, as some of us there, me included had actually never really been part of a deaf community before then. Others were totally deaf and never known anything other. Nonetheless, I made friends, and I still keep in contact with one of my housemates. I also learned more then I was originally sent to learn, as the teachers there were willing for me to learn other stuff, while I was learning what I had to. It was an amazing time. But like all good times, it ended. I came back home. I felt small. decided to go uni. I failed at that. That started some of the whisperings in my head. then I got a job. credit crunch hit, I lost that and couldn't find another job for five years.

  This was probably my first actual conscious battle with depression. I thought about killing myself within this time. two things saved me, One, my loving family. Two, My other family. I am not a dad. I have never been that successful at relationships, and I have always been careful enough to make sure I haven't made a kid. (If I'm going to have one, it gonna be because both me and his mother wanted him very much.) But that best friend I mentioned in the previous post? The one who I known since secondary school? He had gotten with a lady, who had a lad from a previous relationship, and they had kids and also got married. This is my other family.

  I love those kids. I am Uncle Dave to them, and I love them more then I love anyone else in the world. This is not a slur on anyone else including my family, It just that I have seen these kids from shortly after they were born, Their parents have allowed me to share many precious family moments with them. my heart is just full to bursting. When I thought about suicide then, (not all of them had been born at this point) I thought about my friends having to explain to those kids why uncle Dave wasn't around then. I couldn't do it. Any time I have thought about it since, (and I have) All it has taken is me imagining that scene to make sure I haven't gone that route. Maybe I would have found something else to have stopped me if they hadn't existed. But I don't think I would have.

So I knew I had to do something. a friend of mine had suffered a misfortune and was renting a room. in a bigger town near me. With help in form of benefits, I moved out of my family's house, into hers, vowing never to go back home. That it was gonna be all or nothing.

It panned out. I got a job three months later. which was good, because I was actually, due to problems with our landlord, having to either find more money or move out. and since I vowed never to go back home, I was researching on declaring myself homeless.But I got the job, and then come a few years of depression being forced into a corner and thinking it dealt with. It definitely wasn't. Oh it subsided for a while, and started coming back in later years, which is where it connects to the present day. Which I will talk about in the next post.

Precis - Part one

Precis - Part one

so the Precis as I am prepared to give is this.

  I was born, in 1982 with Spina bifida and hydrocephalus, also deaf, but they didn't figure that part out til I was 5. My parents were advised to abort me when it was detected, as it was felt I was likely to die in childhood, if not at birth and would require a lot of care. My parents didn't and I was born. I survived and thrived despite numerous prediction. I was actually not classified as a walking and capable being til I was an adult. I had to go see a doctor every year til I was an adult, and they would conduct numerous tests. Like I say, it was also found out I was deaf when I was 5 as well, I have what is known as neural sensory hearing loss. (mouthful eh?) basically, the problem is a part of my brain that receives the signal, rather than my ears. I'm talking about all this, because it a big part of how my depression began to form.

  Then came school, primary was mostly ok, but a couple of patterns came out of it. One, because of my disabilities, I didn't mix well with games like football and that. As a result, with boys I was mostly an outsider. So I spent quite a bit of time alone. This is where part of my independence and that started to form I think. I was a happy child tho. I was quite happy to play by myself or to read (I really, really, really love to read, even to this day.) However, one day, a girl called Tina started to play with me. tag around the shed. It is one of my most earliest happiest school memories. I was in junior then. The other girls started to accept me to play with them, and they taught me how to play netball and I was even allowed to join in the practice after school occasionally. As a result, I feel more comfortable with female people then I ever do with male people, with a very few exceptions. Even to this day.

  Secondary school was a shock to me. It was wildly different from my primary school life. wildly different.  I went to two secondary schools, as I had to change from one to another and move down a year. At the first secondary school, I made two best friends from that time. One I still live near, and see to this day. He and his family has have an impact on my life to the extent that they are family to me.  The second guy, was a very important part of my life for a decade. He is not now, we drifted apart. like you do. He taught me many, many things. He caused some of my depression. but paradoxically, he also saved me from it at the time, and taught me very important lessons on life, some that I only realised in the last few years.

  My depression started at the first secondary school. It was very mild, there was a lot going on in my family life at the time, I didn't fit in at school, the pattern of being shunned by the boys for the most part continued and well, with puberty beginning to rear it head, most of the girls did, as I knew very few people who were from my area at this school. but that mate for a decade, well, he was a lifeline at the time. I mentioned earlier, that I liked to read, I started to read more. and kept to myself.  On the outside I seemed a happy enough person. I was for the most part. But there were times and days and weeks, when I hated my self and the world. yet, like I say, I had a family who loved me very much, and those two friends and my family, kept it all at bay. When I went to the second secondary school, I felt completely isolated there. As it contained a deaf support unit, it was the main reason I was sent there. I was friendly enough with people there, but apart from a foreign student who came from overseas, that had been sent there, because he was in danger where his had originally came from. I became very good friends with him, til he left to go back to his old country. I sometimes think about him to this day, and hope he is still alive. But I mostly felt isolated there and reading and music became two very important things to me, and still are to this day.

  Listen to this song.Everybody free to wear sunscreen It done by a guy called Baz Luhrmann who in turn took it from a speech. It came out the year I left school, (1999) at the time, things had improved, and although I was still slightly unhappy inside, a new move, new changes, a job, it seemed things were on the up. I was happy for many years with just the occasional struggle. Then I hurt my knee. badly. What followed was a year of mixed feelings. Here the thing I found about depression during this time. You don't feel it all to the exclusion of all else. Rather, it colours the world and how you see it and feel about it. It can be overbearing, or it can be subtle. that year, it was subtle.

A Road not taken

A Road Not Taken

There is a poem. Quite well known. It is by a gentleman by the name of Robert Frost. It title is the same as this post. A Road Not taken.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

I love this poem. It resonates with me. I feel it is one that applies to me.

But it doesn't. Not really. Because I tread a road that plenty of other people do tread, and feel that they are alone, even when there are plenty of people around them. It has many nicknames and sometimes seems to me to be prevalent among the people of today, more than it ever did. But maybe that because people are mostly willing to talk about it now. to confront it. I also have some other theories but that is for another day. The road I am talking about is depression.

This blog is going to be about my journey through life with depression and other problems I have. it going to focus on the here and now. I might delve into the past occasionally, but apart from a precis that I'm going to give in the next post, I am not going to mention the past that much.

"Why?" I hear you say. "Surely to understand it all, we have to go back to the beginning." Well, yes, I did have to. To understand myself I had to go over the past over and over. There were particular parts I dissected many times. BUT.

  I am for the most part a private and very independent person (if any of my family and most of my friends read this, they probably will think boy he ain't kidding!) To figure out a bunch of stuff, I had to crawl through my own personal hell. It wasn't fun. A lot of the time I cried and would withdraw into myself. I didn't want to be around people, cos I was convinced that the dark cloud I was carrying around was something that could hurt other people. That sort of past gazing can cause a lot of self harm to your psyche and I don't recommend it, unless you are prepared for it, or talking with a professional. tbh, the second is probably the wiser one, but well, I never been that good at taking the less stubborn route.

As to why I am creating this blog, well it for a couple of reasons. I started acknowledging this year, that I have a serious problem. Before, I would dismiss, it make light of it and hide it. People, This is not a sensible thing to do. take it from me. I am hoping that this blog will help me to figure it out, by putting it down in writing so I can review it.

"But why are you putting it in such a public domain?" Well, now we have come to my second reason. Understand this. I have thought of going the suicide route. The reason I haven't? I have a very supportive family background, and some amazing friends. But, as I mentioned earlier, I am a very private and independent person. I don't communicate well through voice. As a result, while most of my family and friends know I have problems, they probably don't realise how I have and still do struggle so hard. but I always been good with putting down words. So, I guess this is my attempt to open up to them, because I do want to. I'm just not good at it face to face and with voice.