It's a perfect summation of not only stigma but the lack of understanding out there for depression. It's an aspect of my experience that I have wanted to share but didn't quite know how to approach until now.
Think of a heavy cold. You get it like everyone else come Winter but shrug it off as a result of being run down and busy of late. "Have a few Lempsips, you'll be right as rain in a few days". You become careless and fail to wear a coat going out in the cold. Your sniffles progress to flu-like symptoms. Lemsip isn't strong enough for flu but you continue to drink it-"It'll cure me eventually, surely". You become so tired that you have no energy or even the realisation to look after yourself better. You don't bother to see a doctor, you go to bed with wet hair, you're engulfed by fever. It stays untreated. The flu becomes pneumonia. Still no doctor visit and pneumonia is so severe that...well, there couldn't possibly be a good result from untreated pneumonia, could there?
Apply the same principal to mental illness. You feel slightly out of sorts, but ignore it as a seasonal change that you'll snap out of soon. You keep on living as you normally would but it doesn't come so easy to you. You think that constant napping and comfort food should sort you out although there are no signs of your mood improving. Suicide, of course, is a huge epidemic; a tragic last resort that is felt by far too many people in this country as their only way out. It is the pneumonia to your cold. I want to make it clear that I do not mean to be insensitive to this fact, but I have to highlight that early detection in every illness is surely the most effective prevention of it spreading.
It is so, so important to realise that just because you're not on death's door with pneumonia, doesn't mean that you're going to ignore the fact that you are bed-ridden and feverish. You get an antibiotic, listen to doctor's orders, and take the appropriate rest time to recover. Listen to me when I say that you do not have to be suicidal for your mental illness to be cause for treatment and care and sympathy.
For longer than I care to admit, I felt so guilty. So guilty for feeling so dreadful with no reason that I could see. It was clear that there were so many more troublesome cases than mine, it made me feel selfish and undeserving of sympathy or relief. But then it struck me-heck! Is it not better to catch a flu early and avoid the whole pneumonia thing? Wouldn't that have saved a lot of worry and heartache and pain?
I remember when I was diagnosed earlier this year, trying desperately to fall asleep in the spare room of my family home-insisting that I slept there just so I could be closer to my parents. I was reverting to a child -like state of dependence. I was scared and not in control of the pain. Just like when I had glandular fever or the measles or a migraine or any other debilitating ailment. I was just about dozing off when I received some misguided frustrations in an inappropriate and upsetting message that I should apologise for my actions. For making life hell for people around me. That it wasn't anyone else's fault that I got depression. As if I had had control over what I did and actively sought out to hurt and offend people. Like the delirious ramblings of an influenza induced fever were a huge insult that I should have known better than to utter. Needless to say I did not get to sleep that night.
Depression is a selfish disease-I will not deny it. All you can see are your problems, your pain, your suffering, your inability to make anything feel better. Name me one illness that does not feel like this in some shape or form.
As a friend of mine said today-think before you speak. Take a new approach. Be compassionate even if the understanding part doesn't follow quite yet. We have no need to defend or explain our illness; just a duty to be open, unashamed and unapologetic about it and just get the right treatment to get well.
Remember, it's an illness. It's not personal.
This is beautifully honest, thank you for writing this. xx
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