Early signs of depression

People often ask me what depression feels like. How I know.

The question usually comes when I've been boasting about how I now have this chronic illness under control. About how I watch out for early warning signs, and as soon as I feel them, I nip them in the bud with a bout of ECT. I make it all sound terribly straightforward.

Sometimes I wonder if people are asking because they've had feelings themselves that they've never discussed openly before, and want to know if I'm about to describe something similar. Sometimes I think they're waiting for me to describe just an amplified version of ordinary sadness, or feelings of stress, so they can write me off as someone who can't cope with stuff like they can.

Most of the time though, they probably just want to know out of genuine interest. Especially as I'm talking about such a personal thing, with such certainty. It's a human interest story that would catch most people's attention.

Anyway, I tell them that I feel it very physically, and unmistakably, in my body. I give them the line about 'my blood runs cold', and say that I'm sure that one day there'll be a test that doctors can do to show this change, like diabetes and blood sugar.

But it's hard to explain it properly, to do justice to the description, until you're in it. And then, you don't want to talk about it. Partly because the nature of the thing means you don't feel like talking, or typing, or even opening the front door unless absolutely necessary. And partly because (and this is a bit counter-intuitive, so bear with me) as soon as you start to feel it, you go into denial.

I wax on about how sure I am when it's starting, and how it's different from ordinary worry, or tiredness, or illness. But then when it does, that's exactly what I try to put it down to. After sixteen years, I still kid myself that it's because I've got a cold, or it's to do with a particular source of concern that is due to resolve itself.

There was one time, about ten years ago, when I told myself and my employer that I had the flu. For two weeks, I stayed in my tiny flat, shaking, obsessively reading detective novels because if I even looked up from the page I would go into a spiral of panic about what was happening. I had no symptoms of flu - no temperature, for example - but I did feel very wrong, and it seemed much more palatable all round to pretend it was that. I got in quite a lot of trouble when I did go back to work for not providing a doctor's note, and my boss was furious with me for letting her down by just disappearing one day, and thus never really forgave me. But that's another story.

What I want to describe now is how it really does feel. Because I can be honest here, and it is so bizarre, and so unpleasant (hah! what an understatement) that I kind of feel you ought to know.

You'll be doing something mundane, like walking through a carpark, when you realise your blood is rushing through your veins in the opposite direction to usual. Alarm bells go off - this is very very wrong, says your brain. Help. Inside you is upsetting loud music, a surge of adrenaline almost, as if you're poised to take action. As if you'd just walked round a corner straight into a gun pointed at your head. You look down at your hands, to see if they're shaking because of all this cacophany going on inside you, and they don't seem to be. Not much anyway.

Then someone walks past you and says "Morning" and herein lies the most awful moment. "Morning" you say in reply, and force a smile. And they have no idea. It seems preposterous that they can't detect what's going on inside you, hear the noise, smell the fear, but they don't. And that is when the greatest loneliness starts, because not only are you contending with bodily trauma, but no one else can see it. Partly because you are complicit in the lie. The deception has started, and it seems impossible to reconcile what's going on inside you with the absolute normality of everyday life outside.

Then it eases off a little, and you think maybe it's gone away, it was nothing. So now you're lying to yourself as well. Anxiety comes to visit, and every day you wake up in the early hours with a gnawing in your stomach. Sadness must be there too - after all, why else would you have a big bubble in your throat, that threatens to burst into sob every time you open your mouth? But the over-riding feeling is of numbness. Stuff is happening to you, but you're so scared you don't do anything. Can't.

Every bit of you is frozen, so it seems hard to even move sometimes. A painful stiffness. Reluctance hardens into fear. Some days, every fibre of your being longs to be in bed, under the duvet, where no one can see you. 

Gosh it sounds bad written down. I remember the other reason why I don't normally describe it much detail. It makes people worry, and I don't want them to do that. Because just as surely as I know when it's happening, I now know that there's a way to zap it. ECT. Even though depression by definition means you find it hard to make decisions or drag yourself to the psychiatric place, with all those alarming people in the waiting room, you do it. And then hang in there.

Logie, who is now two and three-quarters, is interested in feelings at the moment. He likes to say he is sad, or happy, or scary (by which he means scared) because he is trying on these words for size, and because saying them to a grown up gets a reaction. The other day he said "I sad". When I asked him why, he thought for a bit and said "Because the gruffalo he shouted at me". I must have said something suitably soothing and fiction-busting, because shortly afterwards he said "I happy now". Again, I asked him why. He scratched around for an answer - he concentrated so hard he was actually frowning - and then declared "Because of tickles". That's the kind of detail I like.