What depression feels like

I like to think that most of the people who come across this blog, who don't know me from Adam, but genuinely find some of the content interesting, are drawn in because of what I write about mental health.

It's a subject matter that one in four of us experience in any given year, and pretty much everyone knows someone they care about who's had a rough time. So given that it's potentially relevant and useful to strangers reading this (and it's certainly what people who know and love me want updates about, bless them) I don't actually write about exactly what depression feels like very often.

Well, I've had a really rock bottom day today, so I thought I'd describe it for you.

Part of the crapness, the loneliness, the feeling of being trapped, is due to not being able to tell anybody. Or at least, not have anyone understand. Or sympathise.

It's a mild version of that first day back at work after Christmas, where everyone you pass in a corridor asks "Good Christmas?" and you have to make a decision about your answer. I know plenty of people, braver than me, who put up with much more, who are probably screaming at the screen "Just say 'Fine thanks, how was yours' and move on. What's the big deal?" and they're probably right. But if your Christmas was less than idyllic, a tiny little bit of you dies each time you lie. Worse still, if you say something non-committal like "It was mixed" what you don't want is for the questioner to continue probing, wanting you to go into detail and put your fence-straddling answer that you're now massively regretting into context.

Now I'm not bah humbug enough to propose that we ban people asking how your Christmas was on the first day back in the office. I just think you should be able to give any answer you want, but still have it glossed over in the spirit of the whole question, whatever you reveal.

But back to today.

I'm not well enough to work at the moment. I've been trying my best, and probably doing a passable job, but fretting enormously about it, and in need of some rest. So my kind and understanding boss suggested that I come home at lunchtime on Monday and take the rest of the week off sick. Which I did.

I then had my third session of ECT on Tuesday. It went absolutely fine, but I don't feel an iota better. The docs are confident though that I'll start responding within the next couple of sessions.

In the meantime, life goes on. I have two beautiful, small boys who are full of energy. I don't want them to know I'm ill. I don't want them to look back later in life and say 'I always knew when mum was ill because she wasn't as fun/had less patience/lay crying on the kitchen floor'. Well I pretty much blew that last week, as I snapped at Logie more viciously than I've ever done before, then all three of us sat crying in the kitchen. That was a low point.

Today, all I wanted to do, with every cell of my body, was hide away, stay in bed, read a book, not be in the world. Ten years ago, during a bout of depression, I could do that. Now I can't. That's not a complaint, it's just an observation. Maybe it's no bad thing, I hear you say.

Today I took Felix for his swimming lesson at 10am, Logie for his at 11:30am, then we had lunch there afterwards with friends. But this isn't really telling you how I felt, is it? I felt on the verge of tears the entire time. I felt terribly terribly wrong inside, like an imposter pretending that normal life was going on regardless, desperate for someone to notice the pain that I was in and do something.

Because it is a pain. Imagine someone's stuck a drawing pin in your eye. No, that's probably too hard to imagine. Imagine it's been stuck under your fingernail, and it's really fucking painful, and tender, and all ALL you can think about is trying to get it out. The pain doesn't go away for periods, and only come back when you remember about it. It's there. All the time.

And while on the outside you're getting someone into their trunks, making conversation about how bad everyone's colds were last week, inside you're thinking 'I just don't think I can do this any more. I'm going to snap. I'm frightened, I feel it's very close. I don't know what that actually means, but believe me - I'm literally counting the next few seconds, please someone come and rescue me, I CAN'T KEEP GOING'.

And it hurts. I mean, it's clear to you at the time that it hurts, but you only have to zoom forward in time to a time when you're better (I'm lucky, I have good reason to believe that that time will come for me), and then look back at this moment, and you'll be even more horrified. The contrast between ordinary everydayness, mildly late/hungover/existentially concerned about your work-life balance is not even on the same scale as this terrifying, pressing feeling that you are literally about to implode.

Or imagine it was happening to a friend of yours, someone you really care about - imagine the sympathy, and advice, and free childcare you'd be offering them. We are never as kind to ourselves when it comes to mental health problems as we are to friends and family that we love.

I don't want you to try and read some sort of implicit suicidal ideation into this, because that's not what's happening. I am not thinking about killing myself, or making any sort of plan to do so. I wouldn't do that. I have a husband and two children whom I adore. I have a treatment that has 100% success rate in previous episodes, so no reason (apart from the pessimisim that is part and parcel of depression) to believe that it's not about to work again, and quite soon.

But that only adds to my feeling of being trapped, funnily enough. Because I still feel as acutely awful, and desperate for something to happen, to change, and incapable of believing that this could continue for even another five minutes because it's just so inhuman and unbearable. But what am I going to do? Nothing. I know that. So what is the point of feeling so hideous? None. But it's not a feeling I can control. So what can I do? Nothing.

And once the kids were in bed, I still couldn't collapse under the duvet. Because it's Logie's birthday on Saturday and I wanted to make his cake. Because life goes on. Even though mine doesn't feel like it is. Even though I feel like I'm not giving myself a chance to get better, because I can't have a ten-hour sleep and a day without stress.

But who can? Does this just sound so spoilt? Probably. I just needed to tell someone.