Blog 9: I'm mental. No really..... I'm proper mental.

Every day at work I speak to person after person claiming various things. Some things are true, and an awful lot arn't, but one of the most heard claims is that someone is suffering from Stress, Depression and Anxiety.

These are probably the least believed statements by me and many of my peers, partly because they are so prevalent that by law of averages a large percentage must be bullshit, and partly because claiming stress, depression and anxiety is relatively easy to do and it's a ticket to convenient benefits.

We arn't there to make a judgement on whether these people are genuine or not and in fact it makes no odds to us whether they're faking it. But the underlying fact remains: as soon as someone says Depression, most of us think of it as a quasi- illness. I'm no better than anyone else in this respect. I disbelieve the stories, I assume a lot of them are lying through their teeth. (On a side bar, I don't believe 90% of ADHD claims either but don't even get me started on that bullshit...)

The thing is I should be more sympathetic than most. If anyone should give people the benefit of the doubt in this situation it's me. Because I'm a proper mental. I suffer from stress, anxiety and depression and have for the past decade, and for years beforehand without confronting it.

I don't speak about it, other than to a select few people. This is mainly because most people (like me) assume that if someone says they have depression it either means they're preparing the ground to go on a long stretch of sick leave at work, or they're looking for a big dose of sympathetic attention, neither of which I want people to think about me. So I keep it quiet.

But now I'm here blurting it out for all 4 people who may just bother to read my blog and one or two of them may not know this about me already and may even tell other people too. Why?

The reasons I want to make it a bit more public are twofold. Firstly, occasionally you find out that someone else you know suffers with depression and has been really battling against it at a difficult time but has never spoken to you about it because they, like me, keep it to themselves. This is frustrating because when I've been suffering it's really helpful sometimes to talk to someone else. Not a big girly blubfest, but just to mention it to someone and feel free to talk about it can be very therapeutic. Fortunately I have some good friends in this respect, and I've been lucky enough to be there for other people. But there are times when good friends have been struggling and I could have helped but we were both playing the non-admittance game, and to be quite honest it's shit. Secondly, I'm too old to be embarrassed by this kind of stuff anymore. I am what I am, and I am who I am. And whether I like it or not this is part of me so I'm not going to bother keeping it quiet. If anyone has a problem with it tough shit. If you know me and you think any less of me, I don't care.

I first got diagnosed 10 years ago. Scared the shite out of me at first because I had no idea what was going on. I'd just moved into a new flat, a few weeks later had met Kerry and a few weeks later she'd moved in with me. Happy days, or should have been. But work was just beginning to turn shite at the time and with all the changes going on I think everything came to a head. I had a week where I simply couldn't function. I was exhausted and run down. I presumed I had a fluey thing and went to bed, expecting that after a day or two, I'd feel better, get up and back to normal. But that didn't happen. And so I went to the doctor who said it sounded like a virus and signed me off for another week. And than another. And then on the fourth week he ran through some questions. "Do you ever..." this, and "How do you feel when..." that. Then he asked me where I worked and when I said "Norwich Union" he just laughed and chucked a truckload of pills at me and wrote me a sicknote for work which said "Depression" and I had to suck it up and deal with it, because I was going to have to hand it in at work and become one of those people that I'd always been suspicious and skeptical of. I went back to work, relieved that I wasn't dying of some mystery disease, but baffled by the fact that this was what I had because I'd never thought of myself as being someone who would get depression. I didn't think I fit "the profile". But I went back in, rightly or wrongly, and those initial four weeks are still the only time I've ever had off sick from work with depression.

It really didn't sit well with me, not just immediately, or for the next few months. I developed horrendous panic attacks which would show up for no reason and which would render me a sweating, breathless lunatic. I remember having lunch with Kerry one day and suddenly saying "sorry, have to go" before dashing out the door because I thought I was going to pass out if I stayed where I was for a second longer. Proper fucking nutcase stuff.

For months I kept going over it in my mind: how did I get here? I thought I was mentally strong, now I'm a fucking basketcase. What triggers are there that set me off? Surely there's something I can do to get rid of this? Some way to put this bloody genie back in the bottle. But there wasn't. And after a long time I realised this and came to terms with the fact that it wasn't going away.

It's with me for life now. My Black Dog (If it's good enough for Churchill, another mentalist, who coined the phrase, then it's good enough for me). And I'm fine with that. I can manage it. I have down periods, and then I have ok periods. I still sometimes have panic attacks which I keep quiet about because nobody wants to see a big sweating freaky mess so I'll keep them to myself. But otherwise it's just a normal part of life. A pill a day keeps the total wobblies away.

But I can cope. I've been lucky to have Kerry who's been amazing, putting up with my madness, my freakouts, and my sometimes overwhelming snappiness and melancholy. Love that woman. I've also had various friends, some who are non-mentals, some who are up-front mentals and some who are closet mentals who've helped me and who continue to do so.

Anyway, I've decided that whilst I'm definitely not making a song and dance about it, I'm moving from the closet out into the open. I'm a strong proud mental man and I don't care who knows it. And hopefully if anybody else is where I was 10 years ago and needs to talk about it, they'll feel they can with me.