Warning: this post
contains possible triggers for anyone with a history of depression or mental illness.
Last week's R U OK
Day campaign to raise awareness of suicide prevention has prompted me to write
a blog post about my experience with depression. It concerns me that despite
ongoing awareness campaigns, depression is still perceived as a weakness of the
spirit, and something that prompts us to collectively back away instead of
holding each other closer. I don't imagine my story will do much to change this
outrageously flawed and counter-intuitive approach but I think that the more of
us who share our stories, the less potent the notion that depression is
self-indulgent and trivial becomes. I hope.
I have devoted my working life to writing about matters that range from the sparkly to the gritty, yet I struggle to assemble
words that can even come close to accurately describing this incredibly bleak
period of my life. It was 2000. I was 20, and in my final year of a
communications degree at university. I was looking forward to a long-reaching, successful
career as a journalist and had no reason to believe that would not pan out as I dreamed. I believed that good things happened to good people,
crime happened only in TV shows and that New Zealand was the safest place in
the world. I was wrong about all of these things.
I was working at a
magazine part time while I studied (I've talked about that experience before). One bitterly
cold evening in June, a much-loved and respected colleague was walking home
from the bus stop when she was raped, repeatedly stabbed and left to die in a
suburban park by a man out on parole after serving time for a sexual assault. Her body was found later that evening. We were called into a
meeting the following day where volunteers from Victim Support (a truly
wonderful organisation) were on hand as our boss, in absolute pieces, explained
the horror that had unfolded overnight.
When you receive news
like this, your blood runs cold. You go into shock and you watch the room start
to spin and you wait to be told the police have made a mistake and actually
she's fine oh here she is of course she's OK what is this some sort of movie
this is absolutely not happening. But they hadn't and she wasn't.
My colleague and I
were mates – she was sort of a mentor to me – although we were not close. But more than the loss of her it was the brutal manner of her death that catapulted
me into depression, a fog so immense and terrifying it makes my hands shake to
detail it here. This tragedy caused a violent rupture in my foundations. I
ceased to function.
Although my memories
of this time are fairly hazy (self-preservation, I guess), I do remember that I
didn't eat for days at a time. I did not leave my bed for about three weeks – I
couldn't find a reason to. I occasionally slept but was tortured by nightmares
in which I was chased across town by sinister figures. I couldn't make decisions. I spoke
to no one. I forgot to go to classes; I forgot what day it was. Time meant nothing.
I had fallen off the edge of the world and I did not care where I
landed.
I was diagnosed with
depression and told to take anti-depressants which, because I was so broken, was a practical task I couldn't deal with. I was encouraged to attend counselling but I had nothing to say, about
anything. The world was dark and hostile and could never be anything else.
There was no point to anything. This, friends, is why depression is so
gravely destructive – if you don't care about anything, you stop participating in life. And that can lead you down a path of no return. Vastly more destructive than any physical injury I've ever had,
depression crippled my emotional nerve centre, rendering me unable to feel – and for a long time it felt like no person, activity or human experience could shift that.
I knew I needed help
but I didn't want it. I wanted to stay in my vacuum where I
would never feel pain again. I didn't want to participate in a world that could
be so unspeakably cruel.
I'm very fortunate
that my depression was circumstantial – it was prompted by a specific traumatic, grievous event, rather than the depression that fells
so many people throughout their lives for no reason at all, without reprieve.
When I started actually taking anti-depressants on a regular basis, they
changed the chemistry in my brain enough that I could start to face up to what
had happened (a process that took years) and slowly fumble my way through a powerful tide of emotions (and yes, I did eventually go to counselling). There
were searing rage, a stomach-twisting injustice and an overriding bitterness,
and there were agonising questions that will never be satisfactorily
answered.
I want to make it very clear that as immense as my despair was, I did not get to the point of wanting to take my own life. I cannot imagine the depths of hopelessness that brings people to that point, and I feel enormous sorrow for people in that situation, not to mention their families. What happened for me was that an unwillingness to cause pain to my sister, the person I love most in
this world, slowly started to ignite a desire to fight back against the darkness. my suffering was causing pain to the people I loved –but when you're depressed, your capacity to care about other people is disabled. Some people never get that prod – but that is not a failure on their part, it's just a reflection of the extent that this disease has them in its clutches.
It took months but I
eventually reached a point where I could imagine the possibility of
maybe experiencing joy again, even though it would be always feel tarnished in some
way. A smashed vase can be glued back together but the
cracks will always be faintly visible.
While my struggle
with depression is behind me now, it still casts a shadow over my
life. No matter where I am or what I am doing, in the background there lurks the threat that I will one day fall into that deep pit again – and
that this time, I will not be able to claw my way out. And since I'm being truly
honest here, this fear is a major contributor to my decision not to have children. I
cannot run the high risk of post-natal depression. (That said,
if I desperately wanted children I would probably be willing to take that
risk.)
This chapter of my
life is why I want us, collectively, to keep talking about depression. It is real and it is
ferocious – but we have each other and that is where we find hope.
This is why 'hope' is
my favourite word in the English language. It is why, two years later, I got a
phoenix tattooed on my back (something I regret, but that's another story!). It
is why I believe, in the words of Holocaust survivor Connie Ten Boom, that
there is no hole so deep that God's love is not deeper still. It does not
matter what God looks like to you – it only matters that you can find something
more powerful than the darkness. Hold on to that. That is what hope looks
like.
If you need to talk
to someone anonymously, at any time, call 13 11 14 (Australia), 800-442-HOPE (USA), 08457 90 90 90
(UK) or 0800 543 354 (New Zealand).