life is 10% what happens & 90% how you react to it. my mental health story.
*Trigger warning; cancer, death, grief, depression*
7 minute read.
If I am going to claim this space to focus on Mental Health & psychology, I feel it is relevant to share my experiences & my journey with my own MH, that have brought me to where I am today. I am literally writing from MY brain. Although there are similarities between how we can feel, every single person’s journey is unique; made different by our upbringing, cultures, socioeconomic status’, relationships, experiences, I mean the list goes on. No two journeys will ever be the same. This story is uniquely mine. As my journey continues, & as much as I want to be an open book, I have recently discovered the power of a private life, & a small circle. However, I have an endeavouring drive to break the bias & the stigma on Mental Health. If I can be honest & share my experience into how I finally took notice of my mental health & help just one person, then I will take that. I also hope this post gives some context around my experiences & where I am coming from. I truly believe that no-one can speak on behalf of someone else’s experiences. I do plan to visit other MH topics within this blog, however it will be written differently in comparison to say me writing about grief, depression & anxiety. I have experiences from these, thus I can write from my angle on those topics. But again someone else’s experience could be different, but here is mine. I’m comfortable talking about these events. I’m not telling this for sympathy or empathy, I feel these are quite normal life events to happen to someone. The focus is on how these triggered something much deeper, & how I came to acknowledge my MH.
I have shared this story before on my instagram page & I plan on sharing this story in a similar vein as I did then; my timeline, my experience with therapy, my experience with anti depressants, the lessons I have learned, each presented in separate posts. By breaking it down this way, I feel it will hopefully be less autobiographical, & possibly easier to navigate. If for example you only wanted to find out some more information on anti-depressants, well just read that post.
I’ll begin in 2013. I am 28 years young. I have recently moved 200 miles away from my home town for work. Change at this point didn’t make me as nervous as it does now. I’ve been an adult for ten years here & I’m still very much just breezing through life hoping it will just, happen. My social life is heavily made up of drinking at the weekends, at the pub, gigs, festivals, & all mainly back in my home town. I do have a wide group of friends who are still some of the best people I know. I occasionally spend some weekends indulging in the more cultural side of my interests; visiting galleries & exhibitions, using my spare time to cook & take walks. But I find the drinking takes up a lot of my time, either drinking or being hungover. It’s around this time however that I start to get the post alcohol blues BIG TIME. The drive home on the Sunday would be a heavy one. I’m tired & emotional. I put it down to the alcohol but I know there’s something underneath tugging at me. I have some unexpected outbursts of tears which before this would be very unusual for me, but again I just brush it under the carpet & put it down to being far from home.
In early 2014, I turn 29, & also land myself a job back at home. I was looking to move back, or to London. I am over the moon. It’s a three month notice I need to work, but that’s ok, I’m coming home, & I can move to London after this. The plan is to move in with my Grandparents to save money for a while, who’s health is becoming increasingly worse although they are incredibly brave about it. I used to help out my grandparents a lot, with housework, shopping etc. It was hard for me to see them get older & sicker, & I felt living with them not only would save me money, but I could also be there for them. I plan to move out after a year to rent a flat of my own. Within 1 month my moving back, my granddad is diagnosed with cancer, & two months later, so is my 62 year old dad. Neither of these diagnoses I can really believe, cause everything will be alright, won’t it? 4 weeks after his initial diagnosis, my Dad is told he is stage 4, with a prognosis of 18 month to 2 years with chemo. This is the first time I cry about it. I only tell a few friends about Dad’s cancer; I’m still processing the news myself, & cause everything will be ok. I am a fairly private person. I have a few friends that I confide in when I need to, but I do prefer to keep things within my personal life private. I like to understand things for myself before I share them (I know this must seem ridiculous as I share this on the internet, but I choose to in the name of Mental Health Awareness). I remember one of my friends asking how my dad was (she was one of a very few people I had told). I didn’t want to talk about him being at stage 4 (no-one knew this) & I lied & said he’ll be fine, just needs some chemo. 3 weeks later, he is dead. The day after my Dad died, I am supposed to be running a half marathon, which was a bucket list activity I had wanted to do before my 30th which was in Feb 2015. I obviously do not complete the half marathon, but later book to do the Reading half marathon which falls a month after my 30th the following year. The half marathon meant a lot for me to do as I had never really felt I had achieved anything. I wanted something to focus on & work towards. I think I knew at this point that there was so much more I would need to focus on & work on to make myself happier.
This is the first time I’ve ever had to deal with grief. My grandparents with their poor health are obviously devastated, & living with them I focus on their grief having just lost a child. I remind myself that losing a parent is part of the circle of life, but I couldn’t imagine anything worse than losing a child. My heart is broken for them. This is not to say I wasn’t ‘allowed’ to grieve. My Grandparents, the rest of my family, my friends & my new workplace were all so supportive, but truth was I just didn’t know how to grieve. Christmas comes & goes, & quite frankly, it was sh*t. My world has just been turned upside down & nothing feels the same. Because it isn’t. As the time went on, it was just the regular days that the reality hit that my Dad was gone. No texts, no phone calls. My Dad really was my biggest fan & my biggest supporter & now that had been taken away. I have never once argued with my Dad as I just never needed to. He will always be my hero & my favourite teacher.
For the first three months of 2015, I focus on my training for the half marathon. That was one of the best things I did for myself during that time. I decide to raise some money for Macmillan, & on my birthday my friends present me a cheque of over £300 & I am full of love. I was turning 30. I was dreading it. It wasn’t the age I was dreading, but the pressure of a ‘big’ birthday. I have so many fond memories of my dad calling me every birthday & singing down the phone to me, & telling me about the day I was born like he was the proudest person in the world. Now my birthday is a day I dread every single year. I wake up the morning of my Birthday & just cry. I want my dad. I book holiday I had dreamed of doing for my thirtieth year since I was 25. This holiday was to happen in June. I feel a sense of guilt booking things to do & enjoy because shouldn’t I also being feeling sad about the loss of my Dad? I mean I was of course, but I wasn’t sure if I was grieving correctly.
It was from here that I notice a significant shift in myself. I am a zombie at work. I’m not engaged, I still spend the weekends drinking & at work I’m still hungover from the weekend that I just can’t focus. However, my work still remain supportive of me, which I was incredibly grateful for now that I look back. In the lead up to the holiday in June, I feel absolutely zero excitement about the trip. It was like I was numb. I wanted to remain so positive for my two friends that were coming on this trip with me. But I feel nothing, just tired. I was so so tired. It was hard for me to open up to my friends about how I was feeling, cause when you’re on a trip you’ve been dreaming about for years, you should feel happy, right? So why wasn’t I? Now, the trip was amazing, & it was there I totally & utterly fell in love with Yosemite. Besides the point, the trip was amazing, but I look back & see someone who was struggling inwardly with the first feels of depression. I had never felt like this before.
In August 2015, my Grandma passes away. She is a woman who has played a MASSIVE part in my life. My very first best friend. We had an incredible bond. It was another, but new kind of broken. What broke my heart the most was my Granddad. My incredible, strong Granddad grieving in his own silent way. I had an annual trip with my friends booked, which is basically a very drunken 3 nights in a huge house. I feel so disconnected. The alcohol I notice really does not sit well with my mood. I can’t enjoy myself. But I pretend, which makes everything twice as hard to do. It wasn’t because I didn’t think my friends would understand, but it’s because I didn’t want to be the party pooper or a burden. But it was hard. So so hard. It was after this trip that constant tears fall. My manager at the time suggests I try Cruse Bereavement Counselling. As a charity there is a 6 week waiting list, but I am at my wits end of feeling this way. So I look into private therapy, & start this. My dad’s anniversary passes, as does another sh*t Christmas.
April 2016; Granddad passes away from the cancer he was diagnosed with in 2014. He is 93, & still will always be the strongest (physically) man I know. This one I cry so much more at. I felt beaten & defeated. I continue to drink on the weekends which leaves my weekdays hard, tiring, emotional & incredibly unproductive. Productivity wasn’t key for me at this time. Just getting through another day was all I tried to do. Now I’ve never been one to ‘drink through’ something, however it did feel like the only kind of social life I had, & I had fun. I always had fun. However looking back at myself at this time, I was undeniably in a bad place, unsure of what to do & feeling totally hopeless.
I decide to leave therapy & instead visit a GP about talking therapies as the cost of therapy was too high. I was still convinced that therapy would give me some magic words & advice & I would feel better. I walk into the doctor’s office & don’t stop crying. My GP suggests I try Anti-Depressants. It’s not something I wanted to ever take. In fact was the first time it was suggested that I was depressed. I did’t want to believe it though, I wasn’t depressed as I was still functioning. Looking back, I really wasn’t functioning, I was only existing. I will stop this part of the journey here, as it’s from here that I want to talk about my experiences with therapy & medication.
From mid 2016 I accept that perhaps, I am depressed, & my focus is to basically be as not depressed as I can be as quickly as possible, so I could feel ‘normal’ again. Even just writing this now, it feels so incredibly wrong that I thought this at the time. It highlighted to me how little I was in touch with my MH, or any MH. That I wasn’t able to read signals that I really wasn’t ok.
& I’m still on this journey of learning. Because my life, your life, our lives will change at different points. & some things are hard. One of my favourite sayings that I identify so much with is ‘life is 10% what happens to you & 90% how you react to it’. It put so much into context for me. I’m learning to understand my reactions, & how can I can support them. It’s quite the journey!
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