Depression. Where to start??

Depression is something that affects 1.666.000 (one million six hundred and sixty six thousand) people in the UK alone, 2.6% of the population* and a whopping 10,897,000 (ten million eight hundred and ninety seven thousand) people have suffered suicidal thoughts at least once over the course of their lifetime*.

Worldwide the numbers are around 350,000,000 and it affects women more then men interestingly.

For some reason it’s very hard to talk about something that is so prevalent in modern society and I’m not sure that it’s necessarily that more people these days suffer from it than the fact that we are better at recognising it’s symptoms and effects now that there’s more education available on the subjec, but I am going to try and explain what depression means for me and how it can affect someones life on a day to day basis rather then the umbrella malaise that you live with year on year. You may never be able to beat it and your life may become a struggle to keep your head above the water, as it were, but there are ways to alleviate it and ways to put it away for periods of time. I intend to talk you through the ways it has affected me personally and how I try on a day to day basis to keep it at bay and not let it swallow me whole again like the metaphorical white whale, something you want to kill but must tread carefully around to prevent it claiming your life instead.

I haven’t thought of ending my life since I was 19 years old and spent 25 minutes standing on a bridge in Luton above the duel carriageway at around 20:15 smoking cigarette after cigarette listening to Too Many Humans by Buckethead on repeat and wondering what would happen if I dived head first into the traffic. Wondering how long it would be before friends and family around the world found out that I had selfishly split my skull open rather then deal with the problems I was going through. There were no romanticised visions of how much I might be missed and no level of glory to the dive I thought so long and hard about taking – just fully objective thoughts of what my body would look like after the skull had caved in and multiple bones had broken and of how long it would be before everything clouded over and my heart pumped for the final time.

Those 25 minutes were the longest of my life and have never been repeated thankfully, I vividly remember getting home to my grotty little house on the street all my friends got mugged on and crawling into bed to turn on an episode of The Simpsons and try to forget these powerful feelings of self loathing, because if I had done it I would have JUST transferred all my sorrow on to the people I loved. My parents, who would lie awake at night and wonder where they went wrong and WHY their little boy had chosen to bleed his last moments away on the grimy asphalt so far away that they would only be able to turn up to a hospital housing his cold corpse, my brothers, who would always wonder if they could have helped if they’d called that day to talk or if they could have read any signs the last time they saw me, and my friends, who would always wonder if they could have recognised my symptoms, the way I hadn’t been awake to see sunlight for almost ten days and if they could’ve helped me before it was too late.

That was seven years ago and even though I will NEVER forget those twenty five minutes I did resolve to try every single day to never let it get that bad again, to talk to someone before I got to that point again, not for attention or a cry for help but to stop me from thinking of or consider carrying out such a dreadful, disgusting and selfish act. I Don’t know anyone who has commited suicide and I’m incredibly grateful and thankful for that because all I can imagine about the act is that it obliterates scores of lives close to you wondering why you did it, getting no answers and leaving only crippling guilt that they might have done something to prevent it if they did things differently.

I started my blog with the heaviest story of my depression not for attention or for validation, I would much rather you were disgusted at me for letting it get to that point then pity me but I wanted you all to see what the furthest end of the spectrum is that one can end up on and how I feel incredibly thankful that I never carried out this ragingly strong impulse. It wasn’t narcissism that made me write this it was a desire to share how much this mental disease can effect a person, even someone like me who you probably couldn’t have guessed suffers from it, a chirpy, cheerful chap. If you know me personally or even through Facebook you’ll know that I’m usually a happy joker of a man who enjoys laughing with mates and and having a good time more then most but the problem with depression is it doesn’t manifest visibly very clearly and it doesn’t mean you are never happy, it just means there is a small base level of unhappiness that lies there and of course you can shake it off for hours at a time even days maybe weeks if you are lucky but it is always there lurking in the background, ready to close in on you as you try to sleep or wake up in the morning.

I still deal with depression on a day to day basis but It has never been this bad since and so I feel as (un)comfortable sharing it with you as I do. It only really manifests for me these days in a sometimes overwhelming apathy and lack of drive to do things and an incredibly shaky sleeping pattern, I’m totally fine and have never been chronically depressed, these thoughts have never been a staple in my life but statistically speaking 169 of my 997 (17%) friends on Facebook have experienced these thoughts to some degree. All i wanted to do with this story and blog was to share how I deal with depression and ways I’ve found work for me to help me face opening my eyes in the morning and get up to do something with myself. I also wanted this blog and window into the weirdest 25 minutes of my existence to help people recognise what depression is, how it manifests and how and why you should do something about it before you get to this point. Cliched and corny as it sounds if one single person realises where they might be headed if they don’t see the danger coming and take actions to combat their situation then I’ll feel like it’s worth 20 mins of my time to write something they might find helpful. I like writing and I don’t do it enough so for me this is therapeutic – I’m not treating this like some sort of weird online therapy and I won’t discus the reasons I felt like taking the plunge. It wasn’t drug or lack of support related, I have a fantastic bunch of great friends who couldn’t be more supportive and decent and always had a fantastic relationship with my family, the problems didn’t come from there . That is all finished, the rest of the blog will be about how I deal with this weird backpack of feels that unzip and pop their heads up at bed time and when its time to wake up.

I’m still the exact same chap you know, the cheeky ape who sellotaped a dildo to his dome and went out as a dickhead for fancy dress at uni, still the same fool who suction cupped the prosthetic phallus onto the police care. Still the same bugger who’ll come to the park and make an idiot of himself trying to play football or run you down on the rugby pitch, the same one who’ll bust some wobbly shapes on the dance floor. Still the same lad that wore a hideously skintight bunny onesie on hockey tour in Rimini for four days and still the same berk who’ll come to the pub and choke on his pint with laughter with a group of buddies! Still the same Andy and friend you know.

Depression affects a lot of people and luckily mine is pretty mild but it’s worth keeping an eye on and worth combating at all stages.

More on my almost decade’s worth of depression to come but I promise it will not all be this heavy, I hope to be able to share with you things I have learned to help get over it and what I do when it becomes worse then the niggling feeling in my head. Thanks for reading and I hope you felt it worth your time.

*according to statistics from mind.org.uk