Failing Fast

As subtle as a brick

Dunno about you but for me depression comes with a frigging huge dollop of failure. The feeling of failure that is. And it's taken me bloody ages to work out why this is. I mean, I'm not ashamed of being depressed. God knows, that'd be the equivalent of feeling shame about suffering from lupus. Yet every day I get a moment of wondering whether I've been genuinely ill or just copping out. I know for a fact that the answer is the former but there's this nagging feeling that I've been dabbling with the latter.

Problem is that socially there's still a problem with mental illness and such a big bloody problem that even those of us who are genuinely ill are dealt with as if we're swinging the lead. I recall a time when I had to deal with the DWP about my benefit, having to make calls to my local jobcentre. And, by fuck, the way they dealt with me was appallng. I was spoken to as if I was taking the piss. When I was unable to make an early morning appointment because my meds rendered me too incapable, the snorting civil servant on the phone suggested they find a time that coincided with when I could be bothered to get out of bed. 
Now, this reminds me of something my mental health mole told me. Remember him? K-Fix? Well, here's what he says: "There's one human race rather than a league table of humans yet it's pervasive in society that mental health patients are at the bottom of the league table. 
"And just look at the DLA forms you have to fill in when you claim benefit because you're unable to work. Page after page you've been asked to prove how incapable you are so how do you feel when you've finished filling it in?" I can answer that. You feel a complete and utter fucking failure because you're unable to contribute both personally and professionally.
As K-Fix adds, "If you are told you're no good then you think you're no good. The messages are subtle but they're also clear."
He's not kidding. Everything from funding cuts to mental health services, benefit claiming, government messages, media reporting and even friends' reactions can carry those subtle messages that you're swinging the lead. The result? That however sick you genuinely are you've no excuses for letting down society with your unacceptable skiving. Yup, just when you feel about as shitty as you're ever going to feel, along comes society to make you feel even shittier.
I used to suffer at the hands of these assumptions but, by, fuck, I don't any more. Now I've realised that only I know what I am capable of and that this won't be dictated by idiots with generalisations. So every day I make a point of reminding myself of what I have achieved, whether it's a blog post, 20 mins at the piano or just managing a feeling of panic or doom. 
You can shove your subtle messages. I'll keep on doing things my way because, right now, my way is what's getting me back on my feet. Failing? No, I'm succeeding and against odds that could fell even the strongest of us. 

Hello? Hello?
Whoa! Look at how long it's been since I wrote a post on here. Sorry, my beloved kraken-loving gherkins. I've been all wrapped up in this 'ere blog instead which is, I admit, a doleful neglect of my depressive duties. It is, though, a spectacular form of therapy. Online ranting does wonders for my mental state and puts an inevitable spring in my step. I'm never perkier than when I've been indulging in my favoured profanities.
Anyway, I'm going to pick up the pace and will blog here a bit more often. While the effects of that vile fucking breakdown linger on - and, by God, linger they do - you can rest assured that I'll bang on and on and on about every last morsel of it. As ever, I politely request that you gird yourselves...

Sofa-lovin'

Beats a 10K run

Christ, I love a study that states the bloody obvious. And lo! in the nick of time one has come along: An NHS funded study, published in the BMJ, has decreed that combining exercise with conventional treatments for depression does not improve recovery. Well, no shit, Sherlock. 
The brains behind this study coaxed out 361 sufferers of depression, half of whom were helped to increase their activity levels (by beating the black dog off with a large stick perhaps). By the end of the study, though, there was no difference in recovery between the two groups. Problem is that current guidelines suggest that those in the grip of this stinking disease exercise three times a week. 
What, may I ask, the frig? My experience alone could have shown how exercise is about as helpful to depression as setting fire to your own farts. Over the years I've done everything from running and aerobics to yoga and gentle strolls and none of it did anything to prevent the oncoming freight train of depression.
Worse, when I'm in the grip of the black stuff the last thing I am capable of is exercise thrice a week. Jesus, during my breakdown I barely got out of bed for an entire year. I'll be fucked if I was capable for going for a spin around the local velodrome.
See, it's easy to prescribe exercise but the monumental effort involved in doing it when you are depressed is one frig of a different ball game. And I don't know about you but the pressure to exercise at the weakest points in my life was pressure I could have done without. My feeling of supreme uselessness was simply compounded by the fact that leaving the house for a 20 minute walk was beyond me.
So thank fuck that urgings to exercise your way through a breakdown are being tested.   Yeah, the effort is great when you are perfectly healthy but when you are not? Well, perhaps it's OK to occasionally curl into a ball and mentally hibernate until your brain has healed itself. It sure as shit beats forcing your carcass through a list of physical jerks while all your body wants is sleep.
Yet again, thank fuck for the NHS. And studies that, for once, make perfect sense.

Snap!

Hanging on

Dunno about you, but something scared the shit out of me when I first went to my local psych unit. I had this Gothic image of my CPN caging me, screaming, when I flashed him the foetid recesses of my brain. Fuck knows why. Logically, did I really think that I was his first interaction with someone who was, er, brainally challenged? Then again, logic didn't come into it back then. In fact logic didn't come into many things at all.
Anyway, I'm burdening you with this information because I've been chatting to my mental health mole, K-Fix. And you know what? He tells me that when patients come to him, not only does he have professional experience of plot-loss but he has experienced it personally too. 
Now that shouldn't be a surprise. But it did make me realise that none of us are infallible. Here's what K-Fix says: "My first experience of mental health problems was when a friend of mine, who was a father figure to me, went to a hotel and committed suicide. No one knew it was going to happen and he hadn't told anyone that he was feeling this way. It was terrible.
"Then some time later I went through some personal difficulties and I too became depressed.  
"These experiences helped me decide to go into mental health nursing when I was in my 40s.  If nothing else all of this has given me an insight into what my patients are going through." 
And isn't that all any of us want? Someone who knows what we mean and how we feel when we sit there blubbering or raving or panicking? And OK, we want the expertise too but remembering that CPNs, therapists and counsellors have all had their shit times makes one frig of a difference to anyone else having a shit time.
So here's a mad idea. Perhaps we should grill our mental health professionals on their own personal woes before we start spilling our own guts. I know, I know, it'd never work but I'd be more than happy to hand my fevered brain over to someone who'd suffered from their own stint of brain fever. If nothing else it'd be a kindred spirit to cling onto and that's a good start for any recovery dontcha think?

The Other Side

K-Fix he ain't

Breakdowns. Who'd have 'em? Well, queer thing is that I've met someone who makes a living out of the bloody things. By that, I mean making them better, not actually causing them. Well, not that I know of. I shan't bore you with the details of how I've stumbled upon this mysterious creature but stumble I have and he's been glorious enough to tell me one or two things about life on the opposite side of the appointments diary. Let's call him, I dunno, a kraken fixer, K-Fix for short. Ooooh, how down wiv da kids!

Anyhoo, from here on in, as well as regaling you with the tales of the dark side I'll be regaling you with tales from K-Fix. He's offered to give us a taste of what it's like to wrestle with mental health illness from a professional point of view. I know! How cool is this guy? 

So, you know how, when the black dog pissed over your leg, that you thought you'd be bundled into the nearest asylum? Or the mortification you felt at sobbing and snotting your way through Tesco? Or how you thought your counsellor would come over all Nurse Ratched on you? Well, K-Fix'll be grabbing our sweaty paws and leading us through the lot of it. He'll bust some myths, explain away a few fears, reveal his personal experiences of mental health snarl-ups and generally be a cooling flannel on the fevered brow of depressives everywhere.

So watch this space, my kraken-loving muffins. It'll soon be too helpful for words. And if the shock of that doesn't get you, K-Fix will.

Big Decisions

The inside of my head

I'll be buggered if I've noticed something oddball about my recovery from a breakdown: I haven't a bloody clue whether my judgement is sound. In fact, my ability to judge situations is now such a moveable feast that I'm about as bewildered as Katie Price after marrying a Muslim.
Now, I'm known for being loudly opinionated. And I continued to display this delightful quality throughout my mental decline and subsequent floundering. Problem is that during this stage of derangement my judgement of various situations didn't so much change as violently mutate. I'd utter stuff which, to me, sounded like distilled common sense while, to the rest of the listening world, sounded like the blabberings of a nutbag. For example, I was so convinced that I'd be locked away that I did all but stock up on postcards. And I was so absolute in my belief that I wasn't Kraken Junior's mater that I announced this to just about everyone who cooed over her.
Course, now that the clouds of doom are floating away I can see that these were the thoughts of someone who was keeping her right mind in a bucket in the shed. Yet when I make judgements now, I'm still not entirely sure what they are fuelled by: barkingness or crystal clarity. So every time I do make a decision about something, I dunno, whether to buy soup or go lion taming, I have to ask myself where my fevered decision is derived from.   
If it sounds exhausting, that's because it fucking well is. You know those people who analyse things to death? I think I've become one of them. Christ help me if I was expected to move house or take up a wildly different career. I'd think it into submission and then book myself into Broadmoor.
Course, this is getting easier. Seeing as no one, so far, has stumbled backwards, bug eyed, because I decided to plant lupins or wear purple eyeliner I'll assume that I'm not indulging in major lifestyle fuck-ups. I'll rely on social disquiet to alert me when my judgement becomes so alarmingly skewiff that I'm found casually barking messages in Klingon into a stolen policeman's helmet.
Until then, all I can do is practice. Practice at refining my judgements, that is, not speaking Klingon. I like to think I'll get better with time and then, God help the lot of you. I'll be back to my loudly opinionated self and that's when the social disquiet will really kick in.

Great Danes

Carrie-ing on. Geddit?

Whoa! What the frig have you been doing if you haven't been watching Homeland? Seriously, it's the depressive's telly of choice thanks to the goggling acting of Claire Danes as Carrie Mathison, the bi-polar, Sargent Brody-shagging/hassling CIA agent.
The series ended this week with Mathison choosing to undergo Electroconvulsive Therapy in an effort to rid her of her burgeoning illness. And, by Christ, it was the best depiction of a woman with mental health problems that I've ever seen. Seriously, there were moments when I forgot it was telly and I thought I was seeing into my own fevered mind. It made me do a little wee right there on the sofa.
Soaringly manic at one point, crashingly depressed the next, Danes' Mathison was a masterclass in what it's like to be fucked over by your own brain. While watching Danes go through all the stages of bi-polar disorder I had tooth-curling flashbacks to the moments when I have been engorged with panic, crippled with confusion, verging on hysterical, enflamed with rage and, finally, rendered physically and mentally immobile by impenetrable layers of darkness. 
Why in the fuck is it so rare to see anything like this on TV, outside of some Channel 4 come-and-see freak show? Because Danes' acting wasn't just a parroting of the realities of mental illness, it was done with what seemed to be a complete understanding of what it's like to feel scared, abandoned, angry, lonely, isolated and desperate. 
And, get this, it also made me feel ever so slightly proud to have a wonky noggin. In the grasp of her mania Danes managed to crack the conundrum that had dogged her and her colleagues throughout the series. I felt as if I'd been thrown a bone and reminded that while mental illness can be crippling there are lights along its long tunnel too. 
In those last few episodes of Homeland Danes' Mathison turned into some sort of idol for me. Not because she is superhuman, skinny and staggeringly glamorous, but exactly because she isn't. She's juggling her job with her mental illness and, just like the rest of us, the cracks show, gape and then you fall in. 
Thank fuck for that. Just when I, as a sufferer of depression, was feeling ignored by the world Homeland came along and gave me a teeny tiny voice. I can only hope that Danes' portrayal makes that voice louder and louder with every episode that passes.

The S-Word

Outdated in more ways than one

And you wonder why there's still a stigma attached to depression and suicide? Jesus, I've just listened to a news story on a radio show which included the details of someone who committed suicide several years ago. Problem is that the entire story was discussed at length but without a single mention of the S-word. Instead the person who had taken an overdose was said to have "died from depression". Excuse me?
Look, while depression really is a matter of life and death how on earth did the brains behind this story manage to discuss suicide without actually mentioning suicide? That takes a certain kind of genius, like the nuts who produce tampon adverts without using the word 'period' or Tena Lady ads that never, ever refer to wee.
What in the fuck is wrong with using the word 'suicide' when talking about suicide? Apart from the fact that this Medieval approach to a modern problem simply bolsters its outdated stigma, do the producers actually realise the impact this has upon listeners? Anyone feeling suicidal or living through the suicide of someone else gets just one message from the refusal to use the S-word on a show like this and that's another S-word: shame. 
As if thinking about killing yourself doesn't feel mortifying enough, now there's some implied hush-hush about the issue on a radio show. It's like telling sufferers that just when they felt freaky enough, society can make them feel even freakier.
Anyway, what in the frig did the producers of this show think would happen if they mentioned suicide? That there'd be a wave of listeners stampede towards Beachy Head or a run on paracetamol in Tesco?
The point is that this sort of refusal to speak openly about suicide simply makes the problem worse. It encourages suffers to keep their feelings to themselves, to rebuff help and support and to just plough on until suicide becomes the only, and shameful, way out. Just when they feel at their lowest, society comes along and stamps a heavy, dark boot onto what's left of them.
Thank fuck, radio discussions like this one are on their way out. Increasingly the media is treating suicide with the sensitivity and honesty and acceptance that it deserves. It's clearly not enough yet though, is it? Let's hope that any sufferers who were privy to this show realise that there's a problem although, this time, it's not with them.

Scaredy Cats

Not in Kansas any more

If there’s one really bloody hideous thing that comes gift-wrapped with the onset of a breakdown it’s this: fear. And not just any fear. I mean the sort of fear that makes sweat run down your back and freeze in the crack of your arse. And once it has set in it isn’t half a bastard to shake off.

It’s only recently struck me that this hairy demon of terror pervaded my every waking – and unconscious – moment when I was in the midst of my nuclear size mental meltdown. There was the fear that I was going mad, that I’d already gone mad, that I was going to be locked up, that Kraken Junior would be taken away, that my family would abandon me, that I’d never recover, that my mates would turn their backs on me, that I would never work again, that I would never contribute to society again, that I would never feel happiness again, that I’d forever be branded a failure as a human being, that the Tories would drag me through the streets and rub my nose in my illness and that the next time I decided to make a cuppa my shrunken brain would fall out of one ear with the pressure of it all. And that’s just when I was awake. When I was asleep the nightmares took over wonderfully efficiently, thank you very much.

This fear was one of the worst things about being on the business end of a breakdown. I continuously felt as if I was one utterance away from being bundled into a hospital van or left to the terrifying earnestness of the Social Services. Each time I was met with support the black-hearted little bastard sitting on my shoulder would whisper fresh threats into my ear.  “The GP will think you’re nuts”, “You think that counsellor will let you walk out of here?”, “That psych’s going to call the police on you”, “You think the therapist will let you see your kid again?”.

Which, oddly, was how the darkness became punctuated with the tiniest shards of joy. I recall telling my counsellor that I was having suicidal thoughts and he received this news with such a stunning lack of shock that I almost inverted myself with relief. He didn’t call in an armed unit, the Social Services or even press any hidden panic buttons. He just said, “OK” and proceeded to chat about it as if we were discussing the scandalous price of chicken breasts in Tesco.

You know those films where the star can see a huge friendly rabbit or some other weird creature but no one else can? The fear is like that. You feel it, live it, eat it and sleep it but no one knows it’s there. Not a single soul. So telling someone that, if they look slightly to your left, they might see that frigging enormous black dog slobbering all over you is one fuck of a leap.

It’s a leap that’s worth, well, leaping though. With every admittance of my mental state the fear has gotten smaller and smaller. It’s still there, the hairy little bastard, but it’s got one of those stupid little Alvin and the Chipmunk voices now, rather than a booming James Earl Jones number. The cold sweat still runs down the crack of my arse from time to time but something I’ve learned keeps me ploughing on though it: all I’ve done is get sick. And now I’m getting better. Perhaps there really is nothing to fear but fear itself after all.

Talking the Walk

Baby steps

Now, my Kraken loving lovelies, I'm going to drill a tiny hole in my skull and let you have a sneaky peek into my fetid, post-breakdown psyche. Fuck knows why, but you could say the same for this entire blog, so go with me.
After spending a year of my life in bed I got right out of the habit of exercising. Christ knows, I got right out of the habit of managing a decent shower so taking a daily constitutional was well out of my league. That was then. Now that I am recovering I've started walking again. Nothing too yompy, just an hour's walk every day to reacquaint myself with lactic acid and civilisation. 
There is, though, a snag. While I'm physically up to the task mentally I'm like a fucking newborn. In my head these walks feels completely and utterly beyond me. 
Now, I've been doing these walks five times a week for the last couple of months. So it's safe to say that I have evidence to prove that I can, indeed, walk. So why the fuck is it that every day I go through the same battle with the voice in my head over whether I'm  capable of leaving the house?
I blame Shit FM. That's what one of my counsellors and I decided to call the blaring, negative voice in my head, the one that unceasingly yells my supposed failings at me. Believe me, it's deafening. It's like having Celine Dion screaming at me about her ongoing fucking heart, day-in, day-out. And you wonder why I've been suicidal?
Anyway, every day when I shove on my trainers Shit FM is yodelling again. So I go through this process I've been taught, to mentally turn down the volume knob until said cranial radio station is on so low that I can actually sing over it's noise. See, I can't turn off Shit FM, but I can turn it down, so that's what I do.
Problem is, though, that because I can't turn off the radio of doom it's with me on my entire walk. From shuffling start to sweaty end, to the point that some days I think my only option is to sit down on the pavement and wait for someone to carry me to the safety of my bed. 
Take today. I fiddled with my mental knob and left the house but the evil radio in my head got louder and louder. Seriously, I stumbled up the street like I was dying in the Australian outback. Every step was its own individual battle. Each time I raised a foot my internal radio told me that I'd never make it. I'd sing over it but then the skirmish continued with the next step and the next and the next...
Even when I was 100 yards from my front door the voice was telling me to give up and lie on the pavement. And the bastard didn't stop when I got to the house. Then it started telling me that I'd never be able to open the front door and now, as I bash out this blog, it's telling me that it can't believe I walked at all, that it must have been a fluke.
See, this is the reality of my breakdown. On the outside I look as ordinary as any other bugger. Yet inside my head I scale Everest every single fucking day. It's crucifying and it's why I have no idea of when I will ever work again, as much as I feel like a heel for the long-term sick note. When doing the basics is this much of a slog, adding a job to it would turn me into an atomic incident. 
So I take my pride in the small things, like ignoring Shit FM for another hour or walking through what feels like a wall. It's not pretty but it's a start. I just hope that one day I'll actually get to see the finishing line.

The 'P' Word

No, not home sweet home

Whoa there! Come back! What the fuck did I say? Oh, was it my honest, yet cheery, response to your tentative question about my mental health? No? Oh, in that case it must have been the mention of the anti-psychotics I'm taking. Go on. It was, wasn't it? 
See, that's the problem with taking anti-psychotics in an effort to trip up my onwardly-stomping depression. The 'P' word terrifies people. So many people I know break into a sweat when I mention anti-depressants that by the time I mention anti-psychotics they're actually sweating spinal fluid. I find myself having to reassure them that I'm not carrying a knife, as if I were on day-release from Broadmoor's solitary confinement wing.
The reality is that low doses of anti-psychotics stabilise mood swings, a hideous, broiling symptom of depression. That's why I take them and that's why you'd have to prise them from my cold dead hands. Until I swallowed my first dose my mood swings were almost a form of entertainment. A ten minute timeframe would take me from skippingly joyous through to desperately suicidal all because I didn't like the way the mugs were stacked in the dishwasher. Counsellors tried to teach me how to halt the black moods as they came on. The problem was that they came on so rapidly that I didn't know they were happening until I was face down in the sneaky bastards. 
Then I started my love affair with anti-psychs and the wild mood-swinging abated to become an occasional mild sway. Course, I'm still prone to yelling at radiators and carpets if the mood takes me but at least I can now see said mood coming at me from a mile away. The anti-psychs buy me valuable, life-saving time to change the direction of my day.
Course, by writing this explanation, what I'm really trying to do is comfort those who think that anti-psychs are only for the deranged and sneakily armed. They're not. And I'm not. There's no scale of bug-eyedness that determines whether you take them and you don't have to prove a life-long dedication to ripping the legs off puppies either.
So do not fear the 'P' word. Just take a sigh of relief when you hear me babble about them. It at least means I'm one fuck of a more stable soul. It's when I come off them that you'll really want to worry. Boo!

Kipilicious

You said it

Course, when it comes to depression and new motherhood the killer blow is this: when you need your sleep the most you're denied it the most. Mother Nature, I'd just like to say thanks a fucking lot. 
It's all chicken and egg, whether it's the exhausting whipping out of your tits out four times a night that sets off the depression or whether it's the depression itself that worsens a pressurised situation until there's a deafening crack. Frankly, I don't give a shit which comes first. All that's important is the frigging mess it leaves you in. 
By the time depression had me by the throat I was knackered enough to forget my own identity. Seriously, I responded to requests for my name in the same way most people respond when they're asked the capital of Togo. Fucking clueless.
That's when sleep became an even greater priority than my own offspring. Not through choice but because I honestly thought that if I didn't sleep I would die. My breakdown was so severe that things like birdsong or more than one item on a table would cause a mental overload that resulted in yet another gobful of diazepam. Sleep and the chance for my brain to heal was my only method of survival.
That's when I told my psychiatric counsellors that I would never recover until Kraken Junior was removed from the house. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it sounds horrific but that's because I was one fuck of a desperate woman. I'd spend mornings asleep just to recover from the trials of the night and afternoons asleep just to gather enough energy for the post-creche chaos. That meant there was never enough sleep for my brain to mend itself.
You know this celeb malarchy, where A-listers get depressed and disappear into rehab in the desert for three months? Well, that's what I needed although that sure as shit isn't what I got. My family took on the lion's share of the strain and let me kip as much as I could but even then I felt as if tiredness was turning me to stone, crawling unceasingly from my toes up. Jesus, no wonder I was loop-the-loop.
And that's why juggling babies and depression is such a complete and utter fucker. Just like the process of heaving a newborn from your vag, the demands of your baby and the demands of your ailing brain leave you feeling torn in half. 
And that's one reason why I chucked in my career. So I could sleep. I now spend the 9 - 5 working on getting better and, believe me, recovery is a full time job. Fuck knows if I'll ever get a promotion back into the real world but at least I'm getting some shut-eye and right now that's all that I can do.

A New Normal

My kind of normal

You know what’s really pissing me off now that I am recovering from my breakdown? People happily telling me that I am almost back to normal. Now, I realise that this makes me sound like the arsiest kind of hag it’s possible to be without turning into Daily Mail columnist Liz Jones. And I also realise that it’s wildly ungrateful to get the hump over such generous praise.  So what the fuck is my problem?

Perhaps it is because I’m never going to be ‘normal’ again. Well, by that I mean I’ll never be the old me again, if it’s the old me that represents ‘normal’. So when anyone congratulates me on being almost back to normal it’s like congratulating me on being the old me. Problem is, the old me got me into this fucking mess in the first place. This chemical imbalance may have been visited on me like a pervert in the night, but the old me did a spectacular job of inviting it in, offering it a cuppa and warming its sweaty little slippers.

I like to think that I’ve learned a thing or two from sprint-finishing over the edge of reason and that includes knowing that I wouldn’t be the old me again if you paid me cold, hard cash to do it. It was too much like hard frigging work. I pushed myself to be brilliant at everything (although fuck knows if I actually was) and created personal goals that would have towered over the Burj Khalifa. As one of my counsellors asked me, when I told him that I’d been managing myself wonderfully for the last 40 years, “Yeah? And how’s that working for you?”. Fair point. Well made.

And don’t go thinking that my getting this hump over this particular kindness is about pessimism either. It’s not. It’s about optimism. Optimism that I’ve left behind the gnashing little demons that lived in my brain for the first 40 years of my life.

Apart from which, there is something about the whole getting-back-to-normal thought that feels like a negation of what I have gone through.  As if the breakdown is over and I can now put it behind me. Er, hardly. The fact is that my breakdown is evident every day, even on those days when I have to be restrained from skipping through fields the sunbeams. It’s changed me and not just for now but forever. Does anyone really drop their marbles so spectacularly before returning to life as if nothing ever happened?

The thing is I just have a new kind of ‘normal’ now. Not the old ‘normal’ but one that is slightly less bananas and a smidgen less destructive.  So, for fuck’s sake, don’t curse me with being back to my old self. Just ask me how the new normal is going. God knows, it might even raise you a smile.

Tall Tales

I can't believe it's not better

As if being sucked down into the plughole of depression isn't bad enough, you know what makes it one fuck of a lot worse? Explaining it to your offspring. And no, I don't mean giving them some deep psychological insight into the workings of the overloaded mind. I mean saying something, anything, to both explain and brush off the fact that you are sobbing into the margarine tub as you knock up the breakfast.
In short, it's a bastard. Kraken Junior, my four year old, has heard every crappy excuse this side of an episode of The Jeremy Kyle Show. As far as she's concerned my tears are my instant retort to anything from the stumping of toes to the fact that I can't find a pen. And fuck knows what she must think of my dexterity thanks to my well-worn excuse of having hurt my finger. She probably thinks I've got some unnatural relationship with a cheese grater or a fetish for paper cuts.
And yeah, there have been times when I've explained that mam is sad and that's why she has snot pooling on her chin. In my experience - and shit knows, I've had a lot of it - the trick has been to couch this in terms that only a four year old kraken can understand. I've recalled a time when she lost her teddy or - hysterically, I admit - walked into a door and then tell her that I'm going through something similar because that's just life. 
The thing is, all of this reasoning and excusing and bare faced lying boils down to the same thing; the fear that lurks in every depressive's breast, that witnessing their illness, panic, sadness and general barkingness will scar their kids for life. I've read enough tales about kids recalling little about their childhood other than their mother never getting out of bed or their father being wild eyed with mental illness. I'll be buggered if I want Kraken Junior to end up writing Mis-Lit too. That, though, is just bloody fabulous in theory. The practice it's a thousand times knottier.
I recall being in a psych unit after a particularly difficult weekend and having to explain what had happened to a couple of counsellors. Fair play, I hung on in there well until one of them asked me about Kraken Junior. I explained that she hadn't witnessed any of my distress as she'd been out cold at the time but one supercillious fuck still told me that this was no environment for a child to live in. Thank Christ Conjugal Kraken was there. He came in handy by wrestling me back into my chair. That's because even in my darkest moments I have done everything and anything to protect Kraken Junior from the reality and I've done a fucking good job of it too. 
Course, as I recover there are far fewer tears and as far as Kraken Junior is concerned mam's gotten better at handling that new fangled cheese grater. I don't hurt my fingers or toes half as much these days. Mind you, the margarine is occasionally runnier than it should be. 

Knocked Up

My kind of baby bump

You'll be thrilled to hear that this weekend I read something that made my head explode. It was an agony aunt-type column about a woman who was suffering depression after giving birth to the child she thought she'd never have. And all I can say is hallel-fucking-ujah.
You know, I actually, really and truly thought that I was on the only person who had gone through this. After a thousand years of a health problem that had caused infertility, somehow I managed to get knocked up. Problem was that when the rest of the world was rejoycing about my miracle baby and how I'd managed to kick the odds up the arse I was plunging into the mental health equivalent of a nuclear meltdown over the sudden destruction of my identity.
Within 60 seconds of wizzing on a pregnancy testing kit I'd gone from being a 36 year-old, happily infertile woman to a 36 year-old mother-to-be. And this, after twenty years of being told that it would be easier for me to climb the Eiffel Tower with my tongue than have kids. 
Jesus, no wonder I went on to have a breakdown. Thing is, while my body was playing host to the burgeoning form of Kraken Junior, my brain was playing keepy-uppy with the pre-pregnancy, career-chasing, travel-loving Kraken. Talk about the perfect fucking storm. It's no wonder that the first time I felt KJ kick my hand through my belly I screamed with horror. 
Worse, everyone was so deranged with joy at my news that my mental carnage went unnoticed. I was told a million times that I must be thrilled, that my baby was here for a reason or that I was unbelievably lucky. All of which, while heartfelt and natural reactions, made things even worse. Not only was I not coping with the fact that I had gone to sleep one person and woken up another but now I was the mam-to-be of some Christ-like figure who was here for some mysterious and wonderful reason. How the fuck the Virgin Mary never lost the plot is beyond me. I'd have kicked the donkey to death and told the three wise men to go fuck themselves.
Problem is, no one ever thinks to ask how you are feeling at times like this. It's assumed that you are with child and therefore must be chuffed to fuck. It's not that black n white though is it? Pregnancy tests don't come complete with party poppers. I was about as far from chuffed to fuck as I could get without being on Death Row. It's just that no one knew it. Anyway, how do you tell people who are actually, physically skipping about at the news that they need to take it down a peg or two? Well, don't ask me. I still haven't got a bloody clue.
Course, now that KJ is here, running amok and asking 'why?' like she has exclusive rights to the frigging word, I can see that she is the best thing in the world. But before you sit back in your chair to give me a satisfying I-told-you-so I've paid a heavy price for it. I've had nine months of panic, four years of depression, two career collapses, several thousand milligrams of anti-depressants and anti-psychotics, ten months of therapy and one breakdown that's wiped out the person I used to be forever. 
But yeah, KJ did come here for a reason. And if that reason was to ask me daily why cups are round or what makes yellow not red, then I've seen the light. It just blinds me sometimes, that's all.

Boo!

Yup. I have this effect on everyone.

You know what's the bat shit craziest thing about having depression? No bugger ever asks you how you are. Well, no bugger outside the circle of family and close friends, that is. It's as if my depression is a grenade and that asking "how are you?" will yank out the frigging pin. That'll also explain the look of abject fear that I see on some faces, as if I'm perpetually on the verge of going postal. At least, I hope it will.
What the fuck is it all about? I've had the mental equivalent of a train crash but no one ever mentions it. If I'd just recovered from a broken arm or a gall bladder removal I suspect I'd have no end of questions about my fluctuating health. Yet recovering from a breakdown seems to befuddle said well wishers into such a deep state of panic that they're rendered incoherent. 
Twice in recent times I've been invited to mates' places for grub only to feel as if I'm making everyone so maniacally uncomfortable that I'm better off nipping to the chippy. Seriously, I've sat at tables where everyone has been asked about their work, kids, hobbies, views on whatever-the-fuck but I've been asked little more than to pass the salt. And when I have chipped into conversations - offering vignettes on day to day life, say - everyone shifts as if they've collectively had pins stuck in their arses. Some mates' dates have even turned into interviews because they have been so scared of asking me anything that I have simply fired questions at them in a hideous effort to keep the conversation going. I come home exhausted at having made sure that everyone else is having a good time.
Thank fuck I'm able to talk to my close friends and family. My best mates will happily ask me how I am doing, crack jokes about my ongoing banana-ness and offer all manner of wonders when I am mid-meltdown. And behold! None of this has ever come even close to pushing me further over the edge than I already am. In fact, I'd rather a stammered and panicky "how are you?" rather than no "how are you?" at all.
Then again, p'raps this is the price I'm paying for being so open about my depression. Had I spent the last two years sobbing and gibbering yet glossing it all over with a "No, I'm fine!" then perhaps everyone would feel more comfortable about me losing the plot. They could pretend that my marbles had done anything other than rolled away.
Thing is, though, that would have made everyone else feel better but it would have sent me straight to B&Q for a length of rope. And I'll be fucked if I'm going to let politeness kill me. You know, when it comes to being bat shit crazy I reckon I'm the only sane one out there.

New Year's Revolutuion

Happy New Year, like

Funny thing, losing the plot. it doesn't half change your priorities. In fact, it doesn't just change them, it gives them a sound buggering before dousing them in petrol and attacking them with a flame thrower. 
Take this new year malarchy of list making, goal setting and generally piling on the pressure until you sweat spinal fluid. Prior to the loss of my marbles my new year's eves were laden with fevered promises to write books, crack new editors, run marathons and travel to far flung outposts with nothing but a toothbrush and reversible knickers. I'd usually do what I promised I would too. 
Then I found myself sailing up Barking Creek on HMS Nutbag. Suddenly the steaming urgency to swim for the Olympic team or knock out 10,000 words of award-winning literature per day was, pardon the technical terminology, pushing my luck all the way to Fucksville and back. In fact, mid-breakdown you could have tasked me with showering after remembering to take off my pyjamas and you'd have been bitterly disappointed. I used to stare at the kettle because I couldn't remember when it did, for shit's sake, and panic when there were too many baked beans on my fork. In the blink of an eye I'd gone from glowing over-achiever to being bewildered to the point of insanity and with the functioning capacity of a gin-soaked toddler.
Which is why, post-breakdown, all this new year pressure to do, do, do looks to me like a big bag of bollocks. So my resolution for 2012 is to have no resolutions. I have absolutely no intention of making 2012 my big year by publishing a novel or bagging a column or swimming the channel. My only vague requirement for the following 365 days is to survive them, ideally with a modicum of mental faculty, by exactly this time next year. 
See, having been tossed so far into the hole of depression means that even the slightest gains become towering achievements. I can read a book without becoming so overwhelmed that I cry, which is my new version of writing a book. I can spend two hours with Kraken Junior without needing help and support, my replacement for marathon running. And I'm capable of basic hobbies, which will replace 2012's attempt at forging ahead in my career.
All of which makes for a happy new year. The lack of pressure is glorious as is my contentment at what I've achieved since my marbles rolled under the sofa. Which means that January 1 won't be the first day of anything. It'll be another day of something and that, for me, really is the greatest achievement of all. 

In the Dark 2

Just one word

I would apologise for blogging more thoughts about Gary Speed's death but you should know me better than that by now. I'll blog whatever the frig I like, ta very much. 
Today the former Wales player Dean Saunders said, amongst other things, "I just wish I could have spoken to him before...maybe I could've just said something". He won't be the only one of Speed's friends n family who are thinking exactly the same thing today.
That's one of the cruel ironies of depression and suicide. The person who is depressed feels so worthless, trapped and desolate that to them it is unimaginable that anyone could care about them. Meanwhile they can be surrounded by those very carers, who love them and want, more than anything, for them to be well again. And the line between a depressive succumbing or surviving can be marked by just a few words.
When I've suffered from depression the one subject that everyone has studiously avoided is suicide, as if the mere mention of the word will have me jumping off the nearest cliff. Yet I'd have thought of that particular way out long before anyone else has dared to mention it. Problem is that whenever the subject of suicide has been avoided it has simply added to my loneliness and isolation and general feeling of freakery. Believe me, I've felt utterly fucking bananas as it is without feeling as if I'm the single person on the planet who is harbouring such a thought. 
In fact when I was referred to the local psych unit last year it was a revelation. It was like living in a parallel universe where suicide was as openly discussed as Katie Price's latest tit job. My counsellor would ask me if I was feeling suicidal, I would say yay or nay and then we would just, well, chat about it. No raised eyebrows, no judgement, nothing. And no it didn't push me over the edge or give me ideas about ending it all. In fact all it did was help. Just telling someone that I was suicidal was enough to help lift the terrible weight that I carried alone.
So now I wander about the place like the grim reaper, openly bantering about death and suicide. My honesty has led to a few people telling me about their own depressive feelings and the first thing I ask them is: are you suicidal? They either stumble backward in horror and say "Christ, I'm not that bad!" or they grasp at me with the relief that they aren't the freaks they thought they were.
Course, the first step in helping someone is even realising that they are depressed and that's why Gary Speed's suicide is such a shock to those who knew him. They simply had no idea that he even felt that way. What, in that case, could they have done? 
If there's one cruel lesson from this event it is that Speed's friends and family will be more likely to spot depression in someone, and more likely to talk about it, than ever before. That lesson has come too late for Gary Speed but perhaps it is just in time for the many other depressives who walk among us feeling lonely and unloved. 
Dean Saunders is right. Maybe you could just say something and save someone's life while you're at it.

In The Dark

What is there to say?

Hard to believe, I know, but this won't be a rant for once. Gary Speed, the Wales footy manager, died today as a result of suicide - hanging (allegedly) if you want the specifics. Now I know fuck all about football or, for that matter, Gary Speed, but I do know a little bit about suicide or at the very least what pushes you to it.
Read the reports about Speed's death and they're choc full of quotes from people who are shocked and saddened. He had been harbouring feelings that he felt could only be resolved by suicide although this was clearly completely unknown to those around him. He'd even been a guest on BBC's Football Focus just hours before taking his life. Can you imagine how lonely and desperate it is to feel such misery and desperation while pretending that everything is alright? To banter on a TV show about football when you feel about as worthless as it's possible to feel?
Well I can (except for the footy bit), thanks to a fuck load of depression and my recent breakdown. And that's the problem with suicidal feelings isn't it? No one knows about them. You don't bounce through Tesco with a knife to your wrist even though every step feels like the last one you ever want to take. You don't neck fistfuls of paracetamol at dinner parties even though you would give anything for the chance. And you don't answer the daily water-cooler "How are you?" by weeping, "Fucking terrible actually. My family would be better off without me and I just want to end it all by stepping in front of a bus".
That's one of the awful tragedies of Speed's death. That he must have felt and thought of those things over and over again before deciding upon his final heartbreaking act. And the shock of those around him is testimony to how well he kept those feelings hidden when they must have been eating at his every waking moment. Ironically, that takes enormous strength at the very point when you feel you have none left.
I've been suicidal and at crisis point and feel desperately for Gary Speed. I don't know why he did what he did but we probably shared the same thoughts, just as many suicidal people do. The loneliness, the isolation, the desperation, the darkness and the overwhelming feeling that the world would be a better place if only you weren't in it. 
Luckily my family and professionals got to me in time. I've been given the chance to grow old with Conjugal Kraken, kiss Kraken Junior goodnight and blog complete and utter bollocks. It's desperately sad that Gary Speed hasn't had that chance. All I can hope is that wherever he is now, he's free of the darkness that led him there.

Amateur psychiatrics

If I wasn't nuts before, I am now

Have just read a column about when to terrify friends and family with the news that you are suffering from depression. I, The Kraken, came out as a depressive years ago but still go through the same ole routine every time I meet someone new.
And you know what? Telling people about your mental health status is a piece of piss. The hard part is the reaction of the recipients of said information. Seriously, you could announce yourself leprotic by waving a three-fingered hand in the air and get a better reaction.
Course, no one knows how to deal with it. They don't know whether to console, sympathise or just slowly back away from the lunatic. What I have learned though, is that there are some things you never, ever say to a depressive. Wanna hear them?


1. "Oh, stop being so negative."
That's right, because negativity is such a cool lifestyle choice! Hey, I was sick to fuck of being happy all of the time so I figured that instead of going on holiday this year I'd tinker with a noose.


2. "Just read a funny book or watch a funny film."
Excuse me? You genuinely think that spending an afternoon with Will Ferrell is all the treatment I need? I've sobbed away three months in bed, given up my job and can barely leave the house and you think the solution lies in Jim Fucking Carey?


3. "What have you got to be depressed about?"
Well, how about inane comments like that one? What, do you think I'm considering suicide because I've run out of frigging teabags? 


4. " Oh I was depressed too, when I couldn't get into my dress." 
So putting on a few pounds pitched you into the darkest and most isolating hopelessness, so deep that even psychiatric clinicians could barely reach you? And you begged for admission to a psychiatric ward? And you spent weeks stockpiling paracetamol? And...oh, no, I didn't think so.


At the risk of ranting (even more) I'll stop there. But, believe me, I'll come up with more of these gems as the blog wears on.

Nut Notes

Aye, it's been a tidy day

Gird yourselves, my blog-chomping munchkins. I have news, for today I was officially discharged from my local psych unit. Yush, after 18 months of depression and a year of clinging to counsellors while pawing at them for medication it has been decreed that I am fit n well enough to be released back into the wild. Feel free to arm yourselves with whatever comes to hand.
Mind you, while I have been reunited with my faculties there are situations when I retain the right to lose the slightest grip on my marbles once again. Here they are:


1. When within a two mile radius of any supermarket
2. When within a ten mile radius of Asda
3. When I see anyone driving while on a mobile phone
4. When I see anyone driving while on a mobile phone, and driving like a fat-handed twat
5. The rape of the English language via text speak or badly bandied-about apostrophies
6. Anything involving condiment-tossing TV chefs
7. Any show that appears on BBC1 or ITV1 at 9pm on a weekday. Whatever it is, it'll be some televisual social morphine that has all the challenge of a bucketful of Sudocrem.

Stuff, like

Me, sporting the natural look

Chances are that if you’re reading this pile of pish you want to know what I’m up to these days. Merrily, not much. I’m a regular Barbara Cartland of a Kraken these days, swathed in puce chiffon while barking utter shite from my chaise longue. Short story is that the black dog of depression bit me on the arse in April 2010. Problem was that the flea-bitten bastard gnawed on me until my plot was well n truly lost, I became a psychiatric patient and I rattled with joyous amounts of medication.   

That’s when I chucked in freelance journalism.  Not an easy decision because, frankly, I was good at it. But honestly, if I had to crawl up the arse of one more fucking editor, prattle with one more PR or chase yet another late payer (you stingy shits know who you are) I was going to be even less responsible for my actions than I already was.  And I speak as someone who already takes anti-psychotics.

Now? Well, I’m almost recovered although still nicely medicated. I have my hobbies – dressmaking,  learning to play the piano, reading (I’m like an extra from Pride n Frigging Prejudice) – and may have to add blogging to that list of keep-me-off-the-street activities too. Let’s see how that last one goes though, eh?