Some more history

It wasn't until the end of my first year of university that I learned what clinical depression was. At the time I wasn't coping, I had family worries, financial worries and I had just been betrayed by a friend in one of the most hurtful ways. (Maybe another day.) (Is betrayal anything but hurtful?)

I picked up the phone to talk to my father and he advised a trip to the doctor, my dad had been fighting depression for years, and it dawned on him that this might be a family trait.

Luckily I didn't have an arsehole for a doctor, I have had a few doctors over the years and you'd be surprised how many there are. He went through the usual checklist, appetite, sleep patterns, libido and so on, anyway clinical depression it was. So on the drugs I went, and in no time (well several months) I was as right as rain.

Of course being the kind of chap that I am, I then did a lot of research into the condition and realised several things in pretty short order. Most of them quite trivial, but I did learn to spot the signs of an imminent relapse.

The really horrible thing that I did learn, was that I had been chronically depressed for pretty much most of the last ten years.

As I mentioned yesterday, my lack of social skills wasn't the only reason I had a problems at school, one of the other ones was depression.

I managed to put a thin veneer of functioning personality on myself as a coping mechanism, I honestly though that everyone felt as shitty inside as me. I guess that was why my father had no inkling of the similarity of our problems. The end result was that I was miserable unnecessarily for the best part of a decade with an illness that could be easily have been treated with medication. Its not much fun fighting off thoughts of self harm for a decade I can assure you.

Cool huh? (Yeah for all values of "Cool" that intersect with "Fucking Tragic").

The end result was that my entire school career is littered with yearly reports where the main commentary, was not about the attainment, but about the attitude and effort. The teachers knew I was clever, they just thought I was an attitude case, all because I had no facility for generating enthusiasm or maintaining any motivation for doing the work.

I was the proverbial gifted kid with attitude, not one of the fuckers ever took the time to question why I was like that, so much for the child psychology part of their teaching various degrees! No it was far easier to make life harder for me by constantly giving me a hard time to perform to their expectations, while all the time that pressure added up till I was ready to hit the self-destruct button.

I never did press the button, I never tried to kill myself, I know people who did. I consider myself lucky in that regard, I coped until I got treatment, it wasn't nice but I managed to survive what a lot of people don't.

For those of you who were wondering, this is why work is hard work at the moment, and why my achievement levels are less than optimal. The enthusiasm is not here, and the motivation all but left some weeks ago. I think I know what has triggered this latest bout but we shall see how I cope.

Who's looking out for me now? Me.

Ah well you live and learn, C'est la vie.