Depression, Dyslexia and Excuses

Ok, not a happy title I know and this is a very personal blog. Before you ask, this is not a plea for attention, I find blogging cathartic and have been ashamed of this side of me for long enough.

I have lived with depression for as long as I remember, though did not realise it at the time. When I was young, it was just seen as me being miserable. When I was in my teens, it was seen as teenage mood swings. As I got older, it was just me being grumpy, moody and pessimistic.

Now I realise that it was depression, pure and simple.

History

I am not sure what the cause and effect analysis of all this is, so I just present a short intro to my life and you can decide for yourselves — I have given up trying!

When I first started at Woburn Hill (now St Georges College) aged 7, I was branded as stupid. This is not guess work or a feeling I got as a kid. My maths teacher said as much to my mother one day. I am surprised that teacher could still walk afterwards, as my mum could be pretty fierce when it came to defending me! The point was, the school gave up on me by the time I was about 8. I was hard to teach, terrible at reading, writing, spelling — anything important to the way a school assessed your abilities.

My parents decided that it would be a good idea to see if there was a better way to decide if I was thick or not — so took me to a specialist in London to be assessed. It turned out I was dyslexic but had an IQ in the top 10 percentile for the UK. Great, so I had “superior intelligence” as the report put it, but had no way to show the world! This was around 1985 and schools had not really started to accept dyslexia as a real thing. To their credit, my parents forced them to accept it and got me extra help.

The issue was — and my parents have never known this — the damage had been done already. I was thick, worthless and I knew it. That’s how my mind worked, I genuinely loathed myself. This was exacerbated by the fact I was also bullied — something that the school could not have cared less about. It is amazing how much damage can be done so early on in a life.

This continued for the next 10 years or so. I stayed in the same school, with the same people and the same attitudes towards me from them and myself. To be fair, as I hit 14 or so, there were some great teachers (Harry McHugh springs to mind), who saw something in me and put the work in to get the best out of me. It is worth noting that by then, I really was not a very nice person to the people around me. I had become anti-social and mean.

This was not helped by being diagnosed with M.E. at 16 — another condition that no one recognised at the time, even the doctor who diagnosed me got threatened by his practice to change the diagnosis! This meant that my only real release, sports (which I sucked at — but at least gave me a release), was taken away. Again, my parents were amazing and helped me to start playing the guitar instead — literally a life saver.

Things started to change at university after the first year or so. For the first year, I drank a lot, partied and made new — non-judgemental friends, who helped me sort myself out and get a new perspective on the world! By the time I left, I was almost normal.

Let me explain what I mean by that. I mean I had managed to hide almost everything about me that society frowned upon. I got good at the fake smile, suppressing the strangeness that I had developed and was able to function in the normal world in the way that was expected of me.

Near the end of university, I met the woman that I would later marry, the love of my life. A person who managed to love me in spite of everything society decided was wrong with me. She was and still is quite literally my rock.

Accepting Depression

I have accepted that I have depression. I have been diagnosed and I have had some help with it. However, “that” part of me that is buried still escapes from time to time, when things get me down it still surfaces. I find myself down in a hole and unable to climb out of the pit. The weird thing is, I know it is happening but still can’t stop it. I try, but it just doesn’t seem to be possible.

Most of the time it just displays as non-productive self-defence mechanisms. I distance myself from anything that some would see as important. That way it can’t hurt me. So, for instance, my writing. I love writing, but I do it for me. However, I distance myself from it at times so that negative (or even positive) criticisms can’t hurt me. This is not because I feel my work is beyond criticism. I genuinely have no expectations of anyone reading it or enjoying it. This is hard for some to understand. It is because if I let it hurt me, I would shut down and not do it anymore — to protect myself. That one runs on one side of my family.

Depression is not sadness or misery or just being a bit grumpy

Depression is not sadness or misery or just being a bit grumpy. It is an illness that is hard to control. There is no way to see a bright side when you are depressed. You can create amazing reasons and excuses as to why there is no positive spin on anything. In my case, I often find myself apologising for everything from being unhappy, to just existing. I then put the fake smile on so that others don’t have to feel awkward.

Thankfully, I have never had to miss work or anything important in my life due to depression. I am blessed by that and not everyone is!

Dealing with people who are depressed

One of the things that people often want to do is fix those with depression or any kind of mental illness. For myself I feel that there is nothing to fix, it is part of me. That doesn’t mean I want it to control my life, though. My trouble is that society often makes me feel that I am weak because deep down I want to get help to understand what makes me tick and how to make the best of it. Again, I don’t feel I need fixing, but at the same time, I would not mind a few rough edges smoothed down!

I want people to accept me for who I am, not who society says I should be. I don’t want to be made to feel ashamed because I have had a down week and for a day or two I can’t keep the fake smile up.

My advice to those who know people suffering from depression, or who suspect it, is to let them feel that there is no shame in being them, by treating them like normal human beings — because that is exactly who they are. If they are not doing well and you are truly concerned, encourage them to seek help. However, for Christ’s sake, don’t take them to one side and give them a pep talk, it is likely to get you a punch in the throat, no matter how well-meaning your intentions!

There is no shame in depression, just as there is no shame in seeking help with it. Society needs to grow up and accept this.