Endless sadness
A window into depression
Every story seems to be about happiness. Self-help guides abound. What are you selling with your condensed answers expounding the secrets to success? That sentence is a contradiction. To expound: “to give a detailed statement of, set forth”. To condense: “To make more concise; abridge or shorten”. Whatever it is it’s only ever brought me unhappiness and sadness.
I contradict myself daily. As an actor who’s been cast as a jovial gentleman but whose real life lover has told him she no longer loves him and is leaving with the kids… and the house. Outwardly I was forever happy, calm, and easy. Inwardly suffering from an endless sadness.
My story begins as a teenager. What now I long for was once normal for me. I bumbled through life; lazy and unaware. I couldn’t understand how anyone could be sad. Life was too good. I was too happy.
It came out of nowhere. Slowly crept up on me. Like glaucoma; imperceptible until too late. I withdrew from the world around me. Bit by bit rejected what kept me sane. Quit my job. Moved in with my parents. Locked myself in my room. Stopped calling people. Stopped answering the phone. If a social situation was unavoidable I would attend wearing my mask of happiness. Drink heavily. Disappear silently.
Months went by. No one noticed. Not even my parents. I stopped shaving — not that I had much to shave. Showered only when the smell began to sicken me. My anxiety spread to sound. I’d wake in the morning and listen. Listen to make sure no one was in the bathroom, or on the landing, or near the stairs. Making sure the coast was clear. Only then making a rapid dart to the toilet to release 11 hours worth of liquid pressing hard on my bladder. 11 hours. I was sleeping longer. Not sleeping; lying in my bed researching.
I’d become a diligent scientist. In four years of university, studying chemistry and then more chemistry, only one of those years can I claim to have worked. But now here I was in my lab. Studying hard. What’s the most painless way to die? How can I take my own life without harming anyone else? How much is a one way ticket to Beachy Head?
Countless times, the Samaritans saved me. I never called the number. Never heard their voice. Try searching suicide. Their number will turn up. It made me think of how hard life is for my mother already and how much harder it would get if I was to leave. My father, he’s strong, but he’s done too much for me to desert him now.
My saviour was unexpected. It was my brother who discovered my despair. He noticed it in my absence. We never got on. Not once until the age of 21. But he was there, when it came to it, he was there when I needed him most.
He’d seen it before. Perhaps in himself but certainly in his patients. A psychiatrist by trade. The success of the family — written with a touch of scorn, but also love. It started slowly, the recovery. Peppered with dips, relapses big and small, on the journey to somewhat normal.
The first steps back out in the real world were far from easy. I didn’t have anyone to call. 10 days of yoga for £10. It will get me out of the house. I attended purposefully and industriously. It gave me a glimpse of peace. But it wasn’t enough. I was still withdrawn — spoke softly, avoiding eye contact — but at least I was speaking.
On returning from an evening yoga session, I would sit downstairs and eat my dinner in front of the TV. This doesn’t sound odd to you, but for me, it was progress. It had been many months since I’d last remained in a public space for more than a few minutes. A space where someone could wonder by. It had also been a similar amount of time since I had last eaten a proper meal. Not snatched bitings when I was sure no one was around. For the next 8 months I attended a class almost every day.
I can’t tell you what helped me get through it. Perhaps it was time. Maybe I was never depressed at all. Just endlessly sad. But for 2 years there was no escape. And now I felt, on occasion, the warmth of happiness. For 2 years after that I did all I could to make myself better. Forced myself out into the world. Attended a silent meditation retreat. Rekindled great friendships that, at the heart of it, were never lost. For a while it all felt better. For a while.
It crept up on me again, in earnest, not too long ago. I’d had minor set backs before but this time was different. It was darker. A realisation that on my journey to recovery I’d gotten one thing wrong. What I do, or the way I do it, was dragging me back into the void.
I’d began working in a startup with a cause I believed in. But I knew what was coming. I could feel it happening. It culminated with a demoralising and embarrassing explosion of emotions in front of my colleagues. Driven by months of laziness and excuses, both theirs and mine. By the fear of poverty, if we didn’t get the work done and ran out of cash. And by desperate loyalty to someone who had put his faith, and all his money and love in us.
This time I know what to do for me. I’ve started working on it. But I know now that my battle with the sadness is ongoing. I can’t get complacent when it starts to feel ok. This is my new life; tolling away in the fields of happiness. Happiness takes work. Hard, laborious, back breaking work.
