Mental Health - How long is too long?

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By Nadene

It’s a question that I have asked myself a lot recently. I am not suicidal. I’m just completely stuck with my progress and totally fed up. I have had a more on than off relationship with mental illness for over ten years now. I know that is not uncommon but when you are in the midst of it, you feel completely alone and as if no-one cares or understands.

How long (1) - How long is too long? Sadly, too many people just do not feel able to write or say anything about their own mental illness.

After the birth of my second son in 2008, I was struck hard by severe postnatal depression. It took me several years to recover, including a year in hospital. I eventually came out of the other end a more thoughtful and caring version of the old me (that is my opinion anyway). Throughout much of my illness, I have been convinced that there was nothing actually wrong with me. That I have just become an evil monster who does not deserve to live. If I am completely honest, those thoughts still take up a lot of space in that messed-up head of mine. There are way too many dark thoughts that I still find myself fighting every single day.

A Human Yo-yo

In 2015, after a very stressful period, I became very depressed. You think you will see the signs the next time around, but mental illness is a sneaky little git. I was like a human yo-yo, bouncing between feeling ‘normal’ and crashing to rock bottom in the blink of an eye. I still didn’t recognise my illness. The combination of the above resulted in it taking too long to obtain the help that I needed. The evil monster was back with a vengeance. Yet, just as before, I seemed to be the only one who could see it.

After another four months in hospital, a lot of different combinations of medication and six electroconvulsive therapy sessions (which I had already been treated with for postnatal depression) I was released feeling the best I had in more years than I can remember. I felt that with a little more recovery, I would finally be able to return to the job I loved and to my life.

Thrown Out on the Scrap Heap

Things were great for a while, but I soon started spiraling. Through my employer’s private healthcare insurance, I started seeing a psychologist once a week and a psychiatrist every month or so. There were several changes made to my medication, but nothing made any difference. When I had been absent from work for two years, I was informed by a letter that my employer was starting the process of seeing if I could be retired early due to ill health. It was like a bad dream, something that I never even considered I would qualify for.

Four months and two independent specialist’s reports later, it was all over. It had been deemed that the possibility of me ever being well enough to return to work was ‘very unlikely’. There was no retirement party, no speech at work and not even a single retirement card. I had a meeting at home with my Team Leader, which I thought was going to be about what would happen next but to my shock and horror, it was my exit interview.

Bang! My career was over! In all honesty, I knew that I was not well enough to return to work but at forty-something, I felt as though I had been thrown out on the scrap heap and was no use to anyone.

Watching the World

It’s now a year later and my mental health is still getting worse. I am under the care of the secondary mental health team. For nearly a year I have been trying to get my medication changed. I know that medication alone does not cure a mental illness, but I have had more therapy sessions than you could shake a handful of sticks at! The problem lies in seeing a different psychiatrist every time, all who have very different opinions about my treatment.

I am still a contestant in every-day life. I get my two boys up for school, go shopping and keep on top of any basic housework. When the opportunity arises, I even manage to go out to see friends. Watching the world go to work and have ‘normal’ lives is extremely hard. I am not just sitting on my backside feeling sorry for myself. OK, well I’m not sitting on my backside!

Volunteering, Social Media and Friends

I have begun volunteering with Mind. To start with, I felt like shouting about this from the rooftops! I was finally doing something good with my life! Then I felt like I was just ‘bigging myself up’ about something that so many people just get on with doing. Once again, Nadene needs some attention! My mind is still a very dark place where everything is my fault, even the things that I have not been a part of. I’m still that horrible person (which has been proved by the people who have just stopped talking to me and won’t give me any reason).

I am a social media addict. I cannot go a day without posting something to let everybody know that I am still here, even though it is the last place that I want to be. Worse still, I know I drive people into not reading anything I have to say because it is mental health this and depression that. I get sick of the sight of my own posts, but I still have to write them. I need to know that someone out there thinks something of me.

Through a controlling previous relationship and the battering from mental illness, I do not have a great deal of friends. Most of the ones I do, I have only ever ‘met’ online. I sometimes wonder that without Facebook, I could quite easily slip into oblivion with only a handful of people ever noticing. Every day I get out of bed for my children and my husband. Every day it disappoints me to find out that I am still in the same low mood as the day before and the day before.

Not About to Give in

I have long ago lost hope of waking up feeling a little bit better, a tiny bit different, and I constantly wonder how many people I am going to upset today. There are only so many ways that you can say how you honestly feel before people get fed up of asking you and before you get fed up of saying the same thing, day after day. Most people stopped asking a long time ago anyway. Mental illness is hard enough for those who have it to understand. If you see that someone appears ‘normal’, the majority of people will think that there is nothing wrong with you, that you should just stop feeling sorry for yourself and get on with it.

I am not about to give in. I wish I had a penny for every time I have been told how lucky I am to have such wonderful children and a fantastic husband who has stood by me through everything, even if I do not show it, I do know. This blog is about how I feel, just me as my own person. I am pretty sure that I am not alone in the way I feel. Sadly, too many people just do not feel able to write or say anything about their own mental illness.

Reproduced with permission, originally posted here: skybluenadworldpresscom.wordpress.com