My journey with depression, chronic fatigue syndrome and borderline personality disorder. Part one.

This post may be a trigger. And remember it is very individual, so take it out of it what you need and disregard what you don't.

The trouble started when I started senior school. Everything was fine until I moved to senior school. I had no mood issues, as far as I was aware, up until then. I was placed in a class of people I didn’t know except one girl. We had been friends, in a way, at primary and junior school. Sharing an interest in horse riding, she had her own horse and I would impose myself on her to get as close to her horse as I could. The relationship was fickle and not deep rooted but we knew each other, however in senior school she paid me no mind and I was more or less left on my own. 

The friends I were closer to were in a different class with a completely different timetable to mine so I had no one to sit next to in class and no one to hang around with at break or lunch time. They'd made new friends and having a hanger on wasn't an option.

I started to dread school and spent every Sunday evening crying myself to sleep as I didn’t want to go to school on Monday. I had no one to talk to about it but it was noticeable at school and my very kind form teacher asked me what the matter was. I told my form teacher only a tiny bit of the story, one problem was that I was left in the dinner hall on my own. I found it very intimidating eating on my own with a table of unknown or older kids, it got to the stage where I wouldn’t go in to the dinner hall at all and spent my lunch hour trying to find places to hide and trying not to cry.

My form teacher asked the only girl I knew in the class and her new best friend to go into lunch with me, I felt like a burden, although they were with me in the queue they never spoke to me and if I hadn’t finished my lunch they would leave without me. It didn’t solve the problem, only made it worse. 

The crying continued and I stopped eating, virtually all together. My brother was a year above me at school but he chose to ignore the very embarrassing younger cry baby sister and continued his tirade of teasing at home, the usual brother/sister stuff, not just the fact that I was a crying freak at school.

Eventually after months of tears I was moved forms to be with some of the girls I had been closer to in junior school. I was relieved but it started to cause trouble. I felt I fitted in much better in that form as there were kids from the same sort of background as me. I got close to a girl called Amy, who had become close to Lisa, my friend from junior school, and Lisa did not like it at all. She became jealous. What made it worse was that I was attracting male attention especially from a boy Lisa was smitten with. She started to turn against me and loyalties were divided. Luckily, by this time, the tears had stopped but not the last thing I wanted was my insecurity to cause friction with class mates.

Within the year things settled down amongst us, with the odd fall out, and my emotional state was less volatile however another mood descended and by the time I was 14 I had taken a blade from a pencil sharpener and started self harming. The pain was a relief from the awful empty yet disorganised feeling I felt inside. I was still prone to emotional outbursts and very dour feelings. I remember saying to a friend that I would die, one day, by committing suicide. It didn’t help that I became friends with a girl who thought being dark and moody was cool. Enter the Gothic stage.

At 15 I started going out with an older boy and felt I was madly in love. I was clingy and possessive and it didn’t sit well at all as you can imagine Although he didn’t dump me, he backed right off and I felt confused and upset. I thought I was loosing him and I was terrified. It came to a head and I ended up slashing my left wrist one night with a razor blade. One small cut about an inch across. Hardly a suicide attempt but that’s what I thought it was at the time. The nurse who attended to me in Casualty told me to talk to my Mum when I had problems. I agreed just to keep the peace but I knew I wouldn’t, I couldn’t talk to my Mum about anything.

I remember wanting to ask my Mum for a bra when I was around 12 as I was the only one still wearing vests at school. I sat with the catalogue open at the underwear page on my knee one evening for what seemed like hours. She must have known I wanted to ask her something as I kept looking at her. She ignored me. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. I didn’t start my periods until I was 14, the last one of my friends, it wasn’t until then could I say anything to my Mum. I didn’t know how to approach her and tell her I had started but it was such an awful first period I had to ask for help.

To add embarrassment to the fact I had self harmed, my Dad was called back from work that night and gave me a lecture on paying more attention to school rather than boys. I wasn’t close to my Dad at all and I was mortified.

I had been to my family doctor about my feelings asking for help before my first self harming incident and at seventeen he referred me to a psychiatrist. I didn’t tell anyone I had been referred but by the time the appointment came through I had already hurt myself. I still attended the appointment though as I was still feeling vulnerable and down.

It was at a clinic about 15 miles away from my home and I drove there by myself and no-one knew. I was too embarrassed to tell anyone. Doctor Clayton was apparently a good friend of my GP so I thought I would be safe in his hands. He seemed ok but I was very nervous, he asked me a few questions about myself and my family and why I come to see him. I told him I thought I was depressed and had harmed myself, he told me that sometimes cancer can cause depression therefore he wanted to examine my breasts and asked me to take my top and bra off and lay on the coach. The examination seemed genuine but despite my naivety I knew it was wrong and I felt uncomfortable. After the examination I was very keen to leave as soon as possible and after a very short consultation of which I do not remember a great deal about other than him saying if I felt I needed to come back I would be welcome and to tell my GP.

I nodded and headed out the room at speed and did not ever return. I told no-one, not my Mum, not my GP, not my friends. If that was the treatment I got from asking for help then I didn’t want it, I would battle through on my own.

I kept my feelings under wraps from then on until I had another failed relationship around the age of 18. There was a pattern forming; time I made more of a mess but it was still self harm rather than a suicide attempt. A way of calming the churning feelings inside I had no idea how to deal with.

The scars got me no where apart from a little short lived peace, permanent scars, lack of a boyfriend, and ridicule. My mum and dad returned from a few days away, mum found me in bed and I told her what I had done, she seemed almost sympathetic. I can’t remember what she actually said but I can see her sitting on the edge of my bed looking down to me and me not able to look her in the eye as I was so ashamed.

I was in turmoil also as I was about to start training as a nurse. I had flitted from job to job not knowing what to do with myself. I hadn’t worked hard at my exams as I was pretty depressed towards the end of school and the teachers strike was on so teachers weren’t always around. I rode my bike to school, signed in, then bunked off. I remember sitting on an old stool in the kitchen crying to my mum about how crap I felt and didn’t know what to do with myself. Again, I can’t remember what she said but I don’t think it was very helpful. She wasn’t very good at counselling.

I got the sack or rather ‘let go’ from one of the jobs I did in my teens as they didn’t think I was suitable for the job in the probation time. I got one of the bosses to drop me at my Grans’ house so I wouldn’t have to face Mum. As I walked up to the house and round the back I could hear Mum’s voice and knew I’d be in trouble.

I saw a social worker at one point about things but again it didn’t really amount to any form of diagnosis or counselling.

I just thought I was mad and a bad person.

Nursing was the distraction I needed for a while although I was still suffering periods of extreme tiredness, unease and emotional instability. Mostly my moods were calmed by a new found activity of drinking. It was a big thing to do while we were training. I started drinking pints, a big step from my usual Malibu and coke! The alcohol calmed my rages and soothed my loneliness but equally exacerbated the depression up to a point where I was paralysed with emptiness. My best friend and a guy who lived in the nurses home with us tried to make me cry by plying me with cheap white wine and making me watch a sad film. I remember nothing of the film but the alcohol made us larey and we did silly things that night such as dressing up in a long blonde wig I had and taking stupid photos. It was a great night! The next day I was terribly hung over and although I drove us to work I wasn’t legal and had to ask the nurse in charge if I could go home. She wasn’t pleased but I’m sure she could see I was in a state and not fit to be there.

I ended up, a few weeks later, going back to the GP who had referred me to the pervert psychiatrist and asking, once again, for help. I was put on prozac. The same evening my best friend and I went bowling with colleagues we were on a placement with and I was off my head. I was on cloud nine. Someone had finally listened to me and done something constructive about my plight. My best friend remarked on how high I was. I thought it was great as finally the dullness of the depression had lifted.

It didn’t last long though and soon I was struggling to get out of bed again and continuing my studies was hard work.

I didn’t stay on Prozac for long as I thought it wasn’t doing a great deal and I didn’t want the stigma of being on it following me around. There was a bit of press about nurses with mental health problems not being allowed to qualify. It was the time of the Beverly Allitt killings so mental ill health in nurses was being highlighted. I hid my scars as much as I could and not taking the drugs meant I wasn’t ill. I wasn’t anything like Beverly Allitt but I didn’t want labelling as a risk because of my history.

I qualified in December 1993, on the 18^th I dislocated my knee cap. It was to be the starting point of a slide into the worst time of my life. I was having a reasonably good time up until then. I had a boyfriend and I was loving work. I had just landed a job on the ward I was on for my final placement. It was a great ward and I had a great laugh with the people I worked with. I was helping a patient get off a commode when he fell a little and I twisted to help him get on the bed rather than hitting the floor and my leg twisted round and my knee cap popped out. It took a few seconds for my brain to register the pain but when it did I hollered like a banshee.

I was put in plaster in casualty and called my Mum to come and pick me up, it was 18th December. I was still wearing the plaster at my mum’s funeral in February the following year. It led into a slide of out of control behaviour and self destruction.

I was encouraged to see someone by some concerned work colleagues. I contacted Cruise bereavement counselling. The counselling helped me get things in order in my brain and talk about issues I had surrounding Mum’s death but the counsellor told that me one day that I would go the whole day and not think about Mum and I was mortified. Terrified that would be reality. And to this day I still think of her everyday. The pictures of her face got fuzzy after a few months and I had awful dreams about her; she’d be leaving on a train and I hadn’t said goodbye or she was in hospital and I couldn’t get in to see her. I’d wake up feeling exhausted and washed out.

A few months down the line I persuaded my Dad to give me some money to put a deposit on a house from the money he got when Mum died. I thought it would be a new start. I didn’t put my current boyfriend on the mortgage, I suppose I knew it wasn’t going to last.

Despite having the house, I still felt empty, although buying stuff for the house and settling in took my mind off it for a while. I started to crave my freedom from my boyfriend and started to hang out with my immensely trendy best friend again. I’d turned into a frumpy, mumsy type and she was very rock and roll. My boyfriend and I hit the skids and when he became needy as he’d started a job he hated, I couldn’t cope with it. I know, very selfish. But I felt suffocated and wanted to let my hair down. I’d go partying with BF (best friend) and thought of myself as rock and roll as her, but I wasn’t. She was beautiful and I was neurotic. She attracted lots of male attention. I repelled it. It was frustrating. Meanwhile ex-boyfriend would be hanging around coming to mine in the middle of the night after a night out and constantly ringing my door bell, which was hooked up to the mains, so I had no choice but to let him in. Then face a couple of hour’s verbal abuse. Nowadays of course I wouldn’t stand for it and would call the police. But back then it wasn’t thought of as an option.

I started taking drugs mum had been given for pain relief as well as drinking heavily. I once won a bottle of vodka, drank a pint, neat and took a tab or 2 and cannot remember locking myself in the loo or that someone had to climb over the top to let me out. I made a complete fool of myself on the dance floor with a junior doctor I fancied but didn’t fancy me back.

Then when the drugs ran out I became very depressed but a distraction was waiting in the wings in the form of a male. My bf was house sharing with a colleague of hers and she had started seeing her house mates brother. They would come round and sit with us watching TV and drinking tea and having a laugh. I wasn’t aware that the mate fancied me as I was sort of seeing a friend of my brothers at the time, which was an awful experience, but wasn't on the look out. But somehow we got together and started seeing each other after I had ended the relationship I was sort of in. Bearing in mind this was only just over a year after Mum had died and I was going through a hypomanic phase, not that I knew that at the time though. 

He was smooth, tall, and a charmer. I fell for all the bull. My bf and his bf and us two made a good team for a while, enjoying time at my house and doing stuff together then it started to go wrong.

He had been staying at my house on his Uni holidays and one night he took me to work in my car for my night shift and was supposed to pick me up the next day. I waited and waited and he didn’t come.

I rang his Uni house and one of his house mates told me he’d overslept and was on his way. I felt reassured but not convinced. Things just didn’t seem right. One night out in town my BF, her house mate and I went for a curry and I was whinging about where he could be and my BF said ‘for god’s sake will you just shut up about it, he’s been talking to his ex and he left with her the other night when we were out’.

It hit me like a ton of bricks. I thought, as I always did that, this was ‘the love of my life’. How could he do this to me?

The depression kicked in even more and I started to go downhill rapidly. Withdrawing myself from everyone and mooning over my ex and his infidelity. I hung around a lot at my BF’s digs and it got on her nerves although I thought she was being very unkind and insensitive, it must have been a pain for her, having this mooching, sad sack around all the time.

She was going to say goodbye to her boyfriend, my ex’s best mate for the summer and said I could go with her as long as I didn’t moan about them snogging or talk about the ex. That was the turning point for me. I headed home and buried my head. I rang in sick and took an overdose. I wrote some crap about love and devastation in my diary and rang a friend/colleague when I became very drowsy and got scared. They took me to accident and emergency, where luckily my friend/colleagues doctor boyfriend was on duty. They made me drink charcoal and stay in for the night. Ironically I was put in the same bay as my Mum had been in when she had been admitted to hospital. I was freezing and daren’t ask for a blanket as I thought the nurses would not be nice to me after what I had done. It was still very much stigmatised to OD, especially over your boyfriend splitting up with you. I had heard many nurses/colleagues mocking overdoses or suicide attempts brought in especially when it involve the person having been dumped by a boyfriend. Females tend to overdose whereas males tend to try hangings or poisoning by exhaust fumes. 

I remember being depressed before my Mum died and thinking ‘I wish I had something to be depressed about then no-one can judge me’. They say be careful what you wish for as I got my Mum’s death in return.

I could not handle the rejection and my thoughts of his betrayal were whizzing round my head. I couldn’t think straight. I can’t remember being seen by the self harm team, maybe I was but I just wanted to put it behind me and carry on. I just wanted to be normal.

Self harming often resets the way I feel and takes away the turmoil even though I know it’s all wrong. It resets the way I think and feel and I was back on an even keel again, ready to face the next chapter.

Coping with Grief.

It's taken me a while to write this post as a good friend of mine is suffering at the moment with the loss of a very close family member and anything I thought about writing seemed inadequate. But then I came across this photo this morning......

It summed up basically what I'd be trying to say in a nut shell.
I also wanted to share some advice, if you like about coping with the pain of grief. It's a difficult subject so I'll be as sensitive as I can be without hopefully patronising. Please don't take the things I write as being condescending, just take things from it that you find useful and ignore what you don't.
Please note that if you are experiencing grief for the loss of a child then this advice will probably not be helpful, it's a very sensitive area and I've not experience that type of grief so feel inadequate to offer advice on this.

It's hard to blanket advise anyone whose loved one has died because every death and grief is unique. Unique to person, time place, circumstances and cause.  People can sometimes blame themselves for the death such as not doing something sooner or making them go to the doctor earlier, the truth is you cannot be responsible for this. Unless you physically hurt the person who died then you are not responsible for their death. Adults are their own people and are responsible for their own health. You can only hope that if you ask someone you love you are concerned about to seek help, that they will. You could not have dragged them to the doctors and even then there may be a list of inadequacies even if they did seek help, it can be out of your hands as to getting the right treatment at the right time. All you can ever have done is be supportive and helpful.

My mums treatment was a catalogue of errors but even if they had found the cancer earlier she would not have survived. I did complain about the lax attitude of the GP but I was young and naive and didn't handle it right. If there are inadequacies and errors in the treatment of your loved one then by all means pursue and complain, health care inadequacies don't get sorted unless people complain. But make sure you are in a place emotionally and mentally where you are able to tackle it and cope with the stress it may cause. It might a actually be the thing you need to help you cope.

If you feel guilt because you didn't have an active part in the life of the loved one before they died then there is no room for it in your life now. You cannot change what happened, so feeling guilt over what you could've done is wasting valuable energy you need to be able to live in the here and now. Find a way to cope with the feeling of guilt and let it go. I envisage it as a ball sitting in my solar plexus and I imagine I take the ball in my hands and push it out and away from my body and believe I have gotten rid of it and put up a shield that it doesn't come back. If that sounds a but too new age for you, although it really works, then try reasoning.

Reasoning relies on the truth. Looking at the truth of the matter can release us from the burden of guilt.

Ask yourself these questions.

Could you change the situation?
No, because it's in the past and you cannot change the past. It's gone, there is nothing you can do about it.

Is it true that the person died because you were ineffective or inactive? No, because the person is their own person and responsible for their own health and care. If you weren't there when they were sick and dying then there must have been a reason for this. Again you can't change what happened all you can do is learn from it and change any future behaviour.

Do you believe you omitted or neglected to do something for the person whilst sick of dying or did something that expedited their death? Is this absolutely true? 100%? No, it is not because you are not that powerful as to stop death in it's tracks. One thing in the grand scheme of things will not have changed the outcome. Did your actions expedite the death? If it was an act of kindness and not harm then your actions were not responsible for the death coming sooner. Someone once said to me they felt guilty for rolling their dad over because he was uncomfortable and in pain yet he died whilst she was doing it and she felt her actions caused his death. It didn't, she did the best thing she could for her father at that point and that was what he wanted. Death was inevitable. No one could have stopped that.

Do you feel guilty you weren't there when the person died? Every situation is different but maybe you didn't need to be there when they died? Maybe the person who was dying chose to die when you weren't there to witness it? There is no way of knowing what a dying person is thinking and it may sound bizarre to think a dying person could chose when they want to die. No one will ever know if this is capable in reality but take comfort in that perhaps you weren't meant to be there. You were in the right place at the right time, right where you needed to be.. A friend said she felt guilty when her loved one died and she wasn't there but she was home taking care of her loved ones children so their father could go to the hospital and be with his wife. What a great honour and privilege of taking care of the ladies precious babies for her. That's exactly what she would have wanted.

Thinking of a relative or friend dying at home alone is horrific but you were not to know they were going to die at that time, unless they were seriously ill, in which case you would probably be by their side. If it was an elderly relative who wasn't ill and they died as a result of a fall or similar then you could not have done anything unless you were with them 24/7, which isn't possible or practical.


Anger is another part of grief. And it's justified. So go with it, within reason. Directing and dealing with the anger is the issue. Anger should not be dealt with by reckless behaviour such as drinking, drugs, promiscuous sex or overspending. We all know it's destructive, solves nothing and can create more problems. I'm guilty of doing it in the past. All it created was debt, hangovers, more guilt and unhappiness. Facing anger head on can be a huge undertaking so you need to find ways that suit you to be able to cope with it. In the midst of all that's going on finding something to appease the anger is tricky.

Finding a non destructive way for helping with anger, not controlling as such but letting it out can be difficult but not impossible. We lose track of boundaries and control methods when angry. Anger might well be a very new concept for you too. So where and what do we do with it?

Firstly, it's a part of grief and has to be gone through, both avoiding and prolonging anger is incredibly hurtful to the body and psych so sometimes you just need to go with it. Deferring it to a time and place that is more conducive to letting it out isn't always possible so if you find yourself in a position where something or someone is winding you up then remove yourself from the situation. Use all your strength to not explode at the person or situation and find a place to go let off steam, whether it be crying or just calming down away from anyone.

Physical exercise is a good way of getting rid of the build up of stress and tension in a body. It can be running, cycling, yoga, swimming or whatever you feel able and comfortable to do. Walking a dog in the country can be very good for the soul. Getting a massage can release a lot of tension and acupuncture can help a body deal with stress and anger. Grief counselling can also help even if it seems like a waste of time, speaking your feelings can be a release of tension and help dissipate anger. Talking about what makes you angry can be very therapeutic and help dissipate it.

And again if the thing that seems to be helping helps then do not feel guilt about spending time and money on it. It's very important to take care of self. I cannot stress that enough. If money is tight and you are paying for therapies then be frugal in other areas of your life to avoid getting into money trouble as well.

Emotional pain is an extremely difficult burden to carry. It messes with our head, our beliefs, our psych, our bodies and our hearts. It's like carrying a ball of concrete. It exhausts us, there is no tablet for it, it robs us of joy. How do we deal with it?

As described above, we need to look after ourselves first and foremost. Self care is incredibly important. Again, it's something that has to be endured and not shut away. Sometimes distraction is a great tactic for dealing with things we are enduring and we need a break from it but do not try and drown out the pain as it will only end up hurting you more in the long run. Allow yourself to do nothing, be unconstructive, sleep or do whatever it takes. Sometimes doing nothing is the best option.

Give in to it. If you can cry then cry. If you feel like you cannot stop crying then go with it. You'll stop eventually. Sometimes it comes when you really don't need it, again find somewhere you can go and have that cry. If it's in the workplace then telling your employer what you are going through, no matter how private you are, is needed. You don't have to tell them everything, just that you are struggling from the time being and need some leniency. It's not too much to ask of them. If you meet opposition and find it difficult to cope at work and can take time off then do it. It's you who is suffering, no one else. Put yourself first for the time being. Take time out and regroup. It may take a long time, or a couple of days might be all you need. It's your journey, no one else's. And it's not an admission of weakness. It takes a strong person to realise when they need to take time out.

Practicing gratitude at this time will probably seem like the last thing you want to do. Losing a loved one can be the single most devastating time in our lives. But being thankful for very small things from having a time and a place to cry to the fact you had the loved on in your life. This may seem contradictory but there is nothing that can be done to bring the loved one back and the fact they will miss future things in life will be a very bitter pill to swallow but practicing gratitude can be a very powerful and liberating.

Grief is atrocious. There's no two ways about it. It has to be endured and dealt with. It has to be carried and weighs us down until we are on our knees but it is not the end of your life. It can be overcome and it can be lived with. We just have to find a way through it, the best we can. As superficial as it sounds we are needed and valued others, whatever our circumstances.

Suicidal feelings do rear their ugly heads at the the most vulnerable times in our lives. They can come all the time and we may reach out and get talked down from that leap but the next day is the same. Not wanting to bother friends or family with these feelings can be a hurdle. That's where professional help can be of benefit. I've been there many times and somehow I have gotten through them. They have been my dark shadow for weeks on end at a time and fighting the urge has sometimes seemed impossible and I have given in to the feelings and looked for a way out. It only bought me further suffering and didn't heal anything. It's not the answer.

You may have never experienced suicidal feelings ever in your life before and they can be overwhelming. Just know, they do stop. They are an all consuming emotion but they do stop.

If you think you might be depressed or someone suggests it to you and it's been going on for a while then action is needed. Remember what I said about every adult being responsible for their own health? This includes mental health. It can be hard to find help but keep looking. I found great help in my acupuncturist. I couldn't find the help I needed with my GP or mental health services, although they weren't exactly unhelpful,  it just wasn't meant to be for me and you need to find a way for yourself. Researching, trying things out, reaching out to people. Be mindful that some things you try and some people may not be helpful and you may feel like giving up. Please don't just focus in your mind and heart that something will come along that will help ease the pain.

Bare in mind if you do receive counselling or help, that you are very vulnerable and if you feel like it's making you worse or conflicting your recovery then please stop the activity. Be careful who you tell your story to or offload on. Some people can be vultures at this time and prey on the vulnerable to their own ends and it's difficult to see these people for what they really are when grieving. If you feel someone has good intentions but you don't feel comfortable confiding in them, then don't and once again, do not carry that guilt. Take it and push it away, it's not another burden you need so don't own it.

As the photo says, their is no grief without having loved. It's the price we pay for having loved ones in our lives. But it's so much better to have loved and lost.

Be brave.Take care of you.