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.