This is part one of two (everyone loves a sequel don't they?!)....
I’ve been off work now for just over 3 months, diagnosed with ‘depression’, ‘stress’, ‘anxiety’ – whatever you want to call it. There are several names people attribute to my ‘illness’; years ago it would be known as a mental breakdown, which is how I like to see it. Partly because these days the former three terms seem so normal, and yet I feel far from normal. And partly because that’s how I feel – mentally broken. This is my hell.
It’s 3.45am and I’ve just woken up shouting ‘garages’ in my sleep! That’s been happening a lot lately – I feel like I’ve got sleeping tourettes or something! I woke Simon, as I always do with my unexpected outbursts. Simon works hard, has long manually and mentally gruelling days and I sit at home all day watching Homes under the Hammer and all the other atrocious day time TV I can indulge in to distract me from hating myself. And I can’t even let him have an uninterrupted night’s sleep. Just another justification of why I’m a bad wife, daughter, sister, friend, work colleague – the list goes on.
My name is Helen Hickman.
I’m 42.
I hate myself.
I live in Southampton with my wonderful husband Simon and my adorable (if sometimes scary!) cat Missi. I haven’t had a terrible childhood, no poverty stricken upbringing sprinkled with physical abuse. I consider my life to be just that, Life – a series of ups and downs, nothing unusual. Not like the terrible stories you hear about children being locked up in basements for years on end, or totally mistreated by the parents who they had absolute faith and trust in. And I think that all adds to my self-hate – the fact that I so obviously haven’t been able to cope with ‘normal’ Life.
I used to be ‘normal’. I loved life, was confident, went to university, lived abroad, had the confidence to holiday alone (because being single wasn’t going to stop me doing normal things!). That person, however, is just a distant memory. Like a character in a favourite book and every now and then I flick through the pages to re-read the best bits, the funniest bits, all the time feeling excruciatingly envious and wishing I was that person.
I talk to myself in my head (not in a gaga way, just silent thoughts as everyone does... I hope!) trying to untangle this horrible, suffocating, all encompassing hell I’ve found myself in. When I try to verbalise it to others it just doesn’t come out the same. It’s like singing a song in your head and you sound great, perfect tune, pitch and words, but when you sing out loud you sound like a litter of mewing kittens with sore throats! And over time you learn it’s safer to sing only in your head so you don’t offend or irritate others, or damage their hearing for good!
So I’m writing this diary, or whatever it turns out to be, because I hope it will help me untangle this hell without the frustration of translating thoughts in to the spoken word. The beauty of writing is that I can delete words, paragraphs or even whole events so the ‘listener’ only hears the finished version, in the hope that the unfathomable becomes fathomable!
This isn’t a self-help type of thing for other poor ‘like-minded’ souls to read – I’m not sure I can even help myself. But I hope and pray that somehow it will. Maybe I’ll show it to family, friends, counsellors and doctors to help them understand, but then again maybe the written word won’t be any more comprehensible than the spoken. I’m writing this in real time, recording events as they happen, so you never know by page 10 I might have shown this to the world and his wife!
To get things in to context I need to remind myself how this hell came to the surface. I believe it’s always been there, simmering away. For some reason I’ve not been able to turn the gas down this time and the pan just simply over-boiled, and continues to do so.
I feel quite exhausted just re-reading this so I won't tire you with the rest just yet. Part two (the sequel!) to follow!
Take care, Helen x
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