Lonely tears - thoughts on depression

"Though my problems are meaningless/That don't make them go away" - Neil Young, "On the Beach"

No-one prepares you for the agony of living...

The curse of the middle classes, someone once called it (I'd like to think that was me, but I doubt it). For context's sake, I should mention that someone I know has tried to take his or her life. Thankfully, this person was unsuccessful, and whilst he or she has escaped the worst, he or she will now have to deal with the fallout of that attempt: the guilt, recrimination and incomprehension. Above all, this person will have to continue to fight against one of the most prevalent but misunderstood illnesses in the world: depression.

Let me give the lie to one of the most stupid and harmful of misconceptions about suicide: that it's selfish and cowardly. Can anyone imagine anything braver? I do not believe that such a decision is made flippantly, at least not in 99% of cases. I know first hand of the anguish and despair that can lead to the notion, one that quickly becomes all-encompassing, that one's life is no longer worth living. And these people have stared into the abyss of non-existence and decided that total annihilation is still preferable to being alive. This is the level of despair and pain we are talking about.

Of course, for the family of a suicidal person who has taken this plunge, it's horrible as well. They are left behind to pick up the pieces. It's awful, but that should not be a reason to undermine the agony that depressive people feel, even those who end up leaving their loved ones behind.

For over 10 years now, I have suffered from severe depression and borderline personality disorder. At first, I internalised it, unable to comprehend what I was feeling - surely it was little more than typical pubescent angst? As my teenage years turned into my twenties, I continued this isolation, not confiding in anyone about the fact that I was so miserable so often, for reasons I couldn't understand. After all, what did I have to be miserable about? I had a loving family, parents who had given me more love and financial support than I was entitled to expect. I was wealthy, well-educated, and well set on a path to be successful. As such, the guilt over the dark feelings and implacable sadness was almost as crushing and those emotions themselves. I knew people who had lost their mothers or fathers or siblings at a young age, or who were having to deal with poverty, severe illness or abuse. How dare I feel like shit on a nearly basis? These people had a reason to. I sure as fuck did not, or so I believed (and still do, despite my decade-long struggle). So I kept it inside, and, imperceptibly, became a drinker.

It only came to a head once during my uni days. My drinking spiraled as I fought to keep my inner turmoil to myself. Sure, there were times where I would tentatively confide in friends that I felt mournful at times (a touch of "the blues"). Sometimes there would be tears, dismissed later as drunken foolishness. But one night, as I lay -admittedly drunk after a solo binge on vodka- in tears on my bed in my studio flat, I decided I'd had enough. A voice in my head was telling me that the reason I was alone, and had never had a girlfriend (my depression was so bad during my teenage years that I was totally unable to process the fact that I was gay; something that would remain a source of unidentified identity strife until I was about 21), was because I didn't deserve anything more than this solitude. I had reach depths of self-hatred that I couldn't even put a name to, I couldn't comprehend what was happening to me. All I knew was that I felt awful, that I was in floods of tears for no apparent reason, and that there was only one way I could end it for good.

Thankfully, I failed. Possibly my innate fear of death stopped me going through with it properly. I don't think it was just a cry for help, as I was very much alone, and didn't tell anyone for years. Had it worked, I wouldn't have been found for days. But the pills I took just made me vomit profusely, and I escaped. I threw myself into my university work and, above all, a wonderful relationship, and evaded such depths for a while.

It didn't last, sadly, and, after a few idyllic years during which my mood fluctuated without frequently reach rock bottom, the dark clouds returned, with a vengeance. This time, inspired by a Stephen Fry documentary, I decided to get medical help. My best friend, and then girlfriend, had already explained to me that I had something wrong with me. (Incidentally, she helped me accept my sexuality.) But Fry's brave exposure of a different form of depression - bipolar disorder - crystalised the notion that this was something you could treat. For a while, the combination of anti-depressants, my girlfriend (later friend)'s support, and a diagnosis of depression and body dysmorphic disorder, helped me to gain some perspective on my mind and feel better about myself, and my sexual identity.

But, and this is key, as far as I, and many depressed people I know, are concerned, it never goes away. Ever since that initial diagnosis and slow start to treatment, I have experienced constant periods of catastrophically low mood, where it feels like my mind is turning on itself, rending itself apart in a tornado of evil thoughts: that I'm worthless, ugly, stupid and should be dead. Sometimes things set it off: my personality disorder means rejection is something I can't handle at all, for example; sometimes it comes seemingly out of nowhere. There are times where I wake up in the morning and wish I hadn't. Times where my thoughts are consumed with ideas of death and dying. This has impacted on my work, my drinking, my relationships with others and my ability to experience romance or love. I am currently having to deal with being alone for the foreseeable future as I try to deal with these pits of debilitating depression. It's a sad, troubling reality, and one that is almost impossible to understand if you don't suffer from something similar.

To a lot of people, I seem perfectly happy: good job, good sense of humour, lots of fun times... I've learned to project a mask, as so many others with my condition(s) do. If anything, this is the hardest part: keeping up an appearance of normalcy when everything inside you feels like it is crumbling into chaos and horror.

But I am working on it. It has taken over a decade, but I have finally a proper and, I believe, lucid idea of what is wrong with me. I have a good therapist, and strong medication. Sadly, the sense of guilt about this "invisible" illness, that somehow I should, in the words of the Daily Mail, just "snap out of it", that I have, as someone close to me once said, "so much going for" me and therefore have little right to feel so down so frequently, doesn't go away. There is so much stigma attached to mental illness, even when it's this dramatic. But the bravery of people like Fry, Alastair Campbell and Ruby Wax, who have "come out" as mentally ill and/or depressed, is an inspiration. I now try to not put such a rigid mask up. If people ask, I will talk about this illness. Not necessarily so that they will understand, though that would be nice, but so that I can keep facing up to it, and, to use an Americanism, "own" it.

I don't know if I will beat it. I hope so, as this is not a sustainable way to live. It hurts too much. It's exhausting. My personality is still fundamentally flawed, in ways that I can't control and that make me at times unable to move, eat or sleep. The suicide ideation is never far away, although I've found that channeling it into songwriting helps. Knowing what is wrong with me, and expressing it, has certainly helped, and I'm stronger, albeit more exhausted (10+ years is a long time to carry this stuff) than when I was alone in my studio flat 8 years ago. But I'm still alive. And I like that. If we can continue to break the walls of silence and incomprehension that surround mental illness, maybe fewer people will have to go through the isolation and desperation that my friend and I have suffered. Baby steps are still steps...

This world is a wonderful place, full of beauty and kindness. But some of us can't often see it, especially in ourselves. It's a true disease, a dysfunction of the brain. My heart was broken by my mind. I'm trying to put it back together. As I do, it goes out to my friend and all the others out there who have to live under a heavy, painful cloud. Please spare us a thought. Love really is the answer, as corny as that sounds.

- J Phimister