| DEPRESSION |
| Real Life |
| This website is not just something done for kicks mental health not being a barrel of laughs and all. It's something that's been apart of both our lives. I probably wouldn't even be writing this down if I thought anyone who actually knew me would be reading this, but that's the strange sense of anonymity you get from the web. Contrary to some popular beliefs depression is not what people decide to wear that morning. For a lot of people is something they have to battle with daily, it is the world's current secret epidemic. For me personally the illness has always shadowed my life, from birth to the present day. To the point where I believe my family must be cursed because how can all this shitty stuff keep happening. The background I was the unexpected arrival of two newly weds the day before my mum's 21st. They wanted me but couldn't afford me so both had to work full time. This meant that for the first four years of my life I was looked after my grandparents. Or mainly my grandma. When I remember the early years of my life it's their faces that I see. It wasn't all the pretty picture I have in my memories though. I found out two years ago that before I was born my Grandma had been suffering seriously with depression, it drove friends and family alike away. To the point where even now 20 years on there is still a rift between my Grandma and one of my Aunts. The thing that gave her focus and pulled her out of it was looking after me. Even now we still have a close bond. Depression made it's first big impact on my life when I was 12. My dad gradually began to change, from this warm, friendly man into a stranger. Up until then I had always had a lot of freedom, with both parents constantly working I had more independence than most. Suddenly this all got taken away. Work caused my dad to have to go on the sick with stress. The first time it was for 6 months. He went back for two years. Then he had to leave again. It nearly destroyed him. My dads job defined who he was and the fact he had failed twice took years for him to get over. He only went back the first time because after 6 months the sick pay drops from full pay to half. He wasn't well enough, but he pushed himself until he broke. This means that along with trying to get better my parents had to worry about being able to afford to live, as the longer my dad was off the more his sick pay decreased until it was nothing. He was too ill to work, even his work agreed they wouldn't have him back to work because he was too ill. But not ill enough for them to put him on medical retirement. They tried to push him to resign, they held off for 2years refusing to pay. We sunk further and further into debt, and my dad sunk further into his depression. This left my mum as the sole wage earner, and the string that held my family together. It got too much for her. This was the tension in the background. For me growing up changed dramatically. I lost my independence and became the venting point of my parents anger at times. My dad felt he had lost all importance now he wasn't earning so he became very controlling about everything else in our lives. We all had to do exactly what he said about what we wore, ate, watched on the tv, cleaning the house. He controlled it all. He would sit around the house all day, then when we arrived home he would complain it was a mess and we had to clean it. When I went out I couldn't get lifts because it would be inconvenient, and I got told I looked like a prostitute. Writing oit down it sounds so petty. It's hard to convey the feeling of tension that was constantly in the house, the level of control my dad had over us all. You could never fight back because if you did it just made him worse. All we prayed for was it would all stop when he got better. It was the thing that kept us going when dad gets better. Then the pressure got too much for my mum. Both parents were completely neurotic, controlling. The house was so thick with tension, the suspense of waiting for the next outburst, it was hard to breathe. |
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