My Depression Story - Mental Health Awareness Week 2017

To this day, I am still not 100% sure what triggered my depression (if anything), but what I do know is that it is there with me all the time.

In lieu of it being Mental Health Awareness week this week, I felt like I would write up a little about my own personal experiences living with a mental health issue so this may not be the same experiences that every other person has.

My earliest memory which links to my depression came when I was in my primary school age, so not even turning 13. I was experiencing a lot of bullying surrounding my sexuality and it always managed to get the better of me. One day I was in my sister's room and was on her bed, I was really feeling upset and alone at the time and went and hide under the covers where I tried to strangle myself so it could all end. As you can tell it didn't get very far as I am still here to talk about it now.

Skip ahead a few years, so I went to high school and was doing reasonably well academically, but again the bullying didn't stop. It came to a stage in my life that I'd never really come to in my life. I crumbled.  I began having fears of coming into school and would often find myself making up any excuse just to not come in. This all eventually was taking its toll on my education as it meant I was missing out on a lot of crucial lessons and began dropping. I felt so alone and didn't really even understand what was going on in my mind during the time. Around the ending of my high school time, there was a day where I had heard a lot about people self-harming to take their mind of their mental pains, so I made the decision to give it a try and slit one of my wrists. It helped temporarily but the pains came back very quickly after. Lucky enough at the end of high school, I did come out with fairly okay grades, enough to move onto sixth form at least.

Just to add a little context for the next section of my life, I just wanted to add that me and my older sister have always had a very close relationship, but I always ended up being in competition with her, mostly due to the fact that she had gone to university and gotten good grades, so it was automatically expected of me to follow suit and also be smart.

So I began my sixth form journey on quite a positive. I had a good friendship group and was having a fresh start from all the negativity of high school. This was also the time that I finally could accept myself for my sexuality and be more open about it all. So I started playing "catch-up" on all the "normal" activities of teenage life, so I was having my first boyfriend, my first kiss, first sexual encounter... etc. So with all of this happening, on top of trying to be a good friend and enjoy life a little more, I began neglecting my education that little bit too much. So when it came to mock season, I tried my best to do the exams but unfortunately, it didn't all turn out sunshine and roses for me. I quickly realized that this wasn't no walk in the park and I actually had to put in the effort again. So, unfortunately, I realized that little bit too late and ended up failing my exams. Luckily, however, I was allowed to continue my studies and retake some of the exams to try and make up for it.

At the time I was studying psychology which really opened my eyes on how the brain works and how certain mental illnesses formed. So one day, I was having a really down mood and got very upset in front of everyone so my friends took me to see our head of sixth form, who I sat down with and explained what was going through my mind, how I wold sometimes get suicidal thoughts whilst out walking my dog, and how I feel very cut off and lonely at times. So she advised me to start speaking with her and my psychology teacher a lot more whenever I felt these feelings. So they became a source of counseling for myself during my sixth form journey.

It came in my second year of sixth form, on one parents evening where I was sitting with my mother on one side and father on the other. Now all my life I've only received positive feedback from teachers, like "He's such a joy to teach" or "He's so determined and punctual". But this was the first time that I had genuinely received negative comments on my work ethic and my exam results. While receiving criticisms from my physics teacher, I could feel the disappointment seeping in from my parent's eyes as they glared into my soul. I felt so alone and trapped. That was it. I burst out half screaming and crying saying "I am on the edge". It was at that moment that my parents saw the truth behind why for years I would run straight into my room each and every evening after school.

After that, they began to listen and help me out a lot more. I went and spoke to my GP about the issues I was having and feeling and it all became a lot more clear to me. I am living with depression. This revelation helped a lot for me to try to understand my depression more so I could help myself to not feel the pains of it. At the time, I was 17 years old so I couldn't be given anti-depressants, however, my psychology teacher recommended to me to try out taking a vitamin B6 tablet, which yes is meant for women, but it has helped me at times calm down my emotions.

Now moving into the present time. I still get suicidal thoughts from time to time, but I have a lot more of a support network around me, helping and guiding me to get through each day. I have also identified certain things which trigger my depression and try to work around them as much as possible, and try to speak out about my feelings a lot more rather than bottling them up like I used to.

To finish off this I invite you all to talk to me, in confidence or publically, if you have any issues you would also like to get off your chest and also encourage you all to speak up more about your mental health experiences to help inform others of these issues.