Depression

This is a story of a longtime sufferer of a depressive mood disorder: myself.  I've seen lots of commentary in both social media and the mainstream media about this mental illness.  Some of this commentary is correct and a good deal appears to be supposition or stereotyping.  In the end, as with any illness, there are a number of symptoms and this tends to make the experience of each sufferer of depression a little different to another sufferer.  I'd like to talk about the illness as it applies to me; not to fulfil any agenda or solicit sympathy, but to just have the facts out there.

My illness first manifested in my adolescence, I think when I was about 14.  This is partly a genetic inheritance from my family (as most of us suffer some form of depression) and was likely brought on by the chemical changes in my body at the time.  This illness most likely would have as remained some low-level mood issue; however, I was subjected to a lot of emotional (and sometimes physical) bullying through three of the five schools I attended from early childhood to my late teens.  This bullying built layer upon layer of issues on my illness until I had developed a full major depressive disorder.  I still suffer episodes of this disorder now into my mid-30s.

So what is major depressive disorder?  Wikipedia has it defined as "a mental disorder characterised by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem, and loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities".  This is generally true, but I'd like to go deeper into what this illness is for me...

• First and foremost, this illness is episodic, which means I get the clusters of symptoms in irregular cycles.  I used to suffer this quite badly when I was younger, but (thankfully) I only suffer "attacks" every now and then.
• As a teenager (and stretching into my early 20s), I had very little self-esteem or self-worth... sometimes none.  This in turn meant that I had very little confidence in myself.  Going forward, I have slowly developed confidence in myself but still have lingering self-doubts (that little voice in your head that says, "you're not meant to be here!").  These self-doubts have led to an underlying paranoia in my dealings with people, as I often worry about being judged or found to be a phony.
• Probably the worst part of depression is the self-hatred.  This symptom and the low self-esteem seem to feed off of each other in some cyclical way, emotionally putting a sufferer through the wringer.  At some of the worst times, I felt exiting would be a good way to free loved ones of the burden I was putting on them.  At other times, there was some cutting - I still have scars down my forearms and on my ribs.  Nowadays, I seem to have gotten past this symptom for which  I am so thankful.
• During some episodes, I ended up taking medication; the rest of time, I skirted the edge of alcohol abuse.  The unfortunate thing about alcohol is that it in itself is a depressive, so you drink to make yourself either feel better in some way or to not feel at all, but you end up making the problem worse.  I ended up losing control in my mid-20s, and eventually had some sort of emotional breakdown.  That breakdown was like the snapping of a stretched rubber band, and I was able to bounce back quite quickly and self-impose some behaviour changes.  Go forward a decade and I can enjoy myself with a few drinks, and no fear of hitting that downward spiral again.
• I used to be a bit of a drifter.  I had a lot of mediocre jobs and failed attempts at university, because I had a lack of drive to succeed.  I also had relationship troubles where I'd only have either drunken one-nighters or short-term things.  I had very little motivation and that, combined with the drinking, did not make me particularly attractive to potential partners.  After the breakdown, I hit an upward curve of good things happening to me.  I had a couple of good relationships, and eventually ended up with my wife - we've now been together nine years and have two beautiful children.  I got a job with my current employer and quickly found my niche there, rapidly moving up the ladder to my current role.  I also successfully completed an extramural degree.

I was luckier than some in that I had a life-changing moment and subsequent good fortune, after which I was able to find some personal clarity and was able to move forward through my illness.  However, I also had really supportive family and friends who stood by me during the worst times.  This support, more than medical treatment, is critical for any sufferer of this and any other mental illness.  Without support and understanding, we are as alone as our illness makes us feel.

My Year in Review (2008)

It’s been a interesting year to say the least for both myself and my family…

Children

At the start of the year, we discovered that my wife was pregnant with our second child, but she unfortunately lost the pregnancy making this our second early-term miscarriage. Oddly enough, it didn’t affect us as badly this time and we were able to bounce back quite quickly. We put this down to the pregnancy being so unexpected and the fact we hadn’t had time to get used to the idea yet. As we did the last time, we bought a plant and a pot, and buried what there was – this way we have a living reminder.

A few months later, we got pregnant again (albeit a bit more planned). This time, we successfully passed the first trimester and relevant tests, and we’re now expecting a healthy baby boy around the end of March.

In other child news, 2008 was year number two for our little girl Isla and she took to it with a vengeance. She’s running around with nearly a full set of teeth and a good vocabulary (including some unfortunate additions overheard from parents). In a couple of weeks, she enters the “terrible twos”… we’re already getting advance previews and are expecting drama, action, and hopefully some comedy. It’ll certainly be interesting to see her reaction to a little brother.

House

With the increase in family, we needed to get a bigger house as we were already bursting at the seams in our 90 sq.m three-bedroom. The plan was to get our house on the market, get a sale with a reasonable settlement period, and then look for a new house. This way, we would know our exact budget.

However, dreams don’t always match reality. We sold relatively quickly and had a four-week settlement period, but were unable to find a place that fit our requirements. This meant we moved out of our house and shifted in with my in-laws. As they lived about 50km in another town, I ended up referring to this as my “homeless exile” – this ended up being seven weeks.

We did end up finding a new house, after some extensive searching, and we are very happy. We have 150sq.m to play with plus a large double garage and a basement workshop.

Family

It seems that, out of my family, my brother had the most full-on year (although that may just be by comparison).

He spent about seven months as part of the NZ Army reconstruction deployment in Afghanistan, fortunately in a relatively safe region. He sent us regular newsletter updates and painted a picture of a very different culture and a country which had suffered a lot under the Taliban. It was interesting to see how the reconstruction efforts were progressing and how lives were gradually improving over there (e.g. can you imagine the impact of the training of midwives on a village?). In the end, it was a mostly uneventful tour and we were glad to see his safe return.

Not long after his return, we were surprised and somewhat shocked to find that he had severely constricted arteries and required a quadruple bypass (bearing in mind that this is a 46 year old here). Thankfully, he was able to be processed quickly and he is now home recovering slowly. As a bonus, his return to fitness plan seems to somehow involve my participation (oh joy!).

Personally…

I had a bit of a technology boom during the year (which is likely not to be repeated until Haley’s Comet returns), which resulted in my becoming the oh-so-happy owner of a PS3, PSP, iPhone, and LCD HD iDTV. Of these, the iPhone has become a fairly permanent fixture and it is rare to see me without it in my hand.

2008 is also the year in which I discovered social networking, which I embraced wholeheartedly. I’ve participated in site betas, tested others to see if they met my requirements, and generally had a good play. As the year drew to a close, I think I established a solid toolset but will always keep an eye out to discover others. As a side, I’ve found Twitter to be highly addictive (you evil buggers!).

Over the last couple of years, I went from buying books to borrowing from the library (due to costs). In 2008, I felt that I’d exhausted my interests in the written fiction sections and started borrowing the comic trade paperbacks. I hadn’t read comics for a number of years, and my interest was quickly renewed. I have caught up on some old favourites and discovered some great new works. To this end, graphic fiction has now become my primary reading material and I eagerly await each release day to see how my stories will unfold.

With my iPhone purchase and the lengthy commutes I endured, my interest in music was also reawakened. I have not only dug through my iTunes archives to rediscover old classics, but have been introduced to new genres which have rapidly become solid favourites (post-rock for the win!). This has been helped by last.fm and the excellent ways to discover new music through it.


In closing, my family and I have certainly had some significant highs and lows, some of which do make your pause to take stock of one’s life. We look forward to this year and can only hope that the good continues to outweigh the bad.