A day in the life with clinical depression

A day in the life with clinical depression

This is a share that a client of mine has recently released to me and has given me permission to share here on my blog in the aim of helping others with Clinical Depression.

“I manage to get to sleep without too much problem, but each and every morning, I wake early. By early I mean around the 3 a.m mark without fail. Not only does this time of day feel so lonely but everything, my thoughts and my mood feel so much worse. My first thought is ‘Damn I’m still here’ which sounds bleak but I am writing this with total honesty. It’s dark around me in the night air but even darker in my mind and heart.

I lie in bed with the same waves of nothingness, hopelessness and lethargy washing over me. Do I have the energy to survive another day? As the minutes tick away on my alarm clock, I want to tick away with them. Time passes, I try to fall back into a slumber but it is useless as am wide awake, well as wide awake as the anti depressant drugs allow me to be. Sometimes I feel more agitated and get up and other days I stay where I am, not caring to move an inch, saving any efforts for later in the day. I never know which feeling is worse, the total lack of wanting to move or the agitated state.

I live with my husband and we don’t have any children. Which to be honest is a huge relief right now, as I do not know how I would cope with being responsible for a child. It’s proving hard enough of a struggle to behave as a wife does, or as myself, as I’m not sure whom she is now or where she went to? My husband tries to cope with me but I know it’s a struggle for him too as he does not really understand, but he is caring towards me and helps in his own way. Then I feel guilty about that, what kind of a wife am I being to him? He would be better off without me…these are common thoughts that cross my mind. I don’t tell him though, or anyone come to that, except for my counsellor.

I force myself to get up as my husband does for work and get him some breakfast, as I am not currently working. My GP signed me off on the sick a month ago after my decline. I’d reached the stage where I was crying at work every day and intense worry had taken hold of me all of the time. I was a total mess. The tablets have helped to calm me down but I am at a loss with everything else still. As soon as I wave him goodbye I return to bed.

Despite doing hardly anything during the day, I feel permanently exhausted, and when I do try to do a simple task my mind doesn’t focus for long, it feels in a fog. Sometimes I manage to nap but I spend hours just lying there feeling very alone and very low. Occasionally a friend comes by or my sister but I do try to avoid as much contact with other people as I can these days. It takes so much effort and pretence to put on an ‘okay’ front for their sake. I haven’t much interest in things I used to enjoy, it’s like being trapped in a dark hole with no way out that I can see. Occasionally I feel a lighter feeling as though some of this heavy dark feeling has lifted a little but it drops back onto me like a ten tonne weight.

Each time I go to the bathroom I glance into the mirror and stare at myself. I am unrecognisable, whom is staring back at me? I look gaunt as I have lost over a stone in weight as I cannot eat very much. I am not hungry anymore and food gets stuck in my throat. I look wan with dark shadows under my eyes. I look haunted. A ghost of whom I was. And I look unmistakenly sad. If I stare for too long I start to cry at the miserable reflection staring back at me.

I skip lunch but drink several cups of strong coffee throughout the day, its gives me the little energy I have. Later on I cook dinner. It’s a struggle to muster up the effort it takes but I force myself to cook my husband a meal. It’s as though if I drop that, it will be the last straw. It gives my day some sort of a purpose.

Around about 5pm each day I begin to feel slightly better, it is a pattern I notice. This is such relief and it makes it easier for me when my husband returns when I use my energies to try and be as ‘normal’ as I can portray. I don’t want him to know just how bad I feel, I feel too ashamed of myself. I think he probably knows more than I say though as I have stopped wanting to be close to him. Something that makes me feel so guilty.

I look forward to the late evening and most days I am in bed for about 9pm. It’s then that I get to close my eyes and disappear as I drift into a sleep. “