One year on, still learning

One year ago today, I finally went to see a doctor about a low mood that hadn’t shifted or improved for several months. One year ago today, I was so tired of trying to fight against something I couldn’t see that I gave in and gave up, and accepted that sometimes you need a medical solution to a medical problem. One year ago today, I picked up my first prescription of antidepressants and felt like the bottom was falling out of my world. One year ago, I thought I’d crossed a line and that those first tablets marked the start of a new phase of recovery. One year ago today, I thought things, at last, would turn a corner.

One year on, and I am more able to evaluate that time. The GP I saw had a brusque manner and made me feel guilty for feeling so awful. He took months to refer me as he seemed to think that my medical student status would somehow magically help me cure myself of depression. He didn’t offer to change my medication when it made me feel dangerously worse, and didn’t really seem to care if I got better or not. When he did refer me, it was with such a bad attitude that I was too scared to go. By the time I’d spent months changing doses on my first medication, I was too terrified to try another. Those small pills I started taking a year ago today, did not help me turn a corner; rather, they very nearly shoved me over a pretty dangerous edge. Those little pills did not mark the start of recovery.

Who was I then? I was afraid, alone, incapable. I was unable to make good decisions regarding an illness that fragmented my judgement and overshadowed the person I had been. I was on autopilot, still sitting exams, still seeing patients, but not seeing, not really. I was in a haze. I was in a different season, a season of endless winter.

Who am I now? I am still, often, afraid that this depression still lingers, stuck to my shadow. I get frustrated that I am still hemmed in by the fallout from last year – still shackled to inner-city attachments, still tied to constant monitoring and questionning of my mood, still tethered  to counselling. I am the girl who got left behind herself. Sometimes I look at last year and can’t even believe it was me – me, so close to the edge, me, crying desperately, resolutely, endlessly. I can’t believe it was me. It was a year of being so far from who I am, that I feel detached, as though it was just a year of empty space, a year I stepped out of and never found the way back in. I cut myself out of that year and couldn’t patch my way back in.

This year has been the hardest of my life. I’ve learned who my true friends are – which has been both incredibly painful, when people let me down, sometimes pretty impressively, but also incredibly comforting; I’ve got some brilliant friends. They’ve stopped me sinking. I’ve tackled a huge fear and got myself, repeatedly, through a counsellor’s door. I’ve also learned who my God is – that although I often think he leaves me, he never does, that I often think he ignores me, he never does. Although Christians try to act like Jesus on a daily basis (and should), Jesus is more than any of us will ever be. We make mistakes. We injure each other, accidentally and sometimes, deliberately. God does not do this; He binds our wounds.  This is a very fortuitous thing.

I got through this year. Sometimes, I think the only thing we really have to deal with, to get through, is time, unfortunate, as it waits for no man. I am still learning.