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________.::d is for depression::.__

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‘....can anyone follow

the ways of my pain?

I live on the edge of a razor

that cuts me to shreds

as I live?’

Chandidas

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I’m not sure what happened after my anorexia fell into bulimia. But pretty soon I

became too depressed to move or speak. This made me feel worse as I’d come home from

school and crawl into bed, fully clothed. I knew I was fat and lazy but I just didn’t have the

inclination to do anything. My brother once calculated that I spent on average 19 hours of a

day in bed. I’d like to think that this is a vastly exaggerated figure.

Gradually my teachers began to ignore me, I think they forgot that I was there in the

corner. I liked that, people overwhelmed me, in my head I could hear them talking about me,

insulting me and laughing at me, so feeling as if I was invisible made it better. My reports

always mentioned my lack of oral contribution to the class though, so they must have at least

known who I was!

I began to slip; I lost the presence of mind that allowed me to do anything. I was

capable of doing little more than to stare into space. I think that my friends at school always

thought that I stopped speaking to them out of anger. Or perhaps they just thought that I

didn’t have anything to say. But it was never like that, it was always that a wave of sadness

had suddenly washed over me, rendering me with the feeling of being incapable of speech. I

wanted to talk with them, to gossip and laugh and joke.

I would wake up every morning and my heart would sink that I was still alive, that I

hadn’t miraculously died in the night. No, I’d have to get on with living my mundane life with

all its intolerable demands.

I didn’t look after myself very well- I’d lie in bed forever, hiding under the covers and

hardly noticing or caring if I wet the bed. I never washed or got changed very often, I just

lived in bed. Lived being the operative word. I was ashamed of myself then and I am

ashamed of myself now, but that was just how it went. No wonder that I didn’t have many

friends really, when I wore my school uniform from Monday to Friday without changing once.

And never having showers or baths either- too much bother, and besides, I’d only have to

stare at my wobbling fat.

I wanted to hide in small spaces, under chairs or tables where no-one would notice

me. I don’t understand this with logic as I already felt trapped in my mind and surely this

would only trap me more? But I wanted to curl up in the dark, it was just what I felt like doing.

At home I would sometimes get agitated by my racing thoughts and I would hide under the

covers or try to fit into my built in wardrobe.

When I would go out for walks I would walk along the kerb, and sometimes in the

middle of the road (if stopped I would pretend to be a little stupid and say that I was trying to

avoid getting raped by walking there- conveniently pretending that I hadn’t noticed that this

was a main road with a fair few cars!) pushing death as far as I could. What I really wanted

to do was curl up in the middle of the road, letting the darkness surround me and ignoring all

the people. But I never did it, unfortunately I was always too socially aware. I began to take

walks in the middle of the night, walking up and down the road in a daze. The postman

certainly gave me some funny looks!

 Here is a poem I wrote on the

train one day in the deadness as I stared out of the window, looking for something I could

recognise, something to give me feeling:

I feel dead inside,

I am dead inside,

The world is alien to me,

With its colours and lights, laughter and conversation.

The physical body is alive but it is a shell,

Holding nothing,

No-one

So many emotions are gone,

I can barely feel pain,

But I can barely feel happiness either.

I am merely acting;

Pretending to be a person,

With a soul behind her eyes.

I doubt anyone is convinced that this girl,

With her glazed eyes and scars,

Is real at all.

They stare and stare,

Looking for a spark of life

From behind the blank face.

But they will not find it,

It has all disappeared,

Perhaps never to return.

Leaving me empty forever.

I would feel like I imagine you would feel if you went to sleep and then woke up in a dream where

you have no idea what is going on. You recognise the characters and the world, but only in a

 blurry and vague way, as if you have been watching this world on television but now you find

yourself dropped in it. And, as in all dreams, nothing quite makes sense, if you blink for a moment

there is no guarantee that everything will be the same as you left it. One minute you were talking to

your teacher and then she suddenly changed into your mum without you noticing. You know that

something is wrong but you can’t quite put your finger on it. It’s only when you wake up and think

about it that it occurs to you: ‘what on earth was going on there?’

Sometimes all I could think about would be annihilating myself, grabbing a dagger and firmly

stabbing my heart and stomach, watching the deep red blood. Blood paid in a futile

sacrifice in an attempt to appease the gods of darkness. The sudden urges to stab myself

were actually less of feelings and more of compulsions, draining all my powers in an effort to

resist. I would be sitting there mindlessly one minute, when suddenly an intense wave of

sadness would wash over me, making me desperate to grab the nearest sharp object and to

ram it into my stomach over and over and over until the pain left. The compulsion seemed to

be a daring expression of the feelings, and the remnants of life, that had lain dormant while

they were buried and then concreted over.