Something Getting You Down?

I was thinking today about how people with depression are viewed in the 'real world'.
Yes I know technically everyone's all tra-la-la-la-la you have depression that's fine I understand.
But do you?

Today I spent an hour doctoring my CV to cover up employment gaps from when i've been struggling with depression. I've even edited my Uni course information to cover up the fact that I had a mental breakdown and ended up having to take a leave of absense from my degree.
Is this really the society we live in? Where people with depression still have to cover up the fact that sometimes they find life a bit too hard to deal with?
It really isn't right. I would love to leave the gaps in my CV and then say when asked yes i suffer from depression. Yes there are gaps but no it doesn't make me less able to do my job. In fact in my opinion it makes me more able to do a job because i'm so determined that depression won't rule my life!

I haven't always suffered from depression but I have always had a melancholy side to my personality. My therapist asked for my earliest memory of feeling sad and I can rememeber hugging a teddy bear at aged about 5 or 6 and crying because i would never know my great grandparents properly!
(They did in the early 80's).
But apparently that's not usual behaviour for a child.
However i grew up and i don't remember being introverted as a child or teenager. I had a major blip when i was 13 when i came to school one day and nobody in my group of friends would speak to me.
And i don't mean that they ignored me a bit i mean when i spoke to them they turned their backs on me!
To this day i still have no idea what happened. I know i wasn't into make-up and boys like they were all i wanted to do was go home and play on my SNES or go out and play in the fields by my house or look after my animals.
The day that happened i went home and cried my eyes out to my Mum begging her to let me change schools. She refused and said i had to go back i couldn't let them win. And i believe that made me stronger and made me care less about what people think of me!

So i grew into my 20's fairly confident but i'd have my quiet moments where i'd feel sad for no reason and lie on the floor staring at the ceiling for hours.
And to be honest I always felt i was going mad and that if i told anyone that i'd be locked up!
So i kept my opinions to myself till i was 25(ish) then i decided i would try going to a therapist see if that would work. I decided i just had issues i needed to get off my chest and that would clear things up.
We talked about my parents divorce, my friends abandoning me. But none of it made me feel better.
My paranoia that had always been there in the background became more prominent. And eventually i abandoned the therapy idea.
I started to think i was being followed, that people i brought pictures off of had planted bugs in them! That if i texted my friends and they didn't reply they were talking about me and laughing about me.
I became very withdrawn and decided that the answer was i NEEDED to quit my job as that was the problem!

It worked for a little while and I got a new job at Derby City Council in the catering department.
The first 2 weeks there were awesome the boss was on holiday and everyone i worked with was lovely. The job was a piece of piss compared to my old one!
But then the boss came back and she started picking on me. EVERYTHING that went wrong in the kitchen was my fault. I even got blamed for a fight she had with her husband!
All this coincided with my Grandad being told that there was no hope for him with his cancer. And i had to come to work and put up with her crap whilst watching my Grandad deteriorate!
Anyway I needed the job so i put up with it my Grandad died and i discovered the answer at the bottom of a bottle of Vodka. Every night i'd go home and have a couple of drinks and it'd make me feel numb.
Again i withdrew from everyone and my paranoia came back BIG time!
I did go to the Doctors this time. But their answer was anti-depressants. But i didn't like how they made me feel so i decided that i would be fine on my own!
I started going out with my boyfriend and although i had my low moments i ambled along relatively well.
But then my job started to get to me. The attitude of my boss made work conditions unbearable. She hated anyone to have a laugh or any fun whatsoever in the kitchen. And it made me so tense all the time! Luckily (i suppose) i got put on hospitalities a lot and so the order and structure of that helped me loose myself a little bit. I'd shut myself in the hospitality room and just get lost in my job.
I didn't help for long. Again i tried therapy. Thinking that i just needed to get some more issues off my chest.
Only this time the therapist was terrible i really felt that she didn't care what i was saying and was just there for the money. (And at £60 a session, she was not cheap)!
She actually ended up making me feel worse about myself and i ended up not attending sessions and actually staying home in bed!

Again i struggled on and decided the answer was I needed to quit my job and go to uni! So i did.
That worked out quite well for a little while actually. I went to Derby Uni studying Events and Hospitality management. I was based at the Buxton site. I passed my 1st year and started my 2nd. Only i started to get really frustrated with how they ran things i was a January starter so for the first half of my 2nd year i was with the people i'd been with the previous January who were then halfway through their 2nd year. Things were not going great as 1 of the modules started in september and ran over the year so i did the 2nd half 1st and then would've done the 1st half 2nd.
I got SO frustrated and decided that this was not a good Uni and i needed to switch!
So i started at a new University.
Being older than nearly everyone else by a full decade i was determined to not seem like the sad older person trying too hard. At Derby it had been slightly better as there were a couple of people close to my age.
But at Stoke i was the oldest on my course. This made me feel down as i just felt old.
But it wasn't till we went on a residential trip to Barcelona that this became more prominent.
As i didn't really know anyone well enough to share a room (I have anxiety issues), i managed to get a room to myself. So it was nice i had my own space to go at the end of the day.
I love drinking but i get really bad hangovers so i decided to turn down the invites to go out clubbing every night. (I also have a i NEED to go home reaction if i feel sick, so i decided drinking was off the table).
By the end of the week however people were visibly taking the piss out of me for being boring and wanting coffee. So although i loved Barcelona the company was terrible!
After the trip I didn't attend Uni a lot i struggled to travel and decided nobody liked me.
But i passed my 2nd year. (Just).

So back to Uni to start my 3rd year. First day back i bumped into my 'friend' Jackie who took great delight in telling me everyone on my course hated me!
This made me so anxious i was physically sick at Uni and had to go home.

Now normally people's opinions don't bother me but i was out my comfort zone and being told that made me so bad.
It got so bad that i was catching the train to Uni and then turning round and coming straight back home!
I was having panic attacks (which i had never suffered from) in fact one day I couldn't get on the bus to get home from town! I just couldn't stand the thought of being so close to all those people.
I had to be fetched from town by my fella and i cried all the way home!

It was at this point i sought medical help properly. I was struggling to leave the house and see my friends so i knew i needed help.
The answer was yet again anti-depressants but i also got referred to a therapist. I actually took my tablets this time and i was not great on them, but they helped.
I decided that they were a short term solution and that once i started therapy i would be fine as i'd learn to cope without them!

There was one problem with that theory. My therapist was an idiot. He didn't seem to actually understand depression. He had some really dumb ideas (such as i induce a panic attack at an event i'd had tickets to for a year, to see how i cope! Obv i didn't. Also embarrass myself in public. Didn't do that either). He also kept telling me about other clients. And because of my paranoid streak i refused to tell him all my problems as i knew he would be talking about me to other clients!

Fortunatly (i suppose) i broke my foot so i was unable to complete my sessions with him. So i got referred to another therapist.

She was amazing. And really helped me.

I still struggle with my depression. I have learned that it's not something that will ever go away it's just something i must learn to live with.
My therapist made an observation that it's so much effort for me to maintain what others see as a normal mood. that any major knocks to my confidence especially when i'm out of my comfort zone can shatter my mood and send my spiralling down into depression.
She's right. Sometimes it's exhausting being round people. But whereas i would've once hid myself away now i force myself to interact with people.
It's hard and frustrating but i do it.
Everytime i don't let the depression rule my life is a massive achievement.

Some of my friends don't really understand depression (but they try). I have even been told to snap out of it a couple of times but when the silly part of your brain overrules the sensible part it can be hard to do anything. So snapping out of it isn't that simple!

I'm not ashamed of my depression. If asked i talk about it, in fact i'm very open about it. But sad to say employers still discriminate against people with depression.
I'm sure they don't always mean to and i know things are getting better but wouldn't it be amazing of at the top of my CV where you put your personal statement i could put:


I have Manic Depression. I live with it every day. I am learning to control it and not let it control me.

But unfortunatly that's not the way the world works. But with more and more celebrities talking about their depression it can only mean maybe one day i can have that at the top of my CV!

Oh and no i don't call it bi-polar Manic depression sounds more accurate to me!