5. The start of the beginning

On the 2nd anniversary of my sisters passing I was driving a lorry for the weekend and everything was centred around the London Marathon that was coming up, on the day I listened to the commentary on radio 5Live (brilliant commentators on there but that’s another story!) I had many moments of tears and frustrations as you can probably imagine, I think the first sign was that the Royals were promoting their charity ‘Mind’ I clearly remember thinking ‘perhaps I need help’ but didn’t do anything about it.

I plodded on working and going through the motions but never felt really happy or ‘normal’, don’t get me wrong, I had some great days with my wife, mum, kids, nieces and nephews but it wasn’t what it should be. We all go through ups and downs but the ups seemed to be getting less and less. On the 2nd anniversary I got the usual slide into despair as the marathon approached, I watched it on tv, cried and thought I had run 26.2 miles of the most iconic race in the world and don’t remember hardly any of it, can you believe I can’t even remember running around the Cutty Sark!

After the event when things usually start to improve I found I wasn’t coming out of the slump, I was getting ratty, was constantly tired, drinking too much and had a very short fuse. My wife and business partner suggested I see someone as I was becoming out of control, we were going to lose drivers and or customers, I kept saying I was fine, just tired.

If there’s anyone reading this that has suffered depression you will know exactly what I am talking about, if not you can only imagine what it’s like.

I’ll try and explain my feelings as everyone is different, on a bad day you don’t want to get out of bed but you don’t want to stay in it, you want to shower but can’t be bothered to get the soap out or the towel. You’re hungry but don’t want to eat unless it’s something easy like crisps or biscuits (no effort required) which in turn means you put on weight, you look in the mirror and think ‘I’m fat and worthless’ and so the spiral continues. The best way to get through a bad day was to drink, the more you drank the less hurt you felt until you went over the top and the depressive nature of alcohol kicks in, then you’re worthless and want to end it all and so it continues!

The best step I took was to go and see my doctor, I may have been lucky as the nurse practitioner I saw, Janet Thornley, was brilliant, she took the time to talk to me, even if the appointments went on a bit longer than they should have, she gave me options and I had an appointment pretty much weekly for a while. She was patient with me and we tried different ideas but settled on anti depressants, we tried a few different strengths and tablets until we found one that seemed to be working.

As you may have guessed from previous posts I am not the sort that wants to talk about things that are upsetting but she did put a good argument across for Councelling, at this point I had made up my mind that I needed to try and sort myself out or die, I wasn’t going to continue feeling like this.

Unfortunately the NHS is a superb service that is underfunded and understaffed, again that’s another story that I may revisit in a different blog! The waiting list for Councelling on the NHS was anywhere between 6 months and a year, I was lucky enough to be able to go private and was put in touch with ‘Councelling Works’ in Stony Stratford. I met with my councillor, a lovely lady called Kate Stubbings, she was the first person that I really spoke to about things, it was quite good for me up to a point, the best thing I got from it was to share my feelings with my wife and to tell friends what I was going through. That was a weight lifted, anyone going through the same things I was (or similar) really should consider talking to someone close, in confidence if it helps.

This blog will continue soon

I’m not great with this technology thing but I hope this gets shared and gains some followers so I can try and help some others. If anyone wants to message me then I can try and listen if it helps.