SIDE BALL

 Writing on my blog has been very difficult of late.

I have been suffering from depression and I have tried to hide it. I felt unable to write on here because after all the main reason for writing my blog to help my Fellow survivors.  To share with you how I had recovered from my childhood abuse. Therefore, when I became depressed my first reaction was deep shame and I felt unable to continue to write here. I was writing on Facebook because I was getting instant feedback and it saved my life because two people who knew me and knew how unlike myself I had become and they could read between the lines of what I was saying, that I no longer wanted to live.

This could not have happened on my blog. However I made the fundamental mistake of connecting my depression with my childhood abuse. I have very good GPs and may have explained to me how depression can hit anybody at any time for any reason and to no reason and that it was particularly hard on people like myself who are intelligent and who want to know the ins and outs and the reasons. This has been the most difficult part of this disease. I have no doubt at all now that it is a disease. I started on medication and have gradually increased the dose and I think the next time I see my doctor in two weeks it will be increased once more but that will be the maximum.

Depression can sneak up on you as it did on me. The last 2 1/2 years of my showing dogs that was all I did because I was fighting my disease, my physical disease, which I wasn't going to allow to beat me. It took all the energy I had. I stopped knitting I stopped reading  I stopped everything but swimming. Because all I could do was sleep and bath and groom dogs. I eventually realised I had to stop.

This could well have been the trigger for the depression but and this is the difficult part to understand it is not the reason I am depressed. I have come to terms with the dog showing and I am glad that I no longer do it it is such a relief for me to not do it any more. What is much more telling of my depression is the fact that I do not die yarn or knit any more because I can't find my muse for it.When a person stops doing the the things they love, like I have also stopped listening to music, this is another sign that one may be depressed.

Depression is NOT having an off day feeling miserable. It isn't feeling down for a day or a few days. It is like being swallowed by a big dark cloud and one is trapped. One often wakes, if one can sleep, in tears. Or one doesn't get up at all, stays in pj's, take care of washing themselves, cleaning their teeth etc.It is barely being able to do anything. I have dogs so I have had to feed them. And let them in and out of the garden so I have not been able to stay in bed duvet diving.

I fear that I may have given the impression that once recovered from child, abuse, it was all over and done with. Though I feel sure I must said that there is no no getting over it, just learning to live with it. I don't think I ever covered depression because it never came up. Well now it has and so I am sharing it with with you. 

It is NOT a sure sign of abuse and isn't even a necessary apart of abuse or recovery. It can just happen as it did with me.

I always said I would be honest here and I have avoided being so. Well, now I have been. I am still depressed, depressed enough that I still considered a suicide risk but I have a lot of support and self knowledge and knowledge in general so I am safe.

None of this means that my recovery from abuse was fake or that what I have been sharing with you is fake. It just means I was hit in the head by something I was not expecting.