Last month I wrote about my depression. The messages of support, love and friendship have been a joy to receive. I am very grateful, thank you so much. The kindness of friends and strangers is a lovely way to end what has been a difficult year in so many ways. The country may still be bound for the creek, absent a paddle, but I know I am recovering really well and I feel 2017 is going to be great.

This blog will be the only other time I write about my depression, mostly because I wouldn’t write about my varicose veins or sore knees either! If we are to normalise depression it doesn’t deserve to be blogged about like it is rare strain of intergalactic flu; but I do feel it might be helpful to say a little more about what my depression is like for me and that despite its little cottoned socks, I am dealing with it and I am really pretty good.

I hope that writing about it may encourage others to talk more about their feelings and experiences too so that they can be helped as I have been helped. However I am only writing about MY depression and I am acutely aware that depression is different for everyone in its impact, degree and consequences. I hope I do not diminish or trivialise this quite miserable thing by discussing it a little glibly, but it helps me not to make it too important while not pretending it is any more welcome than playing pass the parcel with a leaking bag of cold sick.

On a recent walk a song popped into my head. It was Sinatra singing “Me and my shadow”. I thought it was a very cheerful tune to hum along to; but I had not realised until I checked just how much darker the lyrics appear when they are not disguised by the slightly comical tone Frank found for the song.

“Shades of night are falling and I’m lonely

Standing on the corner feeling blue

Sweethearts out for fun

Pass me one by one

Guess I’ll wind up like I always do

With only

Me and my shadow

Strolling down the avenue

Me and my shadow

Not a soul to tell our troubles to

And when it’s twelve o’clock

We climb the stair

We never knock

For nobody’s there

Just me and my shadow…” 

…Reading these words I can’t help wonder if we are too quick sometimes to mask a truer feeling by trying to whistle a cheerful tune over the top. That might have been my first mistake.

It would be a good description of the last few months, mostly a cheerful tune, but sometimes standing on the corner feeling blue. A feeling that thankfully does not last too long, but where the world feels a stranger to me. A stranger who also brings a darkness that is not just the opposite of light, but accompanied by an exhausting, relentless, swirling sound-scape of every idiot in the world, every sadness and every injustice, drowning out kindness before kindness can take effect. It is a destructive place, a place to smash one’s own achievements as if they were cheap crockery.

When it relents I can let in the sound of silence and a soft calm descends. In this place however I am prone to tears triggered by almost anything; hearing a song that takes me to a happy memory, a picture of my girls when they were tiny, someone else’s sadness, someone else’s joy, even the dog looking at me with her head on one side when I discuss Brexit strategy with her.

I don’t mind the tears, I am glad I have learned to cry again, but I do want the calmness to stay and not leave me, especially in the middle of the night when I can wake up so frightened and gripped that I feel like my mind has cramp.

Good days accumulate, but then I feel it coming again. I feel it like a dead weight pulling me back towards the darkness. However while it sounds a bit shit, and it is, I am really fine, because I know it is just a dumb ride through a dumb tunnel and the dumb tunnel ends.

While the tunnel is not real, the tiredness feels very real. This depression physically drains the energy from every muscle. To be “up” for a presentation or an important meeting is first to run up the hill fully burdened with the need to be at one’s best. When it’s over there is an overwhelming need to rest.

So far however, truly, so good; I can be inside the depression and not be consumed by it. I can be outside of the depression and be comfortable that when it comes again I have its measure. It can waste some time, but what it cannot take is what makes me, me. I am so much more than this. I am more than the good times and the bad. I am more than the person people see, more than the work I do, more than the sport I like to watch or the blogs I write. I am so much bigger than it and I know it can only have a small part of my world and only for a little while.

I do not want to finish this blog with cheesy false optimism. Depression is scary, undermining, exhausting and should never be treated lightly. I have however learnt something that will stay with me for the rest of my days. I am beginning to see the darkness as revealing in me a depth of feeling that I might not otherwise have explored. Like everyone I have a capacity to love, to care and to give; but I am now even more determined to be all of my feelings, not just some of them. I am better for this experience and I know now that I have even more to give. Whether it is just me, or me and my shadow, I want to make such a difference.

Thank you again to everyone who wrote, called or otherwise found a way to get a message to me. I am humbled by your kindness and forever in your debt. Let’s have a drink to kindness, the next one’s on me. Happy Christmas and please take care.

Paul x