I have just received the link to Marian Keyes’ new newsletter, I screamed “oh joy!” (I am not exaggerating) and then I read it and found out Marian is suffering from depression.

I wrote about depression on this blog before (actually I thought I wrote more about it, I am quite surprised to find out there were only two posts about it). An awful lot of people think depression is a form of laziness — when I was depressed, I heard the phrase “why don’t you fucking DO something” way too many times; others think it’s some kind of romantic emo shit — “I am so depressed, I listened to Nick Cave ALL DAY while wearing my MOST dramatic black t-shirt”. It is neither. It is a hormone imbalance in your brain caused most often by underlying mental/emotional problems that have remained unsolved for a long time. It is an illness, and it can be cured. It can also, if untreated, lead to death.

Marian writes: “Regular readers know that I?ve been prone to depression on and off over the years but this is in a totally different league. This is much much worse. I know I?m leaving myself open to stinky journalists saying ?What has she got to be depressed about, the self-indulgent whiner, when there are people out there with real troubles?? so I won?t go on about it.” I know exactly what she means. Some of my friends tried to help me, when I was depressed, by pointing out good things about my life: I had a roof over my head, I had a boyfriend, I had a job, I didn’t have cancer or AIDS or any other, you know, “real” illness. I knew all that, and it made me feel, paradoxically, worse because despite the fact that there was so much good stuff going on in my life, I remained depressed and unhappy — and, to make it worse, I felt like I was being ungrateful as well.

I have recovered from my depression. Whether it is forever, remains to be seen — ask me on my deathbed and I will let you know. (Personally I hope that won’t happen too quickly, I’m a very busy person you know.) It took a total of three years; first of anti-depressants, then of therapy. I ended up becoming a totally different person; calmer, happier, much more conscious of myself. I am not perfect, and I do have worse days, and sometimes I get sad. But so does everybody.

Depression, as I said before, is an illness. It is a difficult illness, both for the depressed person and their family and loved ones; it is hard to understand, hard to cope with, hard to cure and to get through. But it is curable. When I was at my worst, I thought it would never go away. But it did. And I know how Marian feels when she writes: “I still feel like I?m living in hell. I can?t eat, I can?t sleep, I can?t write, I can?t read, I can?t talk to people. The worst thing is that I feel it will never end.” It will, Marian. I know exactly how you are feeling; I know the horrible feelings you describe, for I have been there. And now I am on the other side, on the green shore. And if you, kind reader, are suffering from depression, I’d like you to know that you can get here too.

If I could, I would give Marian a long, long hug. And then I would recommend that she goes to a psychiatrist first, and a psychologist on her way back — as soon as she feels possible, or sooner. I would take her by the hand and go with her and sit next to her and continue telling her that it will be alright. Because first of all, I know that it is possible to recover from depression, and second of all, I might have never met her, but her books have made me laugh and cry, her essays made me feel she is an amazing, gorgeous person and her life story has been so amazing and special that I just know it will get filmed one day, and her character will be played by someone warm, sweet and beautiful (Helen Baxendale perhaps?). Third of all, recovering from depression takes time, and the earlier the treatment begins, the quicker it ends.

Good luck, Marian. I will be waiting here for you, on the green shore. We have sunshine here and nice soft drinks with umbrellas. Don’t stay in the dark too long.

(Read Part III here first.)

One of the oddest phrases uttered during the audition about depression was Cristi saying she is thankful for hers. “What a weird, ridiculous thing to say”, I thought, astounded. And then she elaborated: she was thankful because she didn’t want to go back to her life BEFORE depression. And, once I looked at my life from that angle, neither did I.

Before depression I lived in Poland, with an amazingly boring, egoistic flatmate I passionately disliked (the feeling was mutual, as I eventually found out) but didn’t dare to tell him, with a somewhat shit job that made me unhappy, with not many friends, no boyfriend (I met Scipio after the illness has been going on for months already, and it was loving him that made me go and do something about it), my best friend having just moved to a different town, my grandmother having just died.

Right now I am living in Amsterdam in my own apartment without any flatmates (unless you could my rat), working at a job I still like, slowly but surely building a circle of friends, finally having broken through my fear of biking around town, fit, happy, financially slightly under the weather but solely due to my own choices (working four days a week does that to your finances) and… yes, with a grandmother being very unwell. Guess it’s a habit, this one.

A few weeks ago I have had a small bout of what I thought was depression but now that I think about it was most probably a small mental breakdown instead. I wasn’t able to talk to people. I cried the whole day. I drank a lot. (It helped. Until the morning after.) I spent a lot of time in bed unable to move. And I monitored it very closely; in fact, I started visiting my therapist again three weeks before it happened.

I am no longer addicted to pain and suffering. More, I feel absolutely no need in my life for unwanted, additional pain and suffering, other than what life throws at me regardless of whether I ask for it or don’t. There is absolutely no way I am going to waste any more time on being depressed, wallowing in self pity or telling myself therapy doesn’t work.

I am thankful for my depression because had it not been for the illness I wouldn’t have gone to therapy, which has changed my life tremendously. I have learned how to cope with things; I have learned how to use them to my advantage; I have learned to take responsibility; I have learned that other people are not responsible for the way I feel. I have learned that I still have loads to learn — it is not, by any means, easy to live without falling back into old tracks; after all, I lived wrongly for almost thirty years, it would be rather silly to expect that a year or two can repair such a damage. And I have changed my life enormously. For the better.

I always try to talk about depression publicly because I remember myself thinking it won’t help to do therapy, it won’t help to go to a doctor, etc. I want to be the example of someone who thought that, then went through therapy and pills… and they helped. If I make one depressed person go to a doctor a month earlier than they would have otherwise, I will perhaps pay a bit of debt to those people who helped me while I was unwell.

*

This journey — the journey of self-discovery and learning new things every day — is far from over. In fact, I hope it won’t be over until the day I die. And I do not regret a single bit of it. There is no point in regretting the past, which has the convenient ability to remain where it is — in the past — and not influence your present and future any more than you allow it to.

I just put on my white hotpants — don’t worry, I only wear them at home, that’s a bit too much Ray to be seen in public — and had a very pleasant thought: “Less than three years ago I said to Scipio that he can have them because there is no way on Earth I will ever fit in them again.”

In other news, I listened to a radio show about depression, starring my friend Cristi (I will put up a link if anybody asks, but it is in Polish). I thought a lot of her observations were scarily accurate and, well… largely about me, too.

And in still different news, last night I arrived home after a long weekend spent with the boyfriend. I biked against the wind the whole way — a total of 40 kilometres give or take a few, since we spent the whole day biking around, suntanning, swimming and in general having a lovely time. The bike started making strange noises at the end of the trip; it isn’t a very new bike, but I love it nevertheless. I took off my top — it was shit hot; put the bike upside down to check the brakes, then put it back up to replace a bell and do some other minor service. Sweaty, sunburnt, muscular and tattooed I caught a reflection of myself in the TV screen and suddenly had a thought: “Shit, I am so sexy, I would do myself — except I probably wouldn’t dare to chat myself up.”

All these things are connected.

*

I believe it was around June, five years ago, that I hit the rock bottom. I drank a litre of wine a day, more or less. I had attempted to kill myself. I had cut myself (finding a mail years later that starts with “Hello xxx, please don’t be scared or anything because I am alright but I cut myself last night” isn’t a pleasant experience). I only had dark thoughts, dark feelings, dark t-shirts and dark everything else. I couldn’t remember how to laugh. I was very very very unhappy and completely determined that there was nothing in the world that could help me.

I remember having a friend, Cristi, also self-diagnosed with depression, over. And our conversation where we assured each other there was no way out. That we had no chance. We felt strangely reassured in our suicidal emo-heads. We were… chosen, we felt. Ones that had no chance on the long road through hell at the end of which was death.

And then Cristi was hospitalised, I went on pills and we both started the long, long process of recovery.

*

I hated myself back then. I thought that I was an absolute nutcase, worthless and stupid and useless, drowning in self-pity. I wrote songs about darkness and blood. And I wallowed in pain with gusto.

A depressed person finds a certain solace in their pain. Certain people say depression is an addiction like alcoholism — that you are addicted to pain and suffering. This is in a way true; after all, you’d expect that a person feeling so horrible and awful would immediately seek help. I didn’t. Neither did Cristi and neither did most people I know who suffered from depression. Some went on and on for years, refusing to go to a therapist or a psychiatrist who could prescribe medication, despite the truly horrible pain we were going through; a very real, existing pain, making us barely able to function. And that does strike me as an addictive behaviour, same as that of an alcoholic who refuses to acknowledge his or hers problem and seek help.

I remember certain bits better than others (my memory has been shot to threads by the antidepressants — it still hasn’t improved all that much, I write down a lot of things). I remember once coming home from work, seeing a genuinely funny billboard, acknowledging its funniness and saying, in a monotone voice, “ha, ha, ha”. Not laughing. Saying. I wasn’t able to laugh. I remember being at work and hiding in the kitchen to cry for five minutes, then quickly wash my face with cold water and go back to my desk. I remember lying on the floor for hours, whipping myself with thoughts along the lines of: you’re useless, you stupid piece of shit, looking for attention and pretending to be ill, why don’t you fucking do something you crap excuse for a human being? — and not getting up from the floor and doing “something”, because I genuinely wasn’t able to.

It is not moving abroad, buying an apartment, releasing an album or becoming fit that is my biggest achievement. It is the fact that I learned to love myself.

Part IV to follow…