The End of the Tunnel (for now) and its Impact on me

Three months ago, I couldn’t get up, both physically and mentally.

Physically, I’d wake up for the majority of mornings and think instantly that I wanted the day to be over, back in my dark room in bed, away from any people. Going through days would only exacerbate this sense of entrapment and overwhelm me further.

Mentally, it was like I was a boxer on the canvas, and the swirl of depression and anxiety had just landed the knockout punch in a gruelling battle. Looking up at that opponent, even enemy, was too much, let alone attempting to fight it.  

Now? It’s like an alternate universe. The times where I was moping about physically finding the simplest tasks to be like climbing Mount Everest have become ever rarer, whilst the better moods and the energy that I didn’t have three or four months ago seemingly dominate my outlook. It is only now whilst reflecting on it that I realise truly how much everything appears to have changed.

Even while I write this, I cast a wry smile back at my former self, the one that furiously typed away writing that previous post to relieve some of the stress my muddled brain was experiencing. The one that felt tired as soon as I got up and tried to return to my day-to-day life. The one that didn’t want to battle on.

I said it at the time, it is the loneliest place in the universe. I used the analogy of being at the bottom of a well and looking down, but different people have told me of being trapped in a goldfish bowl or being sat at the side of the road watching cars go by yet not being able to act. Everyone has different experiences and what makes mental health problems so dangerous is that it is impossible to comprehend one another’s problems fully.

The improvement that I’m about to speak of wasn’t sudden. It’s unnoticeable, and on a bad day, I’m reminded just how low things were. Nevertheless, the improvement is there, and it is only when I reflect on it that I realise just how big it has been.

For me, eventually, the solution lay in the form of medication. Understandably, both my doctor and parents were cautious about putting me onto antidepressants, due to the stigma around them and the medical dangers of them. I can now see that caution, though at the time, I needed a quick fix to my ever-worsening mood so thus I was desperate for them.

Eventually I did start taking sertraline and I wasn’t sure what to expect really. It was late March and my doctor suggested that within a month I should be having about the same amount of good days as bad days, and then in two months, be feeling back to close to what was my normal self again.

Through the numerous times that I did doubt their effects, they helped. They’re not ‘happy pills’ they don’t just instantly give you a rush or a high, they slowly balance the chemicals in your brain that improve moods as a result.

I write this around two and a half months later, and they’ve had the desired effect, as I mentioned the littlest things seem more enjoyable and the smallest things that bit easier. I am aware though that they are not a permanent fix and as a result I think I’ll forever have some sort of guard up. I still feel as if there is that possibility of relapsing back into the state I was in, and it’s a terrifying prospect that I don’t think I’ll ever escape. This alone shows that the scars of anxiety and depression remain under the surface, waiting to be provoked by just the slightest thing.

But it’s been proven, a stigma has been broken. Antidepressants actually work, and studies from just this year have estimated that 1 million more people should be on them to help mental health issues. To me, this represents the first important step in increasing the provisions towards mental health, it is just identifying the problems that is now crucial.

I don’t think it needs me to say that just because I am feeling remotely better means that mental health problems are not an issue no longer. Even if I am having a good day, I find there is a very low probability that no one around me is suffering and I am fully aware of the steps that I myself need to take from my experiences. I thought by sharing it here on this blog, very similarly to the previous post about mental health, others can learn from it too.

When I first talked of it, I was touched by the support people gave me, the impact that it had on my dad-to-day life cannot be underestimated. It felt as if I was less alone, and as simple as it sounds, like people cared more.

I really am not sure how it helped. But it did. And if you are still reading now, if there is one thing that you are to take from this, I beg that it is this. The smallest things can help people, be that a smile or a wave or a hug or general compassion. For further mental health conscientiousness in society means more love.

And if there are any that feel low, please talk to someone. Whoever it may be, be that a doctor, a friend, a family member. I know it is so much easier said than done but talking about your issues are the first way to solving them.

I recognise that me saying this probably helps little, and without wishing to sound as if I am a ‘know-it-all’ about opening up – in the long-term it can be the best thing to do. Again, I don’t want to sound overdramatic, but there were genuinely days where I’ve realised if I didn’t talk to people, that would push me over the edge.

Like with the original tale of the last few months that I posted in April, I’m not sure why I’m writing this in all honesty. I am all too aware of how patronising some of the last few paragraphs could have sounded, or did sound, though perhaps that is my underlying nature of cynicism driving through again.

I can’t tell you why you’re reading this now, because I honestly don’t have a clue. The aforementioned cynicism will tell me not that no one cares, but rather that I wouldn’t need to provide an ‘update’ on my feelings, so it can’t be that. And I don’t think this helped as much as the original – if anything it’s made me reflect on just how low I felt and saddened me.

It just feels right.

Those days were like living in hell, being trapped in your brain, and the prospect of going back there absolutely scares the life out of me. Yet so many people struggle with feeling like that and will do unless society changes. Unless we change. The single biggest thing I have learnt from my battle with mental health problems is that I want to do as much as I can to stop others having to deal with these problems, along with the fact that it may not always feel rosy on the road to recovery.

Maybe that is the reason for this post, given that mental health awareness is so vital to me, and so many others. Mental health is now probably the topic I think about most on a day-to-day basis. And it might sound ridiculous, but that makes me grateful for the last few months.

Granted, it’s been a level of awful I didn’t even know existed this time a year ago. But it’s made me value the complexities and nuances of the brain that we take for granted every day. The fact that it controls every action we take and is the most complex organ in our bodies. It cannot be a surprise, therefore, that it creates the most complex and unidentifiable problem in our bodies.

Emotions characterise us as humans. If we don’t work on solving the negative ones and helping each other with them, we might as well not exist.