I've been reflecting on the nature of my depressions in the past.
The first that I would properly call a depression occurred when I was a student in London. I wholeheartedly considered jacking the course in during the second term of my second year - that would be March 1975.
However, it was three years later in 1978 that the wheels really came off. I'd been working in the Box Office of the Royal Opera House and, after a long weekend visit to Paris, I was so exhausted that I had what I now know to be a major panic attack on Tottenham Court Road. I thought I was dying. It was April. I struggled on to May time, went off sick, went back to work and went off sick again never to return there as an employee. It was September of that year before I was back in employment and it was not until I came out that I began to get better.
By the spring of 1982, I was in Burnley working for Mid-Pennine Arts Association and hating my boss and the area. My way out of that period of gloom was to join Friend as a volunteer counsellor and, eventually, to move back to Liverpool. That was the period of my life when I was freelance. It was OK but again I felt trapped and hemmed in so, in spring of 1986, I organised change of career away from arts marketing and into Information Technology.
In the spring 1988, I moved from Percy Street to Egerton Street. Whilst this change of house wasn't depressing, it was stressful to the point where I needed time off work to recover. For a while, I thought that I had gone there to die. I was also battling with Richard. That relationship came to an end following a hurtful Christmas in 1990 but staggered on into the spring of 1991.
My next major upset was David's death in spring 1995. Somehow, I negotiated my way through that but, three years later, in 1998, when Ross became ill, I went into another decline. It's been six years now since I felt quite so low.
Two things are remarkable in this history. Firstly, there seems to be a recurring pattern of a crisis of some sort about every three to four years. Sometimes, these things have been resolved by making changes. On three occasions, I have become ill enough to warrant extended periods of leave from work. Secondly, although many of the trigger events have happened during winter time, the period of crisis has often been the spring.
So, what can I say about now. Well, it's been a while since I last had a major upset so I must be doing something right to have managed things so well in the interim. And, this time, instead of pressing on until I feel really unwell, I've asked for help earlier in the year.
Indeed, the winter months may well be my undoing when combined with stressful circumstances. Ross and I are looking at getting one of those light box thingies. You never know. It may well lighten our darkness.
There's already a small but marked increase of daylight at the end of the day which is encouraging. In fact, the weather as a whole is incredibly mild for the time of year. I spent part of yesterday doing the spring pruning in the garden cutting back the buddleja, the caryopteris bushes, various clematises, the passion flower, the rhibes, the hydrangea bush and the two honeysuckles all of which were putting on a high degree of early growth. This is work that would normally be done at the end of February, beginning of March. I'll just have to hope against severe frosts in the next few weeks.
Elsewhere, I saw the doctor yesterday and she has signed me off for a further three weeks with options to extend. Whilst I'm glad not to be going back to work yet, part of me does feel guilty and a fraud. After all, I'm not suppurating from every pore and I don't have limbs missing. What I still have yet to accept is that I am ill and that the treatment is to do nice things for myself. It is very difficult to put your head in a sling as a sign to the rest of the world.
Another part of the treatment is to get myself another job. In that respect, I have been to Sefton Carers, an organisation set up with funds from the Princess Trust to support carers. Why haven't I been to see them before you might ask? Well, they are only open Monday-Friday 9am-5pm. So, if you are in work, it is impossible to get to see them.
Anyhow, I have been to see their Training Officer and she has given me some good tips about places to write for possible jobs. I'm unused to writing spec letters so she's given me a hand with that as well. I've got myself booked in for an Indian Head Massage later in the week and I am bearing in mind that, should the whole idea of returning to work at Connect prove to be too dreadful to contemplate, these will be the people who can best advise me as to the procedures to follow.
Elsewhere, the big news is that Nutkin has a girlfriend. A pretty, young, sleek, charcoal grey cat has newly appeared on the scene and the two of them have really hit it off. She spends a lot time sniffing his hindquarters and the two of them gambol and frolic in the garden and on the walls. Photographs will be forthcoming if we can manage it.