depression: how it affected me

• I cried a lot.  A lot.  I would cry getting ready for work, on the way to work, when I got to work….. you get the idea.  When I cried, I cried for my dad.  I kept saying, ‘I miss my dad! I miss my dad!’  Undoubtedly I did; but I was also crying for the safety of my childhood, when I was happy, and when parents could fix everything.
• I lost my mind.  I would start a sentence and get confused, and forget what I had begun to say.  I would walk around the house aimlessly, not remembering what I was searching for.  For the first time in my life, I couldn’t read books; they confused me too much.
• I felt physically sick in my stomach.  This was the anxiety manifesting itself.
• I would be driving, and lose chunks of time/space.  I would ‘wake up’ on the highway, not knowing how I’d got to where I was.  (And half the time, not remembering where I was going.)
• I lost my confidence.  I started asking SO, ‘Do you love me?’ because I couldn’t understand how anybody could possibly love such a walking disaster.
• I lost my ability to feel.  When I was at my worst, suicide was a decent option, and I didn’t feel anything – not love, not hate, not concern, not anything.  I was numb.
• I couldn’t work.  On the days I did make it to the office, I would spend the whole time shifting papers around my desk, hoping nobody would notice I wasn’t doing anything substantial.  I just couldn’t concentrate long enough to accomplish anything.
• My idea of recreation was sleeping.
• My personal hygiene suffered.  I would go days without having a shower or brushing my teeth.  The thought of washing my hair was overwhelming; at one point I went a month without washing it.  (To give you an idea, I normally shower twice a day.)
• On the rare occasions I did see my friends, I couldn’t follow the general conversation.  It went too quickly, and my brain just heard noise; it didn’t translate.  I would sit there, smiling or looking sombre, depending on what I saw on my friends’ faces, so they wouldn’t guess I didn’t understand what was being said.
• I forgot words.  When I was trying to speak, I wouldn’t be able to remember the right words for things.  This led to a lot of discussions with SO along the lines of, ‘Um, don’t forget the thing you need for um, later, you know, when you um, you know what I mean……’, followed by tears of frustration.
• I walked around in a permanent fog, that prevented me from feeling or absorbing things.
• I had no motivation to do anything at all.  When I wasn’t working, on bad days, I would lie on the bed, mind blank, bladder full, and just not able to crawl the few metres to the en suite toilet.