Mental Health Mondays #3 : The Thing with Depression...

Last week I didn't write a post because it was my main week of exams and I was Cramming As Heck but the exams went okay so yippee! This week, honestly I have very little motivation for anything and I can't keep myself focussed on anything for more than about 10 minutes. For this reason, this week I'm going to embark on a depression-related ramble and just see what happens. I'm hoping it will help me clear my head slightly and maybe someone will read it and gain something, who knows!

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I'm quite an organised individual, I LOVE lists, I love structure and it's for this reason that I function much more successfully in times when I have stuff that I need to be doing.
As I said, exam season has just come to a close for me but the past 3 or so weeks have consisted of almost constant revision, and although it has been spectacularly boring, it's given my days structure and has been a bit of distraction from other things which have been lurking in the back of my mind.



On Friday I sat my final exam of my second year in university (scary stuff!!) and now I'm sat in my tidy student house bedroom which no more than 48 hours ago was a mess of sheets of paper covered in psychological scribbles. I'm sat here, on the first sunday evening in weeks looking forward to a week where I don't need to be up revising by 10am. A full three months of nothing awaits me now, all I feel is complete exhaustion, all I can think is that I don't know how I'll keep my overly active subconscious occupied until September.

You see the thing with depression is that it's not as simple as finishing my exams, going out to celebrate and then getting on with the next thing. It's like that chore that really needs doing in your house that you push off and push off for the first few days until you realise everything that was keeping you from dealing with that thing is done and it's almost like depression is the only thing that left waiting for you - Let me emphasise here that it is not the only thing waiting for me, and deep down I do know that, but this is me rambling about my feelings and this is how it feels to be me right now.

The thing with depression is that it's like a little storm cloud waiting to rain down on me as soon as it gets too sunny. For the moment it's just hanging out, waiting for me to take a few minutes to myself and then it pounces, slapping me in the face with complete exhaustion and the little niggling voices which tell me I'm not good enough.
See, it always seems to be lurking about somewhere and I suppose that what I'm feeling now is the result of me pushing it away as hard as I could so I could finish my exams with as little disruption as possible, but now everything's over it wants to try and stay.
I'm going to try not to let it take hold, I'm going to fight it hard and try and slam the door in it's face so I feel able to pick up my stuff and get on with enjoying all the blessings that I have been given in this life.

But for now I suppose this post is part apology, part explanation and part self-care for me (apparently journalling is good for you so why not just post it all over the internet right?!). I hope that if you have read this you've managed to scrape some kind of benefit from it. Part of me feels that posts like this are important because, although they may not be fascinating reading material, it's real this is what depression is like for me at this time and I hope that by writing this maybe it'll chip away even a teeny bit of the bigass boulder that is stigma.

Thanks for reading this week's Mental Health Monday, I'm hoping next weeks will be a lot more structured, informative and positive! If you have thoughts on what you'd like me to post about don't hesitate to contact me (see my 'contacts' page for details). All these feelings and words are my own and aren't based upon anything other than my own experience so please take this into account in any thoughts you have.