In the beginning (the first of many)
I have always been depressed, I think. I don’t really recall a great detail of my childhood. Perhaps there lies unknown, unspoken trauma, or perhaps my brain just forgets. Either way, I can tell you that I have been depressed since my mid teens. I have also always been a worrier which has since manifested in extreme anxiety. I come from a family of worriers, although it seems as most age they’re losing the worry while I am gaining it. Perhaps I take on their worries, or perhaps I don’t function in the world like everyone else (we’ll get to that in the future). For now though, let’s just say depression and anxiety have been floating around my life since my teens. For me this included suicidal thoughts & ideation, self harm (in varying forms, some of which you may not even personally class as self harm), issues with substances, isolation, withdrawal, disassociation and an all around general feeling in the pit of my stomach that something wasn’t right.
I was diagnosed with major depressive episodes and generalised anxiety. I tried various therapies – CBT, counselling, talking, group, compassion focused, mindfulness. I tried various SSRI’s and anti-anxiety medication.
In the time frame between mid teens to mid twenties I tried it all. During this time I was also diagnosed with PCOS and also had therapy for obsessive compulsive tendencies, (no official OCD diagnosis). I got to a point where I felt I’d tried it all, even, what I like to refer to as, weak attempts at suicide. During this time I was also consistently on the progesterone only pill (Cerazette to be specific). I had been on the combined pill (Yasmin) but had been taken off this due to my BMI and apparent risk for blood clots.
In some final, last ditch, ‘let’s see if this makes a difference’ attempt at trying to fix my problems, I asked my GP (who I will forever be grateful for) whether I could try coming off the pill to see if that would help. And it did. The way I described it at the time and continue to describe it is as if a heavy black cloud that engulfed me daily finally lifted, I could breathe easier, I felt lighter, things seemed better.
My anxiety and depression remained, a gently buzz in the background that would occasionally gain a little volume. The daily suicidal thoughts & ideation went, as soon as the pill was out of my system. I so vividly remember having a conversation with my GP where I asked, coyly, ‘Does everyone think about dying all the time? Every day?’, to which she replied ‘No.’ It had been so long that I had wanted to die every day that I thought it was normal. How wild it was to feel alive, bored, unoccupied by intrusive thoughts of killing myself or unwelcome repetitive thoughts of ‘die, die, die, you should die, I want to die’.
This lasted a while. I stayed on SSRIs to keep the volume low on the anxiety and depression, although one always seemed louder than the other, each taking turns to poke me. I thought maybe I was bipolar. My moods went up and down, no where to the extremes it had while on the progesterone only pill, but still up and down. I never felt like I met the criteria though – the short bursts of intense depression, followed by the high of feeling well again, followed by stability returning to depression. The cycle was too fast. Still, I knew something wasn’t right.
It is probably important to note that I have dealt with trauma. To sum up some incredibly complex things (which, may, to you, appear to not fit the definition of trauma). My parents divorced when I was in my final year of primary school, on the verge of puberty. I carried the weight of a lot of peoples emotions through that, including adults. I struggled to maintain friendships or connect with people (I’ll come to that another time). My Dad went on to marry a women who brought a whole lot of pain and drama into our lives, resulting in a distancing of that relationship. I saw my Dad a week before he died, I was 19, I hadn’t seem him for a year before that. I was in an abusive relationship during this time, mostly emotionally and mentally abusive, although it did get physical a couple of times. I drank my way through my twenties making multiple disastrous decisions, alienating myself while desperately trying to fit in. I was not an alcoholic, I was a binge drinker who didn’t know when to stop and made all her worse decisions while drunk including, but not limited to, suicide attempts, self harm, harsh words, fights with parents, fights with friends, embarrassing incidents etc. etc. etc.
Here is where I pause to try and remind myself where I am trying to get with this.
I had the most painful break up in 2017, which led to an incredibly deep depression, I felt I would never claw my way out of. Obsessive compulsive behaviours plagued me, as did anxiety. I jumped on and off dating sites, finally giving up.
Then lock down happened. While the world fell apart I found myself piecing the broken parts of me back together. I exercised, I stopped drinking, I started a new job. Then I met my husband (technically we are civil partnered because we both felt more aligned to that then traditional marriage, why I feel I need to disclose this I can’t explain, but it feels easier to refer to him as husband).
We met in August 2020. Civil partnered in June 2021. Had our daughter in August 2021. And are still as in love with each other as the moment we met. This is not to say it has been smooth sailing. Isn’t the saying, nothing worth having comes easy? Or something like that?
Anyway, back to PMDD. While pregnant, despite fucking terrible sickness, gestational diabetes and a bout of food poisoning, my mental health was at its best. I had panicked when I first found out, afraid that I was more prone to post natal depression, so had set myself up with the peri-natal mental health team very early on. It was only after having my daughter, when my hormones returned back to that monthly wave, that I realised my mood swings. As I mentioned previously, I’d been convinced I had bipolar at one point. I had no other theory to back my drastic changes in mood. Until I realised it was a monthly occurrence, one I hadn’t had while pregnant (because the monthly occurrence of my period did not happen).
This is when I discovered PMDD – Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder. In the UK this often gets referred to as severe PMS, something that rubs me the wrong way constantly and makes me want to scream because it truly belittles the experience of so many menstruating individuals.
But this is (and was) just the beginning. One of many beginnings.