A car crash threw me into depression, accepting help got me out

If you saw me walking down the street you would probably notice my resting bitch face. If you saw me in a club you would see my outrageous dance moves and great “sex eyes”. The last thing you would think was that I have a mental illness.

The past year I have gone into my third year, done a placement at a television station and been diagnosed with depression. It’s a part of me and my personality and as much as I hate it, it’s sculpted me into who I am today. That sounds so dramatic and over the top, but it’s only now that I’m out the worst bit of the storm that I can look back at it all.

Before the accident

This chapter of my life starts back at the start of my second year when I was involved in a car accident. I had gotten into a taxi that had crashed. It was totally out of my control and not the way my night out at the SU should have ended.

I discharged myself the following day. 16 stitches in my forehead and six weeks later I went back to uni.

Seven hours later in hospital

Skip forward six months, my boyfriend of a year and a half and I book a holiday. The next day he FaceTimes me and tells me it’s over. Sob story, I know. But it was shit at the time. I then go forward into a mental summer, going constantly at a 110mph. My third and final year starts back. Doing a journalism degree, confidence is essential. But slowly as the year progresses I started to spiral.

When people ask me to describe what it feels like to be manic the only way I can sum it up is: imagine you’re running a race. Not running, sprinting. Sprinting so fast that you almost trip over your feet every time. Then when you do eventually trip, you fall hard. So hard you spend days in your room. Don’t wash or eat properly. If someone asks you to do something you panic and run. You do all this with no one knowing. Making up excuses as to why you can’t go to Quids in or out for a roast.

This race is what happened to me just before Christmas, I had known for a while it wasn’t normal to ring my best friend and cry down the phone every night, to be sleeping four hours max a day and to have lost two stone in a couple of months.

From June to August I went from 11 ½ stone to 9 ½ stone

After an incredibly teary conversation with my mum on the phone, she laid out a step-by-step plan of what I had to do the next day. Get up. Shower. Eat breakfast. Call the doctors. Go to the doctors. Ring my mum. On the last week of first term I was diagnosed with depression, given a prescription and signed off uni till the following term. I didn’t like the stigma attached and convinced myself that no one would believe me. So I lied to my friends, told them I was just stressed and pretended everything was fine. I was the hardest person to convince, and refused to take the medication that I had been prescribed, convincing myself that a bit of counselling would do the trick.

Working at Notts TV in my final year of my course had meant I had to step up my journo game. I was expected to ring and conduct interviews on a daily basis. My confidence went from sky high to nothing. I couldn’t make eye contact with people and never left my friends side when out in public. It was one day that I was working that it all came to a head. I was at Notts TV and my producer came to ask me to do two very simple tasks. It felt like she had just asked me to hold the world. I panicked, logged off my computer, grabbed my stuff and left. I got back to my house hysterical and in floods of tears. I was signed off uni for two weeks and finally started to take the medication I had been prescribed.

Every day is a struggle. That’s a cliché line but it’s so true. My meds have evened me out. Although I don’t have the lows anymore, I would be lying if I said I didn’t miss the highs. It’s like being in the best mood possible, wanting to dance down the street and see and do everything. But I’m better and noticing when I’m starting to sprint again and now I can slow myself down to a walk, so I don’t trip over.

Just the other day I went to my first journalism interview in six weeks. I had every intention of doing it all myself, but in the car I bailed and the girl I was with had to conduct the interview instead, whilst I sheepishly stood behind the camera. The me six months ago would have gone home after that and gone to bed, stayed there for a few days. But I swept it under the carpet, came back to the newsroom and carried on. So you could say there’s some progression. My illness inevitably will affect my final grade because it’s so unpredictable, I still now would rather not speak to someone in fear of them disliking me, instead of getting a better grade.

It’s a word that now a days is thrown around. Everyone seems to have depression or anxiety. I don’t think it’s just become a “craze”, I think people are more OK to talk about it. Living with depression isn’t anything out the ordinary. I’m still the same as I was. I’m lucky, I’ve had amazing support and got diagnosed early. I view it now as an extension of my personality. The thing that I view as my worst quality, I know my friends would say makes me so strong. I’ve been through shit and back. So realistically, it can’t get any worse.

I guess the best way to look at it would be comparing depression to a broken leg. You would never refuse to have the crutches you needed to help you walk, so why as someone with a mental illness, would I refuse the help that’s there? You would never pretend you don’t have a broken leg, so why pretend I don’t have depression?

@harriet_journo

This story was originally posted on Harriet’s blog.