Eight years since my world came crashing in around me
Eight years ago this week I hit a bump in the road. Not a few stray stones or some twigs from a nearby tree. Not an unfilled pothole left by the local council. Not even an un-replaced manhole cover or grid.
Eight years ago this week I hit my own Grand Canyon of a hole. My own sinkhole. My life-changing bump in the road. My breakdown.
Photo taken not long after coming out of hospital, December 2014.
It started like the flu. We thought - including two GPs who made home visits (you can tell it was eight years ago) - that it was the flu. Aches and pains. Fever. Couldn’t get out of bed. Agony. Crawling on my hands and knees to get to the toilet. Three changes of clothes a day. Plenty of fluids. Plenty of rest. No improvement.
The second GP home visit prompted a trip to the hospital - a drive I still cannot believe to this day (or remember) that I made myself. I left my ten month old daughter with my wife whilst I popped along to Epsom and St Hellier Hospital to find out what was wrong - just for some tests. My popping along lasted five nights (until I discharged myself against doctor’s advice - I hadn’t slept, had been moved three times on three separate nights and had been attacked by a fellow patient with a bottle) and then saw many subsequent trips back to the hospital and the GP - first to confirm that my pneumonia had cleared up - and then to find out why I was still feeling so tired, so low, so tearful, so unlike myself.
There wasn’t a rock bottom moment or a big reveal of a diagnosis of depression and anxiety but more the gradual realisation that I was unravelling and had lost control of my mind and my sense of myself. My kind GP gently asked: “do you think you could be depressed?”. I simply said: “I think I might be, doc”. No drama. No fanfare. Just acquiesce.
The final acceptance that I was in the midst of a breakdown wasn’t hard to resist - although I didn’t use the word breakdown for some time (hello stigma!) - it was all that was really left. The only option remaining on the shelf. Trying to get back to work and finding that too hard, both physically (I would sleep there and back on the commute even after only a half day) and emotionally (I cried a lot) that it was beyond me. With the benefit of therapy afterwards - privately-funded because even then the NHS waiting list was measured in months not days - I came to understand that I had been finding work and life too difficult for too long. Not months. Years. Years and years.
The signs were of course there. Huge, flashing, neon signs. The Piccadilly Circus of signs. Snappiness. Poor sleep. Sweating. Heart racing. Tears at work (hidden from view in quiet meeting rooms). Constant weighty feeling in my chest. Mind racing. Concentration hard to maintain. Not present at home. Not even present when watching LFC on TV or when in the ground. Weight gained. A little too much drink. A little too much food. Far too much stress. Saying yes to everything and everyone. Tense. Sad. Tense. Sad again. So stressed. Worried about everything. Feeling responsible for everyone’s happiness. Feeling responsible for everything. Taking on too much responsibility. Full responsibility mode. Wanting to be loved. Wanting to be needed.
My breakdown had many causes - born of many parents. It wasn’t just the job and the pressure, although that became the straw that broke the camel’s back. It was me. It was me trying to fix the ugliest and most painful feelings I carried with me every day: the rejection; the fear of abandonment; the wanting to be wanted and needed and loved; the insecurities; the fear of becoming a bad father and husband; the fear of sitting still, being quiet and just being me.
My breakdown had many causes but it gave me many opportunities. The opportunity to reset my life and to make different choices and understand what had brought me - first to that hospital bed - and then to the moments of quiet contemplation on Epsom racecourse when I started to see more clearly what had happened to me and why I had responded in the ways I had. I came to realise too that my life belonged to me and my family and not to my job; my career; my ambitions, fuelled by the need for validation. The only validation I really needed was from within; validation I got from the feeling I experienced when seeing a smile on the face of Aileen and Aoife or when doing something simple that made me happy.
Eight years ago this week, I fell into a deep, deep hole. As the Grand Canyon is known: into ‘the basement of the world’. I was sat in the basement of my world, broken and feeling like I couldn’t be fixed. Feeling like I hadn’t just fallen into basement but had ben thrown down 100 flights of stairs on the way down.
Eight years later I am no longer broken. I am comfortable in my own skin. I have learnt so much about myself and how I experience the world. I have put myself back together, with the help of many things, including two wonderful therapists.
I will always continue to be a work in progress but that is just grand with me. I will always be grateful I’m still here and grateful beyond what words can express that Aileen held my hand throughout it all. And still holds it today and for the rest of my life.