I'm not having a good day.

It's been a while since I mentioned my depression, or at least I think it has.  But today has not been a good day.

I did not sleep well, waking up every hour or so until midnight, which was when I received a text with my exam results (we have to wait almost 2 months for the results so why they have to be sent out at midnight I don't know, another few hours wouldn't hurt), at 6am I gave up but felt more drained than I did when I went to bed.  I failed, by the way, but this was not unexpected.

I dragged myself out of bed and went to do the 'big shop', I had decided to try a different store today and it really threw me off my shopping stride - I seemed to buy half as much as usual, but paid twice as much.

The rest of the day has been a bit of a blur.

I have managed to wash my work clothes but nothing else.

I wanted to sort out the downstairs cupboard/junk room.  I haven't.

I should have gone and collected my prescription.  I haven't.

I needed to go to the bank.  I haven't.

I haven't attended to my vegetable patch for weeks.

All I have wanted to do today is sleep or eat or read or gamble or drink.

This may be a reaction to everything going on at work at the moment, or it could just be an escalation of my usual summer blues, or it could be a mixture of both, but I don't like it.

I want to go to bed and not get up.

I want to run away and not come back.

I just don't want to be here.  Alone.

Maybe I do have personality problems.

A few months back I posted about Psychopathy and wondered if I maybe had psychopathic tendencies.  At the time it was said as a joke, but I am wondering more and more whether I do actually have issues.

If I read about someone else's problems I often think 'so what?'  I don't mean really serious problems or illnesses, I'm not that much of a bitch, but when people have had things going their way and then suddenly they don't I feel a bit too much joy.

I have suffered with depression for over 10 years, most of those spent trying to self-treat, but I always held down a job so when I read that people are 'too depressed to work' but not too depressed to go out every day with friends, or not too depressed to get pregnant, or not too depressed to go on holiday (that's another annoyance, if you never work, why do you need, and how can you afford, a holiday?), I get very angry with them.

When people claim they have no friends, and no money, and no-one to help with anything, then in their next breath are talking about their 'very good friends' and spending money on unnecessary things I get very angry.

When people announce they are pregnant, I get intensely jealous.

When I am feeling particularly low, and post or say something on one of my substitute friends (also known as facebook and twitter) and I get ignored, fair enough I am used to being ignored, but when someone else posts almost exactly the same thing and gets replies offering hope, help and companionship, I get very angry.

On the rare occasion that someone does say something nice to me, I can't cope and tend to dissolve into floods of tears.  If someone is shouting at me or telling me how useless I am, I just stand there and take it, no problem.

I don't find things funny that everyone else seems to.

I hate change that affects me.  

Little things that others ignore annoy me.

The recent tragedies in Glasgow and Cairns have left me unmoved, I'm not personally affected so therefore they are off my emotional radar.  And yet I donate to animal charities on an almost monthly basis and abused animals leave me in tears.  When I see that a pet has been stolen I am in tears.  When I see an old animal I am in tears.

Am I normal?  Is there something missing or not firing properly in my brain?  Should I try and get counselling?

Why don't I have friends willing to drive 100 miles to check on me and cheer me up?

I was on facebook recently, and in the ticker feed I noticed that someone had commented on a status, being the nosey person I am I had a look.

The person whose status it was had evidently been going through a bad time with their depression and they received so many invitations to visit people for the weekend.  Some offered to pay the train fare for them, one even offered to drive all the way to the Midlands to pick them up.

It must have been lovely for the poster to feel so loved and to have so many friends willing to put themselves out like that.  But instead of feeling happy for them, (trying so hard not to say him or her) I just thought 'where are my friends like that?'.

Why are my cries for help ignored?

Why is it acceptable for me to be lonely and see no-one from when I leave work to when I am back again, and apart from a couple of weeks a year, this is what happens.

I know I have posted before that I still have Mum and Dad, which I am grateful for, but at the age of almost 44 I STILL have nothing more to show for my life, no failed relationships, no children, no close circle of friends.

Where is my comfort blanket?

Where I am with my depression.

Recently I stated in a post that I never had a problem walking into a restaurant or pub and asking for a table for one when I used to be able to leave the house, still don't when I am out of the county or country which sounded a bit of a contradiction, after all to go out of the country, even the county, I have to leave the house so let me explain.

Unlike many people, my depression does not prevent me from working.  I've always had to work, and apart from the periods immediately following two redundancies I always have worked.  It is what was drummed into me as I was growing up.

It was when I started struggling to go to work that I finally sought help from my doctor, up until then I had just dealt with it.  After all, a social life is not important, work is.

And that is what my depression took from me, my social life.

I struggle to leave the house for any other reason than to go to work.

And I mean really struggle.  Not physically, mentally.  

I accept invitations knowing full well that I will not turn up.

I have spent so much money on concert and theatre tickets purchased when I have had a good day, but come the day of the event I cannot get myself out of the house.

Weekends away too, I have booked hotels and not used them, because I can't leave the house.  

Every year I make sure that I have a holiday in Spain, even this is a struggle.  I get very excited about booking but the closer the day gets the more unsure I become.

I leave packing to the last minute, then just throw random things into the suitcase.

I lay in bed the day of departure trying to convince myself to get up.

I have to tell myself not to ignore the taxi when it arrives.

I want to run away from the airport after I have checked in.

The strange thing is, the further from home and the city I get, the better I feel so once I arrive in Spain I feel like a different person.

I spend the holiday feeling great then I have to come home and the black fog descends again.

I have my medication review next month, I look forward to seeing what the GP says.

Why I didn't go out tonight

I was supposed to be going out for a meal tonight, I didn't go.  I just couldn't face it.

It was a joint leaving do for a few people at work, there are supposed to be 20plus people going so I won't be missed.

Some people feel confident when they look good, new dress, new hair, perfect make up. But that is not me, as long as I am showered, hair washed and brushed (I don't bother drying it, it will dry eventually) and I am wearing clean clothes I am good to go.  I feel confident when I am happy and for the last two years I have been happy at work, I felt that I could do anything I wanted to.

But that has changed.

We have had an office move, and the team is now split.

I don't like it.

And because I don't like it, I am not happy.

And because I am not happy, I have lost all my confidence.

And because I have lost my confidence, I don't want to leave the house.

I don't seem to be able to make work colleagues understand the difficulties I face, any more than I can understand what it was like being pregnant at 16 as a colleague was.

So I am now sat on the settee wondering about the grief I will get back in the office for not going tonight.

Too depressed to work but not to party.

So 'White Dee' from that wonderful television programme 'Benefits Street' is in Magaluf to host a party for fans of the show. To be a fan of the show I am guessing that you have to be claiming benefits, no right-minded working person could ever call themselves fans.

Apparently she is not being paid for this shindig, but hopefully, as she is out of the country and therefore unable to work, I assume that her benefits are being cancelled and that she will have to reapply on her return to the UK.  (I know this is what happens as I was made redundant and had my benefits stopped for the week I spent in Spain, even though it had been booked 4 months before I had any inkling that I was being made redundant).

Apparently she cannot work because she is too depressed, obviously doesn't stop her going out and enjoying herself.

And she is not the only one.

I know someone who has not worked in all the years I have known them, apparently due to depression.  However that depression has not stopped them going out drinking, partying and meeting up with friends to go shopping to spend their hard earned benefits.  Although too depressed to work, they were able to meet someone and get pregnant.  They are not too depressed to go on holiday (I still don't understand why you need a holiday when you don't work).

My depression affects me in the opposite way.  I have always been able to get myself to work, apart from two periods of redundancy for which I received the absolute minimum in benefits (JSA and council tax paid), and the brief period which actually prompted me to seek help, but once I get home from work I struggle, and I mean really struggle, to leave the house.

I have lost count of the times I have gone to bed hungry, because although I could afford to buy food, buying food would mean having to leave the house.

Even now, after having my meds doubled, the only place I ever want to be is in bed, with the covers over my head. 

I can count my non-work-related nights out over the last 5 years or so on one hand.  

On an 'up' day, I have booked tickets for concerts, I have booked nights in hotels, all of which I have not turned up to as I just couldn't leave the house when the time came.

I think it says a lot about how you were brought up.  I was brought up to just deal with things and get on with it.

There are some days when I wish that I hadn't.

Back to work tomorrow, and I really don't want to go.

In much the same way that I was not looking forward to 4 days off work, I am now not looking forward to going back to work. Four days is just long enough for me to sink back into the comfortable little bubble of isolation and I do not want to have to leave the house and face people again.  It is going to be so hard to climb out of my safe bed at 5am tomorrow morning, and even harder not to get back into it.  It is a 4 day week too, so by the time I am just about getting used to facing people again I will be off for another 2 days.  It would be so easy to just pull the covers over my head and pretend the world outside does not exist.  Sometimes, though, even the bed feels too big, and I have been thinking about buying a single bed and moving into the box room.

I had cause to spend a night near Norwich last year and I had booked a single room in a hotel, I would normally book a double for single use but for just one night I didn't bother.  It was a very well appointed en-suite room but tiny too.  I could stand in the middle, stretch my arms out and touch the wall each side but I loved it.  I felt so safe and secure and could have moved in permanently, it was this feeling of security that has had me thinking about moving into the box room, but then I think that it would be a bit ridiculous sleeping  in the smallest room in an otherwise empty three bedroomed house.

It may happen still.

This afternoon I have completed my second interim assessment for ACCA, this one was on Audit and was a 'wordy' paper, (the previous was for Tax and was a 'number' paper), I just need to rewrite it now so that it can be read, scan it (that will be fun) and email it to my training provider.  My first exam is just 9 weeks away now, eeekkk.

Time, I think now, for a cup of coffee and a piece of cake.