MHM Magazine

An onset of depression is always the same. I can feel it coming on like a cold. I feel disconnected. My mind is either an overgrown maze or an open barren veld, or an accident in the middle of a traffic jam. It always feels like I can’t get out of the storm, my head is in the clouds. It’s extremely hard to concentrate on menial tasks like pressing the right button on the microwave. I binge eat strictly on junk food until I’m so full I can only take shallow breaths and get attacks of stabbing pains below my rib cage. I overeat because I want to fill this hole that just keeps on growing. I want to get so fat that I’m not attractive, I’m trying to punish myself for my stubborn feelings of guilt from childhood sexual assault. Overeating gives me back control. When I’m depressed I sleep too much - I do this because I want to ‘kill’ time. I literally want to sleep the days away, or sleep and never wake up. Fortunately, when I’m depressed, I can sleep without tablets whose side effect is drowsiness. I feel like the ‘living dead’, I’m not totally present but I can move my fingers if that counts. I need to force every part of my body to ‘show up’ every waking second, or else it’s downhill from here, all the way into the grave I’m busy digging in my wildest imagination. Even in my darkest hour, when thoughts of suicide comfort me like the sun’s wake. I know I have to let someone in on this ‘secret’ before it gets bigger than me. To contain the situation, I make a call to my ‘first call supporters’ – they know my history. These ladies are brilliant at ‘getting me out of my head’ quickly and safely, because they’re acquainted with the pattern of my thinking and behaviour at this point of deadlock. Almost always, my doctor’s name will roll off someone’s tongue on a phone call or scream in CAPS on a text message. A direct message goes straight to my psychiatrist’s emergency number in detail. At the doctor’s rooms there is always a meds’ review and a gentle and confident discussion that happens around it or depending on how far the suicidal ideation has progressed, a hospital admission – it takes one call that triggers the chain of events that gets me a ‘bed’. Even in my darkest hour, there is a little voice that is audible. But ALL SHADES OF ‘BLUE’ LIVING WITH... MHM | 2025 | Volume 12 | Issue 4 | Living With MHM Issue 4 | 2025 | MENTAL HEALTH MATTERS | 31 H