ANTI-DEPRESSANTS, PSYCHOTROPIC DRUGS, THERAPY, CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST, SUICIDAL EPISODE, MEDICATION REVIEW, SIDE-EFFECTS, SUICIDE WATCH, PSYCHOSIS, MANIA, EPISODES OF SELF-HARM, FLUOXETINE

Depression.

They’re all such terrifying words, but they’ve become a part of my everyday life.

On my sixteenth birthday I was held on high-risk suicide watch after admitting to a counsellor that I had a stack of pills I wanted to take at some point. My deputy head and the “Student Welfare Co-Ordinator” (I don’t know, ask her) babysat me all day since I couldn't be trusted with myself. It was so lonely and scary that I distracted myself by thinking up the funniest ways I could kill myself just to spite them. If I wanted to, flushing my head down the toilet was top contender.

They spent the day telling me fabulous lies:

“No shit will hit the fan if you say you still feel that way, don’t worry.”

Here is a graphical representation of how much of a lie that was:

“Sometimes when we feel so low, we don’t know what’s best for us.” You may as well have just said “When we get mentally ill, we turn into sea cucumbers, and are therefore incapable of thought.”

Or patronising me so badly it was insulting:

“Don’t worry, you’ve admitted there’s a problem and you’re getting help now and that’s the first two steps.” Actually, I never asked for help, nor have I admitted to anything, but whatever you say. You’re the ‘professional’.

“You’re so brave!” — like they were going to give me a fucking sticker for it.

I still get pissed off by pictures of people on Facebook who got a cake and a nice meal on their sweet sixteen — I got two CAMHS referrals and a sick-feeling so deep I didn’t eat or drink anything for three days following.

CAMHS really stepped up to the plate, and offered me a consultation for a diagnosis… in three months’ time. Actual treatment would probably take even longer. I dread to think about if I’d been left for that long without help, because I was determined to get dead more than ever now that everyone was trying to make sure I couldn’t. Not to the mention the fact that I wasn’t eating or sleeping or even managing to spend whole days in school without breaking down in anxious tears. My weight dropped from 50kg precisely to 43.2kg in just two weeks: imagine how teeny-tiny I’d have been if it had gone on for much longer. I’d have disappeared altogether or floated away on the wind!

Escaping CAMHS’ clutches wasn’t so hard. My mum seemed to agree with me when I said I thought they wouldn’t help an awful lot. So we found a clinical psychologist who suggested going to the GP about some medication and has done an incredible job with the mental side of things too, so I’m still here. Typing.

Volume 2: The Interim

At 6.30pm every day I take 20mg of fluoxetine and the combined pill, one to make sure I have enough serotonin to get out of bed, the other to control the mood swings my natural cycle gives me. Side-effects like insomnia, fatigue, headaches and sickness affect 1 in every 10 who take fluoxetine. I had all of those during the first three weeks, plus teeth gnashing, feeling ‘foggy’ in my mind, loss of appetite and suicidal thoughts. I was exceptionally lucky that those weeks coincided with my GCSEs, which are pretty suicidal-thought heavy anyway.

I went to the toilet during my biology exam and seriously considered trying to flush my head down. But I had an escort listening to me pee to make sure I wasn’t cheating, and it didn’t seem very fair on her.

Exam time was not good. No one ever enjoys it as such, but I had one very serious suicidal episode and a lot of breakdowns. My poor mother had to work hard just to get me to eat some breakfast in the morning, or even convince me to get dressed. My best friend took a break from me as self-preservation. I was suspended in this horrible vacuum of revision and crying and feeling permanently sick; and in space no one can hear you scream.

But like all things, exams are temporary, and things got back on track... in the end.

I’m not here to preach doom and gloom, but however I try to dress this up in a nice comical bow, it won’t work. Those months of my life were the worst I think I will ever have. However hard I try I can’t look back and laugh. I was friendless, weightless and witless.

So after that, things could only get better.

Volume 3: The Nice Part

I found that once exams were over, my life was suddenly handed to me on a silver platter. I’m often told that the hardest choice I must have made was deciding to die, but that’s simply not true, because at that point living was a much, much tougher option.

There was all this time I hadn’t planned for. Sixty years or more of uncertainty stretching in front of me where (at one point) it had been sixty seconds, and now I was being asked to decide what to do with it.

Forced to make a choice, I picked up sleeping 18 hours a day, crying a lot, being angry with everything and therapy every week. But you know what? It worked. By the time exams finished, I was (more or less) eating and sleeping as normally as teenagers do, and was just scared shitless by exams instead of permanently livid. I began to feel better, gained a new friend, regained friendship with my best friend that is stronger now than ever, rediscovered Minecraft — a childhood favourite, and got even closer with my other best friend. So I’m far from lonely now. As well as my human friends, I got a pair of guinea pigs that became my closest friends of them all for a while.

I’ve got new hobbies. Walking the dog and drawing, as well as eating lots and lots of food. I get the feeling my story isn’t over because it’s going to last my whole life. I’ll be in my twenties telling people about how sad I was as a teenager, and while it’ll never be something I can look back on and laugh at, hopefully one day it will become dinner time conversation that won’t kill the mood.

By writing this post, I really mean to say that depression is cureable. Absolutely cureable. So if you’re reading this and you’re still wading through your quagmire of shit, remember that in the end it’s possible for it to be worth it. Somehow or other, I came out the other side of my four-year-long dark time better than I was before. And I’m probably not the only one.

So if all those clichés like “There’s always a light at the end of the tunnel” or “Stars can’t shine without the darkness” make your teeth grind like they do for me, then remember this instead:

Life is like a fart. If you have to force it, it’s probably shit.

If you’re living every day wishing it was your last, then stop forcing it and find yourself someone to help you out.

Fart free, everyone, and thank you for taking the time to read my life story.

Lots of love,

Annie x

There have been plenty of times in my life when I haven’t felt as if I fitted in. The occasion that springs to mind most is the time I got coerced into running a cross-country race when I was about nine. “The only reason I’m asking you,” the team coach had said “Is because Rosie dropped out and we just need someone to make up the numbers, really. Don’t worry — no one expects you to do well.”

I imagine, for any other (functional) child, those words would have been a get-out-of-jail-free card. But not for me. Oh no.

My Mum and Dad were thrilled for me; their daughter was finally showing an interest in sport, was starting to show signs of actually being related to them, and it was exciting for them. They eagerly found me some too-big second-hand running kit and loaded me up on carbs for weeks before the race in the hopes I might suddenly defy all expectations and reveal an amazing hidden talent for long distance running. (Their hopes were in vain, of course).

Meanwhile, I was plotting my tactics. I’d been to one lunchtime training session and had got round all of one lap of the field before collapsing in a sweaty, wheezing heap. The other four members of the team breezed by me another three times before returning for the warm-down barely red in the face. One or two them suggested I let someone else have a go, but by then I was steeped in too far.

I knew I had to screw my courage to the sticking place and not fail.

So as I lined my foot up against the start line on that rainy day in November, the coach’s words echoing around my head…

I had only one thought of my own.

When the announcer called “Go!” the friendly cross-country competition quickly became a bloodbath.

My elbow connected with the girl behind me’s face and she stumbled back clutching her nose as I streaked ahead. The three kids on my team were ‘pacing themselves’ like coach had said, but I knew better and overtook them.

I pelted it.

For quite a while, I felt superb. I was miles ahead of everyone else, running on fresh grass in my new trainers and feeling pretty proud of myself.

“This’ll show them!” I thought “Just wait til I beat them ALL. Then we’ll see who’s not expected to do well!”

The thought of succeeding against all odds (and I have to say, there were quite a few) was so tantalising that I found myself running harder.

Obviously, being the unfit, untrained lump I was, this strategy didn’t work out quite as I’d hoped. Before long, my lungs were doing that familiar burning thing and my legs started to feel like they were no longer attached.

All I could do was desperately keep running, but I could tell I was slowing. About ten other children had overtaken me; one of them a team member.

The burning in my lungs got steadily worse but I persisted. I refused to lose to the people who’d said they “didn’t expect me to do well”.

I refused to bow down to them.

So I kept running.

Unfortunately, by the time I made it over the finish line, I wasn’t quite the daughter my parents had eagerly brought to the field that morning. What met them when they came and found me was very different. No one was even sure it was human.

In summary, that wasn’t the greatest success of my life. But it wasn’t even the last time I did it. After that loss, I was motivated only further to humiliate myself by entering the 1800m race on sports day (and coming 20th out of 24), and entering the high jump despite only being 5"1 (and a half)…

It’s no surprise really, that blogging feels the same way for me.

I was so pumped as I clicked ‘Publish’ after writing my first post. Finally, I’d managed to do the unimaginable and had actually found something to write about — not only that, but I’d got the guts together to post it online where the world can see it.

At that point, I hadn’t read around Medium.com yet… and I think if I had, I wouldn’t have posted a single letter.

Reading some of the things I feel like a small child in awe of their favourite hero. (Mine was Simba from the Lion King, by the way.) All I can see as I scroll through is these incredibly illustrated, beautifully constructed pieces of satire, and all of them are about something ‘worthy’. Most of them are actually funny too.

And there’s not a single fashion blog.

I can’t help wondering what I’ve got myself into. Once again, I feel like I’m steeped in too far and that I will simply have to screw my courage to the sticking-place and not fail.

I’m not some kind of teenage writing genius, nor am I a great artist. I just type the words as they come into my head in a very word-puke sort of style, and use Paint to add some humour afterwards.

It feels like being the new kid at school… and not only that, but the additional needs kid who is sent to sit at the back with the safety scissors and glitter glue while the other kids solve linear programming inequalities on the smartboard.

Whether my first post was that cross-country race of seven years ago all over again, I don’t know, but I do know that this time maybe I didn’t collapse in a wheezing, sweaty heap on the finish line. So perhaps I should keep trying, see where I end up. For once I’m actually enjoying the sensation of running.

And with that in mind, I’ll be back again soon.

Lots of love,

Annie

It hit me one night (probably morning by then, actually) as I was trying to get to sleep that I really really wanted to blog. But immediately after that revelation, I was struck in the face by the cold, wet fish of reality that I didn’t know what to blog about.

It was the Great Ponderment of 2014. I was utterly, decisively stuck.

Troubled, I mentioned it to several people.

First, my dog. That was a fruitful conversation.

I consulted a girl in my year who has a successful blog, and she said I should write about what I love. But what did I love enough to write about that other people will want to read? If I wrote about what I love my blog would just be about otters and food.

Despite receiving that very sound, well-informed advice, I was still puzzled, so I asked my Dad.

He said I needed something ‘worthy’ to write about so people would want to read it. I didn’t know exactly what he meant by ‘worthy’ so whatever this is, I don’t think it’s ‘worthy’. The worst part was that he didn’t give any suggestions or anything. At least if he’d said “you should write about the meaning of life”, I’d have had something to go on, to inspire me. If he’d suggested writing about the square root of minus one, I’d have been able to add something to the

No Freaking Way List

• Maths
• Science
• Anything educational
• or vaguely resembling school
• Maths

As it was, I was nothing but stumped.

It became a game called “How many people can I ask before I come up with my own idea?”

Armed with this new motivation, I asked the librarian at school. She said I should write about my hobbies, so I tried to imagine writing about singing or drawing and thought it sounded a bit difficult:

I like to sing

I love singing. When I sing an A it makes me happy. When my throat gets sore I get sad.

… scintillating.

Then I asked the girl I sit next to on the bus.

I was right back at otters. Even anonymously, a diary about otters didn’t feel like my blog. Whatever my blog was going to be.

Defeated, I resorted to asking random people at school. They all said the same thing.

That idea didn’t float my goat much.

By then I’d asked so many people and had got nowhere, so I went off to have a ponderous think and came up with a list of stuff I could write about:

1. Something about the fact that I go to an all-girls’ school; (surely that must be interesting? (I can assure you it’s not (and I quickly came to that conclusion))).

2. Some kind of deep and meaningful activism-by-a-15-year-old thing

3. Journalism?

4. A TV character’s diary??

5. MY OWN DIARY???

In the end, I chose not to do any of those things. Being an internet warrior was the first thing I crossed off because I just couldn’t maintain an opinion on any one thing for long enough.

It became rapidly clear I couldn’t pull off the journalism thing, either.

And a TV character’s diary seemed exciting until I realised that it was a bit limited. For instance, if I was doing the 10th Doctor then it would be over in four series and I’d be right back in my current predicament. It also occurred to me that even if I did something more long-term like House, it wouldn’t be very exciting.

Episode 19, Series 3

There was a sick person.

Then there was another sick person.

I made them better.

Which left one more option. My diary. But a minute-to-minute or even day-to-day diary of my life just isn’t blog material, because practically nothing happens in my life. Hence the fact that I’m writing a blog in the first place. I could have called it “The Manifesto on How to be Mundane”.

[ I’ve christened my blog ‘The Mundane Manifesto’ because that’s under 25 characters, [which is the limit.]]

I knew I wanted funny. I knew I wanted interesting. I knew I didn’t want educational or moralising.

And then it hit me.

I’d asked so many people what to write about I had enough material — ironically — to fill a blog post. Over time, I had gathered thoughts about a subject. It wasn’t necessarily a worthy subject, or even an exciting one, but I could make it readable, and I’d be damned if I didn’t!

So I ended up doing this. It’s just a thing. It’s not a “here’s what I did today” or even a “here’s what I thought today”, it’s simply a “here’s…. something”… even if I don’t know what thing it is.

Hope you liked it. I’ll be back with more somethings. Hopefully funny things.

Lots of love,

Annie