Relapse

Looking back on the past month, I should have seen this coming.

I was still naïve to think that I would never come back to these days. The sleepless nights, the tears with the only road possible being towards treatment. I thought I'd be able to get through a few tough days here and there, and then carry on towards the road to perfection.

How wrong I was.

Many of my friends were alarmed at some tweets I sent in the midst of the mayhem that was last night, and reading back on them I can see why. My own mind was a complete minefield. One wrong step at this point, and I'd have been in serious trouble. Ringing 111 was the option I chose, at about 2am and many tears and garbled words later, I had been promised a GP appointment via what they said was a "call report".

Today, I dragged myself over to my surgery, a 10 minute walk that felt like a marathon. Completely exhausted from all of this, I was scared I was going back to square one. It hasn't quite reached that stage yet but the next week is pivotal. I have to make the right choices otherwise all of my progress will have been for nothing. The result of sitting in with a locum GP was an increase in meds and a referral to CBT, which I value more these days than the first time I had it as a teenager.

I have also been signed off work for the week, which I'm nervous about. There's no way I can face the ward at this time, but the longer I stay away, the harder it will be to go back. Come Monday morning, I'm going to have to fight through walls.

This locum GP questioned whether working on an acute psychiatric ward was a trigger. I am fairly confident in saying that it isn't.

I type this at 22:00, a time where I'd be wholly involved in my lucid dreaming, but I'm scared of going to bed. Lying in darkness with nothing but my thoughts fills me with dread and I sense another rough night coming. I can feel the tension in my chest and the anxiety flooding me just thinking about it. Sleepless nights will only make going back to work the next morning harder.

But through all of this recent hardship, a monumental truth has reared it's ugly head. A realisation that I'm going to be like this for the rest of my life. However well I manage it, or deal with the situations that depression can bring, I'm always going to be fighting against the elements. In the back of my mind, however positive I may feel, for however long it may be, I will know I am one wrong move away from recurrence. Do you know how that feels?

I resent it more than I can put into words.