When Hurt Turns to Anger

I’m telling you now, before you read on, I’m in no good mood and I’m not going to be polite, or sensitive or any such thing. You read on, that’s your problem.

Then I stop typing…

When I’m filled with so much anger and hate… what do I let out first? Everything wants out.

Let’s start with school. The fucked up school where I worked. The place where the head had absolutely no fucking idea about home-life balance… she saw her husband every now and again at the weekend for Christ’s sake! Obsessed with her own fucking image… determined to be queen bee amongst her cronies… stuck in the 70s… What a fucked up person she is, running the show… projecting her fucked up ideas onto her workforce. She used to spit blood to me about people who had done nothing more than called it a day and gone home to their family. They still don’t know what she had to say about each of them… and to this day she demands their loyalty despite betraying them many times over.

When it came to depression, she hadn’t a fucking clue. I wished it on her… I sat and cursed her with it so that one day she’d know what a fucking ignorant cow she was. I had an occupational therapist who was great, understanding… supportive. She was telling me I needed to become better at communicating how things were going… so that people could help and so that I didn’t pull any surprises. I’d keep the lid on things, hiding depression like an alcoholic hides drink, and then suddenly it would be ‘where’s Mehdi?’

I took advice well, did what people asked me to do. I told my Head how things were going and she looked me in the eyes and told me slowly ‘I don’t need or want to know how you feel, I just want to know you can do your job’. I’d have been better off that day if she’d put a bullet through my brain.

Never mind my own negative predictions about the future… I was being told by the Head that I was going to be unemployable… nice thing to say to someone struggling with depression.

When I was recovering and returning to work… these were the people I had to be with… people who were insensitive to depression and who didn’t have any patience for it. You had to be tough on the outside… no one cared what was on the inside. I’d sit amongst my colleagues and talk with them only to learn later in meetings with my Head that they were busy judging me and passing their feedback to her… all of a sudden they were the mental health experts being asked for their learned opinions and me… I was supposed to take it.

You know, there were three days when I was returning to work as a behaviour experiment set up by my occupational health therapist. It was for me to learn about how I was responding to the environment. Back then I had very little insight into how depression was affecting my capacity in different environments and situations. I’d show up, say my awkward hellos and find out what I’d been tasked with. At briefing a couple of colleagues sniggered as I was welcomed back… I know who they are and I’ll probably never forgive them. It was tricky, because I wasn’t there doing what I necessarily do day in day out, and someone else was directing me. At the start of the day, there’d be a moment or two of hanging about whilst they sorted themselves out. I remember looking out of the window for a little while, trying not to get in the way given everyone was so busy. It transpired that looking out the window was diagnosed as ‘spaced out’ by my colleagues and it was another nail in my career.

I know… being hooked on approval meant I’d placed my worth in the hands of others. And when they didn’t treat it with care, and trashed it, I got upset. And now instead of blaming myself for empowering them so, I blame them because they took my precious worth and destroyed it.

It was strange to be in an environment where we all supposedly cared so much… for the youngsters at least… and yet behind the scenes there was so little care for the adults… the staff. The caring seemed to stop with the children. We, on the other hand, were expendable.

When I left it was for me. I’d got to know the environment better, my colleagues better and it was fucked up… and it wasn’t the place for somebody who was recovering from depression. How can you hold a gun to someone’s head and tell them… if you get ill again you’re finished. Like I had some way of deciding if I got ill or not! It’s still fucked up… probably will stay that way until people are exchanged and with it culture changes.

I wasn’t going to be dependant on them for anything… not even a reference. So I started my own business. Fuck’em…. Better still, curse them.