Depression is a place I know

I think that maybe all of us who live with episodes of depression wonder if it really is just something wrong with us... or if the world we live in is at fault. Did we jump or were we pushed?

For me certainly, therapy taught me that, like you, I didn't have much say in who I am. I recently tweeted that we take far too much credit for who we are, and when I wrote that I had in mind the genetic pool (over which I had no say) and my childhood experience (again something I was not to determine for myself). So again I am looking at dealt cards and know what I can do is play them, what I can't do is change them.

So what is the game in which these cards are put to the test? Well, I know the game I've been playing very well. It is the one I've been failing at for years, slowly, almost imperceptibly, until one day we all looked and thought to ourselves how faded and tired it looked. But, and for me this is an important but... there are many games. We can play this hand here, where the rules are educate, qualify, work, borrow, buy, work some more. This is the game where those of us with a condition like depression feel that the odds are weighted against us. I mean the odds are weighted against all of us in the casino, and the real winners don't play the tables they own them ... but still, our odds are tougher because we can't play as frequently, don't always show up, and feel loss before the game even began. You've probably seen us around, we don't look as together as you on the outside and even during the winning streaks we smile through our cheap dental work and dance in our scruffy shoes. But you expect us to play so we do, despite our losses.

This is not a game we are good at playing. But there are other games. One such alternative is grow, work, harvest, cook, eat. Other games include, trade, exchange, repair, make, and create. They are games considered alternative when you live here, especially in our cities. But that isn't true across our globe. There are plenty of games where the playing nourishes us, strenghtens, occupies and excites us... and positively medicates our depression such that it almost isn't there.

I was never made to wake up and do the same thing for most of the day. You weren't either. But we do because once people figured they could get rich real quick if they could get us to live like that. And if you can there is no reason to do any different. It's a game I lose at so I'm better off avoiding. I do know when I've had a good day, when the game fits. It usually involves being outside, even in the cold and rain. It comes from getting earth under my finger nails, from making something from almost nothing, from putting my muscles and mind into nurturing and caring for something. I win too when I chop and crush and sear and taste... when I gather us together from our busy activity and we sit and eat. When the bread feels heavy and the butter salty. When the vegetables are still illuminated in their garden colours.  When pudding is a clever creation of bready scraps. It is a game that involves being a father,  playing, teaching, telling stories, watching. It is a game that starts to look and feel like the hard work of self sufficiency. It is an alternative, a compromise, that is good for the soul. Not an easy option... least of all in this part of the world where standing still costs us nearly £900 a month before we have eaten. But that is our challenge... that £900... making the changes that reduce that so that we spend more time working hard for a worthy reward and less time standing still.

We are in your debt.

I said once I don't believe in luck, and I don't... it's attitude. It's how, when I look back at things, I interpret them, whether I learn something from them, make the most of them. It isn't always easy to think that way and sometimes, like the Greeks, I think I have angered the Gods and now they are toying with us in revenge. Of course, that's nonsense, but it feels that way when events are interpreted as being 'done to you' and taken personally, and depression has a habit of making it seem that way.

When the laptop broke the challenge was to still generate and update the paperwork for our business, and communicate with customers. Alicia's mother came to the rescue as she so often does, allowing me to use her notebook one evening. Alicia came down the stairs to find I had dismantled the laptop on the kitchen table, determined to find the fault and see if it could be fixed (I have never in my life opened up a computer before so she was understandably concerned). A broken component hanging off the motherboard cost me £2.49 to replace and a nice chap will solder it on for me later this week for a small fee. In the meantime this smartphone,  won in a competition that the business entered, has come into its own, even permitting me to blog.
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Xavier was due a trip to the farm as a reward for his beautiful efforts. So when the family car broke down at a busy roundabout, the jolly AA man shook his head and called time on our beloved Multipla. Whilst not materialistic about our car, we are sentimental - it holds a lot of dear memories. We were towed home for the fourth time in two months. Our chap at the garage took a look and the repair cost meant we would indeed be looking to let her go for spares or repair. It was a blessing really because insurance and road tax were becoming unaffordable, and fuel a luxury, save the repair costs. But then, out of the blue... he suggested we trade a bit of decorating for the repair. So this remarkable offer means we can see a way of breathing life back into our Multipla, even if only to sell it! People are always astounding me with their kindness and compassion. And to top it all Xavier will still have his trip to the farm, again through the generosity of Alicia's mother who has offered to drive us there. She is incredible.

And yesterday when the door knocked a knock at 8am my first thought was that the bailiffs had come and we froze. It was in fact the postman with a parcel for us. Inside the mysterious large box, chocolates and vouchers for a local grocery store. Alicia and I both cried a little, stunned that someone had thought of us and knew what it meant for us to afford groceries at this time. The kind message signed off 'from a friend'.

Each day a friend gets in touch with us to see how we are getting on, and offer support and encouragement, and that includes the amazing people that take the time to generously leave us a comment on this blog (Spanner is owed a special mention here). We feel that our troubles, minor misfortunes and struggles with depression are in your embrace. Every kind thought and deed reaches us amplified a thousand times and changes everything for us. It makes us feel that depression doesn't have to win and succeed in pushing this family to the fringes of life... that we can make it and we can believe in ourselves in the way that you believe in us. The gift, you see, at every turn is hope. You give us that... always, every day. Thank you.

Play the cards you are dealt

In the UK at the moment the cuts, or austerity measures as politicians prefer to call them, are very much targetted at ordinary people. There is something of a witch hunt for those who are not in work. There are not the vacancies out there, that is a fact, but that hasn't stopped the pressure from falling on the unemployed, ill and disabled. Financial support is harder to access, the sums are slashed and claimants live amongst others who feel guilt is the price you should pay for being on benefits.

For those who succeed in a claim for financial support, I say well done to them. The application process is complex, obstructive and without compassion... and they have overcome it.

Last year during an episode of depression Alicia and I sought financial support for the first time in our lives. I don't need to write here that depression brings life to a standstill, so the reality was that I wasn't leaving the house, answering the phone, opening the curtains, showering, dressing, let alone bringing my business accounts up to date. But that is exactly what was required to make an application for employment support allowance (ESA). Alicia made the call because I wasn't able to talk to a stranger on the telephone. The questions were complex, sought detail and exactitude. The sort of question that can only be answered with a great deal of preparation. An hour later an exhausted Alicia put down the phone. A few days later, a form arrived and once again we were asked the same questions, and this time with accompanying evidence. A week later another form much the same as the last and then another one, I think three in all before we gave up. The irony was that only a mentally well person could have the capacity to apply for a benefit, designed to assist the self employed at a time of ill health.

Our financial decline has been steadily driven by the cycling nature of the depressive episodes. A few years ago we began by turning to our credit cards and overdrafts when my ill health led to prolonged absences from work and reductions in salary. When I lost my job becoming self employed was the only way to be employable. We started to sell our belongings to get through the difficult periods and avoid missing payments. We cut back on whatever we could, not using the gas central heating that only a few years ago I had installed myself. Giving up the family car. Dental care, hair cuts, meat and take aways are all luxuries we don't and can't afford.

When I pulled my accounts together recently the financial cost of my ill health became transparent. The patchy periods of being well enough to work, against the dark days of ill health averaged out to an income of around £615 a month. With Alicia's salary, child benefit and child tax credits, that figure improved to £1093. It was a shock to see what depression, what I, was doing to our family.

After the monthly mortgage, council tax, gas, electricity, water, phone, insurances, TV license, prescriptions are deducted... amounting to £854, this leave us £239. With that we feed our family, wash our clothes, ride the bus, clean, and make a token payment to our creditors. I write this down here not for sympathy, but so that the descent from mental ill health to homelessness is less mystical.

This month will be the first time we default on the mortgage. But we are proactive, and we are survivors. The mortgage company have an application from us to transfer to interest only for a few months, we have more things that we can sell and we are cultivating the back garden to reduce our food spend in the future. In the kitchen we are creative and accomplish something akin to alchemy with seasonal (and therefore affordable) ingredients.

When I said a couple of posts ago that we had to adjust our lives to accept and survive the periods of health and ill health this is what I meant. There is no point anymore pretending that we can aim for a time of stability. The last four years have been devoid of stability and nobody is going to magic away the cost of living in this county or employ someone who can't tell you if they will be well from one day to the next.

From the very first day that Alicia and I came together it was made difficult for us. We have always felt and still do that it is us against the world. Never more so than now. With a compassionless government in power that asks 'what will we get in return' as though human kindness and compassion were themselves born of capitalism. We live in a climate where our compassion for eachother and our unequal and different loads are obscured by the witch hunt and a competitive drive. A drive that has us attacking the weak, just as one would prune the smaller shoots from a sapling... and disgard them so that others can flourish. Alicia, Xavier and I are occupying a part or society that is expendable, inconsequential, burdensome. It is the luck of the draw.

Compassion fatigue

So it's the morning again and I'm not the person that rested their head on this pillow. My eyes are scrunched up afraid of the day ahead. My head full but with what, I don't know. My body heavy.

I know I need to tune out. Tune onto something that will activate a soothing response... releasing the oxytocin embrace.

I am so afraid that the people I love and keep close will tire of this. Med is ill again... it must be so wearing. Everyone I know is so wonderfully busy and their lives so complex. My being unwell must just deepen their waters and thin their compassion. My fellow bloggers, you must know this better than any. I guess this reflects on how I have lost a degree of patience with myself and so expect others might feel the same way.

There is another day looming. Right now it feels like another opportunity to fail. What a way to wake up.