At the age of 8 I moved house. I
moved three miles up the road to
another estate.
I was leaving my world as I knew it.
I was leaving my best friend and my
routine of ‘calling in’ for her so we
could go out in our roller blades or
go on our bikes.
This was all being diminished
because I was moving house. It
may not seem very dramatic to an
adult, but for me, at 8 years old, it
was traumatic.
My casual walking down to school
with my best friend was now going
to be replaced with having to
sit carefully, on the clankity old
Ulster bus seats, in hope that the
movement of the bus wouldn’t
disrupt my position and cause my
legs to shift onto the freezing cold
chrome edges of the seats.
This is when I started to feel
strange.
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| My best friend Carla (Left) and I |
"I too, felt like I was covered, wrapped and stitched in complete unfamiliarity."
I remember opening the door into
the living room of our new house.
The only familiarity that I saw was
our green sofa that had made the
journey some hours before.
I stood in the doorway, and I stared
at the green sofa.
That sofa had been a different
colour once, but my mama had got
it covered in a new material earlier
that year.
I looked at the sofa. What was
once a brown, familiar and molded
with routine sitting sofa, was now
covered in a new fabric.
I too, felt like I was covered,
wrapped and stitched in complete
unfamiliarity.
At 8 years old, I remember the
overwhelming feeling of fear. I was
consumed, by what I know now, was acute Anxiety. I was for the first
time, experiencing Mental Distress.
Little did I know that this was the
start of what would be a very long
journey spent in complete mental
wilderness.
"I was losing my childhood
to the ‘bad feeling’ that
my young innocent
self labelled it."
I didn’t know how to explain
how I felt. I was a child, and my
vocabulary was limited.
I began saying that I “didn’t feel
well” and when I was asked where I
was sore, or how I felt, I just replied,
in hopelessness “I don’t know”.
After many a trip to the Doctors I
was told “It’s all in your head, stop
worrying”, but it was in my head,
and it was festering. That was it, I had to deal with
this feeling because the Doctor and nobody else could understand me. My mum was always trying to
distract me from the silent torment
of my mind by saying “let’s bake
buns” or “let’s go up into town to
get new shoes”.
Nothing worked.
I was losing my childhood to
the ‘bad feeling’ that my young
innocent self labelled it.
I wasn’t young anymore, I wasn’t
carefree anymore, and we all knew
it.
I, who was completely in awe of
Disney’s ‘The Little Mermaid’
and sang every song during
every second of every day, had
stopped singing. The house was
quiet now. My voice was silenced
by the turmoil in my young mind.
Before I was 10, I wanted to die, I couldn’t cope with it.
At that age I had believed I wouldn’t live
long, because I felt that it was not
normal to feel so bad without dying
soon.
Let’s fast forward to 2013.
I’m still alive. I’m 24 now.
Since becoming mentally unwell
from that young age of 8 I’ve
been on three different types of
anti-depressants not to mention
the multitude of anti-anxiety
medication and sedatives.
But I’m so happy!
Never did I think that feeling this
good was possible for me.
Looking back, I know today that
those feelings that I had when I
was 8 was the beginning of the
Depression and Anxiety, and
ultimately a clinical diagnosis of
O.C.D.
It has been over two years since
I’ve been diagnosed with O.C.D. I
was diagnosed due to a crisis, and
I couldn’t cope and I had a
major breakdown.
The coping strategies that I had
developed since I was 8 had
crashed and burned in face of this
crisis where a family member had
become unwell.
It came to a point where I refused
to let the Doctor tell me that
“exercise would lift your moods”.
I
swallowed my pride and demanded
professional help.
My pride, my awareness of the
stigma attached to mental health
that came from society and even
myself didn’t stop me. I didn’t care
anymore. I needed help because
the other option was Suicide and I
refused to let Suicide be an option
any more, even though I had
Suicidal ideation.
And so, I was given an appointment
for a psychiatric assessment. On
the day of the assessment I was
petrified about what would happen
to me once I started to talk about
how I was thinking and feeling.
I have no idea what I said that day
in that room, but I remember I felt
like there was a black cloud that had
just burst open with rain and was
now relieved.
A couple of days later I graduated
with a degree in Drama. I was
proud of myself and I was happy to
have my photograph mounted on
the wall between my brother and
sister’s graduation photos.
The day following my graduation I had received a letter from the
place where I had gone for my
psychiatric assessment. I had sat
down on our new black leather
sofa and read the letter. The letter
described my disorder; the letter
deemed my disorder ‘common’
and contained a treatment plan
of new medication specific for my
disorder and C.B.T.
That letter meant more to me than
my degree, because even though
my degree proved that I studied
drama for 3 years, my letter from
the psychiatrist meant that I could
now get better after 15 years of
mental struggle.
I sat on our new black leather sofa
and I cried with relief, liberation
and catharsis from the unknown
shadow that I could now name, and
now control.
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| Celebrating my birthday in Melbourne, Australia |
I wasn’t like the green sofa
anymore. I was becoming more
like our new black leather sofa, I
had aged with struggle, but I was
tougher now, I was durable and I
was now more resilient, despite
who or what impacted on me.
