Depression Means You Don’t Remember Any Good Days:
And There Weren’t Many to Begin With
In my teenage years, I had major surgery and my mum died. It had taken five years of illness before my mum lost her life, and I was so used to her being ill, that I didn’t know it was going to happen when it did.
As an adult, that seems hard to imagine, but I had lived with this situation since age 12. I still had my dad and siblings, but my life had been changed forever.
A Scared Teenager
For the next several years, I was in a permanent state of fear about losing my dad too, and I’d ring his work if he were five minutes late home.
Although there were no expectations put upon me from others, I felt I had to be the “woman of the house” then. All our extended family were hundreds of miles away, and there was no internet.
Working hard at high school was part of my personality and I always enjoyed studying. Many years later it’s now a hobby, but I didn’t do as well as predicted in pre-university exams. Looking back, I wonder how well I could concentrate, as I was so lost in grief and depression. I was probably quite dissociated too.
Teenage grief felt like endless hours of questioning the point of existence. I was so bored, that time crept by, each tick of the…
