Dropping Off

It looks like I feel

Right then, my kraken loving loons. You know by now that I've had a few skirmishes with the black dog of depression, the arse biting little bastard. So I've set up a new blog especially for my musings, rantings and general bus-station burblings on said subject. It's called - wait for it - www.thekrakensleeps.blogspot.com. Look, just go with it ok? For fuck's sake, humour me. 
Anyway, you've got a lovely new link to the blog up there on the right of the page. Right now it contains my previous wibbly insights but I'll be throwing more on there as and when I get up wind. 
See you on the dark side!

Knocked Up

My kind of baby bump

You'll be thrilled to hear that this weekend I read something that made my head explode. It was an agony aunt-type column about a woman who was suffering depression after giving birth to the child she thought she'd never have. And all I can say is hallel-fucking-ujah.
You know, I actually, really and truly thought that I was on the only person who had gone through this. After a thousand years of a health problem that had caused infertility, somehow I managed to get knocked up. Problem was that when the rest of the world was rejoycing about my miracle baby and how I'd managed to kick the odds up the arse I was plunging into the mental health equivalent of a nuclear meltdown over the sudden destruction of my identity.
Within 60 seconds of wizzing on a pregnancy testing kit I'd gone from being a 36 year-old, happily infertile woman to a 36 year-old mother-to-be. And this, after twenty years of being told that it would be easier for me to climb the Eiffel Tower with my tongue than have kids. 
Jesus, no wonder I went on to have a breakdown. Thing is, while my body was playing host to the burgeoning form of Kraken Junior, my brain was playing keepy-uppy with the pre-pregnancy, career-chasing, travel-loving Kraken. Talk about the perfect fucking storm. It's no wonder that the first time I felt KJ kick my hand through my belly I screamed with horror. 
Worse, everyone was so deranged with joy at my news that my mental carnage went unnoticed. I was told a million times that I must be thrilled, that my baby was here for a reason or that I was unbelievably lucky. All of which, while heartfelt and natural reactions, made things even worse. Not only was I not coping with the fact that I had gone to sleep one person and woken up another but now I was the mam-to-be of some Christ-like figure who was here for some mysterious and wonderful reason. How the fuck the Virgin Mary never lost the plot is beyond me. I'd have kicked the donkey to death and told the three wise men to go fuck themselves.
Problem is, no one ever thinks to ask how you are feeling at times like this. It's assumed that you are with child and therefore must be chuffed to fuck. It's not that black n white though is it? Pregnancy tests don't come complete with party poppers. I was about as far from chuffed to fuck as I could get without being on Death Row. It's just that no one knew it. Anyway, how do you tell people who are actually, physically skipping about at the news that they need to take it down a peg or two? Well, don't ask me. I still haven't got a bloody clue.
Course, now that KJ is here, running amok and asking 'why?' like she has exclusive rights to the frigging word, I can see that she is the best thing in the world. But before you sit back in your chair to give me a satisfying I-told-you-so I've paid a heavy price for it. I've had nine months of panic, four years of depression, two career collapses, several thousand milligrams of anti-depressants and anti-psychotics, ten months of therapy and one breakdown that's wiped out the person I used to be forever. 
But yeah, KJ did come here for a reason. And if that reason was to ask me daily why cups are round or what makes yellow not red, then I've seen the light. It just blinds me sometimes, that's all.

Boo!

Yup. I have this effect on everyone.

You know what's the bat shit craziest thing about having depression? No bugger ever asks you how you are. Well, no bugger outside the circle of family and close friends, that is. It's as if my depression is a grenade and that asking "how are you?" will yank out the frigging pin. That'll also explain the look of abject fear that I see on some faces, as if I'm perpetually on the verge of going postal. At least, I hope it will.
What the fuck is it all about? I've had the mental equivalent of a train crash but no one ever mentions it. If I'd just recovered from a broken arm or a gall bladder removal I suspect I'd have no end of questions about my fluctuating health. Yet recovering from a breakdown seems to befuddle said well wishers into such a deep state of panic that they're rendered incoherent. 
Twice in recent times I've been invited to mates' places for grub only to feel as if I'm making everyone so maniacally uncomfortable that I'm better off nipping to the chippy. Seriously, I've sat at tables where everyone has been asked about their work, kids, hobbies, views on whatever-the-fuck but I've been asked little more than to pass the salt. And when I have chipped into conversations - offering vignettes on day to day life, say - everyone shifts as if they've collectively had pins stuck in their arses. Some mates' dates have even turned into interviews because they have been so scared of asking me anything that I have simply fired questions at them in a hideous effort to keep the conversation going. I come home exhausted at having made sure that everyone else is having a good time.
Thank fuck I'm able to talk to my close friends and family. My best mates will happily ask me how I am doing, crack jokes about my ongoing banana-ness and offer all manner of wonders when I am mid-meltdown. And behold! None of this has ever come even close to pushing me further over the edge than I already am. In fact, I'd rather a stammered and panicky "how are you?" rather than no "how are you?" at all.
Then again, p'raps this is the price I'm paying for being so open about my depression. Had I spent the last two years sobbing and gibbering yet glossing it all over with a "No, I'm fine!" then perhaps everyone would feel more comfortable about me losing the plot. They could pretend that my marbles had done anything other than rolled away.
Thing is, though, that would have made everyone else feel better but it would have sent me straight to B&Q for a length of rope. And I'll be fucked if I'm going to let politeness kill me. You know, when it comes to being bat shit crazy I reckon I'm the only sane one out there.

New Year's Revolutuion

Happy New Year, like

Funny thing, losing the plot. it doesn't half change your priorities. In fact, it doesn't just change them, it gives them a sound buggering before dousing them in petrol and attacking them with a flame thrower. 
Take this new year malarchy of list making, goal setting and generally piling on the pressure until you sweat spinal fluid. Prior to the loss of my marbles my new year's eves were laden with fevered promises to write books, crack new editors, run marathons and travel to far flung outposts with nothing but a toothbrush and reversible knickers. I'd usually do what I promised I would too. 
Then I found myself sailing up Barking Creek on HMS Nutbag. Suddenly the steaming urgency to swim for the Olympic team or knock out 10,000 words of award-winning literature per day was, pardon the technical terminology, pushing my luck all the way to Fucksville and back. In fact, mid-breakdown you could have tasked me with showering after remembering to take off my pyjamas and you'd have been bitterly disappointed. I used to stare at the kettle because I couldn't remember when it did, for shit's sake, and panic when there were too many baked beans on my fork. In the blink of an eye I'd gone from glowing over-achiever to being bewildered to the point of insanity and with the functioning capacity of a gin-soaked toddler.
Which is why, post-breakdown, all this new year pressure to do, do, do looks to me like a big bag of bollocks. So my resolution for 2012 is to have no resolutions. I have absolutely no intention of making 2012 my big year by publishing a novel or bagging a column or swimming the channel. My only vague requirement for the following 365 days is to survive them, ideally with a modicum of mental faculty, by exactly this time next year. 
See, having been tossed so far into the hole of depression means that even the slightest gains become towering achievements. I can read a book without becoming so overwhelmed that I cry, which is my new version of writing a book. I can spend two hours with Kraken Junior without needing help and support, my replacement for marathon running. And I'm capable of basic hobbies, which will replace 2012's attempt at forging ahead in my career.
All of which makes for a happy new year. The lack of pressure is glorious as is my contentment at what I've achieved since my marbles rolled under the sofa. Which means that January 1 won't be the first day of anything. It'll be another day of something and that, for me, really is the greatest achievement of all. 

Mental Hell

Bloody misery guts

Think I'm a Bah Humbug kinda kraken? Well,this is nothing. You should have seen me last Christmas when I was in the middle of my breakdown. You'd swear Santa'd been found dead in our chimney and that the wailing of the world's children was making the globe spin off its axis.
The thing is, this what was going on in my screwed-up noggin. If Santa was festering in the chimney I was the only person who knew it. As far as the rest of the world was concerned I was being my usual festive self, secretly propped up by regular sobs into a cushion before resuming the merry state that I thought everyone expected of me. 
In short, last Christmas was fucking horrible. I alone was carrying Santa's sack and it was weighed down with breeze blocks. Blitzen, Donner, Rudolf and the crew were all too busy pissing their names into the snow to help and I was drowning in goodwill that I felt I just didn't deserve to receive.
It got worse on Crimbo morn when I was presented with a fantastic gift by Conjugal Kraken which pitched me into a swirling state of panic at whether I deserved to receive anything other than a kick in the face. I was trapped in some terrible mentally-induced purgatory but with baubles and Noddy fucking Holder. 
Anyway, why am I telling you this? It's my blathering way of saying that happy Christmases don't necessarily arrive dressed in ribbons and spangly paper. Sometimes it's what you do for people, rather than what you get them, that's important and when you're grappling with a depressive that's more important than ever.
This year, when I've been asked what I want for Crimbo the best I can come up with is that I want some semblance of peace. In my head, I mean. I just want a day that contains some happiness and laughter and most of all a day where my depression gets so knotted up in tinsel that it throttles itself. Yeah, I'd like a few books but that's it. Most of all I'd just like to feel anything but the biggest failure/ oddball/ nutjob in the known universe. 
I know, I know, it's too late for that. It's not too late for this Crimbo day to be a good one though. I'm keeping the hope alive, especially now that the sweep has rendered our chimney corpse free.

In the Dark 2

Just one word

I would apologise for blogging more thoughts about Gary Speed's death but you should know me better than that by now. I'll blog whatever the frig I like, ta very much. 
Today the former Wales player Dean Saunders said, amongst other things, "I just wish I could have spoken to him before...maybe I could've just said something". He won't be the only one of Speed's friends n family who are thinking exactly the same thing today.
That's one of the cruel ironies of depression and suicide. The person who is depressed feels so worthless, trapped and desolate that to them it is unimaginable that anyone could care about them. Meanwhile they can be surrounded by those very carers, who love them and want, more than anything, for them to be well again. And the line between a depressive succumbing or surviving can be marked by just a few words.
When I've suffered from depression the one subject that everyone has studiously avoided is suicide, as if the mere mention of the word will have me jumping off the nearest cliff. Yet I'd have thought of that particular way out long before anyone else has dared to mention it. Problem is that whenever the subject of suicide has been avoided it has simply added to my loneliness and isolation and general feeling of freakery. Believe me, I've felt utterly fucking bananas as it is without feeling as if I'm the single person on the planet who is harbouring such a thought. 
In fact when I was referred to the local psych unit last year it was a revelation. It was like living in a parallel universe where suicide was as openly discussed as Katie Price's latest tit job. My counsellor would ask me if I was feeling suicidal, I would say yay or nay and then we would just, well, chat about it. No raised eyebrows, no judgement, nothing. And no it didn't push me over the edge or give me ideas about ending it all. In fact all it did was help. Just telling someone that I was suicidal was enough to help lift the terrible weight that I carried alone.
So now I wander about the place like the grim reaper, openly bantering about death and suicide. My honesty has led to a few people telling me about their own depressive feelings and the first thing I ask them is: are you suicidal? They either stumble backward in horror and say "Christ, I'm not that bad!" or they grasp at me with the relief that they aren't the freaks they thought they were.
Course, the first step in helping someone is even realising that they are depressed and that's why Gary Speed's suicide is such a shock to those who knew him. They simply had no idea that he even felt that way. What, in that case, could they have done? 
If there's one cruel lesson from this event it is that Speed's friends and family will be more likely to spot depression in someone, and more likely to talk about it, than ever before. That lesson has come too late for Gary Speed but perhaps it is just in time for the many other depressives who walk among us feeling lonely and unloved. 
Dean Saunders is right. Maybe you could just say something and save someone's life while you're at it.

In The Dark

What is there to say?

Hard to believe, I know, but this won't be a rant for once. Gary Speed, the Wales footy manager, died today as a result of suicide - hanging (allegedly) if you want the specifics. Now I know fuck all about football or, for that matter, Gary Speed, but I do know a little bit about suicide or at the very least what pushes you to it.
Read the reports about Speed's death and they're choc full of quotes from people who are shocked and saddened. He had been harbouring feelings that he felt could only be resolved by suicide although this was clearly completely unknown to those around him. He'd even been a guest on BBC's Football Focus just hours before taking his life. Can you imagine how lonely and desperate it is to feel such misery and desperation while pretending that everything is alright? To banter on a TV show about football when you feel about as worthless as it's possible to feel?
Well I can (except for the footy bit), thanks to a fuck load of depression and my recent breakdown. And that's the problem with suicidal feelings isn't it? No one knows about them. You don't bounce through Tesco with a knife to your wrist even though every step feels like the last one you ever want to take. You don't neck fistfuls of paracetamol at dinner parties even though you would give anything for the chance. And you don't answer the daily water-cooler "How are you?" by weeping, "Fucking terrible actually. My family would be better off without me and I just want to end it all by stepping in front of a bus".
That's one of the awful tragedies of Speed's death. That he must have felt and thought of those things over and over again before deciding upon his final heartbreaking act. And the shock of those around him is testimony to how well he kept those feelings hidden when they must have been eating at his every waking moment. Ironically, that takes enormous strength at the very point when you feel you have none left.
I've been suicidal and at crisis point and feel desperately for Gary Speed. I don't know why he did what he did but we probably shared the same thoughts, just as many suicidal people do. The loneliness, the isolation, the desperation, the darkness and the overwhelming feeling that the world would be a better place if only you weren't in it. 
Luckily my family and professionals got to me in time. I've been given the chance to grow old with Conjugal Kraken, kiss Kraken Junior goodnight and blog complete and utter bollocks. It's desperately sad that Gary Speed hasn't had that chance. All I can hope is that wherever he is now, he's free of the darkness that led him there.

Hack Attack

Gaze into my navel,
not around my navel...

Speaking as an ex-journalist, d'you know what I find really fucking irritating about journalists? This stupendously egotistic idea that no one ever really experiences parenthood/ depression/ cancer/ poverty until they have. You know this from the endless stream of weekend features about said subjects with the appropriately stricken hack gawping at you from some double page spread or other.
Christ, it's unbearable. If I have to read Giles Coren banging on about his newborn again, as if fatherhood had been freshly minted in his back bedroom, I'll have to replace my eyes with dung beetles. And there are other journalists I know who have turned their offsprings' development into entire blogs, actually listing - yes, writing lists - of their kids' achievements. As if anybody gives a shit. Chances are that most parents won't have time to read said bollocks because they are too busy weeping over their own kid's terrifying ability to produce a pint of snot per sneeze. 
Why do journalists do this? Or why do editors want to run with this stuff? OK, if said hack has gone through a lightning-strike type of experience, let 'em write about it. Take Melanie Reid in The Times who writes a weekly slot on living with her crippling injuries after breaking her neck and back in a horse riding accident. It's genuinely a window into a world most of us have no knowledge of.
You can hardly say that of a yet another hack's skirmish with childbirth can you? Look, unless you gave birth while swinging from a trapeze during which you have to plead with Iran's Ahmadinejad for your release from captivity don't bother me. I've given birth, I've had depression, I've been broke... your tales of feeling a pinch low because you couldn't afford to host a dinner party just aren't cutting my brand of mustard.
And yeah, I admit that when I was a hack I wrote about myself once in a very, very long while but at least these were justified by my suitably freakish circumstances or relevant to a national issue which formed the bulk of the story. They weren't the prurient outpourings of someone who simply thinks that they are important enough to accompany a random reader's breakfast. Fuck cracking my boiled egg. I'd be happier aiming for Coren's writing hand.

Amateur psychiatrics

If I wasn't nuts before, I am now

Have just read a column about when to terrify friends and family with the news that you are suffering from depression. I, The Kraken, came out as a depressive years ago but still go through the same ole routine every time I meet someone new.
And you know what? Telling people about your mental health status is a piece of piss. The hard part is the reaction of the recipients of said information. Seriously, you could announce yourself leprotic by waving a three-fingered hand in the air and get a better reaction.
Course, no one knows how to deal with it. They don't know whether to console, sympathise or just slowly back away from the lunatic. What I have learned though, is that there are some things you never, ever say to a depressive. Wanna hear them?


1. "Oh, stop being so negative."
That's right, because negativity is such a cool lifestyle choice! Hey, I was sick to fuck of being happy all of the time so I figured that instead of going on holiday this year I'd tinker with a noose.


2. "Just read a funny book or watch a funny film."
Excuse me? You genuinely think that spending an afternoon with Will Ferrell is all the treatment I need? I've sobbed away three months in bed, given up my job and can barely leave the house and you think the solution lies in Jim Fucking Carey?


3. "What have you got to be depressed about?"
Well, how about inane comments like that one? What, do you think I'm considering suicide because I've run out of frigging teabags? 


4. " Oh I was depressed too, when I couldn't get into my dress." 
So putting on a few pounds pitched you into the darkest and most isolating hopelessness, so deep that even psychiatric clinicians could barely reach you? And you begged for admission to a psychiatric ward? And you spent weeks stockpiling paracetamol? And...oh, no, I didn't think so.


At the risk of ranting (even more) I'll stop there. But, believe me, I'll come up with more of these gems as the blog wears on.

Nut Notes

Aye, it's been a tidy day

Gird yourselves, my blog-chomping munchkins. I have news, for today I was officially discharged from my local psych unit. Yush, after 18 months of depression and a year of clinging to counsellors while pawing at them for medication it has been decreed that I am fit n well enough to be released back into the wild. Feel free to arm yourselves with whatever comes to hand.
Mind you, while I have been reunited with my faculties there are situations when I retain the right to lose the slightest grip on my marbles once again. Here they are:


1. When within a two mile radius of any supermarket
2. When within a ten mile radius of Asda
3. When I see anyone driving while on a mobile phone
4. When I see anyone driving while on a mobile phone, and driving like a fat-handed twat
5. The rape of the English language via text speak or badly bandied-about apostrophies
6. Anything involving condiment-tossing TV chefs
7. Any show that appears on BBC1 or ITV1 at 9pm on a weekday. Whatever it is, it'll be some televisual social morphine that has all the challenge of a bucketful of Sudocrem.

Stuff, like

Me, sporting the natural look

Chances are that if you’re reading this pile of pish you want to know what I’m up to these days. Merrily, not much. I’m a regular Barbara Cartland of a Kraken these days, swathed in puce chiffon while barking utter shite from my chaise longue. Short story is that the black dog of depression bit me on the arse in April 2010. Problem was that the flea-bitten bastard gnawed on me until my plot was well n truly lost, I became a psychiatric patient and I rattled with joyous amounts of medication.   

That’s when I chucked in freelance journalism.  Not an easy decision because, frankly, I was good at it. But honestly, if I had to crawl up the arse of one more fucking editor, prattle with one more PR or chase yet another late payer (you stingy shits know who you are) I was going to be even less responsible for my actions than I already was.  And I speak as someone who already takes anti-psychotics.

Now? Well, I’m almost recovered although still nicely medicated. I have my hobbies – dressmaking,  learning to play the piano, reading (I’m like an extra from Pride n Frigging Prejudice) – and may have to add blogging to that list of keep-me-off-the-street activities too. Let’s see how that last one goes though, eh?