So since starting up a book blog with my good friend Angharad, I've moved away from using this blog. However, there's something that's been playing on my mind recently (well, to be honest, probably for the past eight years) and even if no one reads this post, I need to write it - partly to get my feelings out, and with the hope that it may help even one person out there. As today is Mental Health Awareness Day, I thought it was the perfect time to finally share this post.
I've never kept it a secret that I suffer from anxiety, and suffered from depression before that, although I don't flaunt the facts either. I first showed symptoms of depression when I was around thirteen, and although I'm mostly alright now, it does creep back in every now and then. When I was eighteen, my dark moods lessened, but I noticed that I became more and more nervous. I would get a horrible tightness in my chest, as though there was a heavy weight on it, and would struggle to breathe, think straight, and generally function. Shortly after, I was diagnosed with social anxiety disorder and prescribed antidepressants to be taken twice daily. I was also advised by my doctor to quit my university course, as the thought of getting a train into the city and going into that daunting building scared me. I was halfway through the second year of my BA Photography course, and I dropped out. I stopped taking my prescribed Citalopram as they made me sick, and I was constantly worried that since they were supposed to make me less sad, they were making me not me. I'm not sure how to describe it - I just assumed that mood altering medicine would mean that the way I was feeling was being controlled by pills. (I just want to point out that in no way do I think this about anyone else who takes antidepressants or similar - I just made myself anxious about taking the pills myself).
I was also working at a bar at this time, and although I didn't quit my job, it didn't exactly help with my disorder. So often I'd find myself hiding in the back or in the glass wash area, desperately trying to catch my breath before going back out to pour the next pint. I did this for three years without my managers ever knowing, and just assuming I was shy or antisocial.
Here's the simple fact: many workplaces (thankfully, not all anymore) aren't equipped to deal with employees suffering from mental illnesses. People often just don't understand due to a lack of education on the subject, and there are, of course, the minority who think you're pathetic, tell you to get over it, claim that anxiety isn't even an illness. These, I've had to learn to ignore.
Just before my twenty-first birthday, I left my job as I was moving and getting married. I didn't expect this to make me better, and of course, it didn't. In fact, from then on my symptoms have only gotten worse.
I was also working at a bar at this time, and although I didn't quit my job, it didn't exactly help with my disorder. So often I'd find myself hiding in the back or in the glass wash area, desperately trying to catch my breath before going back out to pour the next pint. I did this for three years without my managers ever knowing, and just assuming I was shy or antisocial.
Here's the simple fact: many workplaces (thankfully, not all anymore) aren't equipped to deal with employees suffering from mental illnesses. People often just don't understand due to a lack of education on the subject, and there are, of course, the minority who think you're pathetic, tell you to get over it, claim that anxiety isn't even an illness. These, I've had to learn to ignore.
Just before my twenty-first birthday, I left my job as I was moving and getting married. I didn't expect this to make me better, and of course, it didn't. In fact, from then on my symptoms have only gotten worse.
When I was twenty-one, I had my first full-blown panic attack. I'd had 'anxiety attacks' (as I called them - I'm not sure if this is an official term) before, but never a panic attack. Honestly, it terrified me. One minute I was crying, the next, struggling to breathe, until I found myself lying on my bathroom floor unable to catch my breath or move. As I said, I was terrified. Even a few hours after it had happened, I was shaken and unable to leave my room. Since then, I've had panic attacks many times - in my room, on the street, at work, on trains, in College, in the middle of nowhere, on escalators, in lifts - the list goes on and on. Honestly, I'm scared of a lot of things, but there is nothing more terrifying than having a panic attack in public when you're alone - and it's happened to me before, more than once.
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Anyway, the main reason I decided to write this post up is because of a specific event that happened to me in August. I was getting a train from Doncaster to Stockport to visit my family, a route which I often take and have never had problems with. As always, I arrived at the station over half an hour before my train was due, just to be sure (and in fact, I was there over an hour early, just by chance). As always, I'd booked my tickets online a few weeks earlier and requested seat reservations, to make sure that I didn't have to stand up and be squashed close to strangers. However, when I collected my tickets at the station, they had no seat reservation. I checked them twice, I checked my emails - I'd not been given a reservation anywhere. This had happened to me once before, and after asking at the ticket office, I'd been given a reservation, so I decided to do that again. I explained that I'd requested reservations but been given none, and asked if I could have one. I got one word - "No."
This was around when the panic really started to set in. Voice wobbling, I politely explained to the conductor that I have serious claustrophobia and anxiety, and that I needed a seat because of this. His reply - "I can only reserve you a seat for your journey back." This is when I burst into tears - and by this I mean I was full on ugly crying in the middle of Doncaster train station on a Saturday morning. I received no apology - I didn't even get the satisfaction of him seeming uncomfortable. The person behind the desk simply didn't care that he'd made me cry and hyperventilate, all because he wouldn't try to reserve me a seat. The worst part was, because I'd arrived at the station so early, I knew for a fact that the train I was getting hadn't set off yet, and after checking online, I also knew it had empty, unreserved seats. I had no doubt that if I'd had a visible illness or disability, the man I'd spoken to would've rushed to help me reserve a seat. Once my panic attack had passed and I realised this, I became incredibly angry. Just because my illness is invisible, it doesn't make it any less serious. Just because it doesn't seem to impair me physically, it does, and it also does mentally.
After getting on the train, I just about managed to grab a seat - however, the aisles were completely packed full due to a football match. Once the train got to my stop, some older men stood near where I was sat had to physically push me forward to help me get through the crowd by the door that refused to let me squeeze through. If it weren't for their help, I probably would've ended up staying on that train until the last stop, too scared to stand up and try and push through such a dense crowd. I later tweeted the train company about this whole situation, and got a vague, uncaring reply which pushed the blame onto a different train company. A couple of months later and I'm still waiting for an apology for the events that took place that day - events that are still making me shake as I write about them.
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My mental health has obviously affected me since this day. In September I had to get a train to Liverpool and then a second train to the coast - a train which I hadn't been told was actually an underground tube. I burst into tears in the middle of Liverpool Lime Street station and was shaking for the rest of the day after having to go so deep underground. Almost every day that I leave my flat, I start getting heart palpitations for some reason or another. Knowing that I have to speak to anyone outside of my immediate family or a handful of close friends on a specific day makes me feel as though someone's put a weight on my chest and my throat is closing up. I've developed OCD because of my anxiety; I'm constantly checking I've locked windows and doors multiple times before I go out, and always have to check them a certain amount of times. I even have to check that things are in my bag or pockets over and over, because J convince myself that something's fallen out of them or been taken, even though I've had hold of them the whole time.
Mental illnesses present a daily, constant struggle for anyone who suffers from them. I understand that so many people will have gone through so much worse than I did at the train station, but I became determined to do one specific thing after that day: spread awareness of mental health as much as I possibly can. In no way am I implying that mental illnesses are worse than any other illness - every situation is different and I don't really think debilitating illnesses can be compared to each other. All I'm simply saying is, one person's mental illness should be taken just as seriously as another's physical illness. If I can get just one person, who maybe hasn't thought about it before, to even think about the impact that mental illnesses can have on a person from this post, then I feel as though I've done what I set out to do.
