Talk About Wasted Talent (But Not Quite)

Ten years ago I had massive potential. Massive potential. I was 17, nearly 18, looking at going to university to study literature and then move on to journalism, pissed off with my hometown and ridiculously under travelled, with a desire to go everywhere and experience everything, slightly shy but always willing to put myself out there, push myself forward for new experiences. The world was at my feet.

In the period of the next four years I would go on to completely unravel this in the most pitiful way. To quote Charles Dickens "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times". Loads of brilliant stuff happened in that time period, I experienced great things I am glad to have experienced but I also managed to damage myself massively which pretty much ruined any opportunities that could have been open to me. I'm talking about depression triggered by drug abuse. Since then I've found out that I am genetically predisposed to depression and that my family is fucked up in most senses, maybe if I had been aware of this before I would have been a little more cautious (or maybe I would have been worse), both my brother and sister have spent time on anti-depressants and been in therapy, my dad is a prime example of non-violent passive-aggression, my aunty and his mum were agrophobic, my mum came from an abusive home and never knew who her real father was and my gran is very eccentric, my cousins on my mums side all suffer from depression to some extent.

That was the cause of me leaving London. I went off the rails and didn't know how to get back on them, so I did the only thing I could, quit and run back home. I began experiencing anxiety symptoms around that point, although I did not know what that meant at the time, I just knew it as some offshoot of depression and some extention of comedowns that I could not handle. Depersonalisation was a symptom I found massively scarey, a feeling of just being cut off from everything and everyone. There was a point when I felt like a walking zombie, when I couldn't hold a conversation with my parents because I felt like a fraud as couldn't be honest with them as there was a big part of my life that I could never disclose to them. This was not apparent to me at the time though, I just felt a big brick wall was there between me and certain other people and I did not know why.

A guy did a psychiatric assessment on me at that time, the only time I have ever seen anyone remotely like a therapist, who asked me a bunch of questions and made me break down in tears, but because I was always completely and utterly shocked every time he asked me something relating to suicide and was therefore no real danger to myself I was not seen as of high importance. I was self harming at this point, I had been self harming since I was 14, and it did escalate at this period as well due to aforementioned drug abuse impacted self loathing, but I never intended to kill myself. Punish and torture myself, yes, but I am definitely not ready for death yet. I was given a box of citalopram and told to maybe go see a therapist if I wanted to and could afford to pay it off my own back.

It was at that point I went back to Devon and just shut everything out, that was what I wanted, to feel better again, I took the tablets, found a job in a supermarket and just carried on. At the time I was unaware but I was just completely numbing myself. There were five years there that I completely wasted. And it wasn't helping me either. I was completely numb, but I was also undergoing some kind of breakdown, I was drinking massively whilst being on a daily dose of anti-depressants. That entire period I was not me. During the day I was living a life I never wanted to live with the minimum of hassle, during the night I was getting drunk, getting into fights, acting like an arsehole. I was even being agressive and hateful to some of my best friends. Safe to say I was not myself anymore.

After around four years I came off the anti-depressants completely. This was when the anxiety really began. It had been present a bit during my time on the meds but it really came into it's own now. I experienced dreadful panic attacks. There were at least two or three instances where I could not go in to work because of the anxiety I was experiencing, physical symptoms as well, one morning I woke up and my back was in complete pain right down to my legs, within hours it had gone. Twice I woke up on a morning and felt like I could not face the world and ended up spending all morning crying my eyes out for no reason. My mum bore the brunt of all of this. One time I had been up to visit my brother in Cardiff. I was at the peak of my panic attacks, at this point I was scared to drink alcohol, and several nights through the week I had to tell him I could not deal with going outside and just wanted to stay in his room all evening. We went to the cinema at one point as well and I had to leave halfway through because I couldn't take being sat there. When I returned home that weekend on the train back I was fighting back tears. When my picked me up in the car I just burst out crying. She was always trying to ask me why I was so upset, why I was so down, but I didn't even know the answer myself so didn't have a clue what I could tell her. I just cried it out and got on with it.

It was then that I went to my doctor. He tried to put me back on meds but I refused. He put me on a CBT course and gave me some propranolol. The propanolol was weird, beta blockers are definitely not for me, they make me go light headed and my blood literally turns cold with them which just makes me even more anxious inside of my head when my body is completely chilled out, terrible terrible experience, I tried Kalms too which did the same, and also St Johns Wort. The CBT I did find helpful though. It wasn't really geared toward me as such, it was more geared toward people who were scared of something, agrophobics and like. I was given a computer program to do which was all about pushing your boundaries, taking baby steps, but that was never really my issue. Even though I did have physical reactions to things and situations I still pushed through and did them.

What was really helpful for me though was the therapy I received though. I lied earlier and said I hadn't been in touch with a therapist. I actually had, but as part of this CBT it was all done over the phone. I was given a few hour long sessions to go with the fearfighter computer programs where a therapist would talk over my symptoms, how I was feeling, where I thought the feelings were coming from. Several times yet again she had me in floods and floods of tears but I definitely found tools from that to deal with how I was feeling and to get through it.

Those sessions didn't last long, again I think I was considered a low priority because I was no risk to myself and my condition wasn't having a considerable impact to my ability to live life. I had issues but they were literally all in my head and were only serving to torture my thoughts and inhibit myself. What they did inspire me to do though was to research anxiety disorders more, tool myself up against it, learn to not be afraid of it. It was only at this point that I really began to make progress.

A little after this I moved up to Manchester, still with the anxiety symptoms heavy over me. They are still there now in fact, greatly diminished but still there. But when I walked down a street and felt like my skull was caving in because my muscles were so tight and tense or when I felt like my heart was going to stop beating, or I could not breathe I now knew for sure that it was all in my mind. Even to this day I still feel those things but I know why.

The next stage is possibly the hardest bit though, dealing with the things that causes all of this. Again I am much more familiar with them now, lack of self worth, lack of self belief, I don't think much of myself, any aspect of myself. Yet I'm aware that I can do a lot of stuff well. That's the inner conflict I have to deal with. It makes no logical sense at all. But it makes the gap between my ambitions and acheiving them so very hard to bridge. I can see the life I want to lead and person I want to be because I know that that is what I'm capable of and what I can do, but then my lack of self worth and self belief is there saying that I can't do it. I am aware that anyone reading this would read that and just think it's stupid and they'd be right but it is this very thing that completely inhibits me.

I never let it stop me, I moved from Devon to Manchester because I needed to do it. I just need to now keep pushing myself. I'm not sure what my next move is really, I've got an alright job on a comfortable wage right now but I'm still not in the right place yet. I guess I just need to keep on healing. Give myself some goals to work toward. This month is set to be the busiest I've had in a long time, then heading off to Ibiza in June, fitting as much as I can into the summer. I just need to embrace life again, embrace what I've always enjoyed doing. I started off by saying I wasted my talent and opportunities that I had, but waste was the wrong word to use, I have never ever written myself off and that's what's important. There is always tomorrow. People say putting things off until tomorrow is bad, which is true, but what is also true is that tomorrow is always there, it's always going to be an opportunity and a new start. No matter what's happened today, there will always be a new tomorrow.