I have always looked back on my childhood and teenage years as happy memories but I know that if I turned into a mole and dug underneath those memories, I would find underneath it, times of deep worry and concern.
I was about 6 or 7 when my mums depression imprinted on my conciousness, it was dark, there was shouting and without having any recollection of what thoughts were going through my mind I was suddenly standing in the bathroom doorway, watching my mum attempt an overdose and my dad ever the calm and reasonable presence in our family trying to stop her with great urgency.
There was of course peaks and troughs, months of great, unnatural happiness. You could tell when these had started for my mum because she would be up at 5am and by 9am she would have cooked, done the house work and moved around the house like she was on speed.
During these times she had a social calendar as busy as the royal family and although she would describe herself as ‘happy’ she had the shortest fuse, you would walk around on many an egg shell, one slip and she would fire loud hurtful things your way.
The other flip side was something a lot darker and we would all come home from school to be told by our Dad that "Mum was having a ‘bad’ day" but to go and say hello. Mum would be locked in her room, where she would of spent her whole day, week even, in the dark, sleeping, sometimes rocking herself on the floor, crying, silent, numb.
I have always been a very emotionally aware person, I am deeply affected by how others feel around me and I would spend a lot of my time as a child and teenager listening patiently, providing hugs and being an emotional leaning post for my mum.
I guess this is where the role reversal began at a young age, don’t get me wrong I have always been supported by both my parents in my life, in my choices and in crisis, both have given all their children amazing life skills and grounding so that we could flourish into the adults we wanted to become. However being the only sibling willing to listen and be leaned upon meant I grew up in some ways a bit quicker than others. I understood debts extremely well and the impact they have on your mental health, I understood how dark and scary your mind can become if you are inflicted with mental health issues, I understood how an addiction like buying lots and lots of clothes in spite of your finances can help to fill a gap, give you a rush and stop the feeling of numbness for a short moment.
I carried my own bag of worries for my mum around school, constantly thinking of ways to help her, to make her smile or laugh, to drag her away from the dark and self-pity of her mind. I also worried especially as I hit my teenage years if I would also become like my mum.
Our doctor thought the only option was anti-depressants, he didn’t really understand depression and instead of admitting this he clearly felt providing my mum with a constant supply of pills was the correct thing to do. To keep taking them until she eventually became immune to them… her body cannot cope without them now.
Do you ever get over depression completely? Do you become scarred as a family? Is it all doom and gloom?
The answer for me is no.
Depression comes back to my mum still but through counselling, support and understanding from all the people around her who love her she has never slipped so far back into that dark room.
It helped build us as a family to work together and support each other, all of us are more empathetic, compassionate and understanding towards each other and people we meet because of what we have been through together.
Like I said at the start I still have many happy memories of my childhood and teenage years, I have an amazingly close relationship with my mum and the rest of my family. The experience has helped me to have more positive values than material possessions, to appreciate my body and mind when I am well and to not abuse it, to take pleasure in simple and natural things and to have the desire and motivation to help others whenever I can.
I cannot help but realise on reflection how much easier it would have been if my family and I had also been supported by perhaps a counsellor or our doctor. How much easier it would have been if we had not tried to cope on our own for so long, we were perhaps too afraid to speak out because of the stigma attached to depression.
Coming to terms with mental illness is a problem to be solved for the whole family, not just by the person suffering and it’s time the medical profession faced up to this
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