OK – I know we’re now on day three and two of the three photos have been fairly crap even by my standards.

To be honest, I’ve been preoccupied with finding out more about depression, its symptoms, causes, treatments and prognosis for people who suffer and I now feel partly as though a weight has lifted from my own shoulders – in a rare moment of clarity I see myself in so many of the symptoms, realise I’m not alone and even if only for a split-second I realise that my feelings of worthlessness and letting people down are both common symptoms. Partly though I feel overwhelmed and find it hard to see what to do and how to do it. Perhaps that’s the control freak in me.

I’ve been onto lots of “proper” (as in medical) websites and read all of their stuff. The biggest relief is that apparently you can’t just “snap out of it” or “pull yourself together” as I’ve been trying to force myself to do for so long.

I suppose I was shocked to find myself signed off again (which, BTW, DM is flabbergasted about, given that he came to the Doc with me and when I came out of the consulting room saw I was in tears – he can’t understand why I can’t see that I’m not well). I’d been expecting the doc to say “you’ve had a few weeks rest, now pull yourself together and get back to work”. Both David and my Mum said it was obvious from a mile off that I’m not well enough to be at work.

Following my “research”, I’ve decided to take the medicine and everything I can in the way of “talking help” because there are a number of things that I am certain I don’t want….

1. I don’t want this to last six months, which is the average length of an untreated episode of depression apparently.
2. I don’t want to find myself suicidal, which is somewhere I hope never to be and apparently this is common, even though only a small number of people actually try to make that a reality.
3. I want to be “me” again.

In terms of other “help”, I’ve found out from the Royal College of Psychiatry that keeping busy, ensuring I still participate socially and “doing stuff” are all important to keep my mind off things.

So, I’ve been to the supermarket, put away all of the food, pottered around in the garden and finally panicked about not having a photo. This is a shot of a drawer in an old wardrobe, left here by MM and in temporary use as storage and the “analogy” is that woollens keep you warm when you’re cold. I need emotional woollens at the moment.

Last year, funnily enough I was questionning my sanity, though in a much less serious way.