The Birth of Jeannie How

This story may be disturbing at times, but it is all true.  It details my rise from lifelong depression .  It is a positive story in that it may be sad, angry and crude, but it details how I continue in the process of overcoming this mental and physical illness. 

Depression and it's many forms can be both an isolating and self centred condition.  Isolating because people find it difficult to understand or relate to how you feel. They can't put their finger on the area of injury and see the problem.  They can't say, "oh yes, a broken leg" or " ....so you have diabetes?".  Yet depression is a very physical condition as well.  Just as diabetes involves the imbalance of insulin in  the pancreas, depression is an imbalance of serotonin and dopamine in the brain.  Most people find it easier to think about a pancreas working incorrectly, but the brain is a whole different ball game! 

When I say the condition is a self centred state of illness, this is not meant as meaning selfish or uncaring of others.  Quite the opposite. You develop a heightened awareness of the possible effect you have on others and feel guilt at being a burden. Yet, depression is like having a badly burnt finger, the whole world revolves around the pain.  You don't want it to, you desperately want to liberate yourself from the torment, but the pain is so powerful as to invade every aspect of your mental and physical being.

Add to this the aspects of psychotic depression, and you also have the delusional thoughts, the hallucinations and the embarrassment of not having control over your own mind and sensations.  For with psychotic depression you have insight into your symptoms.  You crave total madness, you crave the loss of this insight so that you no longer feel ridiculous and embarrassed by your thoughts.  But relief in the form of total psychosis does not come and so you are left with your mind in a nightmare of unreality yet awareness of what is real and what is not.

I was a psychiatric nurse until my violent marriage and depressed state of mind ended my career. I loved my work and the difference I could make in people's lives.  I responded to each client as an individual not a label.  Not a "schizophrenic" or a "manic depressive", but as a person with their own dreams, their own issues and their own potential.  In fact I never referred to anyone as being a "schizophrenic" I always said that they suffered "from schizophrenia" thus helping to prevent  them from being given a label and treated as such.  I had started up a group for young men with schizophrenia and I thrilled at watching them socialise and grow with each other.  Each with their own needs, but each with a special understanding of what the other was experiencing.  I also loved visiting people who with support were able to remain in the community rather than being institutionalised.  It was a breath of fresh air after working at the large and antiquated Royal Derwent Hospital.  I found speaking to the community about mental health invigorating and exciting, and found nothing more satisfying than realising I had brought positive change to someones awareness and appreciation of  mental health issues. 

But my colleagues, even though learned professionals, were not accepting of my condition and saw me as a weak link in their multi-disciplinary team, I was told I was a "liability to them". I remember clearly the day I returned to work and the head social worker directed the team to sit in a circle and each say what they thought about my condition and my return to work.  I sat there as each took their turn in describing their feelings of mistrust in me, their disatisfaction in my return and that I was a liability to their team.  I had grown to think of them as family, I remembered ringing them up when I was in labour to give them an account of my progress.  I wanted to share my begining of motherhood with them such was the closeness that existed, or so I thought.

At the end of the meeting I felt bleak and useless.  I was a "liability", that word kept echoing in my head.  I felt broken and forsaken, so  I worked simply to prove I could do it and then left the career I loved and lived for.  But in going through this process I have now found new beginings, a new and loving husband, two beautiful sons and a reason for life.  I continue to battle depression, but in between the bouts of darkness is the light and hope of success.  Success as a wife, a parent,a daughter and a sister.  Also the possibility of career success is part of my reason for striving forward.  Not a career in psychiatric nursing as I could not be a colleague to those who had cared for me, and I had too often be treated as different even by those who I had trained with.  No, I could not return to my original career.  I had to work within my limits, within my range of coping.  I would work for myself, and target my nursing experience  and other passions towards a career totally different to the one I had left.

I shall continue to add and change these pages as I record the events that shaped my life, what may read one way one day may be different the next.  But the details of this story remains true.  The moral being no matter how low you sink, no matter how lonely you feel, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, you are never truly alone, and life is a continual learning process where all negatives can be changed into a positive or constructive event.



.......and so I begin.............


chapter 1



“You fucking bitch !”.  I felt spit splashing into my eyes as he yelled at me in the middle of the department store.  “You always get black trousers, never any other colour.  I am sick of your crap all the time” . David stood rigid, leaning over me, his nose almost touching my face.  His pupils were like little specks of darkness in a face of pure hate and anger.

People stared and then politely turned away.  Or maybe it was embarrassment and not politeness that made them hurry on.  Only one person, a checkout girl gazed intently at us with a mixed look of concern and sympathy on her face.  I felt stupid, I felt embarrassed, I felt selfish for always wanting black jeans and not some other colour.  Yes, David was right in his disgust of me.  I turn to leave the checkout carrying my shopping bag containing the anger inducing clothing.  David following behind me, red faced, nostrils flaring, his eyes made even more prominent by the beard he had not trimmed for some time.  His tirade of abuse continued on as I walked down Liverpool Street.
"Stupid fucking bitch, always wearing black. You're so fucking predictable!".
I quickened my pace and reached the bus stop.  David continued striding down the street, not looking back even once at me.  So I just stood there a waited for the bus.  Staring down at the ground, arms folded in front of me as if holding my internal organs inside.  I felt like I was going to burst, to spontaneously disembowel myself there and then on the street.  The pressure was so great in my head, and inside my body.  I felt anger, hurt, disgust, embarrassment, and guilt.  I felt so many emotions all at once.  I had to hold them all in.



chapter 2

Then I am back in the room, curled up in bed.  It was just another memory.  A flash back to previous days, previous years of abuse and torment.  It had worn me down to what I am now.  A shell, an empty room, someone who deserved to feel pain.  Yes, it was clear to me now.  I had been a selfish bitch, a bad wife, a bad mother, and now a bad wife to my second partner.  I had let my family down, I had let myself down, now I deserved to suffer.  I must punish myself.

Memories keep flooding back to me.  Moments in the past that take over the now and become my reality , my present.  Till I am like a matted ball of wool that has been played with by a kitten till the end and the beginning of the skein is lost and impossible to find.

I remember when I knew what I wanted in life.  A time of naivety and freshness.  A time when I could be myself and the world did not seem so sinister.  That was before it happened.  Before my childhood trust was taken away by one individual. 

I had 3 brothers and I was the youngest of the family.  The miracle baby that shouldn’t have survived. I was underweight, stopped breathing twice and it was 4 long weeks before my Mother got to hold me.  But I was born with a purpose set before I left my mothers womb.  Dad was an unfaithful and unloving partner and Mum was lonely so decided to have a child in order to have companionship and love.  She had a girl, who inherited the family Christian name of Jeannie  and so continued a tradition from years gone by.  My brothers grew up and left the fold while I continued to act as soul mate to her Mother.

This role of companionship became even more important as my brothers visited her less and less, and my Father becamer terminally ill.  He would sit by the window and say, 'today he'll come and visit.  Today Tim will see us" But Tim would never show.  Neither would my other brother Paul, who had become the victim of a poor and demanding marriage and had turned to alcohol to numb his pain.  My eldest brother, Mark had died several years ago of leukeamia and had left an open festering wound in my Mother's psyche.  But that was another terrible, unbearable story that I shall tell later.  As it haunts me still, as it is one of many claws unravelling my life.


chapter 3


Suddenly I am standing on the rocks by the beach, Tracey is with me, I am 8 years old she is 7.  We pick our way along the foreshore searching for coral and pretty stones. I peer closely at the ground incase I miss something interesting, and already have a handful of little treasures produced by Mother Nature.  Tracey’s Mother is sitting on a  blanket on the beach and gazes out across the water to the hills, she enjoys the chance to sit alone. 

Looking up towards the bank of sandstone and shale I see a man standing amongst some bushes  with binoculars. He is peering intently through them at the yachts on the water, or so I think that is what he is looking at.  He is in his twenty’s, so grown up compared to me.  He seemed like an older man.  Years and years older than Tracey or I.  He was just standing there, looking out, very still, very innocent looking.  A grown up doing grown up things.

“Here are your tablets”.  The nurse has come to give me my lunchtime tablets.  Lunchtime ! that’s a laugh.  You eat at lunchtime and I am not going to do that.  I know what food can do to you.  It controls you, it is society’s way of………..no, that’s wrong, that’s delusional………..no, its right.  I don't deserve to eat anyway, look at all the pain my illness and my past has brought to my children and my loving second husband.  I must teach myself a lesson, I must punish myself, I must not eat.  I don't deserve the experience of placing food in my mouth.  I simply want to curl up and disappear into nothingness.

Then I am back on the rocks.  The man comes down and asks what we are doing.  I pick up some pipe coral and show him.  “I am looking for stones and coral” .  He bends down and stairs at the pebbles, his binoculars swinging forward around his neck. I am impressed that a grown up should be interested in my search for rocks and things.  He must be a very nice man.  Then suddenly, he stands up and grabs hold of me.  Tracey screams and steps back, uncertain what to do.  I try and fight him off.  But he holds me tightly one hand on the back of my head, the other round my waist as he  pushes me against his crotch.  Then he lets go of my waist and fumbles with his button and fly zip.  I see his button with the clothing company logo impressed on its silver shiny  surface and I hear the zip undo.  He holds me hard against him and tries to put something in my mouth. What is it he is trying to do? What is he trying to put in my mouth ?  I struggle and cry out and suddenly something hot and slimey explodes over the right side of my face.  I am screaming, struggling, and slip from his grasp.  As Tracey and I run, I scream.  Ahead is a high pipe which we must scale to get to the beach and Tracey’s Mother.  Will he catch us before we get over it. I reach the pipe, feeling the hot slime on my face dripping down my neck.  I throw myself at the pipe and scramble over the top.  We make it.  My face is wet, he has put poison on my face.  What will it do to me, I could die.  I turn to make sure he isn’t behind me and see no sight of him so I stop by a rock pool and desperately splash water onto my face and try to rub the mass off my skin.  I am poisoned, I will die.  I have to get home to Mum.  She will know what to do.  But I might die before I get back home.  Help, someone !

Tracey and I run along the rocks and after what seems like an eternity we arrive at her Mums side.  I tell her what happened, while crying and gulping between words. 

“So what really happened?” she said through hardened lips.  “Now tell the truth!”.

She didn’t believe me.  A man grabbed me, undid his fly and put poison on my face and she didn’t believe me.    “TAKE ME HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!”.


chapter 4


Suddenly I find myself back in my hospital bed.  I hear the gentle hum of the heater, I want the room as warm as possible, as dark as possible with curtains closed.  I lay there as if within a womb.  A place of safety, if only my memories didn't follow me there.  So many memories, so much pain.  I remember the tablets I had hidden in my clothing just in case............just in case.............just in case my womb like environment within the hospital room didn't protect me enough.  Those tablets will protect me, will still the memories, will stop the emotional pain which is so real as to be physical torment.  Slowly I push back the sheets, every thing is so difficult.  Through the fog which enshrouds my mind I decide to have a bath and to take the pills.  To softly enter oblivion while laying in warm still water.  So peaceful.  So protected.

A nurse enters the room to check on me and asks how I am feeling.  "OK, I am going to have a bath, I will feel even better then" This seems to satisfy the nurse, she is impressed that I have the motivation to bathe, if only she really knew what motivated me.  Slowly I gather together my dressing gown, a towel, a beauty bag and place the pills into my pocket.  I make my way down the corridor hoping not to have to pass anyone on the way.  I desperately don't want to look into anyone's eyes or they may see my plan somehow.  I arrive at the bathroom and open the door, closing it gently behind me I then turn on the taps and wait for the beautiful big bath to fill with loving water. 

I pause for a moment and stare into the mirror as I reach into my pocket and take out the pills.  How many are there..... I don't know.  But there is a good handful, surely enough to help the pain to go away.  To stop the guilt, and the imposition I place on other people's lives.  I love Mat so much, he is such a wonderful husband, but he deserves better than me.  He needs a wife who is stable, successful, sexual and healthy.  I take the pills and drop my night shirt to the floor.  I turn off the taps and step into the inviting water.  I lay down and wait for the little pills to answer my prayers.

I wait and wait, I still feel the pain.  The water is good, it's motherly touch is soothing against my skin, but I still feel the pain.  The frustration of failure causes me to get out of the bath and with an unsteady feeling of not quite being in reality, and feeling as if the world was moving or shifting around me I put on my dressing gown and return to my womb like room.  I shall wait here for the pills to work.  I am certain that soon the pain will stop.
The phone beside the bed starts ringing...............

By now I am finally starting to feel the effects of the overdose, I am experiencing restlessness in my legs and arms, but I am still aware, still in pain. With a feeling of unreality I pick up the phone.  A female voice is on the other end "Hello Jeannie, your lunchtime tablets are ready for you".  I put down the receiver, perhaps more pills will complete what I have begun.  Groggily I get out of bed and realise that I am not walking very well.  But then, there is a rail running down the corridor wall, perhaps if I rest my hand on the rail no one will notice my condition.  I want those pills, they will combine with what I have taken and stop the pain.

I stagger to the door and open it to peer out.  Good, no one is in the corridor.  I grasp the rail and start to head towards the nursing station to get more pills. Then I think to myself "what am I doing, how will Mat and the boys feel if I was to die.  I can't go through with this, I can't do this to them" .  Suddenly the floor rushes up towards me and I feel carpet burn my leg as I hit the floor.  The next thing is awareness that I am seated near the nurses station, someone is holding my head back to restrain me, and trying to take my pulse.  I can't keep my arms still.  "Just let me go, let me lie down in my bed".  If I could only lie down then I could disappear into this world of chemical numbness.  "Let me go" I mumble as I also start to feel the effects of the overdose on my speech.  It is difficult to get the words out, to tell them to leave me a lone.  I know what I want.  I want to lie down and sleep forever.  "Leave me alone, I'll be alright"  I know I shall be fine, my awareness will end and the pain will cease.  "Let me go to bed" .  My womb, my place of sanctuary.  I want to simply fall asleep but they won't  let me go!

I look sideways and notice a flock of chickens on a cupboard.  How strange for chickens to be in a hospital ward.  Then the nurse training I received in the past kicks in and I realise I am hallucinating.  I try to speak, to tell them that all I need is to go to bed but the words are no longer tangible.  They slip from my tongue and come out sounding like some foreign language being uttered by a drunk.  I can't tell them what I want anymore, I can't keep my arms still, I am hallucinating and yet I still feel the pain.  Why does life treat me like this.

Then I am aware of lying on the floor and a light flickering in one eye then the next, then I am on a trolley.  "This is to help you breathe" says someone as I struggle with the oxygen mask.  The world finally goes blank.  The pain ceases.


chapter 5


Gradually I become aware of lying in hospital , I try to speak but can only make grunts, I try to move but my body feels like it belongs to someone else.  I have not control, no means of communication, then the pain ceases again.

Through blurred vision I find myself staring at a figure by the bed, who is it.  It doesn't matter who it is.  I spend two days waking and sleeping.  Feeling pain and torment one minute, then peace and oblivion the next.  I am aware of having a bed bath, of having a toilet pan placed under me.  I mumble and cry, I am so embarrassed, and feel so much trouble to the nurses.  Finally I am "well" enough to go back to the psychiatric ward.  Back to my world of hell and memories.  Where even an overdose can't help me to escape.

My husband travels with me back to the ward and accompanies me to my room.  He is so loving, so gentle, I want him to have someone better than me.  I want him to have a healthy wife, a wife without emotional baggage.  But I am still his wife and still crazy.

Mat is a wonderful man.  I met him through a dating agency.  One of the most important things I learnt from psychiatric nursing was that our life and our behaviour was composed of patterns of repeating cycles.  We learnt things from our parents and repeated them in our lives, continuing an inherited cycle of behaviour, of relationships, of success or failure.  I knew after my first marriage ended that I had based that relationship on a pattern I had seen in my parents, I had to do something different, to change the pattern somehow. 

I had remembered when back in year twelve, when studying social psychology, reading an article about a study of primitive tribes and the high success of their arranged marriages.  That couples from these groups were more likely to be happy and content than couples in Western society.  So I decided to try this method myself, or at least something similar.  I would go to a match making service and see if they could find me a partner who would be a good father to my boys and a gentle husband to me.  The first time I rang as soon as I heard the voice on the other end I hung up the phone.  "I can't do this", I thought.  Then I rang again, this time I spoke to Maree, the owner of the voice I had hung up on previously.  She sounded really nice and I made an appointment to see her.

On my arrival at the shop front I hesitated before going in. Was this the right thing to do.  Was it right for me.  Was it right for my children.
I didn't want to make the same mistake, to repeat my old pattern, to end up in an unhealthy, destructive relationship.  I took a deep breath, looked up to the heavens, then walked in through the door.  I had taken the first step to a new way of life, I hoped.

Maree was highly professional, but at the same time did all the right things to make me feel relaxed.  Then I had a pile of forms and questions to fill out.  Did I want to advertise? No.  I felt if the right man was there for me I would find him without having to be in the classifieds of the local paper.  What were my interests?  What was important for me in a man?  What was important for me not to be in a man? The questions went on and on. But gradually I built up a picture of my dream man, possibly even my Soul Mate.  Then Maree took my picture, "not to show any one but for their own reference".  I left feeling excited, scared, a bit naughty, and decided not to tell anyone what I had done.

I was introduced to two men, both proved unsuitable, one was at least 20 years older than I was told and it turned out his friend had  put in his name and description without his approval.  The second seemed a real gentleman, cultured and charismatic, but he had obsessive compulsive disorder, was narcisistic, and had some weird ideas about what a good sex life was.  The third simply blew me away.

He rang me up and I interviewed him over the phone.  He said his name was Mat and he had a slight accent that while I could not place its origin it sounded gentle and honest.  We arranged to meet at Mr Woobys cafe restaurant in Salamanca.  I told him I would wear a leather jacket with a rooster patterned on the back, and that my car was a noisy little diesel so he would "hear me arriving".

I spent ages getting ready.  I was scared I wouldn't be good enough, that I wasn't what he was expecting.  I was worried I was doing the wrong thing by my two boys. What if this stranger was some sort of madman.  But I kept reminding myself that I had to break my old pattern.  I had to meet someone who fitted the profile of the man I wanted in my life, rather than simply be attracted to a man because I felt sorry for him, or I saw he had potential.  I wanted someone who had already rattained their potential, not simply have potential.  A man who wasn't like a piece of  realestate which the agent describes as "heaps of potential" when it is a total wreck.

I stood outside the entrance to Mr Woobys and coming towards me was a tall man, bald, with a dark jacket on and a large circuclar thing on his lapel.  He came up to me and introduced himself.  I thought my God!  he is so tall, and....bald.  On entering the cafe restaurant we sat down and he took the large badge off his lapel and presented it to me.  It featured a cyberman from the  Dr Who television  series.  From what he had learnt about me from the agency, and further from our phone "interview" he knew that both he and I were crazy about Dr Who.  We sat for ages and talked about our interests, our lives, my boys and our past broken marriages.  Had my luck finally changed ?  Had I finally found the right man?

I returned home feeling excited and scared all at once.  Mat seemed so friendly and intuitively I knew I could trust him, that he was honest.  He was very interested in my boys as well, which was a good sign, and we both seemed to have a lot in common.  I removed the cyberman badge I had pinned to my black blazer and sat it on the dressing table.  Tonight I would go to bed feeling an inner happiness I had not experienced for a long, long time.



chapter 6

Now, I am back in the ward.  Back to the present.  Back to the pills, the nurses, the doctors, the watching probing eyes.  The pain and torment remained.  It had been halted for a short time by my overdose of little pills, but the pain was back.  The guilt, the self hate, the feeling of having betrayed my husband and my family.

The voices were back as well.  They echoed in my head.  Telling me to die, calling my name, telling me food was bad for me.  I knew they weren't real, I knew they were part of my illness but I couldn't ignore them, they were so insistent.

Sleep would stop them, so I curled up in bed and waited for awareness to cease.  For the voices to stop, and my delusional thoughts to cease their endless assault upon my world.  I know these thoughts are delusions. That food will not control me, that my pills will really help me, that I am sick and not evil.  But the thoughts are insistent and constantly tell me that I must not eat, that I am bad, that I should die.
But another part, the sane part, the part that is still the real Jeannie continues to question these thoughts and hallucinations.  To question what is real and what isn't.
My training as a psychiatric nurse tells me to get up out of bed, to have a wash, to put on makeup so that I look presentable for Mat.  I feel robotic in my actions, as my inner nurse, my own personal therapist directs me what to do.

So I get out of bed and follow my own professional advice and once the makeup has been applied and my hair agonisingly combed into place I walk slowly down to the dining room.  To have a drink.  I don't feel guilty when I drink, just when I eat, so I keep my fluids up and follow my own "Nursing Care Plan" that I have drawn up in my head.

I sit at the table and sip my hot chocolate, but waves of darkness like a cloud keeps engulfing my mind, making me feel separate to the rest of the world.  People walk past me, occasionally sit at the same table.  But I feel as though they are on another plane, another existence.  Then I see the face of my dead brother in my mind and I feel overwhelmed by the memories of his death.  So I cradle my hot drink in both hands as if seeking comfort in the warmth of the mug and retrace my steps back to my room.

I wake early the next day but feel as if somehow the cloud has lifted slightly from my mind.  I have gotten up and had a drink and returned to my room, still a place of sanctuary, but at the moment not needing to feel so womblike.  I open the curtains and feel the warmth of the sun on my face and gaze out at the trees being ruffled by a breeze.  It is pretty there, for the first time in many weeks I feel appreciative of something.  It is an alien feeling.  To feel almost positive, to feel almost an inner warmth.  The feeling is foreign, but it is good.

I sit in a chair beside my bed and look at the wedding ring on my finger.  It has become loose due to my weight loss but I daren't take it off as it is my strongest link to happier times.  To a wonderous moment in my life when Mat and I exchanged vows in a garden.  The memories are bright in my mind and I think of the time as the perfect moment on a perfect day.  The only sadness I can conjure up for that occasion is the absence of my brothers and their families, but I had some true friends to share the moment with.  My best friends were there, and the Powel family from Triabunna were well represented.  My Dad had died several years ago and so Mum's best friend's husband, Uncle Ned gave me away, and new friends and family of Mats were there with his close friend Elizabeth playing the harp and a magnificient wedding cake featuring dolphins was created by Margaret another new friend.  Elizabeth, Margaret and their partners were like family.  So close and so loving.  When ever we visited Margaret she would give us all a gigantic bear hug, and she was and still is the greatest cook on the planet.  She is famous for her banquets and going to her place for a meal is a true adventure.  A journey of wonderous flavours piled high on platters and in bowls.  Wonderous aromas and a visual feast reminiscent of a medieval banquet.  Oh what a lovely lady.

So our ceremony was complete with family and friends.  My two boys, Austin and Charles were best men, and presented by Mat during his speech as such.  The ceremony was beautiful, and was conducted by my Aunt who was a marriage celebrant.  A personalised ceremony in a beautiful garden.

Why can't life be more like this.  Why can't I feel happy more often, and be able to focus more on such delightful times ? I sit in my chair and feel the cloud start to envelope my mind again.  A small reprieve from my pain had ended, but maybe it will happen again.  Maybe a happy memory shall flood back to my present.  Maybe there is a light at the end of the tunnel.  But I know I am fooling myself, there is no light, there is no hope and my cloud sits heavy around my world.  So I get back into bed and wait for sleep to come.  I sleep fitfully, keep waking.  It is night time now, I should sleep but can not.  I rise from my blankets and put on my dressing gown to go out to the dinning room for a hot drink.  A hot drink will calm my mind.



chapter 7

"You have a funny name".  It was my first day at pre-school and I was being introduced to my first experience of teasing and bullying.  It had been a tearful morning already.  I desperately didn't want to be left alone by my Mother.  I had clung to her hands, fearful of her imminent departure.  What if she didn't come back when school closed.  What if I didn't see her again.  I screamed in terror as she left out through the door and walked towards her car with the famililar gait which echoed the injuries she had suffered in a car accident before I was conceived.
I knew that there were times when she was gone for days and days.  But I was not old enough to understand that these were times when she went to hospital for yet more surgery, and that this was different.


I had a Mum who frequently required surgery as a result of her car accident.  Repeated spine operations, foot repairs and then a hysterectomy.  My Dad had been unfaithful to Mum while she was undergoing various medical procedures, but I was too young to realise this then.  It was in later years that Mum confided in me the truths behind her marriage, and how Dad treated me with love but had little for her.  Dad was a very sexual man, sexually demanding and frustrated so he sought it elsewhere, and got it.  Mum was going to leave him before I was conceived, but had made an agreement with Dad that she would stay with him as long as she had another child to fill the gap in her life with love and companionship.  He reluctantly agreed, but when the child turned out to be a girl he was very happy.  But not as overjoyed as Mum.  But those first few weeks after the birth were difficult ones.  Mum would hear the other babies crying as they were being taken to their mothers for feeding, while I was a tiny thing that she could not hold for 4 long weeks.  I lay in a  humidicrib and the sisters of Calvary Hospital prayed for my survival.  And, I did survive and was taken home when I weighed 5 pounds.  Mum found it difficult at first, as I had not had the normal bonding a new born has.  I turned away from her instead of instinctively turning towards her as babies do and I had to take an iron supplement from a spoon which would later turn my first teeth orange.  But I grew quickly, and put on weight.  Jeannie the miracle baby, the survivor !

Maybe that is why I have depression.  Maybe I have some deformity causing the imbalance of brain chemistry, maybe because I was so underveloped that by ability to produce serotonin was also affected.  Or perhaps it is because I was not held or cuddled for the first 4 weeks of birth.  Maybe it is all of the above.  Maybe not.
What ever the cause I have experienced a life long and debilitating condition that only now do I understand and see the potential for improvement.  Before, when much younger I simply took it as part of life that I would become teary in the playground, I grew to take for granted that I would not be included in the various friendship groups at school.  I felt different and was different.  I was not interested in the modern songs of the time, or in boyfriends.  I accepted being bullied and laughed at in the schoolground, while in the class room my classmates where in awe of my ability to draw and my seemingly bottomless pit of knowledge of nature and biology.  I excelled in these areas but was dismal in mathematics and lacked such confidence in this area that I wouldn't even try and understand, I expected to get low marks in maths, chemistry and physics.  While excelling in art, writing, biology and philosphical subjects such as religion.  Even so, my lack of confidence in all things numerical spilled over into my other subjects, so I expected to be a mediocre student no matter what marks I got for any of my subjects.  I also accepted I would never be one of the in crowd at school.  "Accepted" perhaps is not the correct word as I ached to belong to a group of friends, I wished to be like the other girls, but I was different and treated as such.

When I got to highschool being looked on as the odd one out continued.  I wasn't invited to the wild parties, and had retained my virginity which also was counted as a cross to my name.  There were areas of the playground I kept away from as well.  For when I walked along the outside entrance to the canteen I would feel that all eyes were upon me, though deep down I knew they weren't.  I would feel as if I was walking strangely, that I looked weird, reminiscent of a dreamlike feeling where your feet are heavy and you cannot do anything about it while trying to get somewhere quicky.  Yes, it was like a dream, but awake.  That feeling of being weighed down, of walking in slow motion, of being stared at for behaving foolishly.  It always happened as I passed along the exterior walkway to the canteen and so I became obsessed with not going that way.  I would do anything to be able to take a different route.  I knew this was illogical, but there was nothing I could do about it.

I also applied as much makeup as I could get away with.  The school was strict on wearing makeup but I piled on the foundation, blusher and mascara as I felt ugly and desperately wanted to look like one of the "in crowd".  I would get up very early in the morning to curl my hair and apply my day face.  I desperately wanted to belong.  But everything I did seemed to accentuate my differences, and when I tried to join in conversation I would have no idea what was being discussed.  Such things as boyfriends, sex and the latest musical hits were beyond my experience.  So I simply sat and listened, envious of members of my peer group who seemed so knowledgeable and experienced in these things.

My one true highlight of my high school years was Tracey.  Her parents were having marital difficulties, and she was constantly disappearing from school or not even turning up.  Truancy was part of her life and she believed she was dumb, to use her own words.  But I saw in Tracey someone with great potential who was the victim of circumstance and made friends with her.  We would share our lunches and both look for excuses not to do phys-ed.  The commonest excuse was menstrual cramping and Miss Farmer would reluctantly tell us to sit aside or go to the library when we issued her with this excuse.  But there were many days when Tracey would not come to school, she would leave home and her parents would think she was going to school, but simply not show up.  Those days were hell for me.  As I would be back to sitting alone and trying my best not to walk along that oppressive route to the canteen.











Footnote:

As you read this please remember that this is a story detailing my rise from depression.  It is not as bleak as it may seem.  But, in order to relay my message of hope I must also address those bleakest of moments.  So that everyone who reads this can see that even in lifes darkest pit is a light, a ray of hope.  You only have to believe and it will be there.

Also remember that this is a work in progress.  I shall be continuing to add to it as I progress through my story of survival and hope.

Thankyou for taking the time to read the begining of my story.

Love and Light to you all, Kitty