Yesterday I cried - all day. I woke up fine, did my usual early morning stuff then opened Twitter on my PC and the first thing I saw was a RIP Robin Williams tweet. That on it's own made me tear up, I've always loved his movies, even the not-so-great ones, but then I saw the cause of death and that he'd been fighting depression and then, then it hit me - hard!
I have no idea why it hit me so hard - I wouldn't have called myself a big fan, I haven't even seen one of his movies in the last 5 years or more, but I felt like I'd lost a member of my family. I honestly howled & sobbed so hard I gave myself a headache and hiccups!
As I calmed down to more gentle weeping though, I realised it brought back the panicked trip to the hospital, following an ambulance and arriving 5 minutes too late. How I drove my husband & brother-in-law home that day, I don't know.
It brought back the day the police knocked on my door and asked if I knew my brother-in-law. The younger policeman had to dial the phone and hold it for me so I could tell my husband to come home.
It brought back all my teen years when I sat and stared at bottles of pills for hours, never quite having the courage or desperation to open those containers.
It brought back the fear - the fear that this monster black dog inside me might come back and sweep all my current happiness away. As if some wicked being somewhere is keeping score of how many days of happiness and sadness I've had and it will soon be time to head back into sorrow.
I want to scream that I've only just woken up again, I don't want to go back. I want to live in the sunshine, not the grey, noiseless, tasteless, emotionless void that I was in before.
Maybe I'm a bit silly but I've been reading a lot of the blog posts that people have been writing - I think of it as innoculation - read all I can about depression, get upset about it now so if & when it does happen to me again - and I'm pretty certain it will, one day - then perhaps I'll be better equipped to deal with it.
Attitudes to mental health are definitely changing - my time working for ecdp has made such a huge difference to my own attitude about all disabilities and they are working to continue pushing that change forward. For all the joy & laughter that Robin Williams brought to the world, I am grateful and I am so, so sad that he's gone but maybe now, he can find some peace and rest at last.
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Gifts for Gamers and Geeks
Gifts for Gamers and Geeks
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