MY HEALTH EXPERIENCE: RUTH O'DOHERTY:IF YOU met me, you would think I am the happiest person in the world. I'm friendly, outgoing and chatty.
Inside I am a mess – paranoid, anxious and terrified of rejection.
Like many others who suffer from depression, I have become an expert at hiding my real feelings. You never know how someone really feels. Even someone close to you can be hiding so much. Not everyone who has depression advertises it.
This started when I was 11. It might sound silly, but I failed my 11 Plus exam and that destroyed me. It was completely unexpected.
I’m 19 but I seem to have had this thing forever. At 13, I couldn’t see myself reaching 15. They say one in five people suffers from depression. But nobody talks about it. It’d be so much better if they did because then people would realise they are not alone.
Recently, things were so bad that my parents rang the GP looking for an emergency appointment. She gave me a letter for the hospital and they said they could admit me for a few nights to keep me safe.
A psychiatric nurse wanted to refer me to a psychiatric hospital, but they wouldn’t take me. They said it wouldn’t look good on my CV. My CV didn’t seem very important compared with the way I was feeling.
My family could not believe they wouldn’t take me. I had been storing tablets and finding other ways to harm myself.
I think unless you experience it you cannot know. In a strange way, feeling like this is a comfort.
I remember sitting on the stairs when I got my 11 Plus results and crying. My older brother and sister both got Bs and so got into their first choice of school.
I had so many plans. In Northern Ireland, the results of the 11 Plus exam dictate which secondary school you go to.
I hadn’t expected to do so badly, but ever since then I have felt like this. I got into my last choice of school, where I knew no one. I was terrified.
My grandma died a week before I was to start my new school. The people at my new school took a dislike to me. I had never been exposed to that kind of environment.
I was there for two years and I was bullied. My parents raised the issue with the school, but after that I was shunned.
I started cutting myself when I was 11 or 12. My arms are covered with scars. I have done it all over my body. I get urges to cut myself in different places. Something in your head tells you, you have to do it.
I took an overdose when I was 13. Obviously my family were crushed. They knew I was depressed, but not the extent of it. I did not want to annoy them, to worry them.
I ended up leaving that school and going to a private school. It was more like a summer camp than a school and I loved it.
In the school, I met an older girl and although she became my friend, she was part of a bad crowd, who stole and lied. Despite that, for the first time I felt I actually belonged somewhere. I did not feel alone.
All the girls fancied one older guy and he took an interest in me. I was 14. My parents say he groomed me. I say I was stupid, blinded by flattery and the urge to fit in and be accepted.
One night in his home he started to touch me. It was awful. I told him he was hurting me, but he did not care. People expect you to fight back, but I was paralysed with fright.
When my parents found out, I was forbidden to see any of that crowd again. I was devastated because I thought I would go back to being nothing.
At 15, I started to study media at a local tech and loved it. I had friends and then I had my first boyfriend, but we split up when he cheated on me. That left me broken.
I think I am a bad judge of character. The funny thing is, no matter how many times you get hurt, you never get used to it. You always want to believe you’ll find the person who’ll be different.
When we broke up, all I could do was cry – I couldn’t eat or sleep. I was put on antidepressants when I was 13 or 14 and I am still on them. The side effects are horrendous – the nausea, the lethargy.
I have been on antipsychotics. They made me balloon and that made me feel even worse.
My dad is retired now and my parents are always trying to keep me occupied. But when I’m depressed, I don’t have the energy to do anything.
I rely on my parents for everything. They have to plan their entire lives around me. I can’t bear to be separated from my mother.
I feel so guilty about what I have done to my family. They are amazing. I would do anything for them. I do think about how much better off they would be without me.
Last year, I was diagnosed with dyscalculia, which is like maths dyslexia. Suddenly I understood why I had done so badly in my 11 Plus. I felt on top of the world because it meant I wasn’t stupid.
Unfortunately, it all came crashing down again. I think I became immune to antidepressants and started hearing voices, getting panic attacks and shaking all the time.
Every single day when I wake up I wish I hadn’t. I think about killing myself or hurting myself hundreds of times every day.
I have a boyfriend now who is wonderful to be with, but even when we’re laughing and happy together I know the feeling won’t last.
I would give anything not to feel like this. It’s not even that I want to die – I want to disappear as if I had never existed. I hate that this is how I am.
The one thing that bothers me and my family more than anything is the length of time it takes for anything to be done about mental health problems. I had to wait over six months to have psychotherapy.
It is so awful not having any consistency with treatment. I have to plan everything around days I see my doctors. It’s terrible to wait for months to even get a letter telling me I have to go for an assessment.
I have come to terms with the fact that I might always need tablets and therapy.
I have never had a proper school life, proper friends or any normality.
My entire teenage years have been clouded with my depression. I have VERY few happy memories of my teenage years. Is that normal? I don’t know what normal is.
You might read this and think, “Cheer up”. You have no idea how much I wish I could shake these feelings. It’s not a choice to be depressed, to wake up every morning and think, “Maybe today is the day it’ll all get too much.”
All I can say is that there is a reason why I am so lucky, four reasons really – my mum, dad, brother and sister. As long as I have them and their undying support, no matter how bad I feel, they will continue to love me. That is the greatest comfort of all.
In conversation with Marese McDonagh
USEFUL RESOURCES
Aware helpline: 1890 303 302; aware.ie
Samaritans helpline: 1850 60 90 90; samaritans.org
ReachOut: reachout.com
Lean on Me: leanonme.net
Jigsaw, Galway: jigsaw.ie
Mental Health Ireland: mentalhealthireland.ie
SpunOut: spunout.ie
Shine: shineonline.ie
GROW: grow.ie
Pieta House: pieta.ie
Suicide Prevention: suicideprevention.ie
National Office for Suicide Prevention: nosp.ie
Suicide or Survive: suicideorsurvive.ie
