I think I'm suffering from depression. I realised this when I began crying on the tube for no reason on my way home from work. DH is out and I don't want to worry my parents or friends, I desperately need to keep my head clear and know I need to speak to the gp in the morning.
The symptoms:
A nagging sense of anxiety at all times, panic over stupid things. Stressed at work and yet i can't focus on the simple tasks that would resolve the stress.
I've had this voice in the back of my head telling myself that I'm a failure, everything I do is crap, life isn't going to get better for weeks. I can't rationalise it away.
Last week DH was away and I cried literally every night. Not missing him. I don't know what. I had a cry on the sofa every night with the cat on my lap. I threw myself into cleaning the flat to make it nice for his return and then on Sunday I felt this cold dead lethargic grip around myself. I got it into my head that I don't love him anymore. I couldn't enjoy his returning. I can't bear to be touched.
I cried yesterday morning when I got up. I felt so slow and numb it took me three times longer to get ready. I cried this morning when I got up. I spent an hour crying and I was late for work. I cried in the loos. I cried on the train on the way home. When I'm not crying I feel numb.
...it's depression isn't it. It's so strange, on paper everything in my life is going well. I had depression before, a few years ago, but then everything in my life was going badly.
I know this reads cold. I'm trying to think systematically. I have a habit of making stupid decisions when I'm depressed or low.
I think this all sounds really cold. I am trying to think systematically. I'd be so grateful for anything anyone could say.
AIBU?
To ask if anyone could just "talk" to me...
IHeartKittensAndWine · 06/09/2011 19:13
good luck op. RE paying it forward - I knew you were a nice person 
If the letter/notes are not about leaving your Dh (i presume not) why dont you give him a hug before you start. Get some drinks and tissues at the ready and maybe take 2 paracetamol if you think its going to be a heavy headache inducing chat 
By your definition I'm a failure too. I went to a grammar school which was at the the time in the top five of the GCSE and A-Level league tables, and within my year I was at least average in pretty much everything (apart from sport and art) and at the top in English and Psychology. I could have done so much better than I did at my exams and got straight As, but I just couldn't be arsed at the time to put the effort in, so I coasted enough so that I wouldn't get yelled at for doing nothing. Got marks which are absolutely fine but not at all reflective of my abilities apart from my Psych A Level and a couple of my GSCEs. The GCSEs, anyway, were done at the same time as I was depressed, so that at least made sense, but after that I just did not live up to my potential. Then I got into uni but decided not to go before I even started and got a minimum wage job for a couple of years before doing a course far below my abilities...
Basically everyone around me was saying I was wasting my potential and I knew it too. However, I did that because I needed to. Just because I COULD be amazing at x, y and z doesn't mean I wanted to, and it doesn't mean I needed to. It was far better for my mental health to concentrate on stuff I was interested in.
Fast forward a few years and I've just finished a degree in something useful (though again, I could have done better by going to a more highly regarded uni, but I didn't feel the stress was worth the payoff) and I have a job doing something I absolutely love and am good at (though still need to find a full time job). At no time during any of that, apart from my depression, have I actually felt like a failure because like I say - I could have done better, but to do so would not have actually been better for me. You see?
I say all this only to make the point - by other people's definitions I am a failure. By my own I'm not because I am happy and content with my life and I feel that where I took 'bad' choices, they were right for me at the time. I can say all this because I have got high self-esteem and have almost always had (apart from during the depression).
You are often your own worst critic. By someone else's standards to have even got into Oxford would be a massive, massive achievement. It's all perspective and yours at the moment is very skewed. That is not your fault - if we could control depression we'd all be fine all the time. And it doesn't sound like self-pity - it sounds like depression!
cottonreels Haha, thank you. I shall be looking over my shoulder...and I refreshed the page before I posted all of the above to check and realised I had meant to add about now not being the end, but you'd already done it! 
Glitterand glue - everytime I read a post on this thread and think thats a really good point/good advice, its you who's said it. Will look out for you again (not in a scary sort of a way )
I just want to add to the list of people reading what you are writing, & seeing an emotionally aware, thoughtful & engaging woman.
As people have said, so much of your relationships is formed by your relationships with your parents - 'saying' they are proud of you doesn't make it feel real - words are cheap & all that.....
And that whole mates thing - you know, of my 4 best mates (who I've known for 20 years & seen through thick & thin) only one of them will contact me spontaneously. After 20 years of this I've realised it's not because they're out having fun without me (my paranoid voice) they're just a bit pants.
Your 'best' mate sounds like a knob.
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