The End Of A Family

Trying to fulfil my promise to my Dad by making him proud was no easy task. By the time he got ill, I had already linked my life to bipolar disorder. I came across it by accident. Of course I had heard of the condition before, but I didn't know a great deal about it.

I was flicking around a rugby league forum and came across an article about an Australian rugby player who was coming over to play in this country, after having problems down under due to his Bipolar disorder. There was a thread on one forum, where someone basically asked what bipolar was and how it could affect a player. About 4 replies in, someone posted something that gave me an idea what I was suffering from. This person spread awareness of the condition, pointed out some of the symptoms. The poster may not know it, but he contributed in some way to changing my life.

Everything the person listed, applied to me. The lack of motivation, change in moods, even the smaller things seemed to be there. It described my life to a tee. I wanted to be sure though and I went to some close friends. I gave them the link and the post in which they should read but didn't tell them why they had to read it. Each one of them came back with the same reply. “That's you that is!”

It was actually a relief to put a name to what I was going through, even if it was ever so slightly incorrect, yet technically correct aswell. I started to understand more about what I was going through, I was able to do some research and I was hoping I'd be able to get through it by myself. I didn't want to be on medication for the rest of my life, just to keep me going. I have no such fears now, but it took time to get to that point.

One of the major problems I had was not being able to control my anxiety or emotions. I'd stress over nothing at all, exacerbating the problem by overthinking it. It was a viscous circle and I couldn't stop it.

Other people didn't help.

Sticking by my promise to Dad that I wouldn't return until I had made him proud, my family started putting me under pressure. They questioned why I wasn't going to see him, trying to force me down there, offering me incentives. One day it came to a big climax and would be the final nail in the coffin for my relationship with my family.

I had been to the rugby one Sunday afternoon and had left a volunteer in charge of the live scores service for the website I had been working for. While I was out, there had been an issue with the scores service and the person hadn't contacted me, like he said he would if he had issues. I wasn't best pleased and voiced my concerns via a Facebook status:

“I can't believe the lack of updates, don't make promises you can't keep”

Or words to those effect anyway. For some reason, my step-mother decided I was talking about her lack of updates on my Dad's condition and decided to comment as such, ranting about something or other. I deleted her comment, as to not confuse other people who read the status and then toddled off to bed, thinking I was done for the day.

It was 3am when the constant beep of my phone telling me I had missed calls, texts and voicemails from my brother. That scared the living shit out of me. I thought something had happened to Dad. But no, they were ranting at me for the Facebook status, leaving me all sorts of nasty messages about what a prick I was being for leaving that status and deleting Amanda's comment.

I was barely awake and it took me a few minutes to fully comprehend what was going on. I logged onto my Facebook and had a similar number of notifications and private messages, berating me. One private message from my brother was the clincher though. He decided to list all my faults and reasons I was a bad son and human being. He questioned my love and respect for my father. He'd gone too far.

After the obligatory reply from me, threatening the shape of his head with the launch of a flaming javelin pole, I deleted all trace of my family from my social media, blocking them so I had no hint they even existed.

I kept that private message from my brother for a while though and it was re-reading it one day I picked up on something. He'd listed a fair few things about how bad a son I was to both my mother and father. There were a number of things in there though that he shouldn't know. Things that nobody down there knew. Things that only one member of my family knew......the mother.

What unravelled over the next few months was a story of the two of them bad mouthing me to anybody who would listen. The mother would tell her first hand story to everyone, including my brother, who would then report back to the rest of the family. None of them had a good word to say about me. But this hadn't been limited to the few months since the Facebook status incident. No, this had been going on for nearly a decade.

Pre-match in the Railway before Wire played Huddersfield. It was a warm day and there were plenty of people out in the beer garden. Huddersfield and Wire fans alike, sharing drinks and stories. One couple sat at our table because there were only two spare seats going. We had no complaints, all are welcome in the rugby league family. We got chatting to them and after a while, it came to light that the wife had worked with my mother at Morrisons. A job my mother left in 2001. She asked if I was the youngest or eldest. When I replied the youngest, she realised I was the one my mother “had had all the problems with”.

More stories filtered from friends that worked at Ikea, where the mother has worked since leaving Morrisons. Everybody knew details about my life that I didn't want them to know. The biggest problem I had with it was I had come across as a lazy, jobless failure who was quite frankly an embarrassment to his family. My relationship with my mother disappeared very quickly after that. Not ideal, considering I was living in the same house as her.

I'd change my waking and eating hours to avoid seeing her. I wouldn't go downstairs unless she was at work or in bed. If I needed something, I'd leave a note. We quite often went 6 or 7 weeks without seeing each other, yet I only ever left the house to go to the rugby. I was getting no social interaction apart from match days, no exercise either. My life was degraded into that of a lonely recluse.

My bedroom was my cocoon. I'd eat, drink and sleep in there. My curtains were always drawn, window always closed and I lived on artificial light. The dark blue paint of my walls darkened the room even more. I came to realise in later years that these things added together certainly contributed a great deal to my depressive stages.

Miserable music, colours and confining yourself to a dark room with no fresh air will vastly decrease your mood. I implore all of you to avoid this situation at all costs.

You may have read these blogs and are asking yourself why I didn't seek help sooner. Well the answer to that is quite simple. For most of the time I didn't realise there was anything medically wrong with me. Nobody suggested my problems were caused my a mental illness and it wasn't until reading that post on the rugby forum that my mind changed.

It wasn't as simple as just making an appointment at the doctor though, not for me, not for my brain. I would overthink every possible outcome, go through scenarios in my head (more on my talking to myself in later blogs) and it took a good 18 months to get past the fears and gain the confidence to go to the doctors. It was helped by having other medical issues at the time, mainly an ear infection and a damaged thumb.

As luck would have it, I had to see a locum doctor, as mine was off that day. We discussed the problem with my ear and my thumb, he diagnosed both and he was about to push me out the door when I brought up my problems, what I felt were mental health problems. His reply was that I had to see my normal doctor about that. Basically he didn't want to know. It had taken me 18 months to get into that room and he just fobbed off my problems like it was a normal, run of the mill cold.

I later found out that my mother had gone to her own doctor about my problems and asked her what can be done. This doctor advised my mother not to do anything because "people like that need to get the help by themselves". I was livid when I was told about this. I even had thoughts of seeking legal advice against this doctor. If you're having problems with depression or a mental health issue and you're told something like this, seek a second opinion. Fight for your right to get the treatment you need.

It was always the same old story every year, but in the second half of 2009, I had an incredible turnaround. Everything went right for a good few months and they were the best periods my life had had for a number of years.

It was inevitable that the depressive stage would come though and when it did, it came in one giant wave and I almost drowned. To go from that high, to that low was a massive swing and only a persistent tyre puncture would save my life. Things got even worse after that though. All will be revealed tomorrow, from the highest of the high, to the lowest of the low