University chewed me up and spat me out...

Hello, just me again! For some reason, I am finding it harder to write this post than the first one, but alas, I will march on. So continuing from my last post where I spoke about my first experiences with depression I will now follow on from when I left high school. For a year or so after leaving high school, I would say my depression then would have been mild/moderate and I did have my bad days, but it was a lot easier to cope with everyday life and it didn't impact on my life as much as it would do later on.

I then decided to go to university when I was 19. I'd always wanted to go and was looking forward to getting out of my home town and meetings lots of new people. The first couple of months were great and I got on with my flatmates well. I enjoyed the majority of what I was studying and was a typical Fresher really. Here are a few pictures..

As time went on and I had began to settle into uni life, I began to feel withdrawn and slowly began to isolate myself to my room more and more. Being a fresher meant I was consuming copious amounts of alcohol on a regular basis to which would make me feel worse in the long run. It got to the point where I would cry in my room wondering what was wrong with me and why I felt this way. I was great at putting on a happy face in front of my friends, but as soon as I locked my bedroom door it was like a dark cloud came over me and negative thoughts would consume me. Why was I like this? Why couldn't I just be normal? I knew I was pretty well off compared to some people and my life could have been 100 times worse than it was. However, I felt like I was in a downwards spiral and it got to the point where I wanted to end my life. 

It wasn't so much that I wanted to stop living, but I just didn't want to deal with the pain anymore. I had a feeling of guilt all the time and I could just be driving and I'd just want to drive my car off the road. It was made all the more harder as I hadn't known my flatmates that long, so it was difficult to find someone to talk to. It took one very drunken night for me to have a breakdown in front of my flatmate, Steph (in the bottom picture, I don't know if I ever thanked her for helping, but she did more than she probably knows) to realise I needed to get help. 

The next day I went to the doctors and sat in the waiting room nervously. I looked around me, there were elderly people spluttering, mums with their young children, then there was me. I nearly had second thoughts about going in to speak to the doctor, because I looked fine, there wasn't anything physically wrong with me. I felt like I would be wasting their time. After a long wait, my name was finally called and as soon as I sat down in the doctor's office I burst into tears. All the pain I had felt over the last few years was finally coming out in a short ten minute appointment. The GP was actually really helpful and prescribed me with some antidepressants straight away and advised me to go see my University counselor as it would be a lot quicker than waiting to see someone through the NHS.  After leaving the doctor's office it was a bittersweet moment as I did feel like I had been listened to and taken seriously, but it also made me acknowledge the severity of the situation. 

At this point, my family had no idea what was going on. Why would they? I was around 70 miles away from home and saw them about once a month. I decided the easiest way for me to tell them would be my e-mail, so that night I told them how I had been feeling, what I had been through. I told them that I was suicidal and that I needed to come home. Deciding to drop out of my university course was one of the hardest decisions I had to make as since the age of 14 I had been gaining experience and doing extracurricular activities to support me in my chosen career - I was studying Bioveterinary Science, eventually wanting to become an veterinarian. It's all I wanted to do since I was in primary school, so giving up the opportunity was difficult but looking back now was definitely the right decision.  

I nervously waited for a reply the next day and lo and behold my mum had sent me a heartfelt e-mail back telling me to come home so she could help me. The most important thing for me was that she didn't feel guilty for not knowing the way I had felt, and I hope that she didn't. Getting that e-mail made me want to help myself, so I went to the university counselor once before I left. I was a bit dubious as my experience in high school with the counselor wasn't the best. This time, however it was completely different and I learnt a lot about myself in the space of an hour. She advised me to contact the mental health team back in my home town when I left so I could be put on the waiting list straight away.

Have you ever struggled with your mental health at university or when you made an important life decision i.e. career change? How did you cope?

Talk soon,

Lucy x