So you might be wondering about the hideous Christmas jumper… it’s for the office.  We were challenged by the boss to buy bad jumpers and the person with the most tacky embarrassing jumper will win a prize at our Christmas do.  Currently winging their way from eBay are a set of battery operated miniature fairy lights, 20 small sleigh bells and a length of snowflake ribbon.  I will show you the final result when it’s finished.

I’m still struggling with work.  Not the work itself, I’m coping OK with that.  But the colleague I blogged about before.  She is still going out of her way to make me feel small and unwanted.  I’ll say things and she ignores me then when someone else repeats it she will fall about laughing and conversing with them as though I’m not even there.  I attempt to make conversation and she will either leave the room or just change the subject when I’m speaking.  This has even happened when it was just the two of us in the room – she just got up and walked out.  I even bit the bullet and asked if she wanted to go to the cinema with me next week and she said no in a roundabout way, and the next thing I know she’s going with someone else to see the film.

I feel humiliated, belittled, paranoid.  I don’t know what I’ve done and I can’t face the confrontation of asking, but at the moment I dread getting out of bed in the morning.  I don’t want to cause trouble by mentioning it to anyone else so I’m sitting at my desk biting my lip trying to stop myself from crying.  I retreat into myself and nobody notices.  Conversations carry on as if I’m not even there.

I know that some of this I can change.  I could actively participate in conversations.  I could have tried harder to get a babysitter last week and gone out with them for their fantastic night out that they don’t stop talking about.  But I can’t do it right now, I just can’t.  And when I can’t, I just get ignored.

I guess I just want one of them to go “hey, are you OK?”

And then I can say no, actually I’m not.

I am a self-confessed TV addict. Mostly I watch shows in the evening but having been off work for three whole weeks I’ve now become obsessed with certain daytime shows and have them on series link on my Sky+. First thing I do when I get home from work is catch up on those, before the husband and boy come home. Then it’s on to the soaps and other stuff that’s on each evening. At the moment, the programmes I like to watch are:

Four in a Bed. Four B&B owners take turns to stay at each others B&Bs, rate them and then pay what they feel is fair for their stay. The winner is the one who gets paid the most and they get a lovely cheesy plaque for their trouble.

Come Dine With Me. Five strangers host dinner parties in their houses for a chance to win £1000 and be insulted by the best voice-over artist in television history.

Don’t Tell the Bride. Very brave brides-to-be leave the entire wedding preparations to their grooms, with two weeks to go.

EastEnders. Long-running soap opera following the residents of fictional Albert Square in the East End of London. I have watched this since it started 26 years ago. I fall in and out of love with it depending on the characters and storylines, but mostly I watch it to spot places I know because it’s filmed where I used to live.

Glee. American comedy drama about a high school glee club. I am secretly in love with Mr Schu. To be honest, I’m not as impressed by this season as I have been with the first two, so I tend to speed watch it stopping only to watch the musical numbers.

Would I Lie To You. Panel gameshow where celebrities have to bluff about secrets and the other team have to guess if they are telling the truth or not. Northern comedian Lee Mack is one of regular team captains and I think i have a little bit of a crush on him. Yes really.

Not Going Out. Sitcom featuring Lee Mack. Need I say more.

Miranda. Sitcom featuring Miranda Hart. I secretly fancy Gary.

Phineas and Ferb. Yes I know this is a kids show, but it is SO well written and very, very funny. The boychild is addicted to it, and so am I. I even find myself watching it when he’s not around!

It is two weeks today since I travelled to London to meet up with Mumof4 and Milo.

It seems a long time ago yet snippets of conversation come back to me and make me giggle at inopportune moments.

SH dropped me at the train station and I had a relatively easy journey down south. For some reason known only to Mr Branson, it was cheaper to book first class tickets than standard so I travelled down with a bit more style than normal. The train ground to a halt outside Watford and the driver informed us it was for electrical safety checks. Turns out it was due to overhead lines being down. Anyway, we were about 20 minutes late arriving at Euston.

Mumof4 met me there and we travelled over to the West End by tube chatting like we were continuing a conversation from earlier rather than not having met in person for 2.5 years. To cut a long story short, we had Starbucks and chatted, then we had a superb lunch and chatted some more, then we caught the tube in the wrong direction, stopped at her hotel to pick up a sack of chocolate and then met up with Milo for wine and more chat.

Unfortunately the train problems were ongoing and I ended up standing for half the journey home, rather annoyingly in the first class coach surrounded by people in the seats who hadn’t paid for first class. According to the “Train Manager” it was “everyone for themselves”. One of the people sitting down even had the cheek to complain that the first class only complimentary wi-fi wasn’t working. Needless to say I filled in my compensation form but have yet to hear from them.

Four choice highlights of the day:

“Grande-non-fat-peppermint-hot-chocolate-no-whip-one-forty-degrees-in-a-to-go-cup-thanks”

“When you’re having a bad day, just remember Larry”

“Does your husband know he shaves his balls?”

“This creme anglaise looks like someone’s had a nosebleed in it”

Also, asking the waitress what she would recommend and then picking something entirely different.

And reminiscing about bloggers who have come and gone.

It was a fantastic day to catch up with my best blogging buddy Mumof4, and also my real life friend who I haven’t seen in around seven years who was singlehandedly responsible for getting me blogging all those years ago (and Milo, you haven’t changed a bit).

Here’s to the next time and let’s not leave it quite so long next time, either of you!

And we still didn’t get a photo.

Monday was horrific.  I came very close to walking out.  The screen swam in front of my eyes, basic tasks that weeks ago I could do with my eyes shut were suddenly challenging and incomprehensible.  At one point I sat in my car with the engine running muttering “I can’t do this” to myself over and over again.  The husband talked me round and eventually I went back into the office (nobody had missed me!).

In the evening I veered from suicidal to aggressive and back again.  I raged, I threw things and I cried until no more tears would come out and my eyes were so puffy I could hardly open them.  Eventually I slept through sheer exhaustion.  I honestly didn’t think I’d be able to get up and go back to the office.

On Tuesday morning I rang the doctors’ surgery and took the first appointment I could get, which was with my original GP.  I was in the aggressive phase when I got there, and slammed the tablets onto his desk and declared I didn’t want to be on them anymore.  He looked a bit taken aback and then I burst into tears.  He read my notes and I told him the hell I’d been through for the past three weeks.  He didn’t seem that bothered, to be honest.  He commented that the medication had helped with other issues I’d raised (which was why he had changed me to them in the first place – something completely unrelated to depression and which this new “wonder drug” was found to help).  He didn’t seem to comprehend that I’d rather put up with the other minor problems then have voices in my head and delusions and the self-harming.  He even suggested that “once I sort myself out” he might put me back on them.  I don’t think we’ll be going down that route!  He gave me a prescription for my old anti-depressants once more and told me to come back and see him in two months!

I am disappointed by his attitude; he’s always been very supportive over the past few years and I have always made a point to see him rather than any of the other GPs at the practice.  But he was on holiday when all this started and I saw a female doctor, Dr F.  She was absolutely brilliant and I’ve been seeing her throughout the last few weeks.  Unfortunately she is on holiday at the moment but it will be her that I make my next appointment with.

Coincidentally, I also received notification of my first psych appointment yesterday – apparently there is no waiting list.  Which is surprising, as my first appointment is 1st February 2012.  At least it’s there, in black and white and in my diary.

Today was easier.  It almost feels like my head is clearer.  I have only been off the rubbish meds and back on the old ones for one day; it normally takes a good two weeks to make any difference, so I can only assume this feeling is just because I can see the end in sight.  I still feel that my mood is flat and I feel quite numb, but I’m not wondering how many paracetamol I can gather or which knife has the sharpest blade.

One colleague has not reacted well to my return.  I have no idea why.  She is the one to whom I cried for help.  She was very supportive that day at the office.  But suddenly, now I’m back, she can’t look me in the eye, she is barely being civil to me and today on a few occasions she was very deliberately rude.  Part of me is upset; I considered her my closest ally in the office.  Part of me is angry because I have no idea what I’ve done to deserve it.  The biggest part of me just thinks, fuck it.  I’d like to know what I’ve done, but it’s her loss.  I am doing my best not to show any feeling on the matter and am just treating her like any other colleague.  I’ve decided (for now) that I will be the stronger person and just not bring it up; we’re only a small office, just six of us, and I don’t want to cause friction and atmosphere – when it happens it’s all-consuming and suffocating in our little group.  Everyone else has been amazingly supportive and I’m being allowed as much time as I need to get myself back in the swing of things.  Like I said, her loss.

I’m going back to work tomorrow, after three weeks signed off by my GP.

Apparently the medical definition is a psychotic episode.  They don’t call them nervous breakdowns.  I don’t remember much about what happened initially, I just know from the husband and the scars on my arm that I tried to cut myself over and over again with a shard of glass that I got from smashing a coaster on the floor.  I know that at work the next day I locked myself in a toilet cubicle and scratched at the wounds to open them up again whilst shouting that I wanted to get rid of the bad stuff inside me.

A week before this happened my usual GP changed my regular anti-depressant for a new one, for various reasons.  Unfortunately in doing so he also decreased my dosage – not sure if that was deliberate or not.  But this resulted in my not only having to get used to a new type of medication but a decreased dosage too.  Not a good combination.

The husband was called to come and get me from the office and he took me straight to the GP surgery.  I saw a different doctor, a female one that I’d not seen before.  I don’t recall much of that meeting but at subsequent ones she’s been fantastic.  She has kept me on the new medication but increased the dosage and after three weeks I feel almost back to normal.  I say almost, because in my head I still want to be on the old tablets so I think part of me thinks things will not be “normal” until I am.  But these new ones are doing the other things they were prescribed for brilliantly.

So tomorrow I go back to the office.  I’m nervous.  I think they are going to be angry that I’ve been off for so long.  Resentful perhaps.  I think they have probably been ridiculing me while I’ve not been there, making me a laughing stock.  I know I am over-analysing and worrying about things I have no way of knowing about.

The weird thing about clinical depression and in particular how I’ve been feeling over the past three weeks (and beyond if I’m honest with myself) is that you work yourself up into a state of paranoia and even though part of you is still rational and knows people aren’t out to get you, the irrational side is stronger and wins every argument.  I’ve spent days with all the blinds and curtains drawn, the doors locked and the phones off the hook because I think people are trying to get me, watching my every move, spying on me, even though I know they really aren’t.  I have had voices in my head telling me how worthless I am, how useless and evil and horrid I am.  I have even accused the husband of doing things to make me go mad when I really do know that he hasn’t done anything of the sort.

The husband has been amazing.  He has looked after me and put up with me shouting and accusing and sobbing and yelling.  He has been a saint, on the whole.  He has cooked and cleaned and laundered.  Ferried the boy to and from school and the childminder.  Bought me things to cheer me up.  I honestly don’t know what I would have done without him.

I feel like I need to go back to work tomorrow, to start getting back to a normal routine.  On Friday, for the first time in three weeks, I was bored just watching TV and reading.  I thought this was a good sign.  But right now?  I’m not sure I’m quite strong enough to deal with all that working life will throw at me again.  Wish me luck.