22nd July 1989 was the last time she attempted suicide. It was both a cry for help and a serious attempt. Somehow one got the better of the other. Luckily.

She'd recently gotten engaged to a long distance truck driver. They had a lot of fun and were cute with each other ... candle in the window when he was due home, or she was due to arrive etc. They socialised at the local airport bar. They both had friends who drank there already. It was the most sociable she had been since a teenager. Long-awaited fun. Much-deserved fun.

A woman befriended her, they got along quite well. She was her shoulder to lean on when the couple argued or there were things to chat over with a buddy.

It wasn't long before she discovered this friend was no friend really. The fiancé was no sure thing either. It devastated her. On the brink of trusting the 'institute of marriage' again. All hopes dashed and belief in other humans completely fucked, she decided to take her own life. Alone in a relatively new home, far from close friends and unable to believe that life had dealt her such a cruel blow. Again.

Fortunately she has a busy-body sister. Unable to get through on the phone and knowing she was at home, she persevered till at last the phone was answered.

The slurred speech, the mumbled and senseless words. She phoned an ambulance. Fortunately, there was no kidney or liver damage. She lived to fight other battles.

It didn't affect me at the time. Emotions stunted for various reasons, it swept over my head. Yes I was sympathetic but too young to cope.

It didn't hit me till years later, the pain she must have gone through, and thinking about the other friendships that she pushed away - I now understand, partly. Would be nice to go back and be there for her but that's impossible. I will try to learn from it.

Many threads indeed.

I have been avoiding Blogland recently and posted a short, friends only piece on my personal blog yesterday to explain my absence. This morning I read a new post here in Stepping Stones and for the first time in weeks felt the need to make a comment...

Having commented, I now feel the need to scribe an entry of my own...

The last three or four weeks have been extremely difficult for me. What I had considered would be a happy time has turned into a period of confusion, upset and frustration… a difficult time that I have failed to understand.

The last week in particular has been extremely stressful and I have found myself spending tearfully, sleepless nights. The clock seemed to have been turned back some fifteen months to a time when I was in a very dark place. Self-harm has raised its ugly face again, but thankfully I am in slightly more control now compared to then and I haven't done anything toward ending the black period...

I've mentioned previously the cyclic nature of my depression and the continued mood swings. I'm not sure those swings do follow the phases of the moon, but I think I understand the old concept of moon-madness. Some of my down cycles are far more scary than others and equally, some of my up cycles are far more extreme than others... I'm starting to sound like someone suffering from bipolar disorder aren't I? Only I haven't been diagnosed bipolar, just recurrent depressive because of the cycles of mood swings.

The medical types say there is no such thing as "cyclic depression" and my condition is better described as "recurrent depression." I'm not sure I fully understand this... my depression is controlled with medication, but it doesn't exactly go away, so why are the mood swings referred to as recurrent and not cyclic? To me recurrent suggests the depression goes away and then reappears... but that's not strictly true. Perhaps because the cycles are not exactly regular so are not true cycles? Beats the hell out of me...

Anyway, talking to other depressive types over the last year it seems to me many of us go through these recurrent cycles when the world turns upside down and things seem very dark for no apparent reason.
(Did you see that? I got both terms in! )

So what am I saying here? Buggered if I know... I seem to have lost the plot again!

I wish I'd appreciated when this all started that beating the whole depression thing wouldn't be as easy as popping a few pills and getting in touch with my inner self; life would be so much easier if that were the case.

The good times are okay though and the dark times have generally been not so bad with the aid of medication and some mental self-help (there are always exceptions unfortunately). So yeah, for me depression comes and goes despite the medication; my moods are certainly cyclic. For this reason if no other, I guess you guys should expect times when Usky disappears for a while...

I'm not sure if I suffer from depression or not. A doctor once told me I had high anxiety levels and borderline depression ten years ago when I first started feeling like this. I have been up and down since then. It's particularly bad over the last few weeks. I came home from a night out with work friends and hacked a strip out of my leg with a key. My boyfriend caught me at it and doesn't know where to put himself. I haven't done anything like that since before I met him. I feel very much out of control of my own life. I scream at my partner for the littlest things and I'm having difficulty in social situations where I'm not in my familiar local, and feel like I don't fit in anywhere. That's part of the reason I dropped out of University for the second time, I didn't really have any friends in class because I was somewhere between the 19yr olds and the 40yr olds and always felt left out especially when there were group projects and I seemed to end up on the sub bench. I barely go out anymore except to go to work. I have no desire to be intimate with my partner, which is causing major friction and I can't seem to be able to tell anyone about this. I have been pretty down before and was ignored by my family who left me to my own devices and offered great advice like 'pull yourself together'. It's really not that simple. Is it?