Staring At A Blank Page

This is what I've been doing for the last thirty minutes or so.  Occasionally, I'll throw a load of words down, then delete them and start over again.

It's difficult to know where to start really.  There isn't a specific place or time when things started going wrong for me.  When I say me, I don't mean me, I mean the other me; the other me in my head.  I sound like an absolute lunatic now, let me try and clarify things for you.  I'm not clinically "mad".  I have been diagnosed as suffering from severe depression and anxiety.  There, I said it.  Maybe now I can move on.

Thirteen years ago, I split up from my first wife.  Not being with her was the single best thing that could have happened to me at that time.  The extended ramifications, less so.  She is the mother of four of my children, and all of a sudden, I wasn't living with them any more. I wasn't there for them every single day of their lives, like I had been up to that point. The getting them up, washed, dressed and fed before school. The listening to them read before bed. The hearing them cry in the night when they were unwell, and fetching them medicine to make them feel better. For all these things and so many more - I wasn't there any more.

I did continue to see them regularly, however. After we split up, I rented a place locally to them, so was able to have them to stay once a week, fitting in around work.

Why is any of this relevant, I hear you ask.  Well, because within months of leaving them (not her), I began to have what I now believe to be a breakdown of sorts.

I found myself sitting in work, and noticing tears rolling down my face for no apparent reason.  It happened day after day and got to the stage where I was genuinely freaked out.  I visited my GP, who was a close family friend and knew of my circumstances, and he immediately referred me to a counselling service.  I visited the most relaxed, caring woman you could ever wish to meet. She sat there, listening whilst I cried and sobbed my way through the first 3 or 4 hour long weekly sessions.  After a few months, the crying eased off, and eventually, I knew I was better. Bizarrely, she pinpointed the root cause of my anxiety as being the death of my beautiful mum, back in the late 1980's.  I never grieved for her death, opting instead to be strong for everyone else.  I was 13.  The whole moving out and not living with the four human beings I loved more than anything was too much, and - it broke me.