Ciara's Story

As the youngest of seven, I grew up in a busy but very loving home. I was always content and lived inside a sweet country-life bubble. At school I excelled and was a very confident and happy (and possibly slightly geeky) child. This all changed when I was fourteen. My eldest brother Daniel had been ill as long as I could remember but I was never aware of the full extent of his illness, and shortly after my fourteenth birthday, he died. I cannot say much about the year that followed as I have blanked most of it out completely from my memory, but I do remember feeling sad a lot of the time and not knowing why. It was as though a dark cloud surrounded me, eliminating all light and isolating me from my friends and family. Then just over a year after my brother died, I finally confided in my mum about how bad I felt. I remember I texted her saying “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It is like I have been deeply sad for so long and I can’t remember how to be happy”. It was this confession that led to various doctors’ appointments and a final diagnosis of severe depression.

At the time school was becoming increasingly challenging. I was suffering from severe insomnia which meant that I was getting less than 3 hours of sleep a night, so at school I was basically a zombie, falling asleep in almost every class and finding I couldn’t concentrate on anything for more than a minute at a time. My group of friends was entirely made of girls, and my relationships with them became increasingly strained, as I wasn’t in a place where I could understand the usual teenage angst of falling in and out of “love” and friendships. I mean how could they complain? They didn’t know the pain of truly losing someone you love. After months of struggling at school, I made the decision to leave for 6 months to work and see if I could get my sleep under control before returning to sit my Highers in 6th year. Whilst out of school, I spent my weekdays working hard while being exhausted and my weekends getting drunk and getting with guys. My self-esteem was at rock bottom and I hated the way I looked so if anyone showed me a shred of attention I jumped at the opportunity to feel good about myself, even if only for a little while.

I had started spending a lot of time with a group of guys from my year at school but still maintained my friendships with the girls. I had been out of school a few months when I got a text at work inviting me to go out with the girls that night. I thought it was a fairly last minute invitation for a birthday thing but decided I should make myself go because I hadn’t seen them in ages. I ended up having a great time at dinner and the cinema and I was in great spirits as we grabbed our drink and headed to the beach. Then one of the girls said something to change the night for me. “Ciara I’m glad you’re here tonight, but to be honest we weren’t going to invite you because we think you’re a bit of a downer and we only invited you because we were pretty sure you wouldn’t come” Now, looking back at this, it is such a typical misconception about people with depression and it was not at all her fault that depression is so misunderstood, but at the time I was completely crushed. On a couple of low days following the confrontation I tried cutting myself to turn the emotional pain into physical pain. I also contemplated suicide and one night had to be talked down from doing it by a close friend.

I cut contact with the girls and when I returned to school, I stayed hanging out with the boys instead. Despite now being really close with all of those girls again, I am so glad that it happened because “my” boys are amazing! They were, and still are, unbelievably supportive and instead of letting me dwell on how terrible I felt, they would make me laugh, do really stupid things and just have a great time in general. I was still falling asleep in classes and only scraping by but because of them, school was no longer something I dreaded. Eventually I left school with 4 Highers and despite the fact I know that is good, I felt I had let myself down, and not met my expectations or potential. I know that for me, and probably a lot of people with depression, it’s incredibly hard to cut yourself some slack in terms of achievement. As my mum repeatedly points out to me, I was ill when I sat my Highers and an illness of the mind deserves as much understanding as an illness of the body.

After school I did a year of drama at college and had a year of improving mental health. By the start of the next year I was enrolled on a uni course, had a new job and a new flat in Glasgow. I discovered I still had severe concentration issues and my anxiety was becoming an increasing problem, having panic attacks every time I sat to write an essay or when it got busy at work. My flatmate didn’t know I suffered from a mental health issue and there was a lot of confusion and missunderstandings that led to me being miserable in my flat and eventually I had a mental breakdown, quit my job, dropped out of my course and moved home. After a month I realised that I needed the social life in Glasgow and the support of my friends to get better so with the emotional and financial support of my parents and grandparents I moved into another flat and continued the life in Glasgow without the pressures of work, studying and living with somebody I struggled to get on with.

I am now living at home and well on the road to recovery. There are always going to be set backs and I still struggle daily with my anxiety and insomnia but there is always a light at the end of the tunnel and no matter how bad it gets I take comfort in the fact that it is, very slowly, getting better. Now that we have started this project I truly feel that I have a purpose and if hearing my story helps a single person or talking through things with me, then it will make my previous suffering worthwhile and will make something positive come out of the worst thing to ever happen to me.