Felicity's Story

My story of depression, like many others, hinged on the separation of my parents when I was little and the events that came after. From a young age I had limited contact with my father seeing him, at most, four times a year. We grew apart without ever really getting to build a relationship at all and stopped talking for years, right at the time when I needed him most I guess.

My mother re-married shortly after her and my dad split up, and I had such a happy childhood and family life for the years her and my stepdad were together. Sadly my mum and stepdad separated when I was 12, which was when my downward spiral started. In school I was really sociable and generally not the best of pupils to teach - making a nuisance of myself most days! I looked for any chance to take my mind away from what was happening at home and dealt with it by drinking at the weekends and skiving school at any given opportunity. That's how it began anyway. At the time I didn't realise how my behaviour was being affected by what was happening at home, and I didn't really realise that I was upset about it at all.

My sister at the height of her teenage rebellion was worse than most and was taking drugs regularly at home. I would see her in some horrible states on drugs and coming down off them – her 15, me 13. I constantly worried about her. She was falling out with our mum all the time and being horrible towards me. Her way of dealing with what happened was by taking drugs and drinking and my mum in the process lost complete control over her. The time I can pinpoint when everything really started to fall apart was when her boyfriend at the time (a complete waster) violently attacked her all because she had tried to finish with him. He went to prison shortly after but the time he served was nothing compared to the effect it had on our family. You wonder how such things can happen to 'normal' people. We had had a great family life for such a long time and a devoted mother but things can so quickly spiral out of control – especially when everyone is dealing with the grief in a different way.

After that happened I completely stopped going to school. I worried about my sister so much and desperately wanted things to go back to the way they were but knew that would never happen. None of my friends at school knew the extent of the situation at home or how desperately low I was feeling - because I never told them. I felt I couldn't. I wasn't an unhappy person in their eyes, instead the one who was always up for a laugh, happy go-lucky, and so I felt it impossible to tell them.

The summer after the incident happened with my sister I tried to commit suicide. People will read this and be shocked and question my reasoning for admitting something so personal – I was in the most hopeless and desperate place at 14 and didn't tell anyone and I don't want anyone else to go through something like that. I don't want other people to suffer in silence. I did for so long and took the hard route by just trying to get on with my life as if nothing had happened. Luckily now my family life has really turned around – my mum and sister get on, I am the closest I've ever been with my mum, sister and brother, and I have started to try and build a relationship with my dad. 

After leaving school I was shocked to find out so many others suffered too, on their own. So I hope the people who read this that can relate to it somehow and are facing problems will get in touch with UME and talk to their friends and families and not go for years suffering in silence like I did. Everyone goes through hard times in their life but they are definitely made harder if you choose to hide them or face them on your own. The best way of dealing with them is having a support framework around you who actually care. And that is what UME is all about...