Recovery?

The trip to South Africa in April 2009 was really good for me and represented a turning point.  During the trip I managed to come to terms with the loss of my parents and the great gaping hole that it had left in my life.  Seeing so many of my father's family certainly helped.  They are wonderful, caring people and when I was with them I felt like I belonged and again felt part of a family.

I started to question whether maybe I wasn’t as worthless as I had thought, but deep down inside I knew that I had been right all along.

I put on a happy, smiling face and came across as this confident and totally together person.  The act was helped along by the genuine passion that I had for my work.  How could anything be as amazing as helping people for a living?  Who knows, maybe I had even been involved in saving someone’s life. 

And I began to wait for the tap on my shoulder that would be my bosses discovering that I was a fake.

Upon my return to England, I threw myself back into my work.  And I began to wait for the tap on my shoulder that would be my bosses discovering that I was a fake.

Friendships at work blossomed, but I was still of the belief that people could not really like me because in truth they didn’t even know the real me.  And if they had a chance to get to know the real me, they would run a mile.  So my sense of isolation grew further.

I hid behind my work in many ways and it took over my life.  Nothing else was as important.  Slowly but surely my act became more and more real to me and I started to believe that I was feeling better.  That I was getting over the depression.  By November that year, I was totally convinced that I had won the battle and took myself off the anti-depressants.