Jumping in front of trains

When doctors rank how depressed you are, one of the the questions on the questionnaire they hand out to ‘rate your mood’ asks how often you’ve been having suicidal thoughts.

It’s a funny question because it seems so intimate and perverse, it’s an embarrassment to answer.  But it’s a useful indicator of depression. Because however likely or not you are to actually act on those thoughts, the bleakness associated with flashes of jumping in front of tubes, or lining up the tablets leaping into your consciousness, means you must be feeling pretty low.

I am having a lovely day.  I am bubbling with happiness. The world is my oyster. I am happy as a pig in shit. But I don’t always feel like this. A few weeks ago, the recurring thought of popping a load of pills, jumping off high buildings (Coq d’Agent in the City where I go for lunch sometimes with Tom springs to mind, but, at the top of a tower near, it’s suffered a spate of jumpers recently, as the economy has gone into freefall…) or doing a ‘Sylvia Plath’ (yes, I did my dissertation on her) kept cropping up, amid rapid mood swings, reckless office tears, and even more reckless helmetless cycling through London traffic.

It happens every so often, when I’m under massive pressure, stress and having trouble with relationships of all varieties. I only write about it today because Paris Jackson reportedly took an overdose last night and it brought back to me my own, and a close family member’s attempts at a similar age. Looking back on it now, sane, deliriously happy (although that in itself is probably a cause for concern) I am sad for her that her own mental health issues (serialised by the press amid a general mood of ‘it is to be expected’ has been documented so publicly. At the tender age of 15, she may never be able to escape it, whereas my, which come and go depending on circumstances, like weather, can be shrugged off and forgotten about in happier times. It seems unfair, and I feel for her.

No one wants to be depressed. Many have deeply entrenched issues that mean that they can’t cope with fear, stress and anxiety in the normal way.I have already embarked on one course of CBT, postnatally, when times were tough and finances strained, to attempt to address my own issues, and now, my doctor is offering me more, and it seems silly, when i am feeling so optimistic about the future, not to take her up on it, when it will be for my future, and for those who I love, that it benefits.

Women are less likely to carry out attempts on their own lives, but they are more likely to internalise stress and anxiety and blame themselves for problems that have a myriad causes. I know I do. And slipping into the hole is horrible. But at least I can have to chance to dig my way out of it without the world looking on in horror.