So I return home, back living in the family home, which was now in a town about 20 mins away from my friends, at times I felt cut off but sometimes I was actually glad to be away from them. I was unemployed for around 8 months, 8 months of mostly staying in my room alone, no motivation or desire to get up or do anything really apart from occasionally coaching on weekends.

Then luckily, I use the term luckily very loosely here, a friend got me a job…. more labouring; but I needed the money and it was good exercise so I took the job. I worked with a great small building firm for 7 months, during which I also became a qualified level 2 football coach in order to help me with the coaching of an under 9’s football team and I would sometimes help out the team I played for.

Sport, and football in particular, has always been a way for me to forget about my problems or any worries and I thought progressing in the coaching world would help me a lot and potentially lead to a way out of the family home and the tiny, dull, lifeless holiday town. However, this achievement brought me no joy what so ever, the dark cloud had returned and really meant business this time and although I was older and wiser, flagging it up fairly early to my family and doctor, I barely left my bedroom again for around 4 months, occasionally playing football and coaching until another knee injury put a stop to this.

Over these 4-5 months, 2 medications were trialled, one was Citilopram again and the other was a new one. I forget the name as at the time I was in a bit of a haze  and I didn’t really care what they were giving me. I could of been fed anything at that time. So, neither of these rare candy (Pokemon Reference) helped, one even made things a lot worse. I tried to break into my own home after a night out with friends by smashing a garden ornament through the door. Granted I probably shouldn’t of been drinking that heavily whilst trying out new medication but hey, I was troubled. I like to think I am a pretty chilled person and I never get violent or particularly angry so this episode was quite shocking, mostly for my family though, I was still in a haze and state of selfish, non caring.

Yes, during this time I would have suicidal thoughts, not for the first time, and even had a “special” team come to my home to speak to me. It was a fairly pointless exercise, I didn’t think they would be able to help me in any way and sharing feelings (typical guy huh?) and face to face communication has never been my strong point so I just sat there and gave some generic answers until they left me alone and I could return to the safety and solitude of my room.

Now, unsurprisingly, a new medication (Sertraline) was prescribed and after extremely slowly upping the dosage, I had to keep asking my GP for the dosage to go up, I was starting to create illustrations and designs in my room which had become an excellent distraction from the negative thoughts that my brain seemed to really enjoy bringing up as much as possible, although I imagine I was still not much fun to be around; obviously I am usually great company.

The endless process of being assessed over and over again by the mental health teams and the endless trips to my GP to hear the same thing 1000’s of times, delays in receiving medications, receiving the wrong medication and the fact that depression and anxiety is stigmatised and not given the same priority as physical illness was making it as hard as possible to remove the dark cloud, which was still hanging around and ready to pounce, and I was still spending a lot of time in my room due to my anxiety but a small thought of escaping this town via reapplying to university was forming in my brain, hidden away from the evil and negative dictatorship that had taken over, like a little revolution. Vive La Revolution!!!