The Background

One day my boss called me into his office and fired me. No notice, nothing. So began my journey to the dark side of depression. At first I celebrated - I hated the job anyhow. I was looking forward to a summer of doing not very much at all. The first few months were a bit of a laugh spent going to the gym, doing the school runs,  homework with the kids and coffees with long-forgotten friends and colleagues. The garden at our cottage in the countryside got a ton of much-deserved attention. I had sporadic meetings with recruiters and other loosely-held contacts met via LinkedIn. By mid July I was tired of being at home and tired of escaping home as my kids were there every day now in school holidays. I woke up every day and flopped myself in front of the computer and began my daily trawl of online job opportunities. A nagging leg injury prevented my daily park runs which had become so vital to my well-being. Duty drew me to spend time with my kids with endless games of Scrabble, Go Fish, Dress Up, Crazy Eights and tons of other activities. I'm not like the other dads out there who can isolate themselves from being with their kids. I'm still a kid and I want to do whatever I can to ensure my kids have the best longlasting memories of our time together.

If you're bored already then skip to Day 1 of The Cipralex Diaries blog - bottom line is I became deeply depressingly numb to the world. 

I was an automaton inside and out. In the mirror I saw Rotwang's robotic Hel image from Fritz Lang's Metropolis. My wife had no idea just how bad it was. She was waiting for me to snap out of it. We went on family vacation and I started reading an even more depressing self-help book about depression. Subtitled ...Freeing Yourself From Chronic Unhappiness, it was the first time I hit upon exactly what I was going through... 'Chronic Unhappiness". The book proposed mindful meditation as the answer but for me it didn't get much more of a read beyond the first 50 pages and a couple of trial attempts at mindful meditation aided by the freakish counsel on the accompanying CD. A bit of meditation is probably good for anyone but for me the pain in my brain felt like an iceberg that would take a lot more than breathing to melt away.