Confession of a serial coper

All my life I have been someone who has 'coped with' things. It is both a blessing and a curse.

On the one hand it means that I can walk into Court within an hour of having a panic attack and still represent my client and do my job. I can sit outside the courtroom for an hour reassuring my witness, and making small talk with my solicitor and advising on law whenever a question pops into their heads. It also means that I am able to live by myself and maintain my independence. It means I can organise charity events. I can sit and compose myself and write a blog post even when I feel utterly awful and still make it sound coherent.

The curse of being a coper is that to the world I will appear fine. Until I'm really really not. I was talking to a friend about maybe having a scale system to describe how I feel, going from 0 = happy, healthy, and all ok to 10 = suicidal thoughts and complete and utter inability to cope with even the most basic task. I have discovered that I can run at 8 and still appear pretty much fine to the world, and still cope. I can even be at 9 and then a couple of hour's later appear fine. It is only when other people see me at 9 or 10 that they know something is wrong. And that is too far along the scale.

This is not anyone else's fault. It is impossible to read someone else's mind. The problem lies in my difficulty with asking for help, with being vulnerable with other people and opening up and saying how I feel. Because if I don't actually tell people how I feel then most of the time they would never ever know. And for a long time (until last June) nobody properly knew how bad things were.

So I am going to do my best to give a shout when I reach 7 (7 is an important number to me!) or even when I get to 5. So that people know that even if I look to all outwards appearances to be fine that actually I'm not. And I'm going to use the numbers. Because while my ability to cope is getting me through all of this, it's also stopping other people from knowing or being able to help. And I know I need other people, I know there are people who want to help me, and I know that it is cruel if I don't let them help me.

I'm also going to start trying a different sort of antidepressant. One that doesn't have the problematic side effects I've encountered before. So, with fingers, toes and eyes crossed, 9s and 10s might soon be a thing of the past.