In 2016 I had a breakdown, or depressive episode; I don’t think it was the former as, I remained at home while my mother took care of my son, who was 6 years old at the time.
A friend recommended a psychiatrist whom, as a result of the compensation that I had received after a traumatic brain injury in 2007, I could afford to consult. This was not dissimilar to crossing the river into Hades, however, and the three-headed canine in this case was a doctor with a namesake in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, who chastised me for using bad language in front of my child after he refused to investigate sending me for a brain scan because there were, in his view, “no new symptoms” resulting from the brain injury. What I was experiencing at the time was some sort of breakdown or episode, and this was indeed new since, prior to the brain injury, I had not experienced such a debilitating phenomenon.
I already had cause for concern as, following a self-referral to a mental health element of my local doctors’ surgery, I had been too unwell to make an appointment and had immediately been discharged. I knew the NHS methodology and, sure enough, when I asked this particular doctor for a referral to the recommended psychiatrist, I had come out of that appointment in tears.
Three weeks later, the Psychiatrist’s secretary telephoned me to see if I had yet received the referral and, when I said I hadn’t heard anything, she took the number of my local GP practice and followed it up herself. Thank goodness she had; it turned out that the referral, in its envelope, had simply been placed behind the reception desk, and no mention made of its purpose. The secretary asked it to be faxed to her, and thus was she able to make an appointment for me to see the Psychiatrist.
The Psychiatrist took a history from me and an account of the brain injury, and my predicament thereafter – I had been assessed for Bipolar Disorder (the psychiatric nurse who assessed me had said no, it was “just” emotional lability after brain injury); the discharge by two counsellors (by the first, for being “too angry” about 6 months after the brain injury and, by the second, after being too depressed to telephone or attend the appointment); and another assessment, about 18 months after the brain injury, from which I had been asked to leave, having been chastised for my bad language. Indeed, to put this into perspective, both at that assessment and then, at the appointment with the GP at my local surgery in 2016, I had raised my eyes to heaven and said, “Oh, fucking hell” when it had become clear that they were unable or unwilling to help me.
You might think that I had done what, in common parlance, is known as “kicking off”. It isn’t my style to do that and, indeed, I have often wished that I had, so squarely back at the drawing board have I found myself and so speechless with inability to cope, after such events.
The Psychiatrist prescribed medication for me, saying that, from what I had told him about my history, the brain injury had been tantamount to “throwing a vulnerable chemistry up in the air”.
It is January 2023, and my mother has suggested that I talk to this Psychiatrist again, since menopause might be making life more difficult, she says. I blew up at my son yesterday, and shouted at him, and screamed and threw things on the floor, which scared him and also me; I feel awful about it. I went upstairs and wrapped my head in one of my pillows and sobbed as though they were being wrenched out of me by force. I screwed my eyes tightly shut and roared an explosion of grief and desperation into the pillow, not wanting to open my eyes ever again as I didn’t want this to be real.
It may have been about twenty minutes or so later that I made myself, with tremendous effort, sit up and open my eyes. I had to make it okay with my son; this is what drove me to my feet and down the stairs into the garage where I found him, wary and self-blaming for what had happened. “No,” I said, “I’m so sorry.”
“My behaviour was a problem, you have nothing to apologise for!” He proclaimed, sounding so much older than his 12 years of age. “No,” I said, “Your behaviour was difficult, but my reaction was unacceptable, and I am so sorry.” I sat on the settee in the garage and sobbed, and he did not come near me, for he was, understandably, wary of me.
“I’ve sent Manny a message,” He said, “Saying that we might not be going there for dinner, as Mummy is really upset. That’s probably her trying to ring now.” Indeed, my ‘phone was ringing, and it was indeed my mum. I felt too exhausted to answer it at that point.
My guilt is enormous. When I was the same age (twelve), my mother lost her temper with me and beat me repeatedly, gasping, between punches, “I don’t know what to do with you!” and I remember having gone hollow and empty when she left the room. I was on my bed, and I sat up slowly, thinking, “It’s best if I’m sent away; I’m the problem.” I am terrified in case I have repeated this on to my son, and I’m caught between abject guilt and utter desperation, because, try as I might and have over the years, I’m just not able to cope with all of the things that need to be done; something always falls away as I prioritise cooking dinners and collecting my son from school over regular baths and hair washes; I wear the same clothes day after day, as it makes life simpler for me, and I am too tired, by 9:00pm, to enforce the boundary that my son goes to bed before I do. Hence, I tuck him in and then fall into my own bed, feeling worn out and desperate.
I can’t do this forever. I’ve hit a point of burnout, and I’m sick of pretending that I’m okay: every day I have striven to be the best version of myself: drop my son at school, pick up some groceries on the way home, get some laundry into the washing machine before we leave the house in the morning so that, when I return, I can hang it on to clothes airers or nudge it on to a drying cycle. Then I do a workout: deadlifts on Mondays, bench press on Wednesdays and squats on Fridays. But, in the run-up to Christmas, my workouts decreased to two, then one, then none for the last week.
When I do my workout I make energy, and then, when I take my dog out, I can count it as LISS (Low Impact Steady State) cardiovascular exercise – unless I stop to chat to people, which I do quite often because there are other lovely dog owners at the field. After that, my dog and I get back into the car and we go to collect my son, stopping occasionally for petrol or snacks on the way (or lunch, because I haven’t got around to eating any). At school pick-up time, I see other mothers and care-givers and can chat, quickly and in snatches, before my son comes out – he is usually the first one, effing and blinding because he doesn’t like school at all – and urges us out of the gate and into the car, often by pulling me along or running headlong towards the gate which, although supervised by a staff member, leads on to the busy road, and I scramble after my child, eager to protect him because that is what being a mother is about, among other things. When your child has Special Educational Needs, as mine does, you aren’t simply a parent; you’re a psychologist, referee, shouted-down counsellor, pariah to some, isolated from the world at large because, when we moved in to our house, there were problems, including my mental illness, which have left me feeling isolated and often resentful. We live behind the mainstream school which excluded him; we live near other families who didn’t care a jot at the time, and certainly aren’t nice, approachable types.
Now, when Depression comes upon me, these things haunt me. Many things rise, as if from a deep well, and replay in my mind: things I heard and saw as a child; paranoia arises about potential threats in our local area and in the wider world, especially regarding my son. His Autism does make matters quite difficult: he is an extremely recalcitrant boy when any advice – be it learning at school or guidance on road safety – is directed towards him. He almost instantly seems to switch off, or a wall shoots up, like a force-field, and one ends up feeling one is leaking noise into the air. Thankfully, he is fairly keen on road safety, although I worry about him paying attention, especially when moody or distracted, but I can only hope that my attempts to be a positive role model will ultimately pay off.
At present, I am re-setting; re-focusing, after things came to a head. The incidence of me blowing up at my son has been a catalyst in showing more clearly that I do need help; things like cleaning and grocery-shopping are examples. I have been investing so much energy into trying to ‘hold it together’ that some things have slipped, like self-care in myself (baths, changing clothes for example) and a tendency to hide all the time in a game on the ‘phone, which stimulates dopamine production but inhibits positive activity. I need to change these patterns into which I have slipped, over time. My world can’t be changed purely by weight-training and tic tac toe; there are other, more mundane but so much more essential, actions to be carried out, and it is in finding the balance that I hope to find my personal and professional potential.
ASD: on being a special-needs single parent 