I’m sitting in my living room with a hot water bottle, soft Christmas slipper boots and a fleecy throw. It’s so cold I can see my breath; the downstairs heating needs fixing.

It’s eerily quiet other than the sound of two ticking clocks, not in sync, and the crunching of dry cat food (Ginger, a potential stray, has come in for second third breakfast).

This week has been very mixed. I’ve experienced most types of human emotion, from radiating happiness to intense depression. It’s been an odd week and I’m not comfortable with so many extremes.

I tried to cope with it productively, using every thing I’ve learned and been taught over the past year. Berocca – check. 5-HTP – check. Protein and balanced eating – check. A small amount of chocolate – check. Being kind and patient with myself – check. Completing small achievable goals – check. Going for a brisk walk – check. Gym – check.

I wrote the above paragraphs more than two weeks ago. My depression seems to be worsening over time (my anxiety is, apparently, worse than I think it is but tends to fluctuate rather than get progressively better or worse over time). I got to the stage where I couldn’t cope and nothing worked. It’s kind of hard to describe, but it’s like that sick feeling you get when something horrendous has happened….but you don’t know why you’re feeling like that and it’s constant.

I’ve spent the past couple of weeks basically in my house, declining all social requests and only venturing out to go to the gym. The rest of the time I’ve spent in sweatpants and oversized t-shirts, watching re-runs of CSI and Toddlers & Tiaras and playing Candy Crush. This is not me at all. Normal me is running around making lists and doing twenty things at once and starting every other sentence with ‘Have you…?’ ‘Did you get a chance to…?’ (regardless of whether I’m at work or home) and stressing about how there isn’t enough time.

I completely and utterly burned out. Normally I can’t sit still, and for a fortnight I’ve barely done antyhing but. I even uninstalled Facebook from my phone. That’s when you know something is seriously wrong.

I went to the doctor’s and answered all the usual questions. No, I’m not bulimic or an alcoholic or a drug user or a self-harmer or having work problems. I’m just incredibly sick of my life and my general existence and I have no reason to be whatsoever considering I’ve spent the last 27 years working bloody hard to have a near-perfect life. The problem is that I don’t enjoy it, it continually gets harder to be happy, and as it turns out, getting more of everything than you could ever possibly need doesn’t make you happy.

It just makes you want to throw it all away.

The end result is that I’m on proper grown-up messed-up person antidepressants, and pretty strong ones at that. The doctor seems to think I have major depression and generalised anxiety disorder. It’s hard to tell, considering it seems to be mostly brain chemicals to blame. The side effects of my medication are awful – I spent almost a week feeling permanently sick. My sleeping’s changed, I’m exhausted, I veer between ‘ok’ and ‘grumpy’, and I still don’t want to really do anything. But I’m at at work for the first time in two and a half weeks anyway, and it’s a good thing I am because my manager is off this week and I’m running the show. Fifty million emails and cake and chocolate later, I actually felt quite good. My mood is still up and down though, and I just want to sleep. I’ve also had to give up an awful lot – I can’t even take ibuprofen, or drink, or anything really.

I also kind of feel like I’m missing out on life, since I’ve had to skip several events over the past few weeks, and I’ll be missing out on a few upcoming ones too. I feel like I’m re-learning who I am, and that I’ve been out of the human race for months rather than weeks. It made me smile this morning to see the same people I always see on my way to work…I’m not sure why I thought they would have disappeared or things would be different, because everything is mostly still just the same.

I don’t really have a meaningful thought or handy summary to finish this blog post off with. It’s a bit of a jumbly loose end, like me right now. I guess the important thing is that I’m still trying, although it does feel that I’m mostly trying to please other people rather than because I’m choosing to fight for myself. I’m tired, that’s all. And tired of being tired.