My Mental Health Journey: The Downpour

I have been through a lot of challenging episodes in my life that have had an impact on my mental wellbeing over the years, but nothing could ever have prepared me for what I have been going through since mid 2023. It’s been a period of intense pain, turmoil and an unbelievably insane amount of tears.

 

When I started noticing it, it was just a chain of small incidents of misfortune. They seemed to grow in significance and frequency quite rapidly.

 

One of the things that brought us a lot of cash relatively quickly in the shop we were running was sweets. Sweets were fast moving, but had no return initially. We were pushing volumes, yet we were barely breaking even. We then realised that in order to make a profit out of sweets, we needed to buy them in bulk from neighbouring South Africa. We found someone to get the sweets for us in South Africa and put them in a bus, then we collected them from the bus depot this side.

 

Business boomed. We expanded our lines and started to include chocolates and snacks as well.

 

The misfortunes started as small things like bus delays at the border. Eventually they grew to things like stock damaged in transit. At one time, we had an entire consignment of perishable stocks not being loaded into the bus. It was loaded an entire day later and by the time it arrived, most of it had gone bad. We lost a significant amount of money in that order.

 

Things got worse.

 

The economy slowed down, and sales soon followed. At about the same time, both my grandmothers got quite sick. I could only wish to help out with medical bills. I only managed to help out a bit with medication. I was working in a pharmacy, so I could get some of the meds on credit and have the bills deducted from my salary. That put a bit of strain on my salary, but what could I have done? A little while after that, my mom was admitted into a hospital for a few days. I didn’t even have enough money to travel and see her.

 

A little while after she was discharged from hospital, I lost my paternal grandmother. She was dear to me although I hadn’t seen her for close to three years. I couldn’t go to bury her, mainly because I was broke and deep in debt.  Barely a month after my grandmother’s passing on, I lost my job.

 

The business was also in bad shape. I had taken loans to try and grow it in the short term so it was not yet in a position to take care of us. As if all that was not enough, the shop rentals shot up. We struggled to keep it afloat but we were fighting a losing battle. We left the premises and found something cheaper in the same vicinity.

 

Things were never the same.

 

We tried with the little money we had left to concentrate on the products that would generate fast cash, but it didn’t work out. We finally shut everything down in October 2014.

 

With a wife, two kids and no income; the hounds seemed to smell blood. They came in droves.

 

Everything my wife and I had built came down like dominoes. We were heavily in debt. A few friends helped us here and there, but with the economy stagnant; they couldn’t help us any longer. We struggled to put food on the table, we sold off our property and fell behind on our house rent. My wife got depressed and I couldn’t do anything about it.

 

The man in me withered.

 

I felt like I had nothing to offer. I tried everything I could, but nothing worked. I got frustrated, angry and depressed. Everything became gloomy. As the year came to an end, I had had more breakdowns than a DeLorean DMC-1. My wife tools the kids to her dad’s for the holidays and I was left all alone. I wanted her to have a break from all the madness that was going on for a few weeks.

 

I spent all the days in my room, only leaving to go to the bathroom. I didn’t open the windows or curtains the whole time. The only people I spoke to on the phone were my wife and kids. I totally isolated myself from the world. I wanted nothing to do with it. I had nothing to offer the world. I became bitter, my social media posts became rants. Some people from social media tried to encourage me and some prayed for me. Some also bought me groceries and gave me some financial assistance.

 

Some time in January 2024, I texted a lady who had invited me for an interview about ten months earlier. I told her that if ever they had a position open, I would be glad to fill it. Debtors were breathing down my neck, chief of whom being the landlady. After about a week, the lady texted me back saying she wanted to see me. I went for the meeting and she offered me a job. I started work on the 15^th of January 2024.

 

After what seemed like an eternity, I finally had a bit of good news. I shared the news with those who had stood by me all this time. I felt relief. I felt like the spell that had been following me had been broken, like I was finally free from the clutches of depression.

 

When I was going through all this, it felt like I would never get to a point where I would smile again. I will not lie and say I had my act together during this period. I was a mess, I broke down more times than I can remember and my blood pressure levels were through the roof. I was diagnosed with hypertension very early in my life, in my early twenties.

 

If you are a man reading this and you have been going through a hailstorm of whatever kind, know that you are not the only one. I can relate to feelings of hopelessness and uselessness. I do empathise with you. It’s never easy going through a time like that.

There is power that lies in your ability to hold on. The very ability to wake up each day and hold on even when it seems like all is lost counts for something, it shows that you really are that man.

 

Till the next one,

 

DEUCES