October 2015, I was living and working in Belfast at Tourism Ireland and visited Dublin for the Bram Stoker Festival. As a big vampire fan, I signed up for several activities, and the experiences I would gain were great for promoting the island during this special time. The festival coincides with Samhain, the Celtic New Year, and a large proportion of our visitors are interested in the Celtic history of the Emerald Isle.
I studied Art History, so a visit to The National Gallery of Ireland was a must. 2015 was also the year that, under the supervision of my GP, I stopped taking the antidepressants I had been taking since I was 26. I was 35 now and hadn’t had depression for some time, so the GP thought it was time to stop.
When I stood in front of this painting, a wave of emotions washed over me. Despair, anger, but also euphoria passed in a short period of time. And I started crying uncontrollably, so much so that the security guard came to ask if I needed help.
‘No,’ I said. ‘This painting makes me happy that I can feel again.’
Antidepressants help you get through difficult periods, often caused by severe depression. During your depression, certain emotions are very strong, emotions that do not help with your recovery, such as extreme gloom, thoughts of no longer wanting to live, anxiety and outbursts of anger. Taking pills dulls these emotions, but that means that pleasant emotions such as happiness also fall victim to this.
During my younger years, I wasn’t really bullied, but I didn’t really fit in. Because I came from a family with a mixed culture, I was an odd one out among my classmates, who all had two Dutch parents. Small comments about how my house smelled because they weren’t used to the spices made me sad.
The real hell began during my secondary school years. The bullying became more personal, focusing on appearance, origin and intelligence. I got high grades, so I must have been sleeping with the teachers. I often heard that I should just die because they were disgusted by the sight of me. During this period, the seed of self-hatred was planted.
I thought there was little point in fighting back against my bullies. As a result, I took the conflict home with me and confronted my parents. They wouldn’t beat me up when I swore at them.
Eventually, things escalated at school. During PE, I was hit on the ankles with a hockey stick and verbally abused. I felt so humiliated that I was boiling inside. After the break, one of my bullies made a comment when I walked into the classroom and I exploded. I don’t remember much about the incident because I was blind with rage, but apparently I dragged the boy across the classroom and tried to throw him out of the window.
I came to my senses in the headmaster’s office, with him crying next to me.
I never received any punishment for this. Years later, I heard from my parents that when the headmaster called, my father said I should have been given a medal for my actions.
The following school years were quiet, because I was the maniac who wanted to throw bullies out of the window. Until I went to college.
I came across as a timid student; I didn’t want to be the centre of attention. But I caught the eye of a classmate who had impure thoughts and sexually abused me. The police advised me not to report it because it was my word against his. And the dean thought I shouldn’t ruin a young man’s life. But what about my life?
It became increasingly difficult to go to school; every time I saw him, I had to vomit. I left school without a diploma.
Self-hatred and trauma made me increasingly angry. I was angry at myself for allowing him to touch me, and I was angry at society for not protecting me. The arguments with my parents increased.
But now I was going to participate in society by working full-time. Surely adults would have left bullying behind them? This was a naive thought on my part.
I was 24 when I started working at a small accounting firm. Even though I didn’t finish my studies, I was good at my job. During my internship, I worked for one of the biggest accounting firms in the world. I wasn’t stupid, but I just couldn’t focus enough for my exams because the abuse kept popping up in my head.
At first, everyone at the office was nice. Until a new secretary was hired. She was sweet and pretty, and the male accountants were charmed by her. The administrative staff didn’t like that.
She had just come out of an abusive relationship and made no secret of the fact that she was seeing a psychologist to help her become more mentally resilient. I thought she was a hero, but the rest of my colleagues called her weak. And they used every little thing they could against her. And I, I kept quiet. Out of fear.
Then I noticed that she wasn’t the only one being bullied. A colleague with a speech impediment who joined the team later was also ridiculed behind his back. And I started to boil inside.
The day it all went wrong for me was when one of the senior employees assigned me a client who actually belonged to a part-timer. The part-timer didn’t agree with this and stood at my desk shouting at me. And something snapped inside me.
I stood up, shouted that they were all terrible and went home.
When I got home, I lay down on my bed and didn’t get up again. The office reported me sick.
But I had to go back to work eventually, and my GP prescribed antidepressants and referred me to a psychologist.
Behind my back, they claimed that I had verbally attacked them and that my colleagues felt intimidated. Part of my reintegration involved being banished to a workplace in the archive in the basement.
The last conversation I had with the company doctor was together with my employer. The company doctor said he wanted to see the conversations I had had with the psychologist because I was not getting any better. My employer indicated that he also wanted to read them, and then I thought these two are my enemies.
I sank into a deeper depression and couldn’t get out of bed. My contract was eventually terminated by mutual agreement, on the condition that I would not sue the company. My father had found enough ammunition to sue them, but I didn’t want anything more to do with them.
A former colleague had the nerve to send me an email saying that I was the instigator and that they were innocent. How hypocritical.
From that moment on, I started taking antidepressants. My parents both worked in psychiatry and fully trusted the necessity of the medication prescribed by the doctor. Surely the doctor couldn’t be wrong?
And I felt very little emotion during the period I was taking it. Sometimes my parents wondered where that cheerful girl had gone, and I would say, ‘Killed by medication.’
I went to four different psychologists and had drama therapy because when my depression returned, I escaped into addiction. Not substance addiction, but gaming addiction. I was successful at online gaming, no one disliked me, and I won every day. That was a better thrill than learning to live with the failure that I was in real life.
I couldn’t hold down a job and ended up in an addiction clinic where, at the time, they didn’t know how to deal with a gaming addict. I was treated alongside cocaine and alcohol addicts. And actually, I didn’t really belong there.
In 2013 my unemployment benefits ran out, and I was told to apply for social assistance. But I had moved back home, so I wasn’t eligible, and I didn’t want to burden my parents anymore.
The unemployment office held a meeting where I was introduced to potential employers in Belfast, Northern Ireland. I had nothing to lose, so I applied and, surprisingly, was hired as a call centre employee.
Within a month, I had to say goodbye to my friends and family and move abroad. In Belfast, I found the peace I needed and made new friends. I was able to continue taking my medication without any problems until my GP wanted to do a general health check to see if the antidepressants were still necessary.
I hadn’t had any depressive episodes for over a year, so together we drew up a plan to taper off the medication. I was also put in touch with support groups, as they were experts in that field in Belfast. That’s not surprising, as the Troubles were one of the most traumatic periods in the country’s history.
We started in June 2015. Cutting back on the medication was scary, but we managed to keep the withdrawal symptoms on a minimal scale. I concidered myself lucky.
And now we are back to the moment when I burst into tears in front of Caravaggio’s painting. The emotions I hadn’t experienced in so long were back with full force. It also made me anxious because what if I experienced extreme anger again? What if I scare people again?
I shared my intense experience in the museum with the discussion group. First, I was congratulated on my breakthrough; I had reconnected with my inner self. Then I was asked to explain exactly what I felt at that moment.
The despair of the person on the far right of the painting, John the Apostle, felt tangible. I immediately understood what he must have felt when they took Jesus away.
I also had felt despair for a very long time, unable to cope with my traumas but also unable to cry over them. I bottled it all up deep inside me and pretended I was fine while holding on to the safety net given to me by the antidepressants. The upside was dulling down the emotions but the downside was massive weight gain and the inability to truly express myself. Which didn’t help my destroyed self image alot.
This reconnection with my emotions felt like I was liberated. Having emotions is not a burden, they are part of what makes you human. I had wasted so much time not living the life I should be living.
Everytime I shed a tear during an emotional scene of a movie, it felt like a win for me. I missed the warm glow I would feel inside when I started petting my neighbours’dog. You can say I became very sentimental after I quit my medication. I cherished the fun encounters I had with strangers, the banter I had with colleagues and friends. The sun has started shining in my head.
But with the good, the bad emotions came back to the surface. I was resentful towards my Dutch GP for never checking up on my general health and kept prescribing me the antidepressants, I was resentful towards my parents for blindly following his lead. And I needed to deal with this but unfortunately life or rather politics got in the way.
Brexit ended my stay in Belfast. I felt I didn’t belong there anymore as I wasn’t British and had no desire to become one. The climate turned very hostile towards immigrants. For the first time in my years of living there I was called a derogatory word because of my skin colour but they got the nationality wrong. My family is not from Pakistan.
Moving back home, trying to find a job had left me with no time to find a new support group. My mother had gotten seriously ill, receiving life-saving surgery and I had to step up and emotionally support my family. I ended up with the shittiest of call center jobs and started struggling with my mental health again. Then my father died.
Before moving to Belfast, our relationship had become very strained. At the airport he was crying, and I was very surprised at that. This was a man who had never cried before in my presence. I used to see him as tough as nails. It made me view him in a different light.
He often visited me and we got the chance to connect by talking a lot. He apologised for pushing me so hard during my college years. I had not informed my parents what had happened and just told them I didn’t feel like finishing college.
My father never had to chance to study, his parents forced him to work as a house painter after secondary school, and it wasn’t until I was born that he studied to become a nurse. And he was really upset that I just threw my chances away.
Being in Belfast, he saw that I had changed tremendously and he was truly happy for me.
And now my pillar of support had died. I never had to chance to tell him I was hurt because they followed the doctors’ lead without any doubt. Feelings of guilt started to emerge. But my mother was struggling and I had to step up and push these silly emotions to the background.
I kept doing this until I landed a job at my local municipality. Things were fine at first until Covid-19 hit the world. Verbal aggression started to reach insane levels. Not a day went by without a death threat and that starts gnawing at your at your core. I remember telling my supervisor: ‘Why do I need to create a thicker skin in order be able to live through a workday while our clients actually need to be taught how to be a decent human being?’
The breakdown came when a guy called us and said that he could see us sitting at the office. No way I was getting stabbed for this job. While a police report was made, and charges pressed I no longer felt safe. Not safe at work, not safe on the outdoors and certainly not safe at my own home.
My distrust in people had planted their roots fed by a lifetime of bullying and created space for a new emotion, paranoia. My old traumas resurfaced and it was time for EMDR. And that was a tough route to walk. It was also a tough period for my boyfriend. We had started our relationship on the day my father heard he had incurable cancer, and he met the rest of the family three weeks later at my dad’s funeral. I had told him everything about my mental health, more so that he couldn’t blame me for not knowing after we started dating.
I started to take it out on him, because he was close to me and more forgiving than a stranger would be. I’d fight him, hurl venomous words and break down in crying fits. It was not fun being my partner at the time but he stuck with me. The therapy sessions taught me that it was better to speak about what was bothering me instead of bottling it up and waiting for the vulcanic eruption.
Communication like this was alien to me, I had never communicated about my inner emotions to a loved one. This was out of fear being judged. I was judging myself into the ground already, I didn’t need anyone else to look down on me. But he never looked down on me.
Fast forward to present day, I am currently recovering from my third burnout. I tend to burnout when shitty things happen at work. Mass layoffs and having to sign a NDA fed into my anxiety this time. My boyfriend has become my husband. There was no need for medication and my sessions with the psychologist are coming towards an end with me being trained to be more assertive and putting down boundries. Trying to do the work of three people next to your own, isn’t a very healthy thing to do. Convenient for the company but killing for me.
This time round I did not explode in the office, big win woop woop. Furthermore, I told my supervisior I am no longer going to pick up the slack from others, this is a job that he needs to manage. His reaction was pretty decent and we will see how it goes when I get back to full-time again.
I have the support of my husband and he assured me no job is worth it, if it makes you unhappy.
While I never want to hear or see anything from my bullies, I was happy to find out that the secretary ended up in a better place. She became a secretary of a councilor and is happily married with kids.
Now, I am working on my own happy ending, with the happy and healthy relationship already covered.