In one of my Taekwon-Do lessons there was a quote that caught my eye, "Pain is the best teacher, but nobody wants to take his class". Of course the intention of this was based on how to get to the top in martial arts. Yet I still saw it as a much more poetic explanation of what I believe learning the heart crushing destruction depression can hold to be like. From what I have seen everybody supports the battle against the illness and they think that they have a good idea of what it is about but when the chance comes for them to show their physical support, they look down and walk away in a selfish attempt to maintain the balance of their personal happiness which the sadness of the individual would disrupt. It is still hard for me to understand this as thanks to my ongoing childhood, I have witnessed life changing evidence that proves this action which I am afraid to say the majority of people take, only makes the situation harder and harder for people involved with and surrounding the illness. If there is one thing that I have left to do in my life it would be to make a single person stop walking away.

I apologise for getting a bit off track, now to my story.

Despite living what many thought to be a perfect dream, a big house in the best area of town, four bright and happy children, their own successful business and a marriage coming up to 20 year. Behind closed door my parents were not what they seemed. My father had committed adultery and lost a massive sum of his and my mother's money. Along with a stereotypical head ache of a teenager, stressful remarks from both husband and mother,a need to work as hard as possible and most importantly in this case an already confirmed vulnerability to the illness, my Mother had a mental break down.

This event effected the whole family and I am sure each will have their own traumatic memories. Perhaps my story will not be as enlightening to the true stale of events as I was in fact only about four or five years old at the time (this making me the youngest to remember).

Despite my lack of innocents I knew more than people assumed and assume now. I knew that she was very unhappy, unhappy enough to cause herself harm (I have learnt now unhappy enough to try and kill herself). I knew that she used to cut her wrist and I knew where she put the knife. I still remember vividly opening the dark wooden draw on the right side of her bed and seeing the black and silver kitchen knife, many different layers of blood dried over its sharp edge. Then dropping the knife back into the draw, turning around and crying in Mum's arms, telling her to stop, so young and I was begging her to stop. All she could do at that time was to cry with me. That memory haunts me but this was not the only time that I had seen the knife in the draw. Many a day during that time I had opened the draw to check it was still there, hoping it had gone and placing the other objects in the draw more so over it in hope that that would weaken its temptation. I am sure I have seen many other things that would hurt me just like this but thankfully I can't remember them.

In fact the time of her breakdown was so painful that I can barely remember the few months she spend away in hospital or indeed anything else to the lead up to her break down. For many years I could not even remember finding the knife as part of my self defence had resulted in me forcing myself to forget what I had seen and all I can do is trust that this was for my own good.

I will skip the years that followed of simply listening to my mothers cries and spending days trying to entertain myself as she could do nothing but sleep as in all honest that is what I would call simply day to day living with a depressive.

It is remarkable how well children can deal with pain but when I became a teenager and hormones kicked in, life became with harder. This was made worst by the fact that my mother was coming close to was so potentially could have been her second break down but thankfully was avoided.

When somebody is depressed they are not very social able, this meant that as the oldest child still living at home, she would turn to me for conversation. Most of this was simply based on current affairs or to my now present shame, The X Factor. Yet on a bad day through her floods of tears she would tell me of her fail suicide attempts, the problems caused by my father, how everyone is thinking negatively about her and how just completely terrible the world. Nobody wants to hear this but when somebody wants to talk about it and you are the only one there, you have no choice. This resulted in many hours of crying both at home and at school (although I never talked to anyone about it until one day where I gave in to a teacher whom sent me to speak to the schools professionals).

I was doing much more around the house and this work load was increased significantly as my mum got worse (yet my little sister was not seeing the attraction of house work) I knew that all these little things such as cooking as cleaning had to be taken care of in order to remove as much stress as possible from her eyes. When my mum's social worker heard of our efforts, me and my now participating little sister where both put of the governments young carers lists (although we heard no help from them).

I am glad to say that this story has a half hearted happy ending as after her menopause my mother's condition started to get better (although it will never go). Sadly though due to additional stress forced on me by issues with my father (which I am forced to keep quiet about to my mother) I have had days which all I can do is sleep and cry, I think that we all know what that means. But thanks to my experience I believe that I know how I can deal with the situation.

One of the saddest problems that I saw from depression was the pure shame of it, I saw how people look at my mother and from a very young age I made the decision to keep family affairs secret from piers and frowned at my mother's openness. Only at 14 did I start to tell people whom were worried for the reasons of my constant tears. I am 15 now and thanks now seen support and understanding from friends, I can deal with the situation fate has put me in but better although prefer the comfort of secrecy from most.

Yet in the end of the day the limited amount of government support did not help the situation and the ongoing threat of my father, that was done my me (with the help of teachers and close friends). This is why I believe it is so important to help the people around a person with depression as when those people which have already been put in the heart of the issue can cope, they can much more easily go about finding how to better lessen or even better end it.