Jen Wight had a good job, was happily married and had just given birth to a baby boy. But then things started to go wrong.
Jen Wight lived in fear of mental illness after her elder sister, Jo, was sectioned when they were teenagers. But by the age of 36 she had a good job, was happily married and had just given birth to a healthy baby. It seemed that she had been worrying for no reason.
People always said we were like two peas in a pod. We were so similar that people would come up to me in the street and say, "Hey, Jo! How're you doing?"
There were three years between us, but we were really close. Even when we were teenagers, Jo always wanted to include me and would take me out with all her cool friends.
We had a very secure, happy childhood growing up in Stamford Hill, north London. There was no history of mental illness in our family, so when Jo became ill at 18 it was quite a shock.
The first time she went into hospital she was there for nine months. I would go and visit her in the psychiatric ward at Homerton Hospital, but a combination of the very strong medication she was on and the illness itself had completely taken her personality away. My beautiful, kind, loving, creative sister was gone.
I kept my head down and made sure not to upset Mum and Dad or cause them any more problems. They did as much as they could to support me and shield me from what was happening with Jo, but it was very, very hard. I missed her so much. I always had a box of tissues beside my bed because I'd cry at night, the tears falling sideways and filling up my ears.
Somehow I came to the conclusion that because I had a schizophrenic sister I would end up the same - Jo and I were so similar that I was convinced that it must be in me, as it was in her.
So on 15 March 1993, three years to the day since Jo had been sectioned, I spent the whole day in bed crying at my student house in Brighton, waiting for it to happen to me. I was 18, as Jo had been, and I felt so sad. The funny thing is, I'm a rational person - I was doing a science degree - yet I was completely convinced I was going to go mad that day, just like Jo.
But nothing happened, and, with the passing of time, my fear of going mad ebbed away.
By the time I was 29 I was living back in London. I'd had a number of boyfriends but no-one that I'd wanted to settle down with, so I told all my friends that I was ready to meet someone and my friend Harriet said, "I know just the guy!"
Kai was so good-looking, so intelligent and so kind. We moved in together after a year.
Unlike me, he'd always wanted to have children and gradually I came round to the idea. I really, really wanted to be with him, and as more and more of our friends started to have kids I was surprised by the strong love I felt for them.
At the tail end of 2008 we'd quit our jobs in London and moved to Australia, and we were living in Sydney when our baby son arrived in January 2012.
In those first crazy weeks after my son was born I was mostly incredibly happy. I really had no experience whatsoever of looking after a baby, but before the birth I'd read this fantastic book, written by a midwife, which covered everything. There was a bit about postnatal depression which I remember reading and thinking, "That's not going to happen to me - I've been through tough times and been really sad, but I've never got depressed."
But on my third night in hospital after I'd had my son I was so exhausted that I couldn't sleep and things began to feel like they were unravelling in my mind. My thoughts were racing, my heart was beating too fast and I began to panic that I was going mad. In the middle of the night, after hours feeling paranoid and crying, I eventually pressed the call button for help.
The nurse who came said, "This is all totally normal. Almost all women go through this after their baby is born. You're exhausted and your hormones are plummeting, you just need a good cry."
Relief flooded through me. I cried and cried and cried for hours on end. It felt like my tears were washing away my very worst fear, the one that had dogged me for more than 20 years. I'd been as close to madness as I was going to get and I hadn't gone mad.
Where to get help
If you've been affected by any of the issues raised here, including schizophrenia, depression and postpartum psychosis, help and support is available via the BBC Action Line
from BBC News - World https://bbc.in/2WAseri
0 Comments