Читать книгу If You Love Me: Part 1 of 3: True love. True terror. True story. - Jane Smith - Страница 8

A lot of people have to deal with bad situations in their lives, and the things that had gone wrong for me before I met Joe weren’t really that bad at all, in the greater scheme of things.

The first time there was any indication that something might be wrong was during my second year at university. I’d had glandular fever, so for a while I thought that was why I was tearful and felt so low. But when all the other symptoms finally cleared up and I was still miserable for no apparent reason, the doctor diagnosed depression.

Fortunately, the antidepressants I was given worked well. So well, in fact, that I eventually decided it had just been an isolated incident and I stopped taking them. And then, of course, the depression came back. It was disappointing to have to face the fact that it hadn’t been ‘cured’ after all, and it was frustrating every time it recurred over the next few years. I was lucky, though, because it wasn’t ever bad enough to interfere with my life to any significant extent and I never had to be hospitalised.

I was doing a degree in the history of art when I had the first episode of depression, and I was lucky again in that it didn’t disrupt my studies and I was able to go on to finish my course. After my BA, I did a Masters degree, then worked as a temp for a while, before doing an internship at an auction house and eventually getting a job in an art gallery. A couple of years later, I was promoted within the same company and started earning a reasonable salary, which enabled me to pay to see a psychiatrist privately every few months, for reassurance as much as anything else.

I had all the usual insecurities and doubts most young people have about being ‘good enough’, but I had a good social life, was doing a job I enjoyed and, thanks largely to the tablets and to some cognitive behavioural therapy – which I found really useful – rarely had to take a day off work because of depression. So, apart from my family and the close friends who knew about my experience at university, no one was aware that there had ever been anything wrong with me at all.

The company I was working for had galleries and offices in numerous cities around the UK and abroad, and I was moved around a bit for the first couple of years after I was promoted, although only ever to places in England. By the time I started working on a more permanent basis in London, I’d been going out with my boyfriend Jack for almost four years.