Pick Me Ups and Paddock Wood

The process of being made redundant had begun. I had two meetings to explain what could happen; both times I had Stuart as my witness because I knew he wanted to take me to Paddock Wood with him. He and Colin had some very heated discussions as to why I would be perfect for the role. Stuart made a very valid point as to why train somebody else to do the job when you already have someone who is more than capable. Colin’s argument was that he didn’t want to pay my travel costs to go to Paddock Wood. That night I was round my Aunt Franky’s house explaining everything that was happening and their reasons for wanting to get rid of me was down to travel expenses. She said it was ridiculous, and I don’t know why, but I just broke down in tears. Everything suddenly came to a full stop and got on top of me. For years I had been suffering in silence with depression and not spoke to anyone about it. She put her arms around me and sent Scott upstairs, taking me into the living room to sit down. We had a chat about a few things. She told me she had a feeling something hadn’t been right with me for a while but didn’t want to say anything about it incase I took offence. I didn’t say anything about being abused though as she didn’t need to know that as it was a long time ago. Nor did I say anything about the self-harming. After we’d had a chat it felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I didn’t realise how easy it would be to talk to someone about the lack of confidence I had felt all this time and that I’d hated myself for as long as I could remember. She said I should really go and see a doctor about it. I told her I was scared and didn’t think I could go through with it. But she convinced me to go through with it and told me she would be there every step of the way. Her first suggestion as she knew talking about things would be the biggest problem would be to write everything down and let the doctor read it. I saw a very understanding doctor who diagnosed me as having severe depression, based on what I had written down. I hadn’t shown Franky what I wrote as it was in a sealed envelope when I gave it to him, therefore she didn’t see that I had written about the abuse and self-harming. He put me on a course of anti-depressants, which were Citalopram, he started me off on a dose of 25mg but eventually I was on 100mg as things felt like they weren’t getting any better. I was back and forth to the doctor every few weeks for a check-up and to get more “happy pills”. In the meantime, Stuart had convinced Burman (along with the other departments backing me up) to keep me on and to get the Transport Department to lone them a pool car once every one had passed their three month trials. So for that time period he had to fork out for our travel expenses in our wages each month until we were allowed the car. Graham and Stuart would take it in turns to drive us down to Paddock Wood each day from head office as the car would have to be left there understandably. I was feeling slightly happier with things now, if a little tired of the travelling.