At the moment I really can’t tell the difference between depression and grief.

You feel bad, you can’t think.  You’re overwhelmed with low feeling.  Obviously it’s come about because of my circumstances.  I probably wouldn’t have been feeling like this if he was still here.

But somebody – a counsellor I think, or a doctor – said to me, do you think maybe you’re getting depressed?

How can I tell the difference?  I’m upset and unhappy because my.. (still don’t like to say it in the simplest words) .. my life partner passed away.  I’m approaching all the one year anniversaries, I’m still struggling with decisions about work and worry about not losing weight and not knowing what the hell to do with my future (if there’s going to be one).

I started taking an ‘anti-depressant’ tablet after a month or so because I was feeling so bad, then I felt guilty that I was feeling okay and being too cheerful and coping okay with practical things.  But at that point I didn’t think I was depressed, it was clearly grief – emotional pain.  Now I’ve come off it because I’ve felt like it’s been too long and I need to know how I really feel underneath.  So I guess now I know – I feel bad, worse.

Maybe at some point grief turns into depression.  Anyway, now I have yet another decision – to go back on the tablets or not.

And – whether to bother with this blog or not.  Nothing worse than feeling you’re ‘reaching out’ to the world and expressing yourself, but no-one’s actually reading it.  I think setting up this site has just detracted from me finishing the ‘A Widow’s Words’ book.  But what’s the point when probably no-one will ever read that?