From the age of 13 until I was around 20, I alternated between depression and mania, barely able to get out of bed on some days and barely able to get back into it on others. My attempts to self-medicate with alcohol, tobacco and other less legal substances never seemed to work for more than a few hours, and as the various cocktails I mixed up inside my body got more elaborate, the feelings (and my ability to deal with them) got worse.
One particularly bad night, while studying at university, I remember collapsing into fits of uncontrollable sobbing in my dorm room. While this was not as unusual an occurrence as I would have liked, this time it was considerably worse, and when the sobbing hadn’t stopped by 1 a.m., I recognized that I needed help. I managed to drag myself down to the infirmary, push the ‘night call’ button and collapse in a heap by the door.
After what seemed like hours but was probably only a few minutes, a night nurse came to the door. She took one look at me and, no doubt ignoring years of nursing training and university protocol, cradled me in her arms and began reciting the Lord’s Prayer.
She kept encouraging me to join in, and as I didn’t have the energy to explain that I only knew the words because I’d recently played Peter in a deaf-theatre production of Jesus Christ, Superstar, I joined in for all I was worth, choking out each line between huge rolling waves of sobbing.