Video Transcript: "I'm Fine"— Learning to Live with Depression

Wow, hi. All right? How's it going? How are you all feeling? That shouldn't be up there yet. Okay, how are you all doing? Awful. 

Awful. Not you. What you did was absolutely fine. 

I'm talking about the torturous engagement tactic that I just used. I hate that. I  know I just did it, but when the person comes out and they start doing the thing,  and they ask a whole room, a whole room full of people at the same time how  they're doing, because the only thing you can really say in response to that is,  like, ow, or whatever you just did. 

And that isn't an appropriate answer to how you're doing. Any other situation,  you know, I could be shopping in Woolworth's in 1994, and I'd go up to, I'd see  a mate in there looking at the Furbies, and I'd be like, hey, Gordon, you know,  how's it going? And Gordon just turns around and goes, ow, like that, and just  howls at the strip lighting at the top like some mad, citified, 90s wolf. I'm going  to think, what a freak, and just turn around, leave my basket of pogs there and  just walk off. 

But yeah, when people ask me how I'm doing, I say I'm fine, generally. I think  that's what everybody does. But for me, that's not a real appropriate answer  either, because for me, it's a way of deflecting the question. 

It's like a reflex. And deflecting that question is something I've got really good at, because a lot of the time, I'm not fine. In fact, I live with depression. And deflecting people away from what's really going on with me is just what I  do. When you get really convincing at pretending that you're okay, people just  assume you are. Much like a lot of you thought there was nothing wrong with  me when I first came out here. 

None of my friends, family, anybody knew anything was wrong with me until  maybe a year and a half ago, when I decided to tell them. I've been secretly  living with dark thoughts and self-loathing for most of my adult life. And saying  I'm fine and not addressing it and not letting anybody in is just a bad move. And the more, the things that have happened to me over the last year, the more I've realised that it's like putting a plaster over cancer. You're not dealing with  anything. Last April was the worst time for me. 

I was living with a feeling I can't even describe. I still can't. I have to now,  obviously. 

But if I was to choose one word, it would be something like overwhelm. I  remember lying in bed one morning and I was overwhelmed because I was  trying to remember what feeling happy felt like. And I couldn't remember. And I thought there's no point in living if I can't actually remember how to be  happy anymore. I'd had suicidal thoughts before, as everyone who suffers from  depression surely does. But always knew I'd never really go through with it  because of the pain and everything that would cause the people that were close to me.

What a great deterrent that is. I just couldn't do that. But that morning when I lay in bed, depression had completely taken over my thoughts. 

It manipulated and it had lied its way into making me think that ending my own  life wasn't just best for me, but actually it would be best for everybody. Because  that is what depression does. It overpowers you. 

It takes the wheel and it steers you away from everyone and everything you  love. And it takes you down a dark tunnel. And when you're in that tunnel, it  hugs you and it tells you that this is where you're supposed to belong. I called my mum that morning, but it wasn't because I needed help. I thought I  was beyond help. I called her because I thought that day I was going to take my own life and I called her to hear her voice one last time. 

Not only does my mum love me, I think, she knows me better than anyone. And  also she's a mental health professional. And I think by the tone of my voice, the  kind of things that I was saying, she knew something really serious was up. And the love I heard in her voice, she managed to bring me back for a  second. And in that second, she suggested that together we get me some help.  And that's kind of all it took. 

I went to my GP the next day and I did something I thought I'd never do. I told  someone I didn't know what was going on inside my own head. And after a  little conversation about depression, he asked me a question I couldn't believe I  hadn't asked myself. 

He said, do you actually want to die or do you just not want to feel like  this anymore? I thought, what an important distinction to make, because when  you're in that fog, you can't ask yourself questions like that. My depression  doesn't hit me like a sledgehammer out of nowhere. And neither does it leave  like with sudden relief, like waking up from a nightmare. 

It creeps in and then it creeps away again. It's like taking a painkiller for a  headache. You don't know the instant your headache's gone. You just realize it's been gone a while. I realized I was feeling better when I was out walking the dog one day and I realized I'd walked the thing 12 miles. And I  was perfectly happy doing that and it just felt good. 

And this sounds weird, but everything looked normal again. All the colours  looked how they should be, because depression kind of lowers the  saturation on everything for me and everything just looked good and it just felt  good. It was like the part of my brain that had conked out six months before had just spluttered back into life and all these, my excitement and motivation and  appreciation of beauty, all this sort of thing had suddenly started to come back  online. 

And I was beginning to remember what feeling happy felt like. And I put it all  down to the walking. Well, not all of it, but I put it down to being outside and  making that first step into talking.

And I had an idea. I went into town straight away and I bought a map of Great  Britain and I sat frantically circling all the parts of the country that I thought  would inspire me to stay outside the whole, you know, just to kind of keep this  good feeling going. And I thought in turn if I document that, then I might inspire  other people who've been through what I've been through to get outside as well. Once I'd circled all the bits of Great Britain that I wanted to see, I put a big line  through them all and this route appeared in front of me. I'm like, yes, I'm doing  that. I need to do that. 

That was the easy bit, obviously. The hard bit wasn't getting myself match fit,  which was really hard. You should have seen me. 

It wasn't researching and sourcing the kit I needed. It wasn't plotting my route to the end. It was telling people not so much what I was going to do, but why I  was going to do it, because it meant coming clean, finally. 

All these feelings I've been so ashamed of for so long, all this stuff that I thought compromised who I am as a person, I had to tell them all. It was the worst thing  I ever had to do and the best thing I ever did. The response absolutely floored  me and I couldn't believe the amount of people that were going through the  same kind of thing I was going through. 

All of a sudden, I realized that this was important. This is something I really,  really have to do. The name I gave my 3,000-mile hike around Great Britain was Black Dog Walks. 

Six weeks later, I stood at Brighton Pier and just started heading west. All I had  on me, ironically, were the things that I needed to survive. In a week, I'd  reached Bournemouth. 

In a month and a half, I'd reached Land's End. At this point, it was all about  promoting exercise and being outdoors as a way of managing mental health  and raising money for the Mental Health Foundation. By the time I got up  to Wales, I'd been gone for so long, the thing had turned from a challenge into a lifestyle where I'd found a way to live in the moment, serendipitous encounters  with strangers and being immersed in nature all the time. 

Having the feeling like you're living completely in the moment is like gold dust to a depressive. By the time I'd made it into North Wales, climbed Mount Snowdon and come back, I was getting messages from people all over the country. I  couldn't believe how open people were being about their own experiences  and how much this was connecting with people. 

I noticed something really, really interesting. A lot of people who got in touch  with me hadn't actually told anyone else I was the first person they were telling.  It was like no one else could understand. 

I remember having that feeling as well because everything in my life led me to  my depression, that awful feeling. The situations I've been in, the people in my  life, the decisions I've made, everything had just reached that one moment. I 

thought, how the hell is anyone going to understand that? That was the thread  that was running through all these conversations I was having with people. They were like, no one's going to understand me because I've been  through this, this, this, this and this. I realized that's not what we should be  talking about. It's the feeling itself. 

Depression is huge. It's the biggest, most inclusive club in the world. Anyone  can join. 

It's evolving all the time. But its biggest trick is convincing everyone who's part  of that club that they're the only member. Isn't that clever? Everyone thinks that  their stuff is the worst and no one's ever had it as bad as me and all the guilt  that goes with that and everything. 

But that's because we're talking about the wrong things. If we start talking about the feeling itself, then people can get on board with that. People know what  that's like and that's when things turn into a community. 

Last November I experienced the true nature of community when I did this. I got involved in a BBC documentary where I and nine other people with mental  health problems decided to tell our stories to the nation and run the London  Marathon together. Initially I thought it was just going to be something about  mental health and endorphins and all the things I've been trying to sum up  within the walk. 

But as it went on, I realized that running was the backdrop and it was more the  community and the achievement and all these things that running led to that  were having a real positive impact on my mental health. Movement is the word  my coach Chevy, who's that guy, uses instead of exercise, I think. I still  don't quite know how his brain works and that's why I love him. But movement isn't just about exercise, it's about moving forward, it's about  progression, it's about working on yourself physically and mentally and being  there for other people. But being in the documentary, I was communicating by  doing the walk before through video blogging, but I had the safety net there of  talking into my phone on my own and having the luxury of being able to trim out  some of the waffle, some of the stuff that I thought wasn't necessary later  on before I posted it as a video blog. What Mind Over Marathon told me to do,  or forced me to do even, was to put an unedited version of myself out there. And that's when I realized what a great leveller talking about your mental health  openly is. Nobody's above anyone else in that conversation. I think a lot of how  we present ourselves is run by ego and status and I think a lot of that, it governs the things that we do and what we say. 

The discussion about mental health seems to suspend all that and it levels the  playing field. And that's great because it's a reminder that really we're all on the  same team. We all have mental health and the more we learn about each  other's, the more we learn about our own.

Whether it was talking to one of the guys, my coach, Nick Knowles, Prince  Harry. I don't know if I've got a picture of Prince Harry actually. Oh yeah, I totally do. 

It's when we announced that we were having our first child. That's libelous, that  didn't happen. I didn't impregnate Prince Harry on the set of Mind Over  Marathon. 

It's important that you know that. But I love this picture because we do look like  mates and we look relaxed and that's because I've been lucky enough to have,  look, Will, photo-abombed in the background there. We'd had this  conversation, this 15-minute, 20-minute long conversation and I was asking him how he was doing it. 

He was asking me how I was doing it. It was real, we'd levelled it all out and I  didn't feel beneath him. Prince Harry, felt on top of him. 

That stops now, that stops now. And breaking down the invisible barriers that  society creates for us, barriers which make us question our place in the world,  it's just good for everybody. Talking about mental health is what's best for  society because deep down everyone craves human connection. The walk's still going on. I came down from Inverness, I've walked over 2,000  miles and after this I'll be heading back up there to finish it up, to Jono Groats  and then head back to Brighton and hopefully finish some time this winter. So  I'm not going to finish on that because it's not done yet. 

I want to finish on something that I have achieved and something I'm proud of  because I want to show that in the face of depression people can achieve big  things and that's a powerful thing. This is something I wrote the day after I ran  

the London Marathon and a year after I lay in bed that day about to kill  myself. As I approach the marker at mile 26 my body begins to feel heavy. It feels like with every step that I take another layer of clothing goes on. By the  time me and Poppy march past the Houses of Parliament I feel like I'm wearing  a suit of armour. And then we run. 

The last 0.2 miles is harder than the 26 before it. It's almost impossible, 800  metres to go, 600 metres to go, 400. I feel like I'm running through water. 200. The crowd's cheer snaps me back into reality and I realize what's  happening, where I am and what I'm about to do. I reach out and I grab Poppy's hand and do my best to hold it up but I'm so weak I can barely lift my own arm. Our feet pound the road in unison, both knees strapped up as we finally cross  the line in 5 hours and 52 minutes. And as my pace drops and I begin to walk I  feel strangely calm. I glide over to the people that have been there with me over the last six months. 

As I watch them cry and hug and congratulate I take a step back and I make a  promise to myself that whenever I feel worthless, whenever I feel alone  and ashamed of the feelings I'm feeling I'll play this moment over and over 

again in my head until it goes away. Because the feeling I have right now, I don't want to die. I want to live forever. Thank you.