[Moonalesca]

I have no idea where to start, other than the beginning. It's a pretty long story though. Just FYI, I'm a 20 year-old male.
When I was a kid (10/11), my parents went through a court battle for custody of me because I was in a physically and emotionally abusive household due to my oldest sister (I'll call her Ella for now, more on her and her own problems later).
At the time, I was very vulnerable because of the stress of all the in-fighting as well as trying not to aggravate Ella. She was very temperamental and used to beat me, my other sister (middle child, I'll call her Melanie) and my mother during one of her tantrums, which were a regular occurrence. As a result of it, I sought solace in food and gained weight rapidly. Which, of course, led to bullying and social ostracisation at school.
Social workers got involved and I was moved to my aunt's house - on the exact same street, just a different door number. Granted, I was able to relax more while I was there and I did enjoy being away from the stress. But that was when my mother kicked up a fuss.
She claimed that my dad's side of the family had been bullying her and intimidating her, and during one particular visit to court she ended up asking to be put into witness protection because my dad had given her "a dirty look" as they entered the court room. I doubted this ever occurred myself at first, but after reading over all of the appropriate reports and documents from the whole court case last year (which I'll go into more detail about later) I was surprised to find that this had in fact been the case. My mother wasn't put into witness protection (glad to see whichever power in charge of that had actual sense).
Along with that, the emotional manipulation began. My mother had visitation rights while I was staying with my aunt. Even though my aunt is on my dad's side, her house was deemed the best place for me to stay since it was much better for me to stay with family than to be put into care, which was the only other option.
Every time my aunt left the room (to make a drink, go to the toilet, make food, whatever), my mother would whisper things in my ear, such as "Why are you doing this to mammy?", "You belong at home with me" and "She only wants to have you so she can get benefits". It's no surprise that shortly after this began, when the social worker would take me to one side and ask who I felt safest with, I didn't have a clue what to do. So what happened instead? I felt like I was letting both sides down for not choosing, because in my head I had this idea that not choosing meant I didn't want either. For a 10/11 year-old to bear the burden of letting one side of his family down, it had serious repercussions.
According to the reports, my nana (father's mother) took me to the doctor and described me as being "constantly teary" and expressed concern that I would often withdraw to my bedroom for most of the day and write "bloodthirsty" stories about people dying, those people usually being a member of my family.
I was diagnosed with depression and referred to CAMHS, a counselling service for children. At the same time, the bullying at school worsened and even got to the point where the headteacher would make snarky comments about me to make himself seem more popular in the eyes of the other kids. One particular lunch time I remember being told (by the headmaster!) to clean up litter around the playground and then told not to because my weight would make it too difficult to bend over. My dad kicked off about it and I received an apology from the headteacher but the damage had already been done. For the rest of my time at primary school (a good year or so) I just let the bullying continue; what good would telling a teacher do when they were already aware of both that and my home situation, but did nothing to safeguard me?
So I resigned myself to waiting until secondary school started.
Unfortunately, that summer was the time the court decided I should move back home with my mother on the provision that Ella move out, which she did - with my mother's next door neighbour. It satisfied the court order, somehow.
I didn't see much of her, but when I did, she and Melanie both drilled into my skull that the bullying would only get worse in secondary school. And if that wasn't already enough, my mother couldn't understand why I, weighing fourteen stone at age 11, couldn't bear the thought of showering with the other boys after PE. It later came to my understanding that my weight was only half the reason I didn't want to shower with the boys - imagine the embarrassment if puberty struck while we were all showering AND I was starting to notice boys instead of girls.
So I went into secondary school expecting to be a complete outcast. And while I was bullied a fair bit and considered the "weird kid", it was a reprieve from what I'd endured during primary school. It helped that my head of house in school had also taught my two sisters, and was one of the most lovely teachers I'd ever had - bullying incidents became few and far between when I began reporting to her at the end of each week with a journal of incidents that might have occurred - this became known as my "Bullying List" among my peers, and I was ridiculed by some for it. But the journal helped, so I took that on the chin.
Time passed and things calmed down. I moved through school and the bullying eventually subsided into playful jabs - my skin was about three feet thick by then so it no longer affected me, and I started giving as good as I got. By the end of my school career, while I wasn't exactly popular, I was well-known and people did acknowledge me as being likeable.
Skip forward a year and half to March 2012: Ella had grown into a mature woman who had learned to control her temper and we grew quite close. Melanie, however, seemed to develop a manipulative side to her that hasn't really subsided even now. Either way, they aren't the main focus of this part.
Now, I'd grown up in a very low income family (due to my mother's refusal to work), and in my first year of sixth form I was given a bursary of £20 a week. I had a laptop that I'd received from my secondary school in 2008 but we'd never had the internet in because of two reasons (1. my mother's lack of money to afford it, and 2. my mother didn't know how to use a computer, so we "didn't need the internet"). I used my bursary to pay for my internet connection, and since I'd never had the internet in before, it was suddenly very new, very exciting, and very, very appealing. After getting it installed in December 2011, it only took a few weeks for me to become addicted. After a few months, in March 2012, I stumbled across a page run by Harry Potter fans for Harry Potter fans on Facebook.
This was my first proper chance at fitting in, so I took to it like a fish to water. I became fast friends with the owner of the page and quickly made my way into an administrative position, where I would engage with fans of the page by playing games and posting quizzes etc. It was all stars and spangles for the first few months, but then there was a load of drama and the original owner of the page was ex-communicated (the fandom was akin to religion at this point). So I was in charge of a page of about fifteen other admins as well as another group of 600 members, and in a situation like that it is very difficult not to be overwhelmed. The power went to my head. During the time all of this was happening, I developed an obsession with Sean Biggerstaff, the actor who portrayed Oliver Wood in the first two Harry Potter films. I also ignored every one of my friends at school and shut the majority of my family out because all that mattered to me was this single community of people who actually had things in common with me.
Come November 2012, after anonymous hate mail began arriving in my Facebook inbox and when I was the deepest into my obsession that I'd ever been, depression started setting in. Full-blown, crippling, mind-numbing depression. To acknowledge that my obsession would bear no fruit, and to know that everyone I'd fallen in love with was now against me, leaving me with no friends whatsoever, was like admitting to myself that I'd screwed my own life up and I knew, deep down, that I deserved it 100%. Over the months following that, I tried keeping my condition a secret until it became too much - my college work piled up, my circle of friends shrank even more, and I began self-harming and even considered suicide, and by March 2013, I was at the lowest point in my life that I'd ever been before, aged just 17.
I told my teacher at college about my condition but didn't tell her the cause, and my headteacher took me to the doctors to help me get sorted. My old friends hadn't been ignoring me like I'd thought.
They'd kept their distance, watching from the sidelines, concerned about my mental health as they watched me deteriorate. Once it came out that I needed help, they embraced me again and really supported me. I started counselling in October that same year after receiving Citalopram for the first time and got involved with a local charity, who helped me connect with people my own age who had suffered similar experiences as me. It helped greatly.
By January 2014, I was confident enough in myself, after having lost 5 stone with still a fair amount to drop, to begin dating. My first date was with a guy the next town over and we only went out for about a week and a half, ending when I realised he was just messing me around. That was a kick in the teeth and I felt demoralised quite a bit, but I kept going.
March 2014 - I tried dating someone else, but that didn't go to plan. When I started noticing a pattern of try, fail, try, fail, I wondered why I even bothered anymore and the depression came back.
I ended up going for a walk one night and ended up ten miles away from home with 2% battery on my phone and a fiver in my pocket, heading down the oncoming traffic lane of a motorway.
Two days later, my counselling sessions were upped to twice a week from once, and my medication dosage went from 20mg to 40mg. I should have taken myself out of the dating game at that point so I could focus on my mental health but the only thing that meant anything to me was filling the emotional void that had been developing inside me for years.
This time, I started talking to a lad who really the opposite of me, but somewhat compatible. With my medication and counselling going well, I thought I'd be able to keep my mental state under control. I couldn't have been more wrong. If I needed attention while he was busy with his business (he was a workaholic), my anxiety would kick into overdrive and I'd freak out to the point of becoming a blubbering mess on my bed. Obviously, that could only go on for so long. Strangely, I was the one who broke things off after he told me, quite tactlessly, that I was too fat for him. I'd been toying with the idea of breaking things off with him for a couple of weeks by then, so I wasn't really bothered about losing him.
For once, I actually had control over the situation and it felt so GOOD. I felt liberated, ready to take on anything. I made the fatal mistake of thinking that I could just stop taking the medication now that I'd finished my time at college and my counselling (which was based in the sixth form college) had ended. Oops.
A couple of months later, in June 2014, two days after my birthday, I met my current boyfriend for the first time and it was absolutely perfect. You know how people say that love at first sight is only for in fairy tales? Well, I must have been living in a fairy tale at the time. We'd been talking on OKCupid for a few weeks before actually meeting, and we were both insistent on taking things slowly because we'd both only recently finished dating someone, and I was really only looking for friends at the time anyway (I don't need no man, and all that jazz). But when we met, it was impossible to resist. We slept together that night, the first time either of us had had sex. The void was filling up and it felt wonderful. I actually felt that all my problems were solved - I thought my only problem and the sole reason for my depression and anxiety was loneliness.
So imagine my confusion when, in September 2014, my depression swung back and hit me like a cinderblock. I was at the university at the time, in my first year. Suddenly, I wasn't able to make sense of my work, or pay attention in lectures. My sleeping pattern was all over the place and my relationship with my boyfriend became a bit strained. I found out a couple of months ago that it was during this time that he had considered leaving me because of the stress. I'm glad that he decided not to, because he suffered from depression during his teenage years as well (he's 2 years older than me) and understood what I was going through.
Suffice it to say, I couldn't keep up with my course and I left university early with nearly £7,500 worth of overpayments to repay, which I'm currently on a payment schedule for.
So I went back home in time for Christmas - and regretted it.
During the time I'd been away, Melanie had taken complete control of my mother's financial assets, which I thought was despicable at the time. We came to blows and fell out, with my mother siding with her. So I went to stay with my boyfriend and his family, after a week of being home, for Christmas, and for the two weeks I was there, I was able to forget about everything. I actually enjoyed myself, and tried my hardest not to cry when I woke up on Christmas morning expecting nothing but finding a small pile of presents under the tree with my name on them. I'd bought my boyfriend's family presents with the little money I had left from my student finance as a thank you for letting me stay, but was taken aback completely by the gratitude they showed me. Which is a stark contrast to what my mother shows me.
See, in the week that I'd been home, my mother had been spoiled rotten by me. In total, she had about £300 from me in that one week alone. I'd been made to feel guilty for leaving her alone in the house because she wasn't in receipt of child benefit or tax credits for me since I was over 19 and no longer at home. Silly me, I bought her cigarettes, paid her bills, paid for gas and electric, bought takeaways, food shopping, and I even took her clothes shopping in town as way of an "apology".
When she told me off for getting into an argument with Melanie, I realised that she wasn't grateful AT ALL and only cared about what financial support I could give her. So I thought, "Why bother staying if she only wants my money?"
I had to go back home eventually, so after Christmas, when I came into some more money, I laid down a few ground rules with her, the main one being that I wouldn't buy anything more than shopping each week and I would only pay for half of the Sky bill - and in absolutely no circumstances would I buy her cigarettes, which was the only part I could stick to without damaging myself in the long run.
In the following month, she must have had at least £500 out of me, paying for her half of the bill, gas and electric, food, HER RENT ARREARS. This certainly didn't help my already fragile mental state because I knew she didn't love me like a mother should - all she loved was my money. But I kept it up in hopes that she would realise how much I was trying to help her because I loved her. I got no thanks or gratitude of any kind. Only "Can I have a bit of money, please?" or "I've got no money for fags, no money for anything..."
The hints and the guilt tripping were laid on thick and fast and by June 2015, I was back on medication straight at 40mg because I just couldn't cope with her demands anymore. I got back into counselling in October last year and grew cold and desensitised to my mother's predicament, leading to many arguments and a fair few times when I've held myself back from slapping her silly.
Again, I made the stupid decision to stop my medication once my course had been completed because the six-week counselling course had left me at my most confident in a long while. My boyfriend stuck by me through all of this and has experienced first-hand how my mother can be, and he absolutely detests her for her effect on me.
And now we skip to today, 16th April 2016. I've been writing this post for little over two hours now because I've nowhere else to go to get solid advice.
My depression, surprise surprise, is creeping back. The low mood has returned, my self-esteem is shattering, my only motivation is to mope about, nothing that once enthralled me is enjoyable anymore - the list goes on.
I recently submitted a claim for Universal Credit - I declared myself Fit for Work because that's how I felt at the time.
I transferred from the ASDA store in my hometown to the one local to my boyfriend's house, where he studies at university. Everything was going well there, and I could see myself moving in properly with my boyfriend once his housing contract had expired. The reason I moved down to his in the first place was so I could be away from my mother, who the counsellor I saw last year helped me unearth as the leading cause of my latest bouts of depression.
Now, I had a career in business administration in mind, not bag packing in a supermarket. So I got myself an apprenticeship with a local company and left ASDA so I could focus on that. After a week and a bit I was fired from the apprenticeship for incompetence, which I'm in the process of disputing.
A week afterwards, with no job to go to and no way to support myself, I was left with no option but to return home, where I am now.
Back to the Universal Credit claim: I declared myself Fit for Work because I assumed that the low mood at the time was to be expected from being dismissed. But in the last few days, the low mood has gotten worse and all those old symptoms have come back - and in addition to that, my mother is at her money-grabbing tricks again. My sisters and I are all aware of her methods now and we've cracked down hard on her, and I've never cared any less about what happens to her than I do now.
I called Universal Credit today to explain to them that my depression has returned and I need to declare myself unfit for work. I've not been diagnosed with it yet, but I'm familiar enough with these symptoms to know where my mental state is heading. My boyfriend has noticed a change, even though we live 70km apart and communicate primarily through Facebook and mobile.
And yet I have this feeling that when I see my doctor about it, he's going to tell me that everything is okay and that I'm fit for work and that this is something everyone goes through. I know that this is unlikely, but I'm sure you've all experienced that voice at the base of your skull and in your ear that constantly whispers things to you that cause you to doubt yourself.
I don't feel fit for work in this state, not when I can barely concentrate on anything more than staying alive. It's been taking me over an hour to get to sleep, when I'm usually out in about five minutes, and all day, every day I find myself fatigued. I'm terrified that the doctor will tell me that I'm healthy enough to work; I really don't need the stress of dealing with the Jobcentre and attending work placements and interviews and all that stuff right now.

welcome to PC.

hoping you find the support you need here.

[Fizzyo]

Hi moonalesca,
Sorry to hear about how much you have had to cope with over the years. This is a brilliant place to come for support.

People here have helped me through some dark times and I hope you get as much encouragement from this community as I have.