Victoria Health

When it comes to emotion, I’ve always felt the concept of “letting go” is an existential question – and one I’ve struggled with for years. You know the advice, “Let go and move on.” Easy enough to say, fearsomely difficult to do. It’s all very well to clear out the clutter in our closets or consign those old love letters to the bin, but there is no easy way of clearing up the mess in our heads. Only the other day my brother said to me that he wished he could take his brain out of his head and give it a good wash. It’s rather a marvellous thought, isn’t it? A lovely, freshly laundered mind.

When I write about my experience of depression or give a talk about my book – a memoir of depression – people quite often thank me for my bravery in being so honest. As grateful as I am, I always think how odd it is that the word honest has come to mean being brave rather than truthful and sincere.

At this time of year my heart tends to sink, not because I don’t enjoy the warmth and conviviality of friends and family at Christmas – although my dislike of turkey, Brussel sprouts and brandy butter verges on the vitriolic – but because, everywhere I turn, there is just too much stuff.

I broke my wrist recently and, a week later, I had to have surgery to wire the bones into place. What with a general anaesthetic and a lot of morphine, I’ve been spinning like a top. So I am, to say, the least, incapacitated, although I have to say there is something hilarious about having a shower wearing a pink recycling bag over my arm because I am not allowed to get the plaster cast wet. As for trying to shampoo my hair with one hand, I end up looking like a demented chicken with one side all lovely and glossy and the other a tangled mess.