What's Normal Anyway? Celebrities' Own Stories of Mental Illness (22 page)

And I'd like to say to the public: you will all know someone – a relative, a friend, a colleague – who's suffering. So when you're sitting in your house, worrying about your child – feeling embarrassed and ashamed, not wanting the neighbours to know – just look across the street, look at your neighbours either side, and there's a fair chance there'll be another family behind that door having exactly the same fears and concerns you are. And wouldn't it be so much better and easier if we could all just talk about it together and then we'd all find that a problem shared is a problem spared and we could all get on and do something about it.

Do I have anything to add? Only that OCD has been part of me but it's never dominated me. There are times when, as I've said, it's been a pain, but it's a part of me as much as an arm is part of someone else, as much as arthritis is, and in a sense you just get on with it. I'm just delighted to be able to help. And I just want your – any – readers to know I'm not a saint: I'm short-tempered, I'm miserable, I'm grumpy and bolshy. But hey, do you know what? In twenty years' time, if my constituents keep me here and I'm still in parliament, or whatever happens, when I look in the mirror I'm not going to see a disappointed person looking back. I can't tell you how good that makes me feel telling you that. If I can look back in twenty years' time and I can say that standing up in that debate was the high point of my political career, then great, I had a high point. Does that make sense? I had a high point. I'm blissfully happy.

‘What would I say to the public about mental illness? Don't knock it 'til you've tried it! Do not knock it 'til you've tried it. Because, you know, it's easy to pass judgement but you never know what someone's going through . . . so just be a bit more understanding.'

T
asha Danvers was born in 1977 in London. A former elite athlete, Tasha represented Great Britain in the 1999 World Championships in Athletics, the 2000 Sydney Olympics, 2002 Commonwealth Games, and 2002 European Championships. In 2003 she married her coach, Darrell Smith, and took time out from her career to have a son, Jaden, in 2004. After making a return to athletics, the high points of her career included winning a silver medal at the Commonwealth Games in 2006 and a bronze medal in the 400-metre hurdles at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. After divorcing her husband in 2008 and struggling with injuries and depression, she attempted suicide, and later announced her retirement from professional sport just before the London 2012 Olympics. Since retiring, she has done some radio and television presenting and regularly gives motivational talks. The interview upon which this chapter is based took place in Bath, where Tasha lived at the time.

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Depression paralyses you. That is definitely a major, major feature of depression for me: just paralysing. It's weird because you have all your faculties about you – you could do anything – but everything that you know you should do, or wanna do, just becomes impossible and people without depression do not understand it. There were so many days I would convince myself that I could do better the next day, that I
would
do better the next day, that I knew what it took to do better the next day. But the next day would come and you can't do it, so then you convince yourself again that tomorrow you'll be able to do it. But at the same time you're convincing yourself that you're going to do better, there's also that nagging voice that's reminding you that you failed at what you needed to do. And that feeds right back into the depression, so it's a vicious cycle.

It wasn't like there was one thing that started my depression. I think there were too many situations that I was not happy with happening at the same time. What's the word for that? Happening in conjunction. Looking back now, I think my depression started a lot earlier than I thought. I think I got depressed when I got married to my coach and was living in LA. I'd always had daddy issues and I knew I shouldn't have married who I married, but I did it anyway. I was so immature then. Like, you know, people say: ‘You were twenty-six, you were grown.' But there's one thing being mature as a person and there's another category as being mature in relationships. And with men I was totally immature, I just basically said whatever they wanted to hear, but I really wasn't ready for that kind of commitment. So then mentally I was frustrated with myself for being in that situation. But I guess it's always easy to look back and say shoulda, coulda, woulda.

On top of that, financially it was just crap, and we were living with his parents. I was doing a lot of – most of – the contribution financially and I think, for a woman, that is a very frustrating place to be. I think you start to resent that person. And then you start to feel . . . it's just bad all round, and I think that's probably when it first started. Then I got pregnant, which I got ripped in the media for, cos it meant I had to miss the 2004 Olympics in Athens. And on top of that I had to watch my husband go to the Olympics, which was depressing. It was kind of difficult for me because my career sort of came to a halt and he was a coach so he still got to go out and enjoy doing what he was doing. So it was like a stream of unfortunate events.

Then my son Jaden was born and I'm an only child so I've never been around babies, while my husband was the eldest one of three. So he would come back and say: ‘Oh why haven't you changed him and duh-duh-duh-duh', and, you know, I didn't want to change him . . . I didn't want to do anything. The first three months were a complete nightmare and I probably got more depressed then. Was it postnatal depression? I don't know what the definition is, but if the definition is: having a baby, then feeling depressed, then yeah, I felt that! I didn't feel like I was good enough and I didn't know what to do and I just . . . I did not enjoy it. When Jaden was born, people were like: ‘Oh, you have this baby and you just have this rush of love.' I didn't have none of that. When my son was born it was just like: ‘Oh, there's a baby.' It wasn't like: ‘Oh, my heart just exploded', and all these fireworks that people go on about.

And then you feel even more crap about yourself because you don't feel anything. So I got down about not being a good mum and not having that so-called movie feeling that people always talk about, not feeling that I was living up to what my husband felt was right. You know: ‘Why haven't you changed him, why haven't you done this or that?' ‘I dunno, I don't want to, leave me alone.' The word depression didn't even occur to me at the time, I just knew I felt bad, I didn't like the situation. I didn't ever say: ‘I'm depressed', it never really occurred to me to come to that conclusion. That's why, only after this more recent explosion of depression, going back I think: ‘Um, I think I was probably depressed long before that.'

So I think having my son compounded the problems in the marriage and in 2007 I had just had enough. The relationship was at an all-time low and I had turned my attention elsewhere, I just didn't care anymore. So finally I said: ‘Look, I don't love you.' But it was very difficult because during the phase where I realised I wanted a divorce it was in the build-up to the 2008 Olympics and obviously my husband's also my coach. So we've got to work together and then live together and, quite frankly, I don't like him. And he'd do bizarre things. I remember him knocking on my door at 3 o'clock in the morning before a race – not just a one-off little thing, we're at the World Championships – and saying: ‘I want to talk about it', for hours and hours. But, you know, I was done already. Another time I remember one of the other coaches coming up to him during training, because he was acting strangely towards me and it was pretty obvious, and saying: ‘Whatever's going on between you and Tasha, leave it outside.' This was at the Olympics, this was at the warm-up field of the Olympics.

But in training you learn to turn off. It's also how depressed people function. You have to get on with life so you put on your attire, your uniform, and you put on your face, and you do what you have to do to get through the day. And then you get back to your own space and you live in it – there's no other way to be. And sometimes you can do it well; sometimes not so well. In 2008 I'd come off a really good year professionally and I don't think I was as extremely depressed as I was coming up to London 2012, so it was just a bit easier to manage. I had a goal that I cared about and that was it. I'd missed out on 2004 because I'd had my son, so I was just really passionate about it. I worked my arse off to get to that point and the Games were brilliant. Other than the background noise – with my husband and all that – it was great; getting the bronze in the 400-metre hurdles was a fantastic feeling.

It was afterwards where it went downhill very fast, because I thought that if you put your full effort into something you get rewarded. I thought if I worked hard – and I'd given up a lot of other jobs so that I could solely focus on athletics – I could create a lifestyle for myself. So I thought: ‘After the bronze things will change.' I knew that I wasn't going to become mega-rich – as track and field isn't often that kind of sport, especially for a 400-metre hurdler – but at least I'd be able to get a good contract. But I think the only offer I got was a $6,000 for the year contract. You might as well just spit in my face. I'd rather you just said no. Because when you see people being offered $60,000, $100,000, $250,000, and I'm offered six after I've got a bronze, that hurts. So I think I lost my enthusiasm at that point because I thought: ‘What have I done this for?' You put all this effort in and you make all these sacrifices and then, at the end of it, someone's just like: ‘Nah.' And that took away my motivation.

And then what happens is, when you're not in your right mind, your body follows, and I got injured a lot. The first year after '08 I did not want to run. I needed a break – I needed a physical and mental break because I'd been through a lot. I really did not want to run, I was just sick of it, but you have to: there are no days off in athletics, you have to just keep going. So I ran the Super 8 inter-city contest in Cardiff and I pulled my hamstring almost off the bone. Basically, the surgeon said if I'd done any more I'd probably have had to have it sewn back on. So there was that and then the following year I popped my plantaris and I had to have surgery.

Then it all exploded through our divorce, which I filed for in December 2008, and when I came back to the UK in 2009 with Jaden that's when it all really went poorly. We were moving to Birmingham to live with a family member who had kids in the household and I thought it would be good for Jaden to be around them. Well, about two weeks or a month before we arrived everything went wrong, there was a major issue in the family, so instead of walking into the warm, welcoming environment that we had planned, we basically walked into a nightmare. So I've brought Jaden into this really depressed situation, and it was just rough. And I was travelling to London to train but I really had no help with Jaden like I thought I was going to have, as my family were unable to support me in the way we had intended.

So that was really difficult and then it just spiralled from there. My home situation: I wasn't happy with it. My financial situation: I wasn't happy with it. My life: I just wasn't happy with it! Everything about my life I just wasn't pleased with so it just goes from bad to worse. Long story short: Jaden left in January 2010 to go back to LA.

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That year, after Jaden left, I moved to Bath and started training at the university there in preparation for London 2012. When I first moved I was very depressed, very all over the place, and no one here knew me so they didn't know that my behaviour was abnormal for me. So they just thought: ‘Wow, she's different, she never wants to engage with the group, she warms up on her own, she doesn't really talk much.' Which is completely different to my normal personality, but they didn't know that. At my core, I am naturally bubbly, outgoing, friendly, I care about people, I'm silly, not embarrassed very easily. So depression is like an intrusion on who I am – as opposed to having changed who I am – if you know what I mean.

So when I'm not feeling good I interact the least amount possible. So, for instance, I'm not a very telephone-cally person anyway, I'm more email or text, but you definitely won't get me by phone when I'm depressed. When you're on the phone you have to keep up this conversation and I just can't be bothered. I don't want to answer no questions, I don't want anyone asking me how I am, or what's going on, I just don't want to put in the effort to try and engage in conversation. It's a lot of work. Whereas by text you can just say one thing and then get on with whatever you're doing – or get on with doing absolutely nothing, which is most likely what you're doing when you're depressed. So you just do enough to function if you can and some days were easier than others.