A Day to TRESure
If you’re reading this sentence, I’m assuming that you have excused the terrible pun in the title. Thanks for sticking with me. Since my last post, my blog has been featured on Tailenders! Thank you to whoever it was that sent it in – it was a very exciting night in the Slade household the night it went up. I always knew my 5 minutes of fame would involve a story about me getting drunk. As alluded to in my last post, this week I’ll be writing about the time I wound up on a FaceTime call with Marcus Trescothick. I’ll be writing this post in support of National Suicide Prevention Day on 10th September. These topics may not automatically seem like a match to some, and a lot of the post might not be about Marcus Trescothick, but stick with me. Now is also a pretty good time to give you a CONTENT WARNING for anxiety and depression. It’ll be a little bit of cricket and a bit of mental illness.
I have suffered with anxiety for a number of years. Often people are amazed when I tell them this, because as a whole I’m a very extroverted and confident person. I did a drama degree and have no problem with public speaking. Sadly, that’s not how mental illness works – it’s what’s on the inside that counts! A lot of the time, like now, I am completely fine; other times I am teeming with anxiety. At periods in my life this has been doubled up with a nice unhealthy dose of depression too. There have been times when I was the life and soul of the party, and I would go home convinced that I was going to die. In talking therapy sessions I’ve often been told off for not taking my own issues seriously enough, which is perhaps why I feel like I can’t properly write about them on my little cricketing blog. Maybe I’ll write a book instead one day, who knows? How does any of this involve Marcus Trescothick? Well, keep reading.
For those unfamiliar with Marcus Trescothick, I’m 99% sure you’re only reading this because you’re my friend and aren’t an actual cricket fan. Marcus Trescothick is a former England and Somerset cricketer who is one of the most celebrated English batsmen of all time. He has also been instrumental in starting the conversation about mental health not just in cricket, but in sport as a whole. He ended his international career in 2008, because of what was recognised initially as a stress-related illness. In Trescothick’s 2008 autobiography, however, it came to light that he had suffered from anxiety and depression for a long time. The book is a fantastic read if anyone has not yet read it, and is a real insight into both the game and Trescothick's experiences with mental illness. Marcus continued to play cricket for Somerset, retiring last year at the age of 43 after an incredible career.
If you have read my previous blog posts, or just know me generally, you’ll know that last year I experienced a personal cricket renaissance. What you probably won’t know is that just before that, I had slipped back into depression. I was working irregular hours every single day in a hospitality job, where I was completely miserable. It was like every single day was chipping away at my soul. Then cricket came along.
The day that Dad mentioned cricket was the day my life changed. It’s overdramatic but it’s true. Every day off that I had, if I wasn’t able to see my friends, I would watch the cricket. Every trip to Taunton felt like a holiday for my brain. It was so therapeutic - all I had to do was sit there and watch. My problems disappeared. And everyone else was there for a common cause - they loved cricket too. It was like I was sitting with an old friend. I took the picture below at a County Championship match between Somerset and Hampshire in June 2019 - it’s what I picture the perfect day looking like.
Towards the end of the season, something happened that sent me back into my depressive spiral (no, it wasn’t Kyle Abbott’s 17-wicket haul against Somerset). Thankfully, I had the cricket to distract me. I decided that for the last two days of Somerset’s County Championship match against Essex I would book a little Taunton holiday, where I could have time off from the world and hopefully see Somerset lift their first ever County Championship trophy. Clearly, that didn’t happen. Day 3 was rained off, meaning that I went for a Taunton pub crawl with my Twitter friend Harry (hello Harry if you’re reading!), and day 4 was a glorious mess that resulted in Essex lifting the trophy. But that’s just cricket. I never cared what happened at the matches (although obviously a win was preferable) – I just liked that they stopped me from worrying about things. Then all of a sudden, the season was over.
With no matches to attend, I realised quite quickly that things weren’t going too well for me. My harmless coping strategy had gone. I had got a promotion at work, hoping that it would make me happier, which I was about a month into when I started having a pretty severe existential crisis. My everyday thoughts consisted of:
· You don’t know what you’re doing
· You can’t cope with this job
· Your colleagues are laughing at you
· Your colleagues think you’re stupid
· Your colleagues hate you
· The customers hate you
· Your parents hate you
· Your friends hate you
· Everyone hates you
Half of me was thankful for my promotion, the other half felt guilty thinking that I shouldn’t have been promoted. I was panicking about every single thing, thinking that everything was my responsibility/fault even when it had nothing to do with me. Whenever I talked to anyone about it, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was burdening them with my problems. I realise that it’s a mental illness cliché but it’s a very real problem. I really didn’t want to go back to talking therapy for the third time in my life. I felt like my problems would be a waste of NHS resources, especially since I had already gone through CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) 5 years beforehand so therefore must already have the ‘cure’. Spoiler alert: there isn’t really a cure.
One day I got a text saying ‘Hi Abi, sorry for the text out of the blue, it’s Marcus Trescothick, I would like to say hello, can I FaceTime you?’ I’ll let that sink in for you.
I should say it wasn’t completely out of the blue. My friend Martha (hello Martha if you’re reading this!) had got a job at an events company in London, and had mentioned her boss used to play cricket for Middlesex. It turns out that quite a few of my friends have really big cricketing connections and just never mentioned it because they have no interest in cricket whatsoever. Anyway, one day Martha told me that if I receive a phone call from an unknown number in the next few days, I should answer it. I was suspicious. Then all of a sudden, I was on FaceTime to Marcus Trescothick.
Turned out that my friends didn’t hate me after all and Martha had kindly talked to her boss and they had set up a call between Marcus and I in the hope that it might make me feel better. It was almost a year ago now, so I don’t remember a lot of what was said – I was in shock at the time, I was still in my pyjamas. But we talked about mental health, we talked about cricket, we talked about the famous Keynsham (pronounced CANE-SHAM if anyone responsible for an award-winning BBC podcast happens to be reading), and we talked about his plans for his life now that he had retired as a player. He was incredibly open and honest about his emotions, which was very admirable considering he had no clue who I was. He also took a genuine interest in how I was doing emotionally. I wish that I could remember more of what was said, or that I had recorded it, but, at the time, it did what it needed to do. It gave me hope that if Marcus could have an incredible cricketing career while fighting his personal demons, then I could keep going too.
While I am an incredibly biased Somerset fan, I honestly think Marcus is the greatest man on the cricket circuit. The time that he sacrifices to show genuine care and interest, not just to other players, but to random people like me, is amazing. His honesty with his experiences has been so influential in changing attitudes towards mental health in sport, especially men’s mental health. He is a hero.
So that is the story! It’s not as eventful as you might have wanted, but was an event that reminded me of my own strength. If anyone is experiencing any of the issues that I’ve mentioned, or know anyone that is, I’ve attached some links at the bottom of the page that might help. There is a passage in Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig that sticks with me whenever I’m struggling:
Depression is also…
Smaller than you.
Always, it is smaller than you, even when it feels vast. It operates within you, you do not operate within it. It may be a dark cloud passing across the sky but – if that is the metaphor – you are the sky.
You were there before it. And the cloud can’t exist without the sky, but the sky can exist without the cloud.
Mental illnesses are horrible - and everyone’s experiences with them are different - but I have found talking about them invaluable. I realise that it is terrifying, but the problems can't be addressed until they are accepted. Go well. ♥️
https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/depression/about-depression/
https://www.time-to-change.org.uk/about-mental-health/types-problems/depression
https://www.time-to-change.org.uk/blog/talking-about-anxiety-difficult-worth-it
https://www.helpguide.org/articles/depression/helping-someone-with-depression.htm
https://headsupguys.org/reach-out/talk-to-a-friend-or-family-member/
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