As you can see from my picture, I am prone to the odd off day.  We all are.  We can all feel a bit blue, down, stressed, you name it.  But this doesn’t mean I am depressed.  I do not have a mental health issue.  I will never claim to understand or know how sufferers feel.  I can however say with great validity that I understand how mental health issues can affect lives. 

I am the daughter, sister and girlfriend of four different sufferers with varying types and degrees of depression.  In the last ten years I’ve seen depression affect four of the most important people in my life. I’ve seen them struggle, I’ve watched them get to grips with their illness and try to understand this creature inside their head and I’ve seen their spirits break.  I have also watched them overcome some really difficult issues (the extent of which I know I’ll never fully know or understand) to get a twinkle back in their eyes. 

So why am I running 5km in January?  Well, 5km might not be a long way for some people.  In fact, I know a few people to which 5km is a casual Saturday morning jog!  But to me this is a real challenge.  I am the girl whose main (only!) form of exercise is getting from my house to the town and back again in enough time for me to buy shoes and hide them before my boyfriend comes round and asks if I really need another pair of boots.  Out of interest: Yes, I always need more boots, and incidentally, my house to TK Maxx to my house again in 30 minutes doesn’t half burn the calories!!

Anyway, on a more serious note, I thought about simply giving money to SAMH (Scottish Association for Mental Health), I thought about selling cupcakes and I thought about organising a fundraiser.  Given that I’m a school teacher by day/ baking buff by night, the organising and baking would be easy for me.  But I don’t want to do something easy.  I want to challenge myself.  I want this to be difficult.  I want to put my body through blood, sweat and tears because, in a strange way, I feel that if I can feel physical pain, I will show those four people, and maybe a few more people reading this, that I notice and care about their emotional pain.

I am not saying that running 5km and having sore feet will make me ‘at one’ with anyone with a mental illness.  I am saying that, no matter how inexplicable my reasons, I want to do this for anyone who suffers in any way.  I am not saying that because I know four people who suffer from mental illness, I am an expert in the field. 

But to those four people, I am saying that I will never pretend to understand you and I will never judge you.  But I will always love you.  Exactly the way you are.