Transcription
[Music] Wow, hi. All right, how's it going? How are you feeling? At shouldn't be up there. Yeah, okay. How we all doing? Awful. All forward. Not you. What you did was absolutely fine. I'm talking about the the torturous engagement tactic that I just used. I hate that. When when the person I know I just did it, but when the person comes out and they start doing the thing and they ask a whole room, a whole room full of people at the same time, how they're doing because the only thing you can really say in response to that is like, "Oh, whatever." You just did. And that isn't an appropriate answer to how are you doing. Any other situation. You know, I could be shopping in Woolworths in 1994 and I go up to I see a mate in there looking at the fur bees and I'd be like, "Hey Gordon, you know, how's it going?" If Gordon just turns around and goes down like that, just howls at the strip lighting at the top like some mad, citified, 90s wolf, I'm gonna think, "What freaked?" and just turn around, leave my basket of pogs there, and just walk off.
But yeah, when I when people ask me how I'm doing, I say I'm fine. Generally, I think that's that's what everybody does. But for me, that's not a real appropriate answer either because for me, it's a way of deflecting the question. It's like a reflex. And deflecting that question is something I've got really good at because a lot of the time, I'm not fine. In fact, but I live with depression. And deflecting people away from what's really going on with me is just it's just what I do. When you get really convincing at pretending that you're okay, people just assume you are. Much like a lot of you thought there was nothing wrong with me when I first came out here. None of my friends, family, anybody knew anything was wrong with me until maybe a year and a half ago when I decided to tell them. I've been secretly living with dark thoughts and self-loathing for, you know, most of my adult life. And saying I'm fine and not addressing it and not letting anybody in is if it's just a bad move, you know. And the more the things that have happened to me over the last year, the more I've sort of realized that that's it's like putting a plaster over cancer. You're not dealing with anything.
Last April was the worst time for me. I was living with that feeling I can't even describe. I still can. I'm have to now, obviously. But if I was to choose one word, it'd be something like overwhelm. I remember lying in bed one morning and I was overwhelmed because I was trying to remember what feeling happy felt like. And I couldn't remember. And I thought, "There's no point in living if I can't actually remember how to be happy anymore." I'd had suicidal thoughts before, as everyone who suffers from depression, it surely does. But always knew I'd never really go through with it because of the the pain and, you know, everything that would cause the people that were close to me. Is, you know, what a great deterrent that is. I just didn't couldn't do that. But that morning, when I lay in bed, depression had completely taken over my thoughts. It manipulated and it had lied its way into making me think that ending my own life wasn't just best for me, but actually would be best for everybody. Because that was that is what depression does. It overpowers you. It takes the wheel and it steers you away from everyone and everything you love. And it takes you down a dark tunnel. And when you're in that tunnel, it hugs you and it tells you that this is where you're supposed to belong.
I called my mum that morning. But it wasn't because I needed help. I thought I was beyond help. I called her because I thought that day I was going to take my own life. And I called her to hear her voice one last time. Not only does my mum love me, I think she she knows me better than anyone. And also, she's a mental health professional. And I think by the tone of my voice, the kind of things that I was saying, she knew something really serious was up. And and the love I heard in her voice, she she managed to bring me back for a second. And in that second, she suggested that together, we get me some help. And that's kind of all it took. I went to my GP the next day. And I did something I thought I'd never do. I I told someone. I didn't know what was going on inside my own head. And after a little conversation about depression, he asked me a question I can't believe I hadn't asked myself. He said, "Do you actually want to die, or do you just not want to feel like this anymore?" I thought, "What an important distinction to make." Because when you're when you're in that fog, you cannot you can't ask yourself questions like that.
My depression doesn't hit me like a sledgehammer out of nowhere. I needed this. It leave like with sudden relief, like waking up from a nightmare. It creeps in and then it creeps away again. It's like taking a painkiller for a headache. You don't know the instant your headache is gone. You just realize it's been gone a while. I realized I was feeling better when I was out walking the dog one day. And I realized I'd walked the thing 12 miles. And everything, just everything. I just and I was perfectly happy doing that. And it just felt good. You know, and this sounds weird, but everything looks normal again. All the colors looked how they should because depression kind of lowers the saturation on everything for me. And everything just looked good. It just felt good. There's like the part of my brain that conked out six months before had just spluttered back into life. And all these my excitement and motivation and appreciation of beauty, or this sort of thing, had suddenly start to come back online. And I was beginning to remember a feeling happy felt like.
I put it all down to the walking. I put it well, not all of it, but I put it down to being outside and making that first step into talking home. And I had an idea. I went into town straight away and I bought a map of Great Britain. And I sat frantically circling all the all the parts of the country that I thought would inspire me to stay outside the hole. You know, then just to kind of keep this good feeling going. And and I thought, in turn, if I document that, then I might inspire other people who've been through what I've been through to to get outside as well. Once I'd circled all the bits of Great Britain that I wanted to see, I put a big line through them all. When this route appeared in front of me, I'm like, "Yes, I'm doing that. I need to do that." That was the easy bit, obviously. The hard bit wasn't getting myself match fit, which was really hard. You should have seen me. It wasn't researching and sourcing the kit I needed. It wasn't plotting my route to the end. It was was telling people what I was good. Not so much what I was gonna do, but why I was gonna do it. Because it meant coming clean, finally. All these feelings I've been so ashamed of for so long. All this stuff that I fought compromised Who I am as a person. I had to tell them all. It was the worst thing I ever had to do, and the best thing I ever did. The response absolutely floored me. And I couldn't believe the amount of people that were going through the same kind of thing I was going through. And all of a sudden, I realized that this was important. This is something I really, really have to do.
The name I gave my 3,000 mile hike around Great Britain was Black Dog Walks. Six weeks later, I stood at Brighton Pier and just started heading west. All I had on me, ironically, were the things that I needed to survive. In a week, I'd reached Bournemouth. In a month and a half, I'd reached Land's End. And at this point, it was all about promoting exercise, of being outdoors, as a way of managing mental health and raising money for the Mental Health Foundation. But by the time I got up to Wales, I'd been gone for so long, the thing had turned from a challenge into a lifestyle. Where I found a way to live in the moment. Serendipity, serendipitous encounters with strangers, of being immersed in nature all the time, and having the feeling like you're living completely in the moment is like gold dust to a depressive. By the time I'd made it into North Wales, climb Mount Snowdon, and come back, I was getting messages from people all over the country. And I couldn't believe how open people were being about their own experiences. And how much this was connecting with people. And I know it was something really, really interesting. A lot of people who got in touch with me hadn't actually told anyone else. I was the first person they were telling. And I was like, "No one, no one else could understand." And I remember having that feeling as well. Because everything in my life led me to my depression, that awful feeling. You know, the situations I've been in, the people in my life, the decisions I've made, everything had just reached that one moment. I thought, "How the hell is anyone gonna understand that?" And ever. And that was the thread that was running through all these conversations I was having with people. They were like, "No one's gonna understand me because I've been through this, this, this, and this." And I realize it's not that's not what we should be talking about. It's the feeling itself. Because depression is it huge, like it's the biggest, most inclusive club in the world. Like anyone can join. It's evolving all the time. But the its biggest trick is convincing everyone who's part of that club that they're the only member. Isn't that clever? And everyone thinks that their stuff is the worst. And no one's ever had as bad as me. And all the guilt that goes with that. And everything. But that's because we're talking about the wrong things. If we start talking about the feeling itself, then people can get on board. Without people know what that's like. And that's when things turn into a community.
Last November, I experienced the true nature of community when I did this got involved in a BBC documentary where I and nine other people with mental health problems decided to tell our stories to the nation and run the London Marathon together. Initially, I thought it was just gonna be a, you know, something about mental health and endorphins and all the things I've been trying to sum up with in the walk. But as it went on, I realized that running was the backdrop. And it was more of the community and the achievement and all these things that running led to that were having a real positive impact on my mental health. Movement is the word. My coach, Chevy, is that guy. He used it instead of exercise. I think I still don't quite know his, you know, how his brain works. And that's why I love it. But but movement sort of isn't just about exercise. It's about moving forward. It's about progression. It's about working on yourself physically and mentally. And being there for other people. But being in the documentary, I mean, I was communicating by, you know, doing the walk before through video blogging. But I had the kind of safety net of of talking about it for, you know, talking into my phone on my own. And having the luxury of being able to trim out some of the waffle that is some of the stuff that I thought wasn't necessary later on before I posted it as a video blog. What my neighbor, Merit, told me to do, or forced me to do, even, was to put an unedited version of myself out there. And that's when I realized what a great leveller talking about your mental health openly is. Nobody's above anyone else in that conversation. I think a lot of how we present ourselves is is run by ego and the status. And I think a lot of that it governs how, you know, the things that we do and what we say. A discussion about mental health seems to suspend all that. And it levels the playing field. And that's great because it's a reminder that really, we're all on the same team. We all have mental health. And the more we learn about each other's, the more we learn about our own. Whether it was talking to one of the guys, my coach, you know, Nick Knowles, Prince Harry. You know, I don't if I've got a picture of Prince Harry actually. Oh, yeah, I totally do. So when we announced it, we were having our first child. That's libelous. That didn't happen. I didn't impregnate Prince Harry on the set of my Nova marathon. It's important that you know that. But I love this picture because we do look like mates. And if we look relaxed, and that's because I've had I've been lucky enough to have that we'll fight. We bobbin in the background there. We'd had this conversation, this 15-minute, 20-minute long conversation. And I was asking him how he was doing. He was asking me how I was doing. It was real. We leveled it all out. Like and I didn't feel beneath him. Prince Harry fell on top of him. Right, that stops now. That stops now. And breaking down the invisible barriers that society creates for us, barriers which make us question our place in the world. It's just good for everybody. Talking about mental health is what's best for society because deep down, everyone craves human connection.
The walk still going on. I'm I came down from Inverness. I've walked over 2,000 miles. And after this, I'll be heading back up there to to finish it up, back to John O'Groats, and then head back to Brighton. And hopefully finish sometime this winter. So I'm not gonna finish on that because it's not done yet. I want to I want to finish on something that I have achieved and something I'm proud of. Because I want to show that in the face of depression, people can achieve big things. And that's a powerful thing. This is something I wrote the day after I ran the London Marathon. And a year after I lay in bed that day about to kill myself. As I approached the marker at Mar 26, my body begins to feel heavy. It feels like with every step that I take, another layer of clothing goes on. By the time me and Poppy marched past the Houses of Parliament, I feel like I'm wearing a suit of armor. And then we run the last point two miles is harder than the 26 before it. It's almost impossible. Eight hundred meters to go. Six hundred meters to go. Four hundred. I feel like I'm running through water. Two hundred. The crowds cheer, snaps me back into reality. And I realize what happening, where I am, and what I'm about to do. I reach out and I grab Poppy's hand and do my best to hold it up. What I'm so weak, I could barely lift my own arm. My feet pound the road in unison, both knees strapped up, as we finally crossed the line in 5 hours and 52 minutes. And as my pace drops and I begin to walk, I feel strangely calm. I glide over to the people that have been there with me over the last six months. As I watch them cry and hug and congratulate, I take a step back and I make a promise to myself that whenever I feel worthless, whenever I feel worthless, whenever I feel alone and ashamed of the feelings I'm feeling, I'll play this moment over and over again in my head until it goes away. Because the feeling I have right now, I don't want to die. I want to live forever. Thank you. [Applause]