TRYING to rid yourself of Depression …

Kevin Maxwell by Lee Baxter

Kevin Maxwell by Lee Baxter

On 8th October 2013, I wrote a blog about Suicide. It wasn’t a post to seek attention or a cry for help, it was just a subject I wanted to write about and share with others who may be in a similar circumstance.

The week in which the blog was written only got worse for me, and I joked at the beginning of the next one that I hope I didn’t experience another such darkness as I did the one past.

The blog post did however cause attention, from friends that were worried and then there was the minority who took it as an excuse to send some unflattering comments because I expressed myself in an open and transparent way.

Since writing about suicide, I’ve kept myself to myself at worse avoiding contact with some of my closest friends which is not good (I know) because of shame and embarrassment.

Not of the post, but the condition I find myself riddled with.

Unless you do or have suffered with a mental illness, whether or not caused by others it is hard to explain how it consumes your body and soul. It is an awful illness, and one which you cannot readily see the ravage that it has done or is doing.

I have good days, but I have more bad. That’s not a ‘poor me’, it’s just the reality of depression.

Many think those suffering with depression can just ‘lift’ themselves out of it, but the truth is not all can.

The many doctors whom have seen me over the years and they are now in the double figures, have put my mental illness down to my ‘reactive’ negative experiences within the Police Service. One would think that would be good, as it will past one day – hopefully.

But, my point of the suicide blog and all the Social Media I have done in My Fight for Justice is … how can you ‘move on’, when those same people whom have already caused you a detriment continue to do so?

Just because something isn’t in the public, doesn’t mean it isn’t going on behind closed doors.

That’s why I started this blog, tweeting and the likes in the first place after becoming unwell so that Scotland Yard couldn’t silence me. That would have been the end of me, as I’d have had NO voice.

This week has been one of those not good ones, and other than when the full facts of what has taken place come out it will be hard for some to understand. I know that.

Depression is not just something you can just rid with a tablet, and an empathetic ear.

Some, do not make the journey to the end. That was the point of the suicide blog.

I may have succeeded in 2012 proving that the London Police Commissioner discriminated against me, harassed me, victimised me and leaked about me to The Sun newspaper all ‘because’ of my race and sexual orientation.

In 2013 after he appealed this, I may have succeeded with a High Court Judge in upholding what the first Employment Judge had ruled the year before.

But, does anyone in ‘their’ right mind think the Commissioner is going to allow ‘someone’ like me to get away with this ‘strive to hold him to account’ for the way the Metropolitan Police Service is led? No.

If you do, then maybe I’m not the only one who needs tablets!

In 2014, I have a three-week tribunal for his sacking of me and for what? Because, I had established flaws in the police policies and law towards black and gay people serving.

Everything the Met Police do to me, I have to challenge back – some privately with my lawyers at McCue and Partners LLP and some in a public forum as I am with this blog to help raise awareness of what happens with regards to discrimination within the UK Police Service.

I do all this, whist trying to fight the Black Dog that is my depression.

It is for this reason I get angry and I do, when, a man who is both white and straight tells me to ‘get a grip’ and live in the real world. The problem is, I do live in the real world.

In 2013, I am fighting the same causes that gay and black people have fought a century before.

The only thing I do know is that I will challenge the Police Commissioner and any Other until the last breath in my body for accountability, when they degrade me for being who and what I am – black and gay.

He/they know this.

As things have turned out, it is too late for me, but I will do my utmost to ensure that the detriments I have experienced do not happen to another gay and/or black person or that the police may ‘think twice’ about doing it.

My pursuit of justice has always been bigger than me, it’s about what is right and what is wrong.

History will judge me, but I want to leave a world where my nieces and nephews can live without the fear of being abused because of their race and/or sexuality.

I look to the British Courts now for the justice I believe I am entitled to, not because the Met has been ‘naughty boys and girls’, but because in Britain the law including discrimination is there for a reason and no one is above it.

Sometimes, an individual even if he is standing alone has to remind the majority of their ‘human’ obligations and my human ‘rights’.

I’m of the firm belief that, the TRUTH always prevails.

Take care.