People wouldn’t have thought that there was anything going wrong with my life. But that’s one of the toughest things about depression.
It’s called a silent killer for a reason. At my worst, I couldn’t leave my bedroom. I would be crippled with anxiety and fear, even though the logical side of my brain was telling me that I was being ridiculous. It could be the smallest of things, such as looking out of the window and seeing a huge gust of wind, and I would start panicking. I have sympathy for those who don’t understand, because unless you’ve experienced it, it’s pretty hard to explain. But I’ll try.
Depression and anxiety haven’t always had such a stranglehold on my life. I started out on my football journey by going through the Chelsea academy from as early as the under-10s. I was a typical happy kid, from what I remember: just football-mad and obsessed by everything Chelsea Football Club. My whole family were Chelsea – my Dad would hardly miss a game and always be in the pubs around the stadium, so for me to be able to join the club at such a young age was fantastic. Looking back now, it felt relatively normal at the time, as that was all I’d ever known.
In hindsight, I’ve been able to realise how fortunate I was to be a part of such an incredible team at Chelsea. I was still so raw. I’d had a fairly successful [2003-04] season on loan at Watford when I was 19 and thought that I’d probably found my level, until I received an unlikely call during the off-season. I was preparing to head
