5th over: England 32-0 (Crawley 16, Duckett 11) <\/strong>Four dots, then Crawley stomps forward, clobbers down the ground, and freezes in follow-through; lovely stuff. These two have found the perfect tempo here, attacking with prejudice but intelligence.<\/p>\n\u201cThe Graham Thorpe story is a tragedy of gargantuan proportions,\u201d writes Mark Lloyd. \u201cI have experienced extended bouts of depression and, in more recent years, anxiety, over a 33-year period and I feel I have a good understanding of what he went through. The last period of ill-health I had \u2013 the worst I\u2019ve had, in fact \u2013 was from mid-July to October 2023, and the best way I can sum it up the sensation is to say that I felt like I was living within one of those big transparent balls you can climb inside. I could see the world outside, albeit through a fuzzy haze, but I had no way of accessing it until late evening each day.<\/p>\n
As is common with depression, mine mercifully lifted significantly at the end of each day, so the hell of mornings always came with the vague knowledge and hope that by the end of the day I would get a couple of hours of relief (although one of the demonic tricks the illness plays is it convinces you that this is the one time it is never going to leave you). I spent whole days lying on my bed \u2013 this is how I listened to the last two Ashes tests, utterly bereft at not being able to extract even a flicker of pleasure from any of it.<\/p>\n
The tragedy for Graham and his family is that depression lifts \u2013 always, in my experience \u2013 and with the lifting of the depression comes a deep and ecstatic joy in simply being alive and, well, \u2018normal\u2019. This knowledge is no comfort whatsoever when one is in the depths of despair \u2013 if it was, depression would lose its power. There is a cruelty in depression which cannot be put into words. And nobody is immune. But and here is the thing I feel my family and friends will never fully understand (because they have seen what it can do to me) \u2026 if, in a parallel universe, I were offered the chance to go back in time to 1992 and erase all trace of depression from the long years ahead, I would refuse without hesitation. I know this to be true, but I have no way to adequately explain it. Rest in Peace, Thorpey – with the stress on the Peace.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even parts of us that are hard to deal with are part of us, and learning to love all of ourselves is one of the best ways of protecting mental health. Whitney had it right.<\/p>\n\n