Somehow it is March 10th and I only have two and a half weeks left in Perth before I fly to Cambodia for a fortnight, then back to London for a friend’s wedding. I feel like I’ve been here for no time at all. The first month involved me being in an intense state of shock, burnout, grief and exhaustion. However, it also a time of happiness catching up with family and other overseas-based Perthites while we had the chance. It was a time of wildly fluctuating emotions – having a really nice day-trip to Rottnest Island for example, despite hiding the fact I was silently crying on some of our bike rides. Having a ball celebrating my Dad’s birthday dinner before being hit with a wave of low mood – kind of a low pressure system for the heart, and retreating to my room in an attempt not to ruin everyone else’s night.

The smartest thing I did during that time was go and see a GP, who asked me to give him a rundown of what happened. I delivered a matter-of-fact summary of the end of 2016 re: work, money, relationship, dog and living situation (i.e. residing with my whole family in the suburbs with no car and no job). I think the poor guy thought I had finished after the first couple of things, but his eyebrows rose further up his face as I went on. I wrapped things up as quickly as I could, and he slowly leant forwards and typed into his notes ‘situational life crisis’. ‘OMG yas’ I thought,  that is exactly right. He went on to explain that as my anxiety, depression and severe stress symptoms (I did that scale thing) were due to external factors, he did not want to put me on any antidepressant medication. I was cool with that. He also said he could write me a mental health care plan which would give me six bulk-billed Psychology sessions. I was definitely cool with that! I was about to stand up and leave when he said “I’m going to write you a medical certificate for Centrelink”. Say what?! He told me that he thought it would be good for my mental health if I had a break from working…but that I needed money for my self esteem and to reduce stress. When I arrived I had sold some employee shares that Woolworths had given me at the age of 19, and that had given me a boost of cash when I first arrived. To see it steadily dwindling away, however, created a tightness in my chest about having to find a job when I badly needed rest. The thought of re-inserting myself into the Perth Speech Pathology scene when I had been out of the loop for 5 years was intimidating and triggered off all kinds of ‘I’m not good enough, I’m not worthy’ kind of thoughts. Although going through the initial process of signing on to the dole was arguably not great for my self esteem, I can see now that it was the best thing he could have done for me and I’m glad I stuck with that plan without giving into the internal monologue of “You’re a total loser”. I started working at the age of 14 and have not stopped since (besides a few months when I was travelling), so decided to (try to) stop judging myself so harshly, let myself get better, and take that sweet sweet Government cash. I knew I had another two months to start catching up with everybody else, so besides doing a few fun things, I kept my head low and just focused on getting better. I spent a lot of time with my Mum during the day as she took some time off work, and I gladly let myself be looked after. I caught up with my friends slowly and one or two at a time to keep things manageable.

At some point in the second month I stopped carrying my dog’s collar with me everywhere I went and moved on to another stage.

Standing Still

I touched down in Perth almost two months ago. To be honest there is not a lot I remember about the 5 months preceding the 31st of December 2016. I have some crystal clear memories – frantically handing over my caseload to a fresh new Speech and Language Therapist, trying not to cry; power walking down the road in Seven Sisters to pick up some sleeping pills for my flight; staring up at the ceiling from the floor of my friend’s apartment on Christmas Eve; a vet tapping my dog’s eyeball to check if he is dead. The rest of it is hazy – nights wrapped up watching Now TV in my new room, staying on ‘my’ side despite there no longer being a claim on the other side of the bed. My friends’ loving and concerned faces on the opposite sides of pub tables…more nights spent on their couches or in their spare rooms, politely asking for permission to do simple things like boil the kettle or charge my phone, wishes that are of course granted but nonetheless would have warranted no such enquiry in my own nonexistent home. There are other memories too – the faces of the clients I took on in those months, the parents I met working as a nanny, the date I went on and the nice way I turned him down. The moments I could have been nasty but instead handed roses to a man while he lit me on fire. The warm faces of the family I lived with between my separation and my departure from London, making a gingerbread house with their 3 year old and watching their 1 year old son start to walk. Lying on their couch at midnight screaming into an empty house after being turned away from the couch I had previously owned; walking aimlessly around Brixton for I don’t know how many hours wearing a giant faux fur coat, holding a cardboard box with some soap and half a bottle of red wine and my dead dog’s collar and a ball he chewed before he died, crying and wishing that somebody, anybody would see me and ask me what’s wrong. Wondering why the crazy people aren’t trying to talk to me and realising that tonight, I am the crazy person, the invisible one, the one you shouldn’t make eye contact with. Someone comes up to look inside my box and walks away. It’s finally happened – I’m not going to be OK. Calling my parents at 4.50am and not forming words, crying, wailing like I have never wailed before, so much that my Mum who never cries starts crying. I take a strong sleeping pill on my flight and chase it down with a whiskey, waking up with an alarming pain in my leg and on the other side of the world.

Now I am standing still. There are no longer three jobs to do across three counties. There are no pets to look after. There is no relationship to tend, no baby to keep trying for. No house savings to add to. There are friends and family who keep me alive. And there is me, slowly coming out of survival mode and wondering where to put all of this adrenalin, these memories and this anger.

World Mental Health Day

Sometimes, life creates a perfect storm and all your chickens come home to roost. In some cases, particularly for those one in three of us who struggle with mental health, they’re demon-chickens. Of course when these demon-chickens burst into the house and start flapping all over your furniture and scratching the rug, you want them to fuck off! You’re scared of them, you make feeble attempts to shoo them away but eventually you give up, let them take over and watch them shit all over your living room.

You understand that these are now your demon-chickens. You resign yourself to living with them for the rest of your life. You start to observe them with a kind of disgusted curiosity. From their behaviour you can tell one of them should be given the name Shame; it likes to roost next to its buddies Self-Loathing and Unworthiness. You notice that these three usually take over a roosting spot from Anger. Anger paces up and down the prime perch screeching at everyone and attacking anyone who comes near, all because it thinks that will make its injured wing feel better, before it runs out of steam and hides behind the curtains.

 

You can’t help but notice a toxic pair – the Obsessive Compulsive Hen and the Catastrophising Rooster, who start off by trying to groom each other carefully and wind up plucking all the feathers off each other’s backs. One of the most horrible, ugly demon-chickens is Paranoia, who broods under the coffee table and watches the other chickens, misinterpreting all of their signals for signs of attack and lashing out unpredictably. But the hugest and most destructive of all these demon-chickens is the Avian Prince Panic Attack. This anxious fowl sleeps for days and nights at a time, hiding away in the shadows of the room. You and all the demon-chickens know he’s there, and you know that if you can keep the others under control just enough so that he doesn’t wake up, you will be able to go about your every day life, working around these unwelcome house guests.

 

For a while after they first arrive, you wake up each day and hate the fact you have these assholes living with you. You think, what did I do to deserve this? If these chickens have come to roost in my house, then I must have done something wrong…all the other houses must have looked too nice and too normal to have chickens from hell take over. They must have been giving out free chicken-wire on your street one day and you were out doing something bad, and didn’t get any. You are too embarrassed to admit to your friends, family or work colleagues that you can’t do something as simple as shooing some birds from your home. You try to cover up the signs, but sometimes you turn up with a telltale feather stuck in your hair. Once or twice you try to storm the room, swinging wildly while the demon-chickens cluck and scurry but do not leave.

 

As time passes, you realise something has to be done. From your observations you understand that the more you glare at the chickens and feel bitter about them being in your house, the bigger and nastier they seem to grow. You realise that you have been unconsciously feeding them, on autopilot, every single day. No wonder they don’t want to leave!

 

You start to see these demon-chickens, these unwanted, unloved house guests in a different light. Instead of letting Shame, Self-Loathing and Unworthiness take over Anger’s perch when he’s finished screeching at everyone, you pick him up gently and put him back in the spotlight. Why does his wing still hurt? How did it get injured in the first place? It takes a while, but you commit to making sure he won’t be in so much pain. Shame, Self-Loathing and Unworthiness start getting fed a different diet made up of little pellets of compassion and forgiveness, and they start to look a bit less demonic and more sad and in need of a hug. Eventually these four fowl decide it might be better to have a wander around the back garden rather than making a mess in the living room all day and all night. Sometimes they still saunter back in, but they are greeted, fed some healthy food and gently sent back out, where they are happiest.

 

There are still some chickens roosting in your living room. That fucker in the shadows is still there, and sometimes you walk out of the house with a feather caught up in your hair. But somehow, you know that one day you will be able to enjoy yourself in your clean living room, with a back yard full of happy chickens.

 

Happy World Mental Health Day!