Mental Health
This article has a happy ending, I promise. But the middle bit was pretty hard to write and I would imagine is going to be pretty hard to read. If this sounds familiar then please get help immediately; if you know of someone for whom this sounds familiar then please check in on them. My recovery was only possible because friends were there for me — once I told them what was going on. There’s people out there who care; find them, reconnect with people, do things that make you happy. Trust me, there’s a way out.
“Like a dream you try to remember but it’s done
Then you try to scream but it only comes out as a yawn
When you try to see the world beyond your front door…”
SPORT saved my life one day.
It also first flagged a problem. State of Origin Game 2, 2019. Queensland (my home state) leading the series 1–0. A chance to seal the series… and I didn’t care.
Really didn’t care. Didn’t care that Queensland ended up being flogged, didn’t care when we levelled the scores early on, didn’t care enough to swear at the TV every time Phil Gould opened his mouth. I just didn’t care, and that was a problem.
I’d never not cared about rugby league’s State of Origin before. Even when living overseas and away from the coverage text updated from family quite literally decided my mood for the rest of the day. Inevitably the games I did watch we won, and while the logical part of your brain says this will definitely not continue on, who cares because yay we won!
And now I didn’t care.
“If you think you’ve had too much of this life
Well hang on
Cause everybody hurts
Take comfort in your friends…”
So I went and got help. The good people at Beyond Blue picked me up enough to get me to my GP, who in turn suggested anti-depressants. While the side-effects of these weren’t great, it was probably just as well after work’s only other full-time staff member at work died suddenly from a heart attack. He was one of the nicest people going around — and suddenly I was calling people to tell them the news, partially organising wakes, trying to stay strong while dealing with shitty little things that seemed minute given the bigger picture.
In amongst all that I finally received my Masters in Brisbane. Great to have family around, big celebrations in the city I’d not long moved out from? Yeah nah. Some people came along, some didn’t, and the whole thing felt more like an anti-climax than I’d like.
But things felt better, and when the prescription ran out I didn’t go back for more. Thought I was better. Thought wrong.
“But I’m not crazy, I’m just a little unwell
I know right now you can’t tell”
I work in a sport highly dependent on good weather conditions. This means no rain, and particularly no wind. We’d had a change in leadership and some new ideas, but the weather decided it wasn’t going to let us test those new ideas easily. Of the season’s first six events we had exactly one that went off without a hitch, with three completed in tough winds, one cancelled partway through, and one cancelled the night before.
Then the smoke came. The summer of 2019/20 will be remembered as a particularly bad one in Australia, as bushfires ended up lighting up most of the coast and a fair bit of the inland between Brisbane and Melbourne. While Canberra avoided the actual fires initially, the smoke haze covered our skies in December and didn’t leave again for good until February.
That haze seemed to match my mind. Each approaching event would see me anxiously checking weather apps to see whether the shitty wind forecast had improved (generally not), followed by worries about the people who once again wouldn’t be able to compete. At one event the wind turned nasty about the time I was due to drive up to Sydney for a national awards dinner, so instead of an orderly retreat up the highway I was trying to help junior rowers, then trying to remember what else needed to be handed over, then basically everything except getting up to Sydney safely, checking into a hotel then getting ready for a black tie event.
Little surprise I didn’t truly enjoy the event. At both the dinner and meetings the next day I was there in person but checked out in mind, part of these things without actually taking part.
My birthday didn’t help. Who gets excited when you’re turning 39, especially when you’re overweight, bald, disabled, permanently single, and coming to the realisation that your thirties — that decade where you were you going to become a proper adult — is nearly over with nothing to show for it?
By this point I’d begun to learn how to row as part of a plan to have para events in Canberra. I can remember having a great time at one of the training sessions one Saturday morning, then getting home and pretty much crying to myself back at home for the rest of the day.
By late December I’d just about had enough. While I’d started to speak to people at work — including the boss, who was quite shocked — I couldn’t see a way out of my funk.
“I never thought I’d die alone
I laughed the loudest who’d have known?”
I headed home for Christmas, still that shell of a human. I was always going to make it up there, was always going to catch up with friends and family. There were great moments — sitting on the couch with Mum, her husband and my sister, getting Siri to play different songs. Catching up with old work buddies and coming away having not laughed so hard in a very long time.
But goodbyes were hard. They are when you think that you’re actually saying goodbye.
I’d have to get into the car and drive off pretty quickly lest I started crying. That was particularly true the day I left Mum’s to start the long drive back to Canberra, because there was every single chance that was going to be the last day of my life.
Didn’t know how it was going to happen. Had to look like an accident though, otherwise the insurance wouldn’t pay out on the car and my family would be out of pocket. Plenty of hills and curves the route I was travelling, couldn’t be too hard.
Leaving Brisbane I decided to catch the radio commentary on what became the final day of the 2019 Boxing Day Test between Australia and New Zealand. Now to say I love cricket barely begins to hint at things: a fairly hefty proportion of books at home are cricket books, while there’s rarely a time I’m on the internet and not looking up Cricinfo at least once.
Or twice. Or two hundred times, but who’s counting?
Anyway, back to the cricket. Australia batted for a little bit before declaring their second innings closed, with New Zealand having to either bat for nearly two days or make 488 runs to avoid defeat. I wasn’t expecting too much from the Kiwis, particularly not after star batsmen Kane Williamson and Ross Taylor were both out cheaply.
But a bloke in his third Test kept fighting. Tom Blundell was a wicketkeeper pressed into opening after some very poor form from the recognised batsmen, and he took his opportunities and stayed in.
And in.
And in.
By the time Blundell was the last man out, I’d reached the outskirts of Armidale, just 30 minutes from my booked accommodation for the night. Instead of thinking about trees and corners, I’d spent the day thinking about my favourite sport.
And it saved my life.
“I had a one-way ticket to a place where all the demons go
Where the wind don’t change
And nothing in the ground can ever grow
No hope, just lies
And you’re taught to cry into your pillow
But I survived”
That’s not to say I was magically better. I still wasn’t myself at New Year’s Eve, the thick, yellow skies and world’s worst air quality providing what’s proven to be an apt introduction to 2020. The bushfires burning in every direction around Canberra finally came close in late January; the resulting state of emergency as people prepared for a potential repeat of the 2003 disaster meant we had to yet again cancel an event.
If that wasn’t enough, in late January I got caught in a massive hail storm that did significant damage to my car. The insurers declared it a repairable write-off, which meant I was now minus wheels coming up to our busiest time of the year.
But.
I’d begun the recovery process. Three of my closest friends live in Canberra, so I started to catch up with them more. Jase & I would catch up for what we called “mental health coffees”; Cagey & I for drinks and swapping lies; Lloydy & I for trivia, which had the added bonus of significant bar tabs for the winners.
I’d also gone to see my GP and began to see a psychologist. Her first suggestion was simple — every time I felt myself sinking into the pit, do something that distracted me. I’d already taken a couple of day trips around south-eastern NSW as a way of distracting myself, with the combination of good music and new scenery enough to lift my spirits. I then went out and started taking pictures again, then expanded to writing some stories about my time as a tour guide.
I also started exercising a bit more. I’d already been doing the rowing training and really got into that as I’d promised the mother of an intellectually-disabled rower that I’d be ready to race him in a para event in February. Midway through February we did exactly that, with the support the local rowing community gave me just amazing. So many people came up and said good luck before the race (including a national champion); but the best part was listening to Cameron laughing his head off as he finally competed in a regatta, five years after he’d begun rowing.
The weight started to come off too, what with the rowing training, newfound need to ride my bike to get to and from work, and group fitness classes a rowing friend encouraged me to join. People started noticing, which never hurts the ego.
Bubbling away through all this was a virus that was now seriously spreading throughout the world.
“You know I’m still standing better than I ever did
Looking like a true survivor, feeling like a little kid
I’m still standing after all this time”
Mid-March was supposed to be it, our biggest weekend of racing in seven years. Six schools visiting from interstate, all our local clubs, the Governor-General of Australia presenting awards — the pressure was on.
Then around 12 hours before the start, it wasn’t happening any more. The COVID-19 pandemic, and the unknowns around it, meant that our big event was cancelled the night before.
Then when I got to work the following Monday, I got told to go work from home for at least a couple of weeks, which turned into months. I live by myself, so this meant I was literally going to be alone more often than not. I’d also be away from family after Queensland closed the border to non-residents, meaning I couldn’t get up there to visit my newborn nephew for the first few months of his life.
This is where the supports I started to build up came into their own. Over the coming months I started going to for walks and rides with friends, getting to know some other people that I’d not spent much time with previously. I’d ride or walk down to a friend’s cafe for a coffee and a chat, often listening to music if I decided to walk the 6km each way.
It’s also been a great time to catch up with old friends living interstate and overseas. There was the Zoom drinks with former work colleagues, most of which had been stood down. Two North American friends like to remind me there’s a pretty unique character floating around inside me; writing stories about my tour-guiding past has also triggered memories of a happy, charismatic young chap who always had a smile on his face.
And somehow, despite all the other shit going on, I got happier.
There’s been challenges. I’m still permanently single, although the exercise has meant I’m in as good a shape as I’ve been in at least 10 years. If I’m brutally honest it’s still one of those things that nags at me and can cause me to slip back down the pit if I start thinking about missed opportunities over the years.
I still don’t know what I want to do when I grow up, or even where I want to live/work next.
I also know that the pit I fell down won’t ever be far away. Hopefully next time though — with friends and family as support — I won’t have to rely on sport to get me off the bottom.
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