When All You Want To Do Is Walk

2015 has been the most exhausting year of my life. What have I been doing to wear myself out so? Nothing. 2015 has been a year of weighty, despairing, dreadful nothing. The year where the proverbial straw broke the proverbial camel’s back. I can explain, but I’m a writer who cannot resist building tension.I start not with the beginning, but with the turning point: I love music. It’s my life blood, second only to coffee and actual blood in its importance in keeping me functioning. It’s a cliche laden sentiment, but music most definitely speaks to us in its clever little musical ways, and only sometimes do we listen. On one day unlike any other this year I was listening to the song Choices by one of my favourite bands To Kill A King, and I really heard it. “All you wanna do is walk,” Ralph sings, “it’s all you wanna do.” I don’t know how many times I have listened to this song but that was the day it got me and got me good. Song’s intention aside (and wildly disregarded), I was walloped in the guts with a realisation. Yes, all I want to do is walk. 
That was the turning point.

This is the beginning: I have been dealing with depression in some form since I was 10. At the age of 26, I finally sought treatment, was diagnosed with clinical depression and anxiety, and started medication. And I did it because a song by To Kill A King made me realise it was a choice I could and needed to make.

On New Year’s Eve 2014 I had a doctor’s appointment and found out that I had tonsillitis. It was a victorious let down, after being sick with tonsillitis at Christmas the previous year and having felt under the weather for the final months of 2014. Well shit, it was essentially forecast, written in the stars. I got a double course of antibiotics and used up all my sick leave. Two weeks, I thought, I will kick this thing.

I didn’t. I stayed sick. I kept going back to the doctor, courses upon courses of antibiotics, I was convinced I was losing my mind as blood tests kept coming back saying everything looked good. I was worn out to the point I would cry everyday upon waking. I had no sick leave, exhausted and miserable, crying on the way to work I would choke out to whoever was driving me, “I can’t do this anymore.” But I did. I continued on, frequently feeling like things would be better if I just died. Having had what I up until recently believed to be your everyday run of the mill depressive tendencies since childhood, I’ve always lived by a specific credo: it could be worse. I can handle this, I always have. In March I had an appointment with an ear, nose & throat specialist where I was diagnosed with chronic tonsillitis. The only fix was removing said permanently infected tonsils. A light at the end of the tunnel.

This light taught me an important lesson though. Yes, you may see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it very well might be the way out, but you should never let that light fool you into thinking there won’t be anymore trains until you’re out of the dark.

I had to wait a month and half for surgery. During those six weeks I very quickly reached the point where my arse was handed to me by chronic tonsillitis and depression. For the first time in my life, two anvils. Chronic tonsillitis falling on top of the one I’d grown accustomed to carrying my whole life. Over 15 years of justifications of it could be worse were realised when it did. I’ve lived my life with this idea about the weight of which I can bear and whether or not chronic tonsillitis was a feather or a dumbbell, it hit the scale and it broke. In the lead up to my surgery I spoke to a lot of people. I was told that I would recover and be like a new person. I wouldn’t know myself, people told me.

When I was really young a teacher at school discussed depression with our class. They said depression made you tired and people that you know, if they’re depressed, they could walk right past you like they didn’t recognise you. I began from a young age to regard depression as something always wholly transforming. Which wasn’t happening to me. I was never able to regard depression as a pick axe, chipping away at resolve, sometimes sharp, sometimes dull, wearing it away over time. But that’s exactly what it was for me. I had surgery, and nothing changed. My tonsils were gone, but I was still miserable. Immobilised by depression yet wrenching myself from it whenever it was necessary to seem okay. I stopped keeping a journal which I’ve always done, I felt there was nothing about my life worth recording anymore. I stopped talking about my health, convinced there was no way out of the black hole, sounding off would have just echoed.

This admission about my mental health will likely surprise many people who know me. When I’m described by those who like me best I’m described in many ways, funny and sarcastic, smart, a control freak, kind, and more often than not, happy, positive. I am those two things, but with supreme effort. It has never been easy for me to be optimistic. It’s not part of my nature, I’m prone to being dramatic and negative. Like I was born a weathered little pessimist. As a child I was often nicknamed ‘Prima Donna’. As a teenager I thought being sad all the time gave me a cool ‘dark’ edge. But in my early 20s I made a very conscious decision to try and change my outward attitude. Because yes, inwardly I was being regularly cast into bouts of depression that made me pessimistic and misanthropic, but no matter how I looked at it, I’ve never wanted anyone else to feel that way. So I fight tooth and nail to encourage some form of happiness for others. I want people to feel safe and loved, because it’s often so hard for me to feel worthy of those things.

Maybe it’s a shocking revelation. Depression has been an unacknowledged and essentially unidentified part of my life almost forever now. It’s almost like a terrible secret. This thing in my life that has been so overwhelming and covert. I’ve been struggling for such a long time. I couldn’t do it anymore.

As September drew to a close I saw my GP about depression and started seeing a psychologist. I was prescribed anti-depressants and continue therapy. It’s been over two months now and I feel better. I feel good and like I’m getting more better. There’s so much potential for feeling better now. Having clinical depression described to me by a psychologist was one of the most clarifying moments of my life. Out of nowhere, it feels like the ground vanishes beneath you, you drop. That’s been my life for so long. In this long year of abysmal health, sadness and existence feeling like a void, I exhausted every avenue in which depression was some kind of choice. It was always so much bigger than me. I could hide it, bury it, pull the covers over it even as it grew and overwhelmed. I kept on trying because it had always been okay, until it wasn’t.

I can’t deny that I’m scared talking about all of this so candidly, don’t get me started on how incredibly self-indulgent I feel. But in spite of our best efforts, society continues to hold a stigma around mental illness. I quietly dealt with depression for more than half my life because I never dared to consider it was an option, my problems weren’t valid. I live in Australia, I’m never hungry or without shelter. I’m so lucky in my life. And I am so lucky, because I’m okay and even though I suffered bouts of depression throughout a lot of my childhood, I never felt like I wasn’t taken care of. But I want to talk about it. I want to help in any little way I can to normalise mental illness because my heart breaks for any other 10 year old in this world in the situation I was who doesn’t know what’s wrong with them. I want people to know they’re not broken or hopeless. It’s important that anyone dealing with mental health issues knows that people are on your side. There isn’t a limited amount of help in the world, it’s there for you and you’re allowed to ask for it. It doesn’t have to be so fucking hard all the time.

I return again to my love of music and the way it’s been invaluable comfort to me. Another one of my favourite bands, Bastille, whose album Bad Blood became an indispensable safe haven of stories and armour when listened to over the past year. Bastille have a song called Weight of Living, Pt. 1. One line goes, “it’s the sun in your eyes.” I’ve listened to that song a hundred times, it cuts straight to how I’ve fallen out and landed as this tangled year ends. It’s like looking up and out and being overwhelmed by all the things that can happen, good or bad. Hopefully good. In my first therapy session when my psychologist spoke about clinical depression he said treatment was like the ground rising back up to meet your feet. You can walk.

If you or someone you know is experiencing mental health issues I recommend Beyond Blue and The Black Dog Institute for information, advice, and support x