We went roller blading over the school holidays. It was my first time. We arrived to loud music, children shrieking, the clank of skates hitting each other, and the thump of bodies crashing into the barriers. Roaming skate instructors, gave snippets of advice to the inept among us:
‘Lean forward and put your hands on your knees. Don’t look at the ground.’
With each instruction the tension in my body ramped up.
In our first world society martyrdom is more insidious than the lick of flames on skin, the sizzle as fire catches hair. If you don’t count what can happen on social media, we don’t have public disembowellings. And the causes we sacrifice ourselves for are often not great, necessary, or noble.
Martyrdom today is working until midnight every night doing a job you hate until it breaks you, without investigating your options. It is smugly telling your mothers’ group that you breastfed your baby as your cracked nipples dripped blood, because you were doing what was ‘best for your baby’. It’s going to work even though you’ve got the flu, because you believe you are indispensable. It is having Sunday lunch with your extended family every week even though it drains you emotionally.
Most of us fall into the trap of martyring ourselves for something at some stage. I did so early on in my career.
Are you aware something incredibly special happened last weekend? I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t been a participant.
A group of magicians gathered in a non-descript conference room last Thursday evening, Friday, and Saturday. We had all been chosen to be part of this gathering. To begin with this meeting resembled thousands of others. Polite introductions, bottles of water, ring bound folders, pens, name tags, dishes of individually packaged mentos lollies on the table, a white board. The reason for meeting could have been anything.
(Confronting content ahead)
One evening about eight years ago:
I pretend to share dinner with my husband on our deck. The air between us is loaded with the conversation we are about to have. I drag my eyes from my untouched food up in his direction and ask:
‘Why can’t you just let me go? Haven’t I suffered enough?’
He explodes:
‘How can you be so selfish? I’d be explaining to our children why you left us for the rest of my life.’
The tiny bit of energy I have left coalesces into a red-hot ball of anger
‘Don’t you dare call me selfish after everything I have been through. Ever! I wouldn’t be leaving you. I’d be doing you all a favour.’
How do you learn to live with the difficult truths of your life? The ones you can’t just step over and leave behind?
Confirmation of my Bipolar 1 diagnosis was one of those truths for me. For several years after my first episodes of illness, we didn’t know whether we were dealing with Postnatal Psychosis or Bipolar Disorder. In my mind one was transient, the other a life sentence. Each time I’d press my psychiatrist for a definitive diagnosis he’d say:
‘We’ll have to wait three to five years to see if you have another episode.’
This answer frustrated me immensely. I wanted to put the whole experience of being mentally ill behind me.
I had plans for this post to be much softer than the last. No politics or indignation…
I started with excellent intentions. I slept in, made banana pancakes for breakfast, a big plunger of coffee, got the paper, and planned to read about the royal wedding preparations, the politics of which I am not particularly invested in.
So, I opened The Weekend Australian. I never got to the royal wedding preparations on page three.
On the front page the following words tore at my eyeballs:
‘Killer grandfather had acute depression’
Have you ever heard or seen a word or phrase that made you feel intensely uncomfortable with who you are?
Until about eight years ago, I had never been on the receiving end of discriminatory language. And yet it managed to find a way into my white, straight, agnostic, charmed life. The first time it happened, I was walking through a shopping centre. The words assaulted me suddenly, shook the breath out of me: ‘PSYCHO BITCH’
I don’t have a best friend. I have several.
My first best friend and I shared the ages five to thirteen in a tiny village in southern Germany. We explored our world freely. The church bells and the colour of the sky were our only reminders of when to go home. We played in the woods. We watched frogspawn turn into tadpoles. We climbed trees. We built igloos and snowmen. We ate wild raspberries and blackberries straight off the hedge. We rode our bikes everywhere. Then, one rainy October afternoon, everything changed.
Where were we? That’s right. We’d left me in a state of catatonic depression. If you haven’t read Part 1 of this post, which dropped yesterday, I suggest doing so now.
The first time I slid into catatonic depression, my psychiatrist tried anti-depressant after anti-depressant while I was hospitalised. Nothing worked. I was still brand new to mental illness. Two months before, I’d suffered my first psychotic episode after the birth of my first child. My First Time
I had gone from mentally healthy for thirty-two years, to experiencing some of the worst psychiatric symptoms in existence. I felt as though I had entered a parallel universe. When ECT was recommended I had a sense of being at the end of the line. I didn’t know much about it.
(Please note – this post contains vivid descriptions of severe clinical and catatonic depression)
Let’s play a quick game of word associations: If I say Electroconvulsive Therapy or Electroshock Therapy, you think…What?
‘They still do that?’ is a common response. A half jokey reference to ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’ is another. If you thought there was stigma surrounding psychiatric medications (and there is), ECT takes the stigma, myths, misinformation, and at times insults to a new level.
Thought Food 