food and the modern seb, part four: supersize, me?

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Prior posts – part one, part two, part three

1990 – At DC’s nightclub.

At age 19 I had my first relationship. It only lasted 11 months but the way it ended effected me for years afterwards.  Shocking to say but I’ve discovered that if you don’t value yourself you end up making some pretty bad relationship choices. I know, right? Projectseb.com – bringing the revelations since 2010. 

It turned out that my first boyfriend – this seemingly kind, smart and handsome 27 year old I’d all but moved in with was an escort. He’d met me through friends, fallen for me and decided to get a legitimate job and ‘go straight’ as it were.

Three months in he’d started seeing clients again but kept this, as well as a return to amphetamine abuse hidden from me.

After eleven months he became so worried about me finding out he ended the relationship – waking me up at two in the morning by burning me with a lighter. He then screamed at me to get dressed, pulled me downstairs and threw me out of his house.

He didn’t speak to me again and a month later a friend of his told me about the escort work and drug use. He said my ex had decided that making me hate him was the easiest way to get me away from ‘the situation’ without hurting me. He did this because he loved me.

Now you see why I crossed out ‘smart’ in the preceding paragraph.

I was already heartbroken and blaming myself for the breakup and this news pushed me over the edge. That night I had a complete meltdown and ended up walking the streets, alternating between fits of crying and furiously hitting myself.

I ended up on the front porch of a friend’s house and the poor guy opened his door to find me standing there hyperventilating,with red welts all over my face and arms, unable to speak.  He put me in his bedroom but he couldn’t calm me down and eventually had to call another friend to come and get me.

While this is not the most flattering of incidents (I should delete my online dating profiles now, yeah?) it highlights the mindset of someone who receives abuse to the point where their self esteem is all but destroyed so I believe it’s important to share. Validation from others feels so amazing when you don’t like yourself and it’s so gut wrenchingly painful when it’s taken away.

When you’ve spent your formative years being beaten up and called disgusting names it’s frightening how adept you become at carrying on the tradition as an adult, in your own head.

If so many people acted that way toward me there I knew there had to be a reason, and in my mind that reason was plain and simple. Me.

Teachers used to ask me that all the time. If I was found with the shit kicked out of me in the boys toilets –  ”Well, you must have done something to deserve it – what did you do to them?”

Over the next year my hatred of myself became stronger and my bulimia got worse. I was eating and purging several times on most days and it started to show. Already thin, I dropped more weight and felt tired all the time. I wasn’t happy with anything in my life and would cry over the smallest things.

I was never skeletally thin but there was a period where my head looked too large for my body and lack of nutrition was beginning to effect my hair, skin and nails. My obsession with the way I looked and my weight had created so much more for me to find fault with.

Bulimia taking it’s toll – smiling with my friend Justin in 1991 but looking incredibly unwell.

There were times that I would get dressed to go out when I looked in the mirror I’d become furious with how ugly I was and tear apart or cut my clothes – often something I’d bought that day – and throw them across the room in a rage before dissolving into sobs on the floor.

I always felt I looked disgusting. I had a picture in my mind of how I wanted to look and the mirror always showed me a revolting, fat freak.

I met my second partner around this time. He was the first person I’d ever spoken to about my problems with eating and he was an incredible listener.

The relief of not constantly trying to hide my problems went a long way toward me starting to get better.  With his support and a year’s work with a psychologist I was only purging once a month.

The key was to use my obsession with my supposed ugliness. My fear of losing more hair and destroying my teeth eventually won out over the need to vomit the food back up.

Still too thin in 1991 but getting some much needed help.

Talking about my past helped but we weren’t able to get to the root of my self esteem issues and I was still completely addicted to food. Around the same time I stopped working in clubs and money became very tight for a few months.

I had to stop seeing the psych but it didn’t seem like we were making progress at the time so I wasn’t too worried. My concerns were now all financial.

After rent and bills were paid there was usually $30 left over to feed two people for a week – and one of us was a food addict. It was awful. I sold off some of my belongings and he used to go to his parent’s house and take food from their pantry.

After a while our phone was cut off and things got so bad one week we ran out of food, soap, toilet paper and toothpaste. We ended up having to use old newspaper and showered twice a day. I drank litre after litre of water to try and keep my stomach full.

The whole time both of us were too proud (read: stupid) to ask anyone for help.

We sometimes could only afford to have one meal in a day and I wasn’t coping mentally. I couldn’t concentrate, I couldn’t sleep properly and I felt physically uncomfortable  constantly – a feeling of dread and panic filled the pit of my stomach and didn’t budge.

Taking away my ability to binge eat didn’t cure me of the disease, it made the need stronger than ever. It’s very similar to being in ‘fight or flight’ mode, but there’s nowhere you can run and nothing to fight. I thought about killing myself most days.

When I found full time work in a cafe later that year we were allowed staff meals. The owners charged us $4.00 for anything on the menu and I ate myself sick every shift on the large portions as well as the leftovers from patron’s plates. I’d cut away the part they’d been eating from and gorge on the rest.

My body, deprived of caloric intake for months began to store fat and my weight ballooned.

These photos were taken five months apart. By this time I’d stopped purging and was putting weight back on, there’s about 10kg difference here.

 

I remember the service station near us opening up for 24 hour trading and night after night standing at the counter at 3am in a daze, holding packets of crisps, chocolate bars and a tub of ice cream. I hadn’t wanted to walk there but I had.

I could hear my own voice in my head screaming at me ‘SOMEONE FUCKING HELP ME. I DON’T WANT THIS. I DON’T WANT TO DO THIS’ as I smiled at the attendant and handed over money I’d earmarked for our electricity bill. I did this night after night as part of my routine. As soon as I’d eaten it all I’d promise myself I’d stop. But I couldn’t.

The deli at the end of my street knew my order as soon as I’d walked in. I worked nights at the cafe, so woke up at 11.30am and went straight there for a large chips, choc milk, a bag of Burger Rings and a large fried rice. This was breakfast every day.

At 2:30pm I’d leave the house and start the half hour walk to work. I’d buy another ice cream or packet of chips from the deli (no doubt they retired early based on how much I spent with them) and eat as I made my way up the hill. I’d stop at the next deli and do the same, finishing the ‘snack’ just before I walked in.

On my first break I’d try and find an orphaned slice of cake (the last slice in every display was seldom bought because it ended up looking dry and a bit sorry for itself) and then at dinner I’d have two large toasted foccaccias loaded with cured meats, sun dried tomatoes and cheese with a giant milkshake.

By this time I’d been promoted to shift supervisor and the owner allowed us to have anything we wanted as long as it was recorded – I can only think that he assumed my partner was coming in to eat with me because he never questioned the amount of food I wrote down and it was a lot.

After my shift there would be another half hour walk home, then a trip to the service station to complete the day’s ritual before beginning it all again the next day.

On my days off I would go into the city and go to two separate food halls, gorging on huge combination plates of Chinese and Thai food.

Once my weight hit around 100kg/220lb (I was 78kg/171lb at my thinnest) I stayed at that weight for  a couple of years, the amount of walking I did daily thankfully stopped further gain and kept my health in check.

My cholesterol and blood pressure were normal and I didn’t get short of breath walking long distances. Physically I was overweight but doing okay. Mentally I was slipping into a deep depression and  agoraphobia really started to take hold.

I stopped wanting to go outside except for work or to get food and I’d hide if someone knocked on the door.

My partner had long given up on trying to talk to me about my eating – it only lead to arguments and I’d storm out of the house because it was just too confronting.

Eventually the toll of watching me channel my depression and self hatred into slowly destroying myself with food got too much for him and after four years he finally left.

At this point, people reading this will either know exactly what I mean or will be thinking there’s no such thing as a food addiction. I can completely understand this viewpoint, after all – surely we’re in control of what we put into our bodies? It’s a conscious thing. I wonder why some of us lack this control – be it psychological or a physiological disposition to an eating disorder. Unfortunately I have yet to find the answer myself.

Another question that comes up a lot- If you feel hungry all the time, why not just eat more but choose healthier foods?  I met a man a few years ago with a terrible binge eating disorder that managed to force himself onto binging on fruit and vegetables.  It didn’t help. He was still destroying his body. Sure he was thin, but he had an eating disorder. The food a person binges on is only a tiny component of the disease.

The feeling – for me at least – of trying not to binge on particular foods is like trying to hold your breath until you pass out.  Your body will fight and fight and fight and you have to exhale. Doing that brings immediate relief to all the pressure. An eating disorder does this but the fight is in your head.

Next: food and the modern seb, part five: exercise to exorcise.

 

 

late night perth – radio interview

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A big thanks to @jasonjordan and @cooksphere for having me on their show Friday night. I got to share some thoughts on the effects of childhood bullying longer term and stay after my segment to watch the guys in action, radioing it up like a boss etc etc. Poor Jason even put up with two hugs from me even though he’s not really the hugging type. He’s good people!

I’m sorry that I don’t have a copy to share online but imagine me discussing this post with a couple of awesome dudes interspersed with classic rawwwk and it’ll be as if you were there.

You can listen to the boys if you’re in Perth 10pm->late every Friday night or online at 96fm.com.au  and even Tweet at them using the Twittertron Machine – @latenightperth.

food and the modern seb, part three: modelling should help, right?

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In previous posts I’ve discussed my relationship with food as a boy and in my early teens. I stopped binging on food when I left school and things were ‘normal’ for a while. I rarely thought about food and was just your average teenager with a penchant for disco.

At 16 I got my first full-time job, bringing home a staggering $140 a week. Would I be a philanthropist with my newfound millions? Perhaps, but I had houses and boats to purchase first and I knew that if I worked hard and saved every cent I could, I’d be able to afford a 1972 poo brown Torana and part ownership in an outdoor toilet by the time I’d retired at 95. I was nothing if not ambitious.

I worked in a record store (dream job) under the management of a woman called Perri (dream shattered) who on my first day refused to speak to me because she only liked working with girls. She left it up to the other staff to tell me that she didn’t want me there and she’d told the boss it was her or me. Thanks for the welcome.  That first day was the nicest time I had working there, because she turned out to be incredibly vindictive and became almost pathological in her hatred of me.

I’m pretty sure she lived on a staple diet of live rats, lemons and barbed wire to help maintain her level of nastiness. She worked out very early on that I was easily rattled and took great delight in pointing out to the other staff how stupid and clumsy I was.

So…. I told her to fuck off and walked out of there with my head held high. I lodged a workplace harassment complaint and successfully took her to court. She was fired and I received thousands of dollars in compensation which I used to record a duet with Dannii Minogue. It went to number one in several european countries and I still live off the residuals today.

Well, that was the fantasy at least.

No, instead of complaining I put up with it and when it was time for lunch I ate like I was about to go into hibernation. I’d start at the cafe opposite the store and get a large chips and a hot ham and swiss cheese roll with mayonnaise. Then I’d go to the food hall around the corner and buy a coke and a large Chinese combination. I had an hour, so there was plenty of time to scoff it all down and I always ate as if there were bonus points for not chewing. Don’t be too grossed out though, I always used a napkin. I’m classy, me.

Why did I do this? No idea. It was a compulsion. With apologies to Nike, I just did it. And when I moved out of home it got worse. I got another job at another record store where the staff were great to work with (I left Perri a badge that said ‘I’m a fucking bitch’ and a card that told her to wear it with pride) and I continued with my lunchtime binges, always one lunch followed by another but by now I was doing the same with breakfast and dinner too.

1989: New job in at the coolest record store in town.

It was around this time, in the staff toilet at the top of the building that I tried purging for the first time. Someone I worked with mentioned that they’d been so drunk on the weekend they’d had to make themselves throw up (how very rock and roll, right?). I asked how someone makes themselves be sick and they told me.

Being the perfectionist that I am, I mastered the art of un-eating in a matter of days and thus a bulimic was born. It wasn’t a weight thing for me to begin with. I just wanted to stop feeling like I was about to pass out because of the all-you-can-eat-and-then-some-that-you-shouldn’t-and-come-on-you-should-stop-now-you’ll-do-yourself-an-injury sessions I was having. The craving for food was constant, confusing and uncomfortable. Fear of not having food caused me to spiral into a panic.  I’ve described it before as having ants swarming over your brain and you not being able to get to them because of your skull.

Food always stopped that feeling but I needed to eat a hell of a lot and the relief was always short lived. Half an hour later I would feel physically sick, guilty and completely disgusted with myself. Every binge was followed with promises to myself that I would stop.

The danger for me was that I discovered purging was followed by a frighteningly dangerous reset of my feelings.

After I’d emptied the contents of my stomach I felt as if I’d suddenly regained control of myself.  Peaceful. Cleansed. Unbroken. My mind was quiet and it was if the binge had never occurred. I had clarity of mind. The trap of bulimia.

I started going to clubs four nights a week and danced for hours on end. I eventually got work as a podium dancer in a gay club (stop laughing!)  and the intensity of the sets – these were the rave days where we flung ourselves around like windmills – meant that my body didn’t succumb to the bloating so many bulimics suffer from.

I was in the best shape of my life, but I hated my looks and was convinced that I was hideously ugly. I’d frequently spit in the face of my reflection in the mirror at home and had fits of rage where I’d punch the sides of my head over and over, furious at how disgusting and fucked up I was.

1990: About to go and bounce about on a podium to techno for $25 an hour. Don’t mention the pants. We never talk about the pants.

I’m ashamed to say that I still occasionally have these moments of violent self hatred. It’s deeply rooted and connected to thoughts about myself I developed the around the time I became bulimic. It’s very rare that it will occur but it’s still there, all these years later. Yay, bulimia.

I met a woman in one of the clubs that owned a model/casting agency I did some work for a couple of designers in fashion shows and some magazines. She also got me gigs as a backup dancer for club acts and a truly shameful two gig career as a rapper in a truly awful house music act called ‘Lurex Groove’ – fronted by a lesbian singer who later became a hooker.

1991: Hipster Seb doing blue steel before it was invented.

I got fired from my day job because I was always turning up late, looking like a zombie but I was getting plenty of club work. Of course purging had never been so important and I found new levels of obsession with my body. Sure, I ended up with some cool stories and there were some short lived boosts to my ego but I used it as a justification for my eating disorder. This ended up damaging my mental health further and created the first seeds of the agoraphobia that dictates so much of my existence today.

1991: “You’re trapped behind a weird membrane, you’re wearing a disco shirt and have an over-gelled caesar cut. Now look sad about all that… PERFECT!” *flash*

 

Next: food and the modern seb, part four: supersize, me?

food and the modern seb, part two: winning at lunch, losing at manboobs.

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In yesterday’s post I explained my relationship with food, glorious food up until the age of 11 or so – not the biggest eater, a bit fussy and never welcomed into the local chapter of the clean plate club. In my last year of primary school that began to change.

The author being all Harry Highpants in February 1984. Why didn’t anybody tell me?

I was being bullied at lunch so my parents thought it would be a good idea to eat at my grandparents house which was diagonally across from the school. Excited about not having to sit through daily performances of the off-broadway musical ‘You’re A Poofter And We’re All Going To Kill You’ complete with full ensemble punch-choreography performed by our school’s most talented bogans I jumped at the opportunity.

My Grandmother, who we all called Dot (her name was Dorothea) made a cooked lunch every day – mostly roast chicken or beef with oil brushed potatoes and pumpkin, some peas cooked in butter with diced onion and half a bacon stock cube and corn on the cob. This would be accompanied by freshly warmed bread rolls and thick onion gravy. It was all incredibly rich, salty and delicious.

I can recall the first time, about five weeks into me having lunch with them, both Dot and my Grandfather becoming so excited over me completely clearing my plate that there were hugs and declarations of pride that made me feel like I’d just done the most amazing thing a grandson could ever do and there would be some sort of town parade in my honour later that afternoon.

The next day I was given a bigger serving, which I finished too – not wanting to disappoint after winning my lunchtime audience over the day before. After another month or so of this I was eating more than both of them and it wasn’t long before I started gaining weight.  Helpfully, after years of begging me to eat more my Mum pointed out in front of one of my friends “You’re putting it on a bit mate, you’ve got boobs!”

The author, November 1984. “Got manboobs, might as well have some cake!”

Having no self esteem due to years of daily bullying at school, the comment hit hard and at age twelve I’d found yet another thing to loathe about myself. In an attempt to fill my stomach so that I wasn’t so hungry I started eating tissues. I’d sit there with a box and slowly tear strips off to chew on as I did my homework or read a book. I did this for about a year and don’t recall if I really lost any weight but it did fulfil the constant urge to chew something.

One of the positive things about being a twelve year old was that a growth spurt was around the corner and over the eighteen months or so I shot up to being 6 foot tall and all the fat just stretched out, making me – as I felt – ‘normal’ again. Bye, bye, boobies.

I progressed on to high school and went back to boxed lunches that I sometimes ate and sometimes didn’t and the only standout recollections from that time are that I would regularly steal ‘forbidden food’ from the fridge or pantry. Mum and Dad each had their own stash of chocolate biscuits or dairy milk bars that I wasn’t allowed to have but I took them all the time.

There would be muesli bars or crisps there for me, but I only craved what I wasn’t allowed to have. I got found out and told off a lot over this but I kept doing it. One one occasion I’d eaten a mini chocolate bar and flushed the wrapper down the toilet because Mum would always find them in the bin despite my best attempts to hide them. A small white part of the wrapper hadn’t flushed and my Dad thought it was a cigarette butt and went absolutely mental at me. What stuns me now is that I took the smacks on the arm and the yelled accusations from both parents rather than admit I had secretly eaten something I wasn’t supposed to as if there was some greater shame associated with it.

If only they’d been smart enough to forbid me from having fruit, I’d be the healthiest person alive today.

We moved to Perth when I was 14 and rake thin. I was again bullied, this time on a much larger scale. I don’t know what happened at school on this particular day. I just remember getting home and crying. My parents were both still at work. I went to the pantry and opened a sealed box of waffle ice cream cones, stood there and ate all 24. It was like they were oxygen, I couldn’t get them into my mouth quickly enough.

As soon as I stopped eating I panicked. Someone was going to ask me what happened to them. I went straight to the money jar that my Dad kept on his dresser and took enough to go to the shop and replace them. When he noticed the note missing I told him I’d given it to charity door knockers. This started a cycle of lying and secret binge eating that went on for years.

The author in 1987 – thin again due to a growth spurt but binge eating regularly. Still a dapper bastard though.

Next: food and the modern seb, part three: modelling should help, right?

food and the modern seb, part one.

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As I mentioned yesterday, I’ll be writing about my issues with food and my experiences with eating disorders. I wanted to share this as it seems to be such a taboo subject for many and as with all mental health issues, if you don’t communicate what you’re experiencing with someone the disease starts to gain advantage. It’s so important that people know they’re not alone and that as well as that seventh helping of black forest gateaux with double cream, there is hope.

Oddly enough, even after all the love and support everyone has shown me I’m a little scared to write about this so if you can send me a few mental mirrorballs as you’re reading I’d really appreciate it. There’s also so much to cover that I’ve broken this down *unconvincing rapper pose* into parts so it’s not a giant unreadable clump of “AND THEN THE SNICKERS BAR TRIED TO KILL ME AND WAH AND SUCH”.

Please be warned that this and the next few posts can be triggering for those with eating disorders, that I’m not an expert and I’m not offering any advice, help or judgement, I’m just a man with a keyboard and a love of tasty crispy fried things that is in a bad place and wants to share the woe dread agony chips and mayonnaise story with you.

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Eating. When I was a small disco enthusiast in a lime green Kermit the frog t-shirt and brown corduroy flares I liked eating but I didn’t like eating a considerable amount of much. At primary school I’d take a bite from a sandwich and throw the rest away. On the days that I’d forget to open my lunchbox altogether, Mum would look at me witheringly as she unpacked my bag to find yet another untouched polony and tomato sauce sandwich that she’d sliced lovingly into perfect squares be returned to sender.

I tried to tell her that Karlene Orbetski had polony for lunch then spent the afternoon doing farts so potent that our carefully drawn crayon portraits would melt into dali-esque nightmares but she didn’t care. She wanted me to eat.

I was born with a taste for most everything that was good for me. I would only eat chicken breast and the skin had to be removed or it was the dawn of the apocalypse down at 22 Princess Street (I know, I know). I hated sausages, chops and any type of steak. I wouldn’t touch cheese and preferred plain bread without butter.  I was never really given soft drinks and loved milk and water.

My favourite treat was tinned tuna or a delicious ham and salad sandwich from the local bakery  - I would could eat salad and vegetables until most everyone was convinced that I was part rabbit. I wasn’t averse to a bowl of ice cream or coco pops, I just didn’t crave these things in the same way I did the healthier options.

When I was growing up, kids ate what the adults were having and unless it was a special occasion you weren’t offered a choice. Mum was a fantastic cook (she made a killer Satay Beef that no restaurant has ever bettered) – this meant a large variety of foods made it on to our plates, most of which I loved but the portions were always too big for me. The unfortunate thing about the era that I grew up in was that the consensus among parents was that if your kid wasn’t a member of the clean plate club then you clearly weren’t doing your job.

Everything had to be eaten, regardless of your child’s preference or appetite for it because they’d wither away and die before the nightly news had finished if you didn’t force them to eat, eat, eat. Failing to have a child in the clean plate club meant that you were a terrible parent and would immediately be cast out of the town and forced to live a nomadic lifestyle with the other unfortunates that couldn’t get little Gregory or Melissa to finish that last spoonful of mashed parsnip.

Most struggles with me came over food I didn’t find palatable but was part of the great Aussie diet. I have vivid memories of retching repeatedly while trying to swallow pieces of fat or gristle in a steak, with my Stepdad telling me off for doing so. Sometimes he’d become furious and yell at me while I’d be bawling, trying to choke the food down so I could get away from the table. I’ve never understood why it was so important to him that I pretend to like something I clearly didn’t.

No doubt it wasn’t wonderfully appetising to have a 9 year old sound like he was about to present an explosive encore of tonight’s dinner while you’re trying to enjoy your meal but to this day, (and I believe this to be completely true) his well intentioned ‘eat it, it’s good for you’ approach has meant that I will start dry heaving the second I find anything texturally similar to fat or sinew in a mouthful of food.

There was also the time honoured battle of ‘if you don’t finish it you’re not leaving this table’ where I’d sit, crying in front of a plate of cold sausage and congealed gravy for half an hour while Skyhooks played on the radio in the background before Mum complained I was drowning out the television and to just go to my room.  And of course the worst of all techniques – ‘what you don’t finish tonight will be your breakfast, if you don’t finish it then it’s going in your lunchbox’. 

My parents only tried this once and after I’d not eaten a very depressed looking lamb chop for the following day’s breakfast, lunch or dinner they realised they had a formidable opponent and filed the technique away under ‘oops’ right next to ‘get him to stop playing with dolls’ and ‘get him to join the junior football team’. Nuh-huh, girlfriend.

These occasions were thankfully not very frequent but are certainly ingrained. I also have vivid memories of visiting my Grandparents after school and not wanting to refuse the kind offer of a biscuit, because I was scared to hurt their feelings so I’d put it in my pocket and throw it over the fence into the ditch drain next door. If I wasn’t hungry, I didn’t eat and that was that. I was always thin, but I didn’t lack for energy and I loved food that I…well… loved.

 Next: food and the modern seb, part two: winning at lunch, losing at manboobs.

and now i’m back, from outer space. well, under my bed actually.

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I think it’s about time I wrote another blog post, seeing that my last update was the 1st of October 2011. I’d hate for the internet to threaten to take this website off me by explaining that there are kids without blogs in Africa and if I wasn’t going to post on here then it will be sent to them. I’m not sure how you’d send a website to someone but the internet is quite magical so I suppose one of the unicorns or cats that run it could find a way.

So – now to the update. I’m not doing so well and I can attribute part of that to not writing, or rather the guilt and frustration that comes from not feeling able to write. I made a commitment to myself two years ago to write about my struggles with mental health, sort of not realising that poor mental health makes writing (along with pretty much everything) difficult and well, didn’t that come back to bite me in the ass.

What a way to cleverly create an infinite loop of struggle and disappointment. Next, I might try to cure my agoraphobia by shopping nude in the city on a busy Saturday afternoon. As long as it’s not too cold. I don’t want anyone talking about the tiny peen on the man running down the middle of the street crying and hyperventilating. That would just be embarrassing.

I’m not too enthused with the whole ‘being alive on this planet’ thing at the moment and am ready to start working my way back from this. Rather than making any positive steps forward I’ve just been sitting in the darkness and feeling crap. Sure, I’m walking a couple of days a week and I’ve introduced a multivitamin as a way to try and make myself healthier but it’s like trying to stop a flood with a household sponge. I’m going to need a lot of household sponges. In a variety of appealing and decorative colours, obviously because: style icon.

One thing I’ve not written about, but is an important piece of the SebPuzzle™ is the fact that I have major food issues. Don’t be shocked, I know you’ve suspected it – all 146kgs of me can’t be muscle, right? I have had and currently am suffering from an eating disorder. Mark that down on your bingo cards next to clinical depression, OCD and agoraphobia. And then possibly consider dating me, because WHAT A CATCH, EH?

I  have also unfortunately been experiencing the darkest thoughts I’ve had in a long time, with obsessive thoughts of suicide and self harm running through my head like an unhappy little jingle. Seriously, my brain could be a marketing genius, it pitches ideas like a motherfucker. The thoughts come for a few days then go but they’re returning with more frequency than I’ve had in a long time which is frustrating because I thought I’d beaten this in early 2011.

On a daily basis I’m angry. I’m feeling defeated. I can’t sleep for a week and then I can do nothing but sleep for the next month.  I don’t just hate this existence. I hate myself. Any time I’m alone I feel sad. And all I want to do is be alone. So that’s working out nicely. Alanis Morissette would probably write a song about it called Ironic? This Poor Fucker Needs Help! Ironic.

Yes, I know she has already. I was being ironic.

At least tonight I’m managing to put something out there and I’m not hiding away in silence. I know that there are friends, family and coworkers that read this. As always this website is a great way for me to communicate where I’m at, without turning up for an invited dinner and sharing my head’s handy top ten plans for ending it all painlessly over stir-fry. Not that I think any of you would genuinely mind, because you’re freaking amazing. But you know what I’m like. I know you’re there for me but I need to work on a lot of this on my own.

Tomorrow I’m going to write about my issues with food for the first time in my life. Be warned that tomorrow’s post may have a triggering effect if you suffer from or have experienced an eating disorder. And if you’re a man in a similar situation but thinking you’re alone I hope I can help by sharing my delicious large family bucket with extra gravy sized story.

In the meantime, text those that mean a lot to you and remind them that you love them. If you have have someone in your life with depression or other mental health issues give them a hug (if you can manage to find them – under the bed is a good spot). Last week was international mental health week but the focus has to be daily, not one week a year. We mentally interesting folk need you, whether we tell you we do or not.

And I’m eternally grateful to every single one of you. Except that woman at Gateways on Friday afternoon. Seriously, what the hell, girl?**

**story to follow later.

 

 

 

 

6PR interview

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Thanks to the amazingly supportive Jason Jordan for having me on his show today. For listeners that have come to the site from that interview, the post we spoke about can be found here.

Thanks for reading.

If you missed the interview you can listen to it on 6PR’s blog here.

agoraphobiarrrrgh!

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In the past few months I’ve made some progress so impressive that had I been a bit more sporty, I’d have have attempted one handed cartwheels followed by jazz hands with spirit fingers atop a cheerleading pyramid formation made up of Doctor Who figures and next door’s cat. My depression seems to be under control so the next thing I want to work on is my agoraphobia, or as I like to call it – “GET SOME MILK FROM THE STORE? BITCH…. HAVE YOU GONE CRAZY?”

I’ve had agoraphobia most of my life to some degree. It’s commonly thought of as a fear of wide open spaces, which of course it can involve (ARG! A PADDOCK! HALP!) but the root (no pun intended) of the disorder is the fear of having a panic attack triggered by a particular setting or event. If you’ve ever experienced a panic attack – with flailing muppet arms, hyperventilating and snot bubbles – you’ll understand the reasoning behind doing all you can to avoid having one.

Having control over a situation is the single most important thing on my mind when I leave the house. If I can’t be sure what I’m going to encounter then I don’t want to venture out. My home is safe, a controlled environment. If I experience anxiety then I can get into my bed and lay there until it passes. The only place I know you can do this outside the home is a bedding retailer and they tend to frown upon such things. There’s only so many bedside tables you can pretend to be interesting in purchasing before you start to arouse suspicion.

As I’ve mentioned before – I’ve always had an issue with supermarkets. When I was younger I was fine in most other retail environments, I’d just ask a friend if they wanted to tag along and after a couple of visits I was able to go on my own. Nobody ever knew I had a problem, but with most supermarkets I’d become so freaked out I’d not be able to focus on anything properly (why are they always so bright?) and I’d have to leave before someone discovered me in a pile of tinned peas, rocking back and forth and snivelling about how scary washing powder was. For most of the past decade I’ve managed to get by on purchasing things from service stations, eating takeaway meals and having friends and neighbours help out with larger grocery shops when required.

It’s not like I don’t keep trying though. A couple of years ago I even decided to take on the new multi story Ikea. Sure, I had to be let out one of the emergency side doors by a very concerned staff member (I’LL! *gasp* BE! *gasp* OKAY! *gasp* SORRY! *gasp* ABOUT! *gasp* THIS!) but my housemate got some completely awesome tea light candles.

Al-Gore-a-phobia. Understandable, yet different.

This year I completed a six week course of cognitive behavioural therapy with a psychologist and we focused on that most terrifying of tasks – grocery shopping. I can now visit three supermarkets but I can’t spend a lot of time in them. The ones I do visit, I visit on the same day around the same time and tend to only be able to buy the same things. It’s an association thing according to the psych. It’s certainly leaps and bounds ahead of where I was at the beginning of the year but I still have moments where I feel panic start to build and have to drive straight home, leaving my trolley abandoned in the dairy aisle. Yes, I’m that guy.

The most frustrating thing about agoraphobia for me is it’s inconsistency. I worked as a club DJ for over 10 years but now I can’t set foot in a nightclub or pub. A month ago someone asked me via Facebook to DJ an event for them and I haven’t been able to reply. Another person asked me on Twitter and I didn’t want to use Twitter again for six days, because thinking about it just filled me with dread. A year ago I managed to get past that feeling and played to 2,000 people at a Pride event.

Now I can’t entertain the idea without feeling overwhelmed with sadness. The fact that I feel like this about something that was such an integral part of my life for so long is breaks my heart. There are days I can’t listen to music released around the period I was working in clubs. It’s incredibly bizarre and I can’t verbalise what the issue is. Nothing happened. I started getting anxious during gigs. Then it became more and more difficult to get to gigs. Like I was walking against invisible resistance in the air, and the closer I got the more my chest tightened until it got to the point I would have to drive to venues early because it would take me half an hour to get up the courage to get out of my car. For me it’s always been an involuntary physical response.

If I could try to explain it – Imagine you sit down to eat a meal and you suddenly can’t use cutlery. Yes, bizarre as it it, you’re in the grip of awful, all consuming fork fear. You’d wonder why, would’t you? You’ve used one most of your life. You’d have no reason to be feeling like this. It’s a FORK. What’s the big deal?

The next night, you’re fine. The night after that you become so panicked you’re too scared to sit at the table. A week later you’re comfortable eating with your family and dismissing your previous fears as a ‘blip’. Another week goes by, you’d almost forgotten about the issues you had, but tonight you’re feeling a little edgy. You dismiss it, but the second you sit down you realise you can’t breathe. You start shaking and begin hyperventilating to the point of passing out. Your family freak out and you’re scared, confused and embarrassed because you can’t explain what happened.

Your partner asks you why tonight was such a big issue when you were fine at the last meal and all you can do is cry. You keep trying to get past it but the more you focus on it, the worse it gets, until a week later you’re eating all your meals in your bedroom using only your fingers. Every time someone suggests trying to sit at the dinner table it paralyses you.

Beelzebub, earlier today.

Imagine that happening to you tonight…how confusing it would be. How you’d feel the next day. How something you never gave a second thought suddenly occupies your mind for hours at a time. Would you want to keep sitting at that table, trying to pick up the fork knowing that you could lose complete control of yourself?

That’s what panic attacks do and it’s why people with agoraphobia try to avoid any situation that will trigger one. It’s not the just the situation itself. It’s not just about feeling anxious. Anxiety is for the most part controllable. Panic attacks aren’t. I have a friend that became so terrified in a crowded venue they lost control of their bladder. I’ve dry retched uncontrollably in stores, causing people to yell at me. I’ve started crying in view of hundreds of people while working in a club. I’ve thrown up after leaving a venue more times than I can count. Knowing that this can happen, but not knowing when it will happen is what makes me choose the safest environments time and again. And for me, that’s doing the same thing week in, week out.

While I’ve made some great progress with depression I’ve noticed that I’ve not felt like doing anything outside my normal ‘rituals’ in the past few months and as I mentioned, it’s the next thing I want to work on.

And just as soon as I get out of this cupboard, I’m going to start.

here, here

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I haven’t blogged for such a long time and have so much to catch up on that I feel we may need to bring in the dreaded bullet points. I know that bullet points are considered lazy writing but I’d like you to take the following into consideration before your put on your lynching cloak with the silver lamé lined hood:

- I’m diabetic
- I just mentioned ‘bullet’ points
- This immediately makes any living human immediately think of chocolate bullets.
- Thinking of chocolate bullets means you must have some.
- Chocolate bullets can put diabetics into a fit of sexy chocolate related orgasmic noises a coma.

So I’m clearly putting my life at risk to bring you up to speed. Ish.

So. Bullet points. In the past four months:

- I’ve settled into my new role at work. I’m no longer a corporate sales Wookiee. I’m now a domains and hosting Wookiee.
- The antidepressant I’m on (Pristiq) was doubled in dosage and after a couple of initially difficult weeks has begun working.
- I shaved my head and my beard stubble at the same time and found out that doing this makes me resemble a surprised gay albino potato.
- I’ve had so many days unaffected by depression I can’t even count them.
- I’ve lost 23 kilos. Partially related to financial difficulties but a welcome loss nonetheless.
- I wrote a complaint letter to the Bank Of Queensland about their service which to date has been read by 1,625 people.
- I went to the movies, in a real live cinema. I saw the Green Lantern. Ryan Reynolds is hot was quite good although could have spent more time in his underpants there were some pacing issues.
- I achieved one of my long term goals by cooking something that not only fell into the category of ‘edible’, it also qualified as ‘tasty’.

Although things have certainly been positive, I was a little surprised by the sudden realisation that I actually want to be here. No doubt that’s a strange statement to make, but I’ve spent years not wanting to live. If someone could physically will themselves out of existence I wouldn’t have made it through my thirties. Now I can see a future. I not only want to be here – I want to keep being here.

This means I have a lot of work ahead. I now have to find out how to best enhance the work the drugs are doing so that I have more support in place should my depression return. I was lucky enough to find one that made such a significant change and have also been fortunate to have an employer that was willing to help me when I was struggling with my work. I was at a point in my life where I was depressed, obese, suffering panic attacks, was unhappy in my job, in mountains of debt and had months where I literally thought of suicide every day. Now I’ve got some distance from the depression I finally have the ability to work on everything else. The best way I can put it is that I’m proud of how far I’m come but I’d be lying if I said I was happy about where my life is at. After enjoying the respite of this period I’m ready start moving again. And an important part of this will be the accountability of writing about it.

I’ve also learned something over the past few months that I wanted to share in the hope that it may help someone else.

When you think that nobody could love you, someone does.
When you think that nobody understands, someone will.
When you’re scared that nobody can help, someone can.

Someone does. Someone will. Someone can. Please remember that.

nobody move a muscle

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Doctor: “Let’s try you on a different antidepressant..”

Me (in my head): “Why not, I haven’t run naked giggling through the streets after maxing out my credit card or tried to drive my car into a tree while screaming and crying for WEEKS! Why don’t we just start hitting me in the head with bricks now AND SAVE ME THE EXPENSE OF HAVING TO GO TO THE CHEMIST!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRGH!”

Me (out loud): Sure.

It was a bit of a wild ride getting on to this particular brand (Pristiq) and possibly even worse increasing the dosage. Ideally, an antidepressant should work like this:

You’re in the depths of despair, crawling around with Lindsay Lohan’s career prospects, expired cartons of flavoured milk and that ‘Dorian Gray’-style painting of Demi Moore that keeps her looking 14. Then you swallow the magic pills and slowly but surely you climb out of the pit. You shower, dress in decade-appropriate clothing and before you know it you’re talking to people about your plans for the weekend. And those plans don’t involve crying, eating or crying about how much you’ve eaten. You may have slight bumps in the road, but it’s nothing you and your newfound bucketful of serotonin can’t handle.

My experience was more like this:

 

People learned not to ask how I was pretty damn quickly, lest the answer be ‘Well, this MORNING I was good but THEN I plummeted only to feel BETTER half an hour later but NOW I think I…..” (goes on for ten minutes, punctuated with sobs and inappropriate laughter).

But I think I am now happy to report that I have had ten days of normalcy. During the process of increasing the dosage I’d had a day here and there where things felt better but they were often followed by a crushing low. Like someone baking you a cake, showing it to you and then stomping on it….. mmmmmmm, stompcake™. But I digress. I’ve had good days, one after the other – in a row. Nice wake-ups, no dread, no bleakness, off to work where I’m actively enjoying my new role then home to a night of attempted cooking (getting better with practice if I do SHOUT IT FROM THE ROOFTOPS say so myself) and then a pleasant night’s sleep.

Ten days, including right now, where I’m on the second day of two weeks annual leave, listening to the Bangles ‘Greatest Hits’ CD and feeling like I finally have the strength to work toward improving my life. Being the screaming, flaming car wreck slightly dysfunctional adult that I am, there’s a lot of work to be done but at least I’m not wishing I was dead the whole time I’m trying to compose a shopping list or crying while washing a frying pan. I’ve got that bit of gas in the tank that allows people with depression to take those tiny steps forward we’re unable to when crippled with the grief our disease so wrongly fills our hearts and minds with.

So here’s to ten days, and cross your fingers, toes and eyes that there’s more where they came from. Because my to-do list for Project Seb is pant wettingly terrifying enormous.