Thanks for reading.

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

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.

Agro-phobia. Not quite the same thing. Possibly bathmat related.

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.

- 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.

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.

As many people with depression may have experienced, I thought this change was going to switch something in my head and I’d suddenly be feeling different. (Hey, I said I was tall and liked Noodle Box and Dannii Minogue, when did I ever confirm I was realistic?)

I just wanted to share this because maybe there are readers of this blog that may wonder the same. Is a sudden change the fix?

Sometimes it can improve things, certainly. But I’ve had to remind myself all week that depression is an illness that doesn’t go from 100% to 0% overnight. I can honestly say that yes, I am a little saddened to realise that there hasn’t been a noticeable change, (as in, I’ve sat there going ‘WHERE’S MY EFFING CONFETTI AND DANCING GIRLS!?!?!”) I was expecting at least something. Then I found myself realising that I had made an improvement. I’ve removed myself from a situation where things were getting worse. I haven’t headed any further in that direction and that’s really something that should be recognised. And I’m not smart enough to know what changes the next couple of months will bring – this could be the best decision I’ve ever made.

So,for now… um… Hooray for not much? *throws confetti*

This lead to a well overdue visit to the doctor and a doubled dosage of the antidepressant I’m on (Pristiq, for those anxious to fill out their ‘Nutter Bingo’ cards). After some good and bad days – think of a bowling ball being dropped from a great height onto a trampoline if that helps – I think I can finally report some stability. Am I dancing around in a silver glitter wig blasting an air horn screaming the lyrics to ‘Born To Be Alive’ (ask Nanna, kids) at the top of my lungs? No. Am I feeling good? No, not quite. Am I feeling hopeless and down? Often, but not every day.

But most importantly, I can do things. There’s been a constant drive from somewhere within me to keep things tidy. Not in a CLEAN ALL THE THINGS ALWAYS TO KEEP THEM CLEAN MUST BE CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN way, just in a ‘It’s nice to not step on all the clean clothes on the floor until they need washing again’ way. To keep trying to not burn the fuck out of make meals for myself. To get up and go to the bathroom instead of sitting there bursting for an hour. To leave my desk at work and get a glass of water when I’m thirsty. I looked up this astounding behaviour on Wikipedia – it’s apparently called ‘self-care’.

The evil bed of doom™ seems to have been conquered. Sheets stripped off, washed and put back on (admittedly one night without them, but progress) without any inner struggle. I can wash dishes, dry them and put them away in one hit. No needing to freak out and lie down halfway through scrubbing a frying pan. Can you imagine?

If any of these things ever need to be done for anyone else, I have no problem. I came to realise this recently when it was my turn to clean the house. My housemates joked about my ‘display home’ requirements for cleaning, and that I have such high standards. They never notice that it’s not for me. I show them the consideration and care that I could never give myself.

Sure, I’d bring the washing in from the line and fold theirs carefully. Then I’d dump mine in a heap on the floor of my bedroom, where I’d walk on it until it needed washing again. Their bathroom would be scrubbed from top to bottom. Mine wouldn’t be touched. And I’d never thought this strange. In fact I don’t think I’d ever given it thought until very recently.

Whenever I needed to do something positive for myself it would be at the bottom of my list. Don’t make lunch for tomorrow. Go hungry. Don’t shower. Don’t put sheets on your bed. Don’t take a jacket. Be cold. Be uncomfortable. Be dirty. Be thirsty. I realised how I treat myself so poorly. No conscious thought behind it. Just my default setting.

Since the increased dose of Pristiq I’m still having lows. I don’t suddenly like myself. But the block that stopped me from doing the little things that show that I just might be deserving of some care has shifted. And it’s been gone for two weeks. That’s an absolute milestone. I think the antidepressants might be allowing me to build the foundation to really fight. Every meal made, regardless of taste (or resemblance to the original ingredients) is a triumph. Every comfortable, fully-sheeted night in bed is a step forward. And the silliest, but most important thing to me – I can drink water at work when I’m thirsty now. I haven’t been able to get myself a drink when I’ve wanted one in ‘public’ since before primary school. ‘Don’t let them see you‘.

So Hello, progress. I hope you stick around. You seem rather lovely. Do you like Noodle Box?

Sure, I’m a little annoyed that it didn’t last. I can feel the sadness creeping back. The things that were so simple to do that day were a little harder yesterday and required a small amount of swearing today.

The internal struggle and the lack of focus and energy started on Sunday morning, and I knew it wouldn’t be a day of productivity. Today it was a little heavier. Tonight, safe at home from work and locked away from the things that drain so much of me I was hoping for a change but to be honest it feels worse. I hoped it was maybe a bit of Monday-itis but it appears to be a case of here we go again. Again. Again.

I think the key is to keep the momentum going. Know that you can do the things that your head is saying you can’t. Keep pushing. I don’t feel like working against this right now but I will. I’m going to make dinner for myself and take it from there. I don’t need to go to the supermarket because I stocked up on Saturday. That’s the thing I really don’t think I could do today. I can try cooking though. Geez, it makes me feel defeated to be writing like this.

But you know what, Depression, you hideous, ugly, nasty, sonofabitch? I made my bed this morning. And maybe I can tomorrow as well.

So fuck you.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you’ll remember days when I was manic from changes to my medication and while those days I can leave the house without anxiety and cross off a complete ‘to do’ list the feeling is anything but normal.

Today I woke up, grabbed the clean sheets out of the basket on the floor and put them on my bed. Without thinking. Without the dance of thought versus feeling. Without flailing muppet arms. I. Just. Did. It. Made the bed.

Then I put a load of washing on. No thoughts, no resistance, no sadness.

I shaved my head.

I had a shower.

I ironed my clothes and got dressed.

I brushed my teeth.

I went to the supermarket and shopped. Bought a weeks work of groceries without blinking.

I came home and cleaned a bit. Played on my computer. Went upstairs and watched TV. When I got cold I came downstairs immediately and put on a jacket. I cared about myself without any thought to do it. No debate. No mental fight.

I cooked dinner. When I realised I had forgotten an ingredient I drove back to the shops and bought it.

I washed the dishes and put them away, saved the leftovers for tomorrow and waited for a friend to come over for our regular Saturday night TV-fest.

I didn’t feel filled with energy, enthusiastic, thrilled with life and my achievements for the day, as I often do on the ‘manic’ days. I just felt not sad. I didn’t think once of suicide. I didn’t struggle once to do anything. I just thought about doing something and did it. I can’t even describe it as a thought, it was more ‘Oh, this next…’ like breathing. I have no recent recollection or memory of this happening.

I was me today, and I’m crying tears of joy while I type this because there hasn’t been a single day in the past ten or so years that I’ve been able to do all that I wanted. There would always be something I knew not to try and force, a concession that had to be made because of anxiety or agoraphobia or depression. Make the bed but too scared to shop. Shop with assistance from friends but forget something so not be able to cook. Too exhausted by the energy required to force myself to do one thing to be able to continue. To run from progressing further by going to back to bed or wearing filthy clothes or distracting myself with something meaningless.

I didn’t once push for perfection. And the day wasn’t perfect. It didn’t mean it wasn’t a good day.

As mentioned in an earlier post this week I don’t know how this day came about. I know from past experience you can drive yourself mad trying to work out if it was what you ate the night before, the time you took your meds, the amount of sleep, the people you saw, whether you were really down the day before, what you wore, anything that will allow you to re-create the feeling.

Whatever it is, I’m so incredibly grateful to be given a glimpse of the life I could have and I hope that I can move toward that. To not be sad about milk, scared of making a bed, devastated by a hand-towel and trapped by the sound of a car in the driveway.

To just be me. I don’t know why I haven’t been able to do these things for so long but I do know that it felt good.

And now I know that I have had such a day. That I can.

Again I pushed myself through the day, avoiding calls from that same customer who now wanted me to sort a billing issue and refused to speak to anyone else, calling again and again, each time to be told he needed to speak to the billing department but immediately ringing another rep, demanding to be put through to me. I lost count of how many times he did it. All it did was add to the heaviness and the fear. In the end I gave up taking calls and again just sat there for the last hour and a half of my shift, fighting tears. So angry that I didn’t have the resources to push through it all.

I feel like I’m not a man on days like this. I’m not an adult. I’m a thing. This giant, six foot five thing that can’t even put sheets on his fucking mattress and had to fight for half an hour to shower that morning let alone make it through a week without falling in a heap. How can I be regarded as anything when I can’t function at the level that most people perform at without thinking?

To say that I don’t feel like a man on those days is incorrect in fact, because I never feel like a man. I feel like nothingness trapped in a tall man’s body. A fake. A liar. It’s a cruel joke to be the size and build I am yet to be such a timid, sad, mess inside. One day I know I’ll be able to feel differently but for now I want to hide what I am away because I know I’m something less than I should be.

Then – a change…

When I finished work I drove out to visit two of my closest friends and their son, where I gratefully received hugs of welcome and found myself smiling genuinely for the first time in days. I laughed while I played Lego with the son before he had to go off to bed and found the heaviness lift further when we sat to eat dinner. After sharing wine, chatting and laughing for a few hours I left feeling myself again.

Sometimes friends are the fix, and now as I sit here typing I know I couldn’t be more blessed to have the people in my life that I do.

Something is different tonight. I’ve finally kept some of the feeling of love and support for not only the entire drive home but an hour afterwards. A positive emotional memory… I wish I knew how to save this. Not the memory itself, but the acceptance of love. The knowing that it’s there and the feeling of having it.

Others with depression will know what I mean. When you feel like this you wonder why you ever felt down, knowing how okay you can be. And you know that next time you feel down you just have to remind yourself of this. It’s just that when you go looking for the feeling, it won’t be there any more. And that’s the biggest tragedy of depression. You can’t trust what you thought you knew to be true. Your mind distorts lies and truth in your conscious thoughts so strongly that you end up only being able to think what you feel in the present moment. The grief. Darkness. Heavy. Alone. Helpless. Hopeless.

But for now, I’m holding this glow in my heart tightly and savouring the freedom it allows me. I feel safe and loved and that’s an amazing, amazing feeling.

After feeling a slight shift in my depression I dared to hope that it was a sign that things were improving. Today I don’t know how I could be so stupid. Am I feeling sorry for myself? No. If I was I could make the decision to reason. This is hell. Absolute hell.

Every word I’m typing brings more tears.

I can barely lift my head. The world is an evil place and I can’t do anything to change how it treats me. There’s no point in trying. There’s nothing in me any more. No reserve. No desire.

I knew as soon as I woke up that the depression had returned with added force. Getting to work was incredibly difficult and for the first two hours I just sat there. I could only think in fragments.

“I should..”
“If I..”
“Tell them..”
“I could phone..”
“Could I just….”

All those words at once, until I just held my head in my hands and cried. I locked myself in a toilet cubicle and let the tears flow until my head was throbbing.

After that I returned to my desk and tried to act like nothing was wrong.

“I can’t afford to go home. I can’t miss any more days. I can’t worry people any more that I have. I’ve used all my points…”
“Just stay for half an hour more”
“26 more minutes”
“Fifteen more minutes”
“Made it. Try another half an hour”.

Over and over, my time honoured self-talk ‘trick’ to make it through the worst days.

Horrible clients emailing me throughout the morning. No formalised greeting, just ranting with exclamation marks throughout and rude demands for solutions to problems that were neither caused by me nor am I responsible for. Clients that you have helped, done your absolute best for who always, always turn on you and treat you like dirt the second they deem fit.

A guy calls to speak to me about a broken connection. I get the team responsible to call and assist him, and when it doesn’t work he calls again, I refer back to the team who continue to try to help but he wants me to fix the issue. I tell him again I can’t. He calls again. I tell other reps not to put the call through and he immediately calls back and tries again with another rep. He does this seven more times. In a row. It’s such an aggressive thing to do. I’m just nothing to people like this.

Why do I ‘let it get to me’?

When your mind is trapped and tells you that you’re worthless all these people’s actions do is confirm it.

I need the people that are telling me that things will improve to be right. Please let them be right.