Have you been to any support groups or anything like that?
No.
Is that something you don’t’?
I don’t know of any. If you know of any, phone me references, I’ll go there. I’m willing to try anything. I’m, I’m sick of it. I’m as sick as you get.
Is it something you think that would be helpful, talking to people?
I don’t know. I don’t know. If there’s anything you try it and then you see how it goes. But being in a lot of people itself might be a bit daunting for me. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. That’s again undefinable. I don’t know. But yeah, I’ll probably give it a shot. Yeah.

I haven’t found a cure, so I can’t give like a very optimistic message to everyone, but I suppose ‘Fight’ would be the best thing. ‘Don’t give up and just keep struggling, keep trying. And maybe you’ll find something, a decent solution one day’, you know? It’s all about fighting. But you do tend to feel unfortunate that, ‘Why the hell do I have this?’ But I suppose these feelings don’t help. So at the end of the day, ‘Just keep trying, keep fighting, keep trying to find new ways to tackle it.

And personally my relationship with God hasn’t been very smooth. I tend to complain a lot, but I do tend to believe that God does exist, although I don’t offer my prayers and I don’t do the usual religious stuff, but I do tend to believe that God does exist, and he’s probably there to get me or something [laughs] torture me, give me a bad life.

Yeah, this is actually my belief that if God goes after someone then he just completely annihilates their life. It’s like, you’re born poor, and without legs, and you’ll have all sorts of tragedies going on in your life. It’s like, I don’t know, you’ll be born in a famine-ridden country and this and that. It’s just absurd. It’s, I don’t know if God does that or, but, it’s, I can’t explain it. You’ll probably have to improvise on my relationship with God, but it’s sometimes, I don’t know, I believe he doesn’t exist. I want to believe that he doesn’t exist, but I can’t believe that he doesn’t exist. I think that’s, that’s probably the correct statement.

No I think the chemical balance obviously is something to do with your moods and, you know, you’ve had these ups and downs, and ups and downs, and that sort of probably created the imbalance permanently.

Right.

It’s, it’s like you’re in a void, you get your, you get your leg amputated. So, you know, what I mean? Like it’s unusual circumstances that get you damaged. So I think it’s trauma, up down, up down, and your brain sort of becomes, you know, unstable.

Mmm’ I mean in the analogy you’ve just used, your leg being amputated is pretty irreversible isn’t it?

Yes.

Do you think that a chemical imbalance is something that’s irreversible?

I think it’s permanent damage, I think. For the time that I’ve had, I think I believe that it’s permanent damage. It’s I don’t see it to be fixed in the near future. I don’t. All I probably now expect is for it to come to a certain level, let me accept who I am, and probably move on from there’

I suppose my main question would be is there a cure? How, how the hell can you cure it permanently? Just get rid of it and be normal again. That’s what I want to do. That’s what my goal is.

So basically I had, I’ve had massive huge problems with women. It’s like some how I repulse them. I’m okay, I’m actually excellent with people who I want to be friendly with and I have, I would consider, excellent people skills. Wherever I go, everyone knows me, I know everyone. But starting the relationship with a girl is something that I’ve found near impossible. It’s like, I don’t know what is wrong with me in that respect. I’ve tried to analyse it so much, so much, but I couldn’t. Sometimes I would come to a conclusion that, ‘Okay, I’m not good looking enough’, but then later on, you know, I would see that, okay, there are people out there who have good personalities and that’s I think all there is that counts. But I think it’s something in my head that stops me from doing it. I don’t know what that is. I’ve never been able to identify it. Friends have always been there. I’ve always been able to make friends’

There was a period, about one year period, in the past two, three years where I couldn’t even speak to a woman. That was something that was – and then people started judging me, and people started making remarks, and I became a real weirdo. It was like a very anti-social person who lost all the confidence, and very, very self conscious. I am all those things right now, but I sort of put a mask on me successfully. And I think it worked anyway. And that, I think that was the lowest point of my life, where I would feel so sad and so down that it was unbelievable, it was beyond help. And I don’t think it was beyond help, but I never seeked help, that’s the thing’

I mean I mentioned women. I mentioned my lack of competition, self esteem, confidence, but I think these things are lost because of depression. Depression is not there because of them. I think they are because I had depression and lost all these things.

So anyways I went directly to the psychiatrist and he told me that, ‘I’m not going to give you any medicine. Maybe he would have given me the reason that I was too young or something like that, which I can’t remember. But mainly he told me, ‘Look, this is a psychologist. She works in this hospital. Go and see her, and have a few sessions with her, and then we’ll see how things go. I said, ‘All right. So I went to see her I think altogether about three times, where we had a one hour session each time, more or less, and she didn’t charge me anything or anything like that. She was very nice. She listened to everything. She was actually a college professor, and a psychology professor. So she listened to me quite a lot. And she gave me quite a bit of time, and I felt actually better during that therapy.

But at the end of the day I think I was just too young to be patient enough to keep on going to therapy and talking about rubbish. I think it becomes a bit boring as well after a while. You know, ‘This happened, and that happened. You need a fix. You know what I mean? Like your mind isn’t working properly. You are in pain, you need a fix. You don’t want to talk rubbish for months. You just need a fix. So I think I was just too impatient. I was probably doing drugs as well. So, you know, I thought, ‘Sod it. And that’s it.

I feel guilty. I think that’s probably a part of depression. That’s, guilt is something that – and I think it’s probably because of my upbringing as well, because guilt was something that my mum used quite often to manipulate things wherever she could, and I think she still uses it. Not to the extent that she used to, but she still does use that. So I think that feeling guilty for no reason comes from that. And it’s, it’s a really pathetic feeling, but I even know that I’m feeling guilty without any reason, but I can’t help it. So that’s… you know what I mean? Like if you know what the problem is and you can’t solve it, then you feel helpless, and when you feel helpless then, you know, you feel helpless. You feel more and more down. You feel like you can’t do anything about it, so how do I solve it?

So the eventual solution that you think in your head is, ‘All right, so kill yourself or something. But I haven’t actually attempted it, ever. I’ve always thought about it and suicide always gives me a sort of relieving feeling. It’s like when I hit the pit and I’m thinking, like, ‘What the hell should I do?’ and my mind is basic, my mind just starts killing myself. And at that point, I think, I think to myself, ‘Okay, if worse come to worse happens and I can’t do absolutely anything, then I’ll kill myself. But am I ready to do that?’ And then my, I sort of start thinking, ‘No, I’ll give it another shot. Maybe next night. And that sort of lifts me up, actually, in a funny way. It’s, suicide is like I use it as a counter-suicide mechanism [laughs], if you will.

I never believed in psychiatric, that’s the thing. I always, I think this is probably the culture that I’m brought up in, that is basically first of all mental health is a taboo issue, secondly it’s, it’s always when you hear about patients who are mentally ill, they always seem to go to doctors like ten years, for ten years, or five years, or you know, they have been a mental patient for life. They have chronic depression for the past twenty years, so, like they never tend to get fixed like other diseases. If you have a problem with your appendix you go to the surgeon and he takes it out. But if you have a mental problem it’s like you take the medicine for the next twenty years, you know? That’s, that’s absurd. So I think that sort of made me stay away from psychiatrists.

But anyways, since I’ve been here in my college, I came here to do my MSc at University of [name removed], and over there, there was quite a bit of awareness about mental issues. So I used to read all these pamphlets and this and that, depression, everyone suffers from depression, one in three persons feel anxiety blah blah blah. So, you know, that sort of made me a bit more confident about, ‘Okay, so I’m not alone and, you know, it might not be such a taboo issue’ and you know. But I didn’t seek help back then.

I think it’s a chemical thing. Because I’m personally come from a science background, that although I’m not a doctor, but I do understand okay, so it’s chemistry. It’s some sort of chemical that’s, chemical level that’s high or low in my brain that’s causing all of this, so I think medication probably is the best way to fix that, personally.

And I mean so how does that fit with, if you think it’s a chemical imbalance, how does that fit with what we talked about earlier about some of the things that you thought had maybe had led to your depression. Do you see what I mean?

Yeah. No I think the chemical balance obviously is something to do with your moods and, you know, you’ve had these ups and downs, and ups and downs, and that sort of probably created the imbalance permanently. It’s like you’re in a void, you get your leg amputated. So, you know, what I mean? Like it’s unusual circumstances that get you damaged. So I think it’s trauma, up down, up down, and your brain sort of becomes, you know, unstable.

And is the medication that you’re taking helping?

It gives me a limit of going down. It’s like a threshold. I wouldn’t go down below that. I wouldn’t feel worse than this. It’s’ Yeah, simply yes, it does help me. But it kills my, I don’t know. I’m a very expressionful person, but it sort of kills everything. It’s, it makes you a bit more bland. But yes, it does help me, in terms of bad mood swings. Yes.

Levels you out?

Yeah, yeah. I think that’s what I wanted to say.

Does… Because you seem to suggest as well that it, it stops you from dipping down

Yeah

but it doesn’t necessarily bring you up?

No

Is that right?

Yes. Yes. That’s exactly what I wanted to say. Yeah, yeah, it definitely doesn’t bring you up. It doesn’t make you happy. No. But it doesn’t, it doesn’t let you become sad. That’s I think what it’s doing.