And I used to drive from the [place name] over to the city every morning and I started to notice that as I was driving into the city and coming over the hill and taking the hill down to the bridge that I’d saw the city and I’d start to get sick, start to feel sick and , and nauseous. And, and well wondering what was going on and feelings of impending doom. And I’d get into work and it, it would be fine and I’d finish work and off to home and then – and it happened again and again. But the, you know, I’d feel nauseous and sick at the thought of going in there and that feeling would extend further and further during the day.

And this went on for a little while and suddenly the, the things that I was finding that were fulfilling in my job started to – not be fulfilling. You know, and I’d go home, my sleep patterns would start to be disrupted. And I, I used to call it, you know, the night of the you know, the, the long night sort of thing and the – four o’clock in the morning on the dot it would be. And it was impending doom and there was nothing physically wrong with my environment. There was nothing that, that would engender that sort of feeling from an outside perspective and I suppose you try and ignore it for as long as you can.

And this went on and on and my sleep became disrupted and, and the nausea was happening on a daily basis and – and at the same time and, which was strange. And then one day I was sitting in front of my computer and all of a sudden I couldn’t read it. And I couldn’t read anything and I was supposed to be going into a meeting and I couldn’t do that and I just couldn’t do anything. And so I went home and took a couple of days off.

And I was feeling anxious and sad and sick all the time. That pit of the, gut wrenching, pit of the stomach type feeling. And I know that I kept on saying to my doctor, it’s like the feeling when I found out my, that my father had died, a couple of years before, that initial gut wrench that, that happened. That, you know, only lasted for, you know, a minute or two then, but now it was all the time. And I, you know, lost interest in food and just smoked cigarettes and laid down really. And because I wasn’t doing anything else my sleep was getting worse and you know, the four o’clock would come and you were wide awake and that’s just went on for quite a while.

To, for depression it’s emotion. It’s very emotional, very teary, very very down, very there’s not light at the end of the tunnel. Very I can’t cope with doing things, I’m going to burst into tears. I can’t think about certain things because they’re going to make me very sad. Also on the other side too it can make me very irritable as well in a sense that if I’m feeling down and somebody says some, something to me that I don’t like or anything I will react differently to how I normally would react. You know I probably, you know I’ll be more snappier or I’d start crying or, or something like that.

And I had that last week because I take, put the Kalma up to one milligram and so I felt like an absolute failure that I wasn’t able to cope with half a milligram of Kalma. And just felt very down and very, very tearful and very emotional about the fact that I wasn’t able to reach that goal, wasn’t able to hit that expectation. So then I refer back to what we call my toolbox, which, you know, is, is full of all sorts of psychotherapy and, and medication as well. And so I try to put that psychotherapy tools into use and today’s not so bad.

Well it’s, it depends on how you define depression really and if you define depression as feeling like there is absolutely no point to anything whatsoever and you know why on earth are you alive, and what’s the point and you might as well, you know, cut your losses and go and jump under a train. That’s what I was experiencing in (country name), while I was deciding what to do.

Ah, and I can’t even think of (city name) now without feeling that terrible feeling of aaah, just such a profound sense of – not even sadness; I don’t know how to describe it. it’s just kind of darkness in the soul. So I think that that was depression.

And what I was thinking was ah it’s sort of like a basinful of water, you know, the plug is in the basin and – but the tap is dripping so you – when you, you’ve got that sort of terrible sense of hopelessness kind of hovering, it’s like that basin is getting fuller and fuller and even the slightest more drip will make it overflow, and the grief is the plug but the water that’s filling up is the depression. That’s sort of how I – that’s a metaphor for me, how it feels. So, you know, to unplug the grief will let the depression out, but it’s really difficult to unplug the grief because grief is there.

I remember standing in the kitchen one day and I had this – this beautiful white mug that I used to have all my- you know, drink tea and coffee out of, it was my mug and it had a big black S on it for Susan, and it was given to me by somebody that I’ve, I loved and I remember lifting it above my head and crashing it down onto the quarry tile floor of the kitchen and then thinking to myself, why did I do that? It was sort of like destroying S, so I thought, aha this is not very good, and that was soon before I left that relationship and then started to find my own recovery.

Well I suppose, look, it’s a feeling of not wanting to face anybody, ah, it’s the feeling of locking yourself away, which I did. People could knock on the door; I wouldn’t even answer the door. And these are people I played footy and cricket with. I’d just drink. But the feeling was, well total, total insecurity, a total of not being, a total feeling of not belonging with, to, or anywhere. You just feel completely isolated. And at that stage I had no idea how to break out of it, except drink. Because when you drink you get yourself blotto and you don’t have to think.

But really that’s a trap too because, when you start drinking, you just go round on a racetrack and you think about the same thing over and over and over and over again. But then, then you get this feeling where you, you just start to quiver inside, you, that’s how bad you get. Well I did, and you’d quiver. You’d absolutely – you’re insides – you’re not shaking outside, but you’re inside shaking. Horrible feeling, it really is, because you just don’t know how to deal with it. And probably that was my mistake, not seeking to talk to somebody else or anything, or anybody. But I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know any better.

A bad day would be just miserable, going to bed crying for no reason at all, with the light on, because I didn’t want the light off. Not wanting to go out, not wanting to have friends around. Not going to play tennis. In fact even at one stage I couldn’t, couldn’t bring myself around to plan a holiday. It just, just felt too daunting to have a holiday. This is in America, but – , due to come up to summer vacation and I wanted to go on holidays, but – or sorry the family did – and I thought it’d be – because that was what we were there for, besides work – but I thought I don’t know how am I going to this, I don’t know how I’m going to do it – don’t know. Strange country, driving, other side of the road, new places, I can’t do it.

Well there’s depression of course and there’s anxiety; panic attacks. There’s the crying spells. There was the tingling in the hands or the arms. Numbness in my back; numbness in my back; numbness in the legs; difficulty in walking – feeling that my gait’s not quite right; not sleeping of course; feeling angry; uncoordinated sometimes.

Ah yeah I’d say despair would be one of them. Ah a fear of what was going to happen to me from now ah because if I didn’t have someone to support me. It was like I was back when I was a kid and I was wanting somebody to just pick me up and, and look after me. And give me that sense of assurity that everything was going to be all right. And oh I just – helplessness. Ah I don’t, I don’t believe I was fearful of – I just think, I just, just trying to, trying to think.

Just the hopelessness of the situation that – and it might have been self-driven from my own needs. Ah yeah, desperation.

Probably when I began to notice that things weren’t going well was – I started to have sleepless nights, so I was lying in bed and I was trying to figure out why a particular individual wasn’t doing the right thing, or wasn’t doing their job, or whatever it might have been and it was kind of like circular thinking, I just couldn’t figure it out. It just made no sense, I couldn’t figure out these problems and I’d just lie in bed all night thinking about them.

The sleep sort of got a bit worse. I started getting these, really vivid dreams. I’d wake up totally drenched in sweat; I’d just wake up totally wet and I’d have to get up out of bed and I’d have to pull the covers back and then I’d sort of go for a walk around the house, get a drink and wait till I’d dried off and then I’d go back to bed. And they – those sorts of dreams stayed with me for years, just really vivid. Not so much nightmares, but just vivid, vivid dreams, and really stressful dreams.

The tension was really, palpable at home and just the sense of conflict and even when we weren’t talking it was passive aggressive, you know? It was just simmering all the time. I got to the point where I just couldn’t manage anymore and I couldn’t see any way forward. Everything was just too hard, everything was just too painful, I really wasn’t coping and in my scrambled brain I – I knew that really the only way out of this situation that would be best for my wife and for my family would be for me to suicide, to end my life, because I think- my, my parents separated when I was 10 and I know the impact that that had on me as a child, and I just couldn’t do that to my kids.

Sure. Okay so it’s felt, you know, it always feels heavy. Ahh it feels heavy here, so I guess on my heart, around here. And I had felt in the past that there was just like black clouds or a – people talk about a black crow or something over their head, and I fully understand what that feels like. It feels like there’s no sun coming down and shining on me. There is no warmth. I am very cold. And because there is no warmth, there is no life, for me, in me. The heaviness translates for me into like sludgy, sort of slow walking, slow talking, you know tiredness and stuff and just immense sadness, ahh sadness and just feeling like there is no point in ahh living essentially and just pain, just pain around my heart and just, and just constant leaking of tears is the way that I get depressed.

And so what happens for me is that I turn it in on myself. So I might feel that what’s going on in the world is futile, but then somehow you know I have not made enough of a contribution to you know help alleviate that futility. So you know I know that what happens for me is that I turn it around and blame myself for things, which you know is a pattern that I have learnt to try and break and you know, I am better at it now, but, as I describe it, I am a bit so. it’s a bit of a, you know, it’s a constant struggle to – well constant vigilance to just keep it, to just keep it at bay.