Is recovery possible? yes. I do wonder, the one thing that I wonder about is once you’ve reached that or, or experienced that weakened state I wonder if you ever become fully strong again? Or if you constantly have to be aware that that is a weakened part of your – I don’t like the word.

So that you need to maybe be more conscious and aware of it than the other, than another person.

Yeah, that’s a good question. Well it’s made me, it’s made me weaker I guess in some regards and it’s made me stronger in others. I feel happier now, like, you know, the last couple of years have been shit, absolute shit. But I like, I love myself now. I know that I’m, I know that, I know that this is a new life for me that I’ve chosen and I’ve created it. Like I believe you create your reality with the choices you make and the, and the things that you say, you make it and I own the bad things that happened to me. Whenever those bad things were happening I never sat there and blamed a god or my, someone else or anything like that.

And what do I have now? I have sadness, I’ve had a lot of sadness. I’ve had that depression, I could have done without that. But I feel truer to myself, I feel more like myself. I feel like I’m showing my children how to live and that they always have the option of making choices in their life.

I do yoga and meditation as well, which I find very beneficial and calming from the anxiety point of view.

Anyway, so sleeping – yes, my sleeping was affected, by my worrying and, I dealt with it that way and med, and meditation. And I was drinking chamomile tea for a while, but other than that, it didn’t work really – not like prescriptive drugs. I can’t, I can’t deny it. Anything else?

Why do you like prescriptive drugs? How different they are? How do they make you feel?

They just stop the – I know that they work. And, and I’ve tried Val – I was going to say Valium – Valerian.

I take my Vitamin B because I think that that reduces, it’s Vitamin Executive B Stress Formula.

And I left my job, where I was working my, I was told that I’d be two and a half week – I told them I’d be two and a half weeks, because I was optimistic that she would be okay or if the worst case scenario that I would be back by then or whatever. But I was a contract, I was working as a contractor so I was, not an employee, so I was able to be fired legally whenever they didn’t want me. So I didn’t want to actually lose my job.

After two weeks, about three days before I was meant to come back home, she was admitted to hospital again with malnutrition/dehydration. She had a litre of fluid drained from each lung. She was in hospital for 11 days, so she was very unwell. So I called my boss and told my boss that I couldn’t come, that I couldn’t come back right now because she was in hospital and three days later he sent me an email telling me that I was let go. So that was part of a trigger for the depression.

Loneliness is, is probably my biggest thing (upset). All my old friends are gone. My friends, my friends – your friends – they’ve been beautiful to me, very supportive. When the relationship is mainly through my husband, but because my husband has been unresponsive to his ex – his best friends. He has, he’s had two best friends in his life and he’s been unresponsive to them and they’re such beautiful people. They’re coming to me and, and supporting me as much as they’re supporting, or trying to support, [husband] even though [husband’s] not responding. So I do have some old friends there.

But I don’t want to be a burden on anybody, you know, I can’t, if I fall into financial difficulty or something like that or if I develop an illness I don’t know who or if anybody will be there, you know, for me. I feel very alone, profoundly alone in that way. My children are both very young, so it’s not like I have older children that could help me. My sisters, I don’t know if they would help me. I don’t know if they love me enough to, to help me (upset).

I have a lot of nice new friends that have just come into my life and sometimes I think that’s sad because no one’s known me for more than a year. But then maybe that’s just the way it’s supposed to be right now. They’re the right friends in my life at the moment and they’re encouraging me and supporting me and, and loving me and, and accepting me for who I am. And I’m being true to myself now so I don’t have to put on airs and graces for anybody and present myself differently so that they like me. They like me for who I am and what I am now. So, you know, even though they haven’t known me long I hope that they’ll be, they seem like important people to me now and I hope that they’ll be friends for a long time.

Well I found it, as reluctant as I was, I found it incredibly valuable. I recommend it highly. Even just, like I said, just for those practical things that you can’t get your head around, not, not necessarily your emotional state. But, you know, she, she taught, she taught me this thing, you know, she said, you know, we’ll put some boxes up on a shelf Kym – an imaginary shelf, you know? Your family is in one big box, your job is another big box, your lifestyle’s in another big box. And we sort of categorised all the things that you have to take care of in your life. She said, how many of these big archive boxes can you get down off the shelf at a time? And I said, oh only one. She said, exactly, deal with one thing at a time. Let’s look at your, let’s look at your relationship with your husband. Let’s deal with that right now and then we’ll get another box down off the shelf.

After all, I’ve made all the changes in my life. I’ve moved out, I’ve, I’ve separated, I’ve re-established my relationship with my children. We’ve established our, our custody arrangements et cetera and I want to talk to her about where I’m at right now and about moving forward from here and what I need to do to continue to move forward. So, I’ve come to another, I’m, I’m, I’m making my own decisions and I’m, I’m happy about them but I, I think [psychologist] would be valuable to speak to – to, to help me keep moving forward.

And I know – the only thing I do know when I get in that depressed state – the only thing that I can remember and think logically about is the fact that I know it’s a time thing. That it’s not going to go on forever. It might last a day, it might last an hour or it might last a week. It might last five days. It’s never gone for more than seven days with me and I know I’m on the upswing. And I have my down days, my very down days now still. But they only ever last for a day and even in that day, when I’m having a down day now, I had a down day yesterday. I drew up a new painting. I got on the internet and found a picture that I wanted to do. I swept my house. You know, I didn’t do a lot but I was still able to function. You know, I made myself food. I did – you know what I mean?

People, people do this big, they start running or jogging and they buy bikes and they start riding bikes. They put themselves under so much pressure and time pressure – we’re all busy. Like I go, like I said, to the gym half an hour twice a week, first thing in the morning, and that’s all I need to do. And I need to fit in a walk every two or three times a week as well and, and I can manage to fit that in. If you put yourself under too much pressure you won’t do it.

So don’t put yourself, I mean if you, if you, especially when you have depression it just, that, that adds to your stress and anxiety. Because you’re trying to lose weight, you’re trying to regain your fitness and if you don’t get to the gym you feel bad and, and you know what I mean? You just have to keep it simple and you don’t have to have it, keep it big. But it’s been very important in my recovery, absolutely.

And if people have depression if they can find something that they’re passionate about, that they can really focus on, almost to the OCD degree, it, it takes you mind off of a lot of the other stuff that you’re thinking about all the time.

And going to the gym and staying fit is important too. And surrounding yourself with the right kind of people. You can have people in your life, I think, that you’ve had in your life for 20 or 25 or 30 years and you can still be their friend. But if they are bringing you down and if they’re putting you down or if they’re a negative in your life in any way, you don’t need them right now, you know? And, and sometimes there’s going to be casualties. The casualties of war.