This is a blog I have been putting off writing for a while. It’s about letting go, but I have to keep reminding myself that it’s not about giving up.
We’ve talked about this for a while but it wasn’t until the last time we took the boat away that we officially made the call.
We’re putting Wildflower up for sale.
It’s a really hard thing to do. She’s been a massive part of Paddy’s life, and a big part of mine for the last 10 years. It’s like letting go of a family member or, the way I prefer to look at it, preparing your child for every possible eventuality and sending them out into the world.
Wildflower is tough and beautiful and created by Paddy to be the ultimate ocean-going vessel – but she’s not crossing oceans. All the little things that went wrong when we last took her out were simply due to lack of use. She needs to be out on the ocean waves.
New adventures
Part of me is really struggling to fight the feeling that this is giving up. I gleefully signed off my book with plans to take her away again in 2016 (note to self: never put a date in print). That year came and went and we are still here in Wellington.
We have taken the boat away on smaller adventures – across to Tasman Bay and Nelson and over to the Sounds, but also embarked on different adventures of our own.
We bought a house, I tamed a feral garden, we got engaged (there’s a half-finished blog about that too. We had a party which involved putting 3000 ball pit balls in a spa pool. It was awesome.) We inherited a new fur child, I wrote a book and got it published and I am writing more.
When we moved from living between the boat and a flat to a house (a move that went amazingly smoothly and, I would like to point out, was Paddy’s idea so no rubbish about me making him swallow the anchor) we thought we would have more time to sail the boat because we weren’t living on her. We could keep her set up for sailing all the time and it wouldn’t be such a drama having to pack up our life every time we wanted to take her out.
The best laid plans
Unfortunately things didn’t happen that way. For a million, very valid reasons, we just didn’t get the chances we thought we would. As I have mentioned before, one of the issues with having a cruising boat in Wellington is the fact that you are in Wellington. You can’t just pop over to the Sounds for a weekend and be back for work on Monday. You need several days either side to make sure you get the Cook Strait crossing conditions right. So, while it’s a lovely idea, it doesn’t happen that often in reality. And in reality, with the new directions our lives have taken, we aren’t going to be able to take a year or so off work to get the boat ready and head over to the tropics any time soon.
This isn’t a bad thing. We are both in a really good place right now and I am happier and less crazy than I have been in a long time. It’s just that it’s a different place than we thought we would be.
Not the end of the adventure
This isn’t the end of sailing for us. There will always be a boat, just a smaller one that means less maintenance and more sailing. One thought is a trailer yacht that Paddy can actually sail and maybe get back into racing. The other possibility is to get a berth down in Picton and have a smaller boat there, so we can fly over in the weekends and already be in the Sounds.
One of the things Paddy asked me when we were talking about this was “what part of sailing do you like best, getting to places or being in places?” And when I honestly think about it, being in places is the winner for me. What I loved about our Pacific trip was the access to islands and villages and people that you normally wouldn’t have on your standard tourist holiday. And while I am super proud of myself for crossing oceans and it gave me a huge amount of confidence, I can’t say I enjoyed it hugely.
The odd clear night with bright stars and a calm sea made it all worth it, but that was the exception rather than the rule. Most sailors I have spoken to don’t enjoy long passages. A couple of days between countries is all good, but I can’t say I get much out of anything longer – other than bragging rights. So another option for us could be flying and chartering a boat. The sailing isn’t over, it just might be a different kind of sailing.
Rules for dating our daughter
It’s not the end of adventures on Wildflower yet either. It can take years to sell a boat and we are certainly going to vet potential purchasers. Our baby isn’t going to go to just anyone. It has to be someone who will love her and look after her and can handle the fact she’s a little bit ‘extra.’ If you are going to date our daughter, you are going to have to get past us. (So don’t worry Mum, you will get your ride round the harbour!)
So, as Paddy has said ‘the star of Which Way is Starboard Again? is up for sale’. She’s strong and beautiful and has more whiz bang gadgets than you could possibly need (don’t even get me started on the fridge) and a piece of me will go along with her.
She is sturdy and safe and got my anxious arse around the South Pacific and back. She is the goodest girl and we are very proud of her. We want to find someone who will love her as much as we do but give her the freedom to sail she needs.
The deets
For those interested, Wildflower is a Bruce Roberts designed R432.
She has a “Solent” cutter rig and an 80hp Ford D series engine.
On board there’s a generator, water maker, dive compressor and SSB radio.
When I look back on it, my mental health blogs seem to jump from ‘bugger I’m bonkers again’ to ‘yay I’m better!’ with nothing much in-between.
That’s because in-between isn’t much fun, and writing when you are in-between is not an easy thing to do. But it’s probably the most important time to write, because in-between is the time that people need to hear that what they are going through happens to us all. That the ups will eventually stick around longer and the downs won’t last forever. I think we have a tendency to block out the in-between when we start feeling better because we don’t want to focus on the crap stuff. So we don’t write about it and we don’t talk about it.
So my blog for this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week (which kicks off tommorrow) is about what in-between being sick and being well looks like for me.
Why do I feel sad? I’m better dammit!
In-between is having an awesome, productive weekend where you do all the things that seemed so insurmountable for so long. You mow the lawns and remember how much you love spending time in the garden. You tidy your room and hang up those pictures that have been gathering dust. You feel successful and, for the first time in a long time, really happy.
In-between is coming home the next day and crying your face off because you have felt sick and sad and anxious all day and you shouldn’t be feeling that way because you are better now dammit.
Poor, long-suffering Paddy says getting better isn’t a straight path, it’s a continuum. And he’s right. When you start to see little glimpses of sunshine you take it so much harder when it starts to cloud over again. But the sun is still there and eventually it will stick around longer and longer.
Okay, who stole my teeth?
In-between for me this time was also finding out how much damage my anxiety had done to my body. It was going to the dentist to have a filling replaced and finding I had anxiety-clenched my teeth so hard, for so long, I had ground down the enamel so far you could almost see the nerves.
It was also having to be a grownup and working out a payment plan so I didn’t have to sell a kidney to get it fixed.
Funnily enough, I had actually noticed in a couple of pictures friends had posted online that I seemed to have a weird gap in my teeth when I smiled. I remember thinking ‘that’s odd. I don’t have a gap there’ – not after all the money, time and trauma my parents went through getting me braces as a teen.
Then the dentist broke the news to me.
“You have the mouth of an 80 year old,” he said.
“What?!” I spat.
“Well, maybe a 70 year old…”
“Dude, that’s not much better!”
It turned out he was talking about wear. I had done about 80 years worth of wear and tear to 37 years worth of teeth.
Yeah alright, it was me.
After the initial shock, I wasn’t actually surprised. I most likely grind my teeth in my sleep, and I have experimented with sleeping with a mouthguard before, but the real issue was during the day. When my anxiety was up I could judge how tense and jumpy I had been by how much pain my jaw was in by the end of the day. I wouldn’t even realise I was clenching my teeth until I unclenched them. My jaw would pop and my back teeth would be stuck together like glue.
It was actually one of the first signs for me that the new medication was starting to work. I would get to the end of the day and think – ‘hey! My jaw doesn’t hurt!’
So while I wasn’t exactly surprised, I was rather shocked that something that was going on in my brain could do that much damage to my body without me realising it. (I may have had a minor meltdown over that, but seriously, who wouldn’t?)
Goodnight, sleep tight – don’t let the tooth monster bite!
The next step was, what to do? Leaving it was an option – for six months or so anyway, much longer though and it would be the difference between $3000 for building up what was there and $50,000 for getting crowns on everything.
I decided to rip the bandaid off. I knew that if I put it off I would just keep putting it off. There was a psychological component to it too. What’s more symbolic of getting better than taking a ragged, crumbling, anxiety mouth and giving it a proper smile again?
So I booked in to get some scans and moulds made. When I saw the mould of my mouth I was horrified. It looked like something parents would use to scare their children. It turns out I had ground several millimeters from both the top and bottom of my front teeth. I needed nine teeth built up with the equivalent of 11 fillings worth of schmoo.
Ahhh! Run away!!
They probably aren’t lined up exactly right as I was balancing them on a chair in the dentist’s waiting room while taking the pic, but you get the idea.
New gnashers!
It all happened quite quickly. A week after seeing the funhouse horror moulds I was in the dentist’s chair having scaffolding put on my teeth. Two hours in the dentist’s chair later (no fun drugs, just lots of injections) and I pretty much had a new set of gnashers.
It was actually a fairly painless process, the crick I got in my neck was the worst of it really. Hearing comments to the dental assistant like ‘look at all the wear there’ and ‘have you seen many procedures like this before?’ and learning that one of my front teeth was actually loose from all the pressure I’d put on it was a little more traumatic.
The dentist looked pretty proud of his work and he had every right to be. I thought I looked like a whole different person. He said I looked younger but he would – I was paying three grand and he had that ‘mouth of an 80 year old’ line to make up for!
I’m pretty happy with it though and think it’s an awesome symbol that things are getting better.
New gnashers
It does feel rather strange though, like I have someone else’s teeth. I tried to bite my nails the other day and I actually physically couldn’t. Maybe after all these years I might be able to quit that habit!
Four weeks of schmoo
The only drawback now is that for the next few weeks I am pretty much on a diet of mush until things settle down. So for me in-between is now soup and smoothies and sneaky KFC potato and gravy – but it will be worth it to have my smile back.
I have also developed a whole new respect for people on special diets. I got my teeth done just before a big work conference that involved catered meals. Everyone was fascinated when my dinner looked different to theirs and I got the third degree. By the end of three days my answers ranged from ‘I have new teeth and can’t eat solids’ to ‘I anxiety clenched my teeth to oblivion, please leave me alone to eat my schmoo’ – I seriously couldn’t do that all the time.
I love my new chompers though, and they are helping me in more ways than one. When I have a rough day and (as Paddy so eloquently puts it) ‘the black dog takes a dump on my brain’ I can look in the mirror and see that no matter how ratty things get, they can be fixed. It won’t be an easy fix, it could be the equivalent of four weeks of eating slush, but there is a fix there. In-between sucks, but it’s exactly that, in-between. You will come out the other side, potentially with a whole new smile (even if it’s one held together by plastic and dental goop).
Mental Health Foundation fundraiser
As always, and especially this week, 50% of paperback sales of Starboard the book go to the NZ Mental Health Foundation. Depending on how financial you are feeling you can either pay $20 and donate $10 here
Or take advantage of the sale price and pay $10 and donate $5 here
Note: This is one of those blogs that travels all over the shop, from New Zealand to Samoa and back – so I have broken it up into bite-sized chunks so you can easily stop reading when you get sick of the sound of my e-voice. You’re welcome.
Also content warning: This post deals with mental health issues including anxiety and depression. It is unbelievably okay to ask for help so if you or someone you know needs assistance there are New Zealand-based contacts below. I am sure there are similar resources available for overseas readers.
When the crazy comes back
This sort of feels like an admission of defeat, but my gleeful post about switching meds for the first time in 20 years appears to have been a bit premature.
In short, the crazy came back.
Basically things went really well, right up until they didn’t. I was functioning fine during the working day, but by the time I got home I was completely out of gas from holding it all together. I was pretty much on an anxiety tight-rope. When it got to the point where Paddy sneezed and I screamed, we knew something was seriously wrong.
I didn’t give up easily. In fact, in trying to find another answer, I probably took longer than I should have to realise it was the meds. I did all the right things, I talked to an awesome head doctor, I started seeing a physio because the tension had munted my back and I was trying to eat healthier. (Getting more exercise was the next on the list, but I hadn’t quite got there yet!) When none of that worked that pretty much left one thing, it was chemical.
I didn’t want to admit this at first because I was so convinced the last happy pill switch was going to be the answer, so when things got steadily worse I felt a bit gutted. It’s silly, I know people who have been through at least six different medication changes before they found the right mix. I just figured that wouldn’t be me.
In typical Anna fashion, crunch time came at the least convenient moment, just before we were due to go on a planned holiday to Samoa. (Before you ask, we totally cheated and flew rather than sailed. We’d need a bit longer than 10 days if we were going to try something like that!)
No time was going to be a good time to switch, so my choice in terms of going on holiday was – wait until I got back, knowing there was 100% likelihood of feeling crappy while I was over there, or start beforehand with the small hope that I might actually feel a bit better. Not much of a choice I agree, but in the end I went with the latter.
This involved weaning myself the old happy pills, a couple of days of no happy pills and then gradually building up the new happy pills – which meant a fair bit of time with Anna’s brain not having enough happy juice. I was a bit scared, but I had done it before, and I knew it would be okay eventually.
Harry Potter and the Customs Official
‘Swish and flick!’
One of the joys of having an anxiety disorder is that you fixate over every possible way anything could go wrong. If you are under-medicated and have an anxiety disorder it’s like that on acid (not that I ever tried acid, my brain was already fizzy enough!).
We were flying to Samoa from Auckland and circumstances meant that Paddy would be there before me (in Auckland, not Samoa), so I was going to catch a red-eye from Wellington and meet him at the Auckland International Terminal.
So of course my brain got busy with all the things that could go horrifically wrong before we even got out of the country. I stayed on the boat the night before to be closer to the airport and, after very little sleep (except for enough to have a nightmare that Wellington Airport was fogged out and no flights could leave), I got there ridiculously early and everything went super smoothly leaving me with an hour to kill. So far so good…
Turbulence on the flight to Auckland made me a little bit jittery, but it was nothing compared to bouncing around in the middle of the Pacific Ocean (which is what I kept telling myself as I gripped the armrests.) I arrived safe and sound and made contact with Paddy to let him know I was about to head through customs. He told me there was plenty of time, but as far as I was concerned there wouldn’t be plenty of time until I was sitting at the gate waiting for them to call our seat numbers.
Customs went fine at first, I was waved through the people scanner, got most of my stuff, then noticed my handbag was heading away from me down the Naughty Conveyor Belt for Naughty People Carrying Naughty Things. I signaled to the customs officials that it was mine and they waved me over.
I stepped towards them and they were all “stay behind the yellow line please ma’am”. This was serious, I couldn’t even check to see if time was running out for my flight because my phone was in my handbag!
It was actually the second time this had happened recently, the first was when I was visiting my sister and new niece in Brisbane, but they found nothing then.
After confirming I had packed my own bags I joked (because that is what I do when I am stressed or nervous) that it might be my good luck troll. For those of you who don’t know me: My name is Anna and I never travel without a troll.
The customs official said “no, but I can see the troll, it looks quite funny!”
“Can I have a look?” I asked excitedly, forgetting I was still under suspicion.
I mustn’t have looked too dodgy because he let me lean over to see.
There she was, smiling benevolently up at me through the x ray. ‘Get me out of this Cal! (Short for Calorie, a story for another time),’ I thought frantically at her. ‘We’ve got a flight to catch!’
Cal the good luck troll (spoiler- as you can see we made it safely to the Pacific and she became TropiCAL)
After a bit of scruffling around and finding nothing, he finally said “What we are seeing is a pointed metal rod with sort of bumps all the way down it.”
I let out a massive sigh of relief. “I know exactly what it is. It’s the Harry Potter wand on my keyring!”
Instead of looking at me like I was a crazy person, he dug in deep, grabbed my keys and said ‘So it is! And it’s not just any wand. It’s the Elder Wand!”
(It’s totally a knock off of the Elder Wand, but I’ll take it).
It was a ‘graduation’ gift from a Wizarding Academy steam train trip I took recently with my Mum, two of my best friends and not a child among us – because #adulting. (Important note to anyone else who went on that trip. Take the wands off your keyrings if you want to fly internationally.)
Wizarding Academy graduates – adulting at its best!
It turned out Mr Customs Official was a massive Potter geek and had just returned from Harry Potter World (I didn’t catch whereabouts, I was still a little flustered).
He preceded to wave my tiny wand around *, showing his fellow customs officers the proper ‘swish and flick’ motion and trying to cast Alohamora.
I was massively relieved and glad to have provided some entertainment and found a kindred spirit, but I was also all ‘dude, flight to catch!’ I didn’t say that out loud though because I was still so relieved he hadn’t pulled out the rubber gloves.
In the end he gave me back my wand and my troll and I made it to the gate with time to spare and a story that I probably found much more entertaining that Paddy did.
* Yes I am aware of how that sounds. If your inner 14 year old boy is as vocal as mine, just google ‘Harry Potter wand replaced with wang’ and get it out of your system.
That’ll keep you going through the show (with apologies to Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb)
Sometimes you don’t realise you haven’t been feeling anything until your emotions come back and you start Feeling All the Things.
It’s like when you stub your toe or otherwise bang yourself up. You feel nothing for a split second after you injure yourself (mostly because you are in a wee bit of shock) and then EVERYTHING IS FIRE AND PAIN.
As I mentioned in my book (which you should totally buy if you haven’t already because half of the proceeds go to the NZ Mental Health Foundation – see I can do product placement!) I have the cray-cray trifecta – obsessive compulsive disorder, anxiety and depression.
The anxiety is pretty easy to identify because you jump every time a spider farts, but the depression is a creeper and often you don’t realise you are going through it until it has its claws well hooked.
Paddy noticed I was sleeping a lot at home, but I just put that down to having a pretty full life. That was really the first sign. The second was that I had stopped feeling. I was making my way through life fine, but I didn’t really feel happy or sad, or anything really. I was numb.
It wasn’t until I was unwinding in a tropical paradise that I realised just how long I had been like that, and I realised it because I suddenly started to feel things again.
Something really silly made me cry. It might have been something in a book I was reading, or I might have lost something, or I might have stubbed my toe – I honestly don’t remember other than it was pretty minor – and I suddenly realised I hadn’t done that for a really long time.
That opened the floodgates. I’d get really involved in a discussion, I’d read something that resonated in a book, I’d see a cute cat on the internet and I would start bawling. It seems perverse that feeling sad can actually be a good thing but when you have felt nothing for so long it really, really can.
The first couple of days were a bit rough. Different people deal with depression in different ways and different approaches can work at different times for the same person. There is no right or wrong way to do this, so please don’t take my coping strategies as gospel, I might have different ones next week.
You often hear people talk about ‘battling depression’ and often that can be exactly the right thing to do. Fight the bastard. Throw everything you have at it. Don’t listen to a lying word it has to say.
Sometimes though you just don’t have the energy to do that, and that’s okay too. Sometimes you need to know when to stop and regroup, to recharge and get your energy back to kick it to the curb. That’s when I find myself sinking into it, just curling up and letting the feelings wash over me, acknowledging them but not fighting them. Sometimes that can take their power away.
Of course from the outside that looks a whole lot like curling up in a ball and feeling sorry for yourself, and when you are in a tropical paradise that some people might never get to see, that seems rather ungrateful and something you should feel ashamed about.
Now that I am out of that ball and feeling recharged and ready to face what’s ahead of me I can tell you that’s absolutely not the case, but it can be a tricky argument to win with yourself at the time.
When you suck at being a VIP
Before anyone tells me what I missed out on, this is not the first time I have been to Samoa. Around 10 years ago I visited Upolu, Savaii and even American Samoa and saw some stunning places, had awesome experiences and met some lovely people. I particularly recommend Savaii if you are thinking of going there yourself, it is absolutely stunning.
This wasn’t meant to be an adventure holiday, it was more of a stop, drop and flop affair. Somewhere warm to go and do absolutely nothing to stave off burnout in our real world.
So for the first time I stayed in a proper resort. To be honest, and I really hope this doesn’t come across as privileged and ungrateful, I’m not really a huge fan. Don’t get me wrong, it was absolutely lovely. We had lovely air conditioned rooms in a gorgeous setting with BATH TEMPERATURE ocean water just outside, the food and people were lovely, but I’m just not that crazy about people running around after me like I’m some sort of VIP.
I know it’s their job and if they didn’t do it they wouldn’t have one, but I just find people serving me and cleaning up after me a little hard.
I think I might have been a bit hyper-sensitive to it because I wasn’t 100% and I kind of just wanted to be left alone. But every day staff were desperate to get into our room to tidy up and, even if we left the ‘do not disturb’ sign up, they just circled until they had the opportunity to. I understood why after a couple of days, when it turned out hours later a manager would come in to check that the first lot of staff had done their job properly.
That didn’t sit super well with me, and is also a little hard when you are already feeling a bit guilty and ashamed about being busted taking a two-hour depression nap in the middle of a beautiful sunny day. I know it’s silly and that people who are on holiday rest a lot but, trust me, depression isn’t big on making a whole lot of sense.
Sometimes superpowers aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.
Voices by the pool
One of the side-effects of going through the medication switch at a resort is that I now know far too much about the people staying there.
I know that three Australian men were there on a racing trip (though I’m unsure what type of racing) and that they were rather fond of the local beer. I know that the kid two tables down from us hadn’t slept for three nights in a row (and I felt terribly sorry for his parents), I know that the woman at the table behind us was headed to Tonga but something her son was supposed to do back home hadn’t been done – and I learned all this in about 10 minutes, while trying to have a conversation with Paddy.
I first experienced this when I was 15 and diagnosed with All the Things. At the time I thought I was hearing voices or had suddenly developed the ability to read minds.
I would be in the supermarket and suddenly be assailed by inane conversations.
“This brand is cheaper but Frank likes that brand better.”
“Susan is a total skank!”
“I told you we were running low on petrol two days ago.”
I would hear all these things simultaneously until I wanted to scream “just put the house on the market Janet – it’s not going to matter if you buy new curtains or not!” at the top of my lungs.
When I told my head doctor about it I was convinced I had developed some sort of unwanted psychic superpowers. “You know, like when Superman got overwhelmed by being able to read everybody’s thoughts until he got control of his powers?”“
No,” she said, disappointingly. “You are not turning into a superhero.”
So much for silver linings!
She explained the fight or flight wiring in our brains, which kept us alive when we lived in the jungle and every cracking twig could be a bear creeping up on you. This was useful when humans were more regularly potential bear snacks, but not so much when you are in the supermarket buying yogurt.
As humans became less likely to be lunch, this hyper-vigilance faded. But those of us with anxiety and out of whack brain chemicals didn’t seem to get the memo. So here I was, in a tropical paradise, drinking pina coladas while utterly convinced there was A BEAR RIGHT BEHIND ME all day, every day. We don’t even have bears in New Zealand, and I’m pretty sure they’re not native to Samoa.
Once I got this under control the first time (and I will again) it actually became a useful skill as a journalist. I had developed bat ears and often conversations inadvertently tuned into, grew into promising story leads.The moral of the story is, don’t whisper things around me, I will automatically tune in, whether I want to or not. Also, that colour really does look good on you, you should totally buy that dress!
Anna’s list of things that help when you are going bonkers in the tropics
There is most definitely a light at the end of this particular tunnel. I am not better yet, the drugs still need tweaking, but I am getting there.
The fact that I am writing again is a pretty good sign. In fact, I wrote most of this while we were away, which is an even better sign. I find writing down the things that have helped me through a wobbly patch is useful for the next time things go bumpy, so here’s my list this time round:
Sending silly messages to my family Whatsapp group chat, and seeing what they are up to (particularly looking at photos of my wee niece and grossing my sister out with photos of my Crocs)
Island cats (none of which were as beautiful and snuggly as my beloved at home of course!)
Island meows!
Swimming in bath temperature warm ocean water
32 degrees!!!
Having breathing space to write again and actually feeling like doing it (it took four days before I was in the right headspace but I got there!)
Umbrella drinks
Putting umbrellas from said drinks in my good luck troll’s hair
Tropical flowers that look like fuzzy Muppet caterpillars
Muppet flowers!
Reading three books in 10 days – a record, which is a shame because I love reading, I just never take the time to do it.
Wearing pretty summer clothes (that probably won’t come out again until the next holiday)
I got Paddy in orange!!
Paddy – for being right there with me while I slept, wrote, stalked island cats and put umbrellas on my troll. Love you babe!
Paddy in training for the 2019 International Competitive Hammocking Championships
Where to get help if you need it (in NZ):
Need to talk? Free call or text 1737 any time for support from a trained counsellor
Lifeline – 0800 543 354 (0800 LIFELINE) or free text 4357 (HELP)
A while ago I learned it is never wise to put a date you are going to do something in print.
If you miss that date for whatever reason its just staring at you and you spend more time beating yourself up about it than getting on with things.
When it comes to work or writing for other people, I eat deadlines for breakfast. When life gets in the way of my own self-imposed ones though, I get unreasonably mad at myself.
I should have learned after publishing Which Way is Starboard Again? the book, which I ended by saying we would do the South Pacific trip again in 2016. For various reasons that didn’t happen. Life moved in different, and amazing directions. There will be more sailing and there will be other trips, they may just be at a different time and in a different form. I don’t regret that at all, but I still have that 2016 date glaring accusingly at me from the page.
I did the same thing to myself when I announced the new book ‘Gators, Guns and Keeping Calm’ about our trip to the US. It started with a hiss and a roar, I had the chapter summaries ready to send to publisher and was all ready to self-publish as an e-book if they weren’t keen this time. I was taking regular ‘writing days’ as leave from work when I could and, if I’d stuck to my self-imposed deadline, I would have finished by now. But I didn’t, and I haven’t. And the reasons I haven’t have been mostly out of my control, but I am still bashing myself up over it.
And don’t even get me started on the half finished fiction…
I realised it was getting beyond a joke when I found myself getting all panicky and angry at myself and the world because I hadn’t written a blog. Well I had written it, but in a notepad, which has been sitting on the coffee table looking disappointed in me for months now, waiting to be transcribed.
It’s an important blog. It’s our engagement blog. (For those that don’t already know, after 10 years, the Captain finally proposed -spoiler: I said yes!) It was getting so long between the event and the blog that it was ridiculous. At least that was what I was telling myself. Yes I had a whole lot going on in my life, but what kind of writer am I if I can’t even make the time to write about my own engagement?
It was a couple of days after that last meltdown that I realised the only person who was upset and angry about this was me. That the voice I thought I had chased away during my earlier battles with mental illness was coming back.
“You’re a failure.”
“You’re letting everyone down.”
“Who do you think you are calling yourself an author? You’ve written one book. You should give up now before everyone realises you are a fraud.”
It is a voice that a lot of people have and it can be really hard to accept that it is a voice that is actually full of shit.
People aren’t thinking those things. They never have. But it doesn’t make it feel any less real. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the hardest battle anyone can fight is the one against their own brain.
But I am telling that voice to shut up and get back in its box. No doubt it will pop up a few more times, but I fully intend to slam the lid shut.
I am capable, and I will do all those things I said I would.
There will be a trip.
There will be a book.
There will be a blog (with lots of lovely photos from our engagement party).
But they will happen when they happen and I refuse to feel guilty about that anymore.
Speaking of deadlines, another one we missed, through no fault of our own, was getting Wildflower back in the water for summer. Instead of the usual paint and scrape, her butt was due for a major overhaul – sandblasting 14 years worth of antifoul right off and giving her a whole new beautiful paint job.
Wildflower takes up stilt walking
Last time Paddy did this he had a bit more time on his hands (and he was also 14 years younger) so this time we decided to enlist a bit of help.
Events that were mostly beyond our control meant the process took a lot longer than anticipated and crept into the colder season which meant then having to wait on the weather. The end result was that we missed the summer’s sailing, but Wildflower now has a lovely arse.
Last weekend we made a massive splash, plonking her back in the water again, where she is most definitely in her happy place.
Poor thing had been sitting so long that a bunch of gunk had clogged the switch of my nemesis the bilge alarm and jammed it on, meaning alarm bells ringing in the middle of the harbour.
Paddy calmly said “would you mind steering the boat for a bit?” and popped down to check things out and I only (internally) freaked out a little bit. Firstly over whether I could actually still remember how to steer the boat and secondly, well, those who have read the book will know why that particular alarm gives me the heebie geebies. It was good news though. I did remember how to steer and the issue was with the alarm, not the boat sinking. I kept my nerves in check and any anxious meeping stayed inside my head. I was quite proud of myself!
I don’t see the point in dwelling on past frustrations, so while it was sad we missed the summer sailing, I am super happy our boat is back in the water and look forward to restoring her from a cesspit of dust and toolboxes to our floating home away from home again.
Also, if you pick your days, winter sailing in Wellington can actually be more settled. We might even enter her in a couple of races in the cruising division of the Evans Bay Yacht Club winter series – though no firm commitment, and definitely nothing in writing!
Skipper watching like a broody chookNice arse! Shiny new paint jobAll aboard!Relieved Skipper is relieved
I’m super excited to see that 1000 lovely people have subscribed to this blog (especially since I have been a bit rubbish at regularly updating it of late) and a big wave hello to the new followers on the Starboard Facebook page!
This is an awesome surprise and a good wake up for me to share more with you all.
To celebrate I’m selling signed paperbacks of Which Way is Starboard Again? for NZ $9.99 with free postage in New Zealand.
50% of the proceeds still go to the New Zealand Mental Health Foundation . Mental health is severely underfunded in New Zealand and this is a fantastic organisation that deserves all the support it can get. I have already made our first donation of $200 so thank you so much for everyone who has been a part of that.
For those of you who would like to donate more the $19.99 full promotion is still available and there is more information about it here
If you live outside of New Zealand and are interested in buying a copy, drop me an email at whichwayisstarboardagain@gmail.com and we can sort postage. The book is also available on most ebook platforms, but I don’t have control over the pricing of those. Do shop around though, I have spotted it on sale at different sites. At the moment Amazon has it at $6.59
In other news, book number two is definitely on the way and I will share a sample with you shortly. I am also investigating turning Starboard into an audio book, I just need to get my head around the technological side of that!
Will keep you posted.
Again, thank you so much for the support. It might just be a matter of pressing a subscribe button, but it means an awful lot to writers like us – so yay you!
Nearly 16 years ago I got into an argument with my flatmate (housemate or roommate for non-Kiwi readers) about whether or not we should get a cat.
“Don’t be ridiculous!,” I said (in a rare moment of sensibleness). “We are going to go our separate ways in a year. Who is going to take the cat? Who is going to pay for the food and the vet bills? We are not getting a cat. End of story.”
It was not the end of the story.
Around midnight said flatmate woke me up to say she thought she had heard an injured cat in the back yard. I muttered something about her probably being high and turned to go back to sleep when I heard it too. A woeful yowling noise that could have woken the dead.
We woke another flatmate up and the three of us headed out to the back yard, armed with a cigarette lighter, because students didn’t have useful things like torches. We followed the noise into the bushes down the back of the property and when I thought we were close I grabbed the lighter. After burning my fingers several times (I didn’t smoke) I found the source of the caterwauling and tried to grab it before it could run away. Still thinking we were hunting for a wounded adult cat, I was shocked when my hands closed on a ball of fluff the size of a regular cat’s head. Where was the rest of the cat? How could it still be meowing? Once my eyes got used to the light I realised I had captured a tiny black kitten. I was amazed that something so small could have made so much noise.
The first thing we noticed when we got the poor thing inside was that it absolutely stank, like something had peed all over it. We gave it a bath in the sink, dried it off and popped it in a shoebox with a towel and a hot water bottle. A fourth flatmate woke up. “Is that thing staying?” he asked. We shrugged, if we couldn’t find an owner, then probably yes. We popped the shoebox in the bathroom, where we surmised there would be less damage if its occupant peed everywhere, and went back to bed. As soon as the lights went out the howling commenced in earnest. “Is that thing staying?” flatmate became “if someone doesn’t shut that thing up it’s going out the window” flatmate and Anna the sucker stepped in. I picked the kitten up and popped it on my pillow, where it promptly fell asleep. The choice was taken out of my hands, I was Mum from that night forth.
The next day we tried to deduce gender, but the kitten was so tiny it was almost impossible to tell. We couldn’t spot any boy bits so we declared our new friend a little girl and named ‘her’ Holly because we found her just before Christmas. A check up at the vet some time later told us a different story, our little fleabag was actually a little boy, and we might want to consider a name change. To keep things simple we just decided to drop the H and Holly became Ollie.
If Harry Potter was the boy who lived, then Ollie was the cat who lived. Right from the start we were told not to get attached to him because he probably wasn’t going to make it. He was only about three weeks old and we were told by various well-meaning cat people that if his mother had abandoned him, if he had been peed on, if we didn’t have a heatpad or fancy food then he was probably going to die. Nevertheless we purrsisted, feeding him kitten milk with an eyedropper and keeping him warm. Before long he was drinking milk from a dish by himself (give or take a bit of faceplanting) and using a litter box. Score one for the cat who wasn’t supposed to make it! Since then Ollie made it through a lot, getting hit by a car, a dicky thyroid, getting lost at new homes. He was the poster child for a cat’s nine lives.
I’m a big kid now! (blurry pre digital camera shot of Ollie graduating from bottle feeding. Note milk beard.)
Because he was so young when we found him, Ollie didn’t really know how to cat. This meant he was a terrible hunter. He knew he should chase things but he had no idea what to do with them if he accidentally caught them. Other than the 3am live mouse chases after having them proudly delivered to the foot of my bed, this was something I didn’t actually mind that much.
Because he wasn’t weaned properly Ollie also sucked his tail. It was kind of adorable when he was a kitten, curled up like a tiny doughnut, but not so cute when he was still doing it three years later. We tried to stop him, but if you pulled his tail out of his mouth he would just slurp it back in like a piece of spaghetti. It was really quite gross. His tail was crusted and pointy like a paint brush (in fact somewhere I have a tail painting where I gave in to temptation and dipped it in some water colours). At one point the tip of his tail became ginger. I kid you not. I have no idea what is in cat saliva but he actually managed to suck the colour out of his tail.
Students. I don’t actually have an explanation for this photo.
Then there were the wet patches. If you tuned out the weird slurping noises and let him stay in your lap for too long he would leave large drool spots in rather embarrassing places. He did it in the bed too, necessitating a few awkward conversations with new boyfriends.
Blep!
Our first real challenge came at Christmastime when we were all going to go our separate ways. Who would take the kitten? As predicted, it turned out to be me. I put him in what from memory was a bird cage and took him to my Mum and Dad’s, where we separated him from our adult cats Pirate and Topsey. He took it all in his stride, getting cuddles from my little sister and posing for a family photo. By then it had been unofficially decided that the fuzzball was mine.
Ollie’s first Christmas
Mum only just told me recently that when I turned up with Ollie she thought it would be a disaster. “Oh god, she’s got a cat. How is she going to cope with that while she’s flatting?” she said to Dad. After a few years of watching me with Ollie, she quickly changed her tune. Yes I saved him initially, but he saved me in so many ways. Those were her words, and they are so true. Through struggles with mental illness, messy breakups, living arrangements falling to bits, work and study stress, Ollie stuck to me like glue. I was never really on my own. He never judged and he was always there.
Renting with a cat isn’t easy (that’s a subject for a blog all of its own) but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Ollie and I have lived all round the country – several flats (and a brief stint in a friend’s Kombi van) throughout Christchurch, another few rentals down south in Timaru when he went with me to journalism school, a number of homes further south in Oamaru where I worked for the local newspaper and we lived on our own like grownups, and finally across the Strait to Wellington where we moved about a bit before buying our first house together (with the help of some bloke called Paddy).
It felt like Ollie and I against the world for such a long time but when we allowed Paddy into the mix, we became a funny little family.
Meeting Ollie was a pressure moment for Paddy. He knew that if the cat didn’t like him it would be a deal breaker. In fact I’m pretty sure I wore a black cat T shirt on our first proper date, just to hammer the point home. Luckily for Paddy Ollie was a bit of a hussy when it came to men and he let him cuddle him straight away. A couple of years later and they were best buddies. Ollie even came to stay on the boat a few times.
Bros
When Paddy first met Ollie he was a little rotund (Ollie not Paddy!). At one point the vet told me if he got to 7kgs we were going to have to talk. Unbeknownst to me Paddy had a history of renaming people’s cats and this time took to calling mine Mr Pies (as in who ate all the…).
Annoyingly, the name stuck. Mr Pies, Pies, Pie-eater, Piesy, Pie pies, His Royal Pie-ness. Ollie started coming when called Pies, he knew that ‘pies’ equated to food and that ‘pie time’ was dinner time. In the end I was calling him Pies too, despite my concerted efforts to call him by his real name.
Sadly every story does have an end and Mr Pies’ was just over a week ago. It wasn’t a shock, he wasn’t in pain and he let us know when it was time for him to move on. We knew our time with him was coming to an end, it just happened a little quicker than anticipated. Ollie’s 16 years made him quite an old man in cat terms and unfortunately his kidneys had just worn out. Right up until his last week with us he was just as playful as when he was a kitten. A miracle kitty arthritis drug had given him a new lease on life. He would hurtle up two flights of stairs and be squawking at me from the top to get up there and feed him in the time my creaky knees had got me a third of the way. When he started struggling with his favourite thing (eating) and started pooing in strange places though, we knew something was up. He was so thin too. From his fighting weight of nearly 7kgs he had dropped down to 3kgs.
The vet told us we might have a couple of weeks, but unfortunately we had just days. The morning I woke up and he was still in bed with me not demanding breakfast I knew things weren’t good. When I popped him down and he was wobbly on his feet I knew they were even worse. We’d read that with kidney issues they aren’t in pain, their bodies just aren’t processing toxins and it is a little bit like being very drunk. Sometimes they just naturally go to sleep. Paddy told me to stay at home with him that day and if things still weren’t good we would take him in to the vet. Ollie and I snuggled all day; He rested his paws on me and purred. When his breathing started to get shallower I told him it was okay, he didn’t have to stay, he could rest now – but if my boy was anything it was stubborn. He started hassling me like he wanted food (he was on a special diet for his thyroid but by that point we decided he could have whatever he liked. Raw eggs and bacon flavoured baby food were his favourites – thank you internet!) I carried him upstairs and we sat in the sun (it was a rare sunny Wellington winter day) and he had a good chow down. The little bugger kept wanting to wander off though and he kept falling over. His body wasn’t doing what he wanted it to do. He let out a yowl of frustration and I knew. It wasn’t fair, he was in distress. I called Paddy and he came home early. Ollie cuddled up to him and started purring, which he hadn’t done for a while. When I said to Paddy we should try to get an earlier vet appointment he started purring louder. I am so sure he was telling us yes.
I sat in the back of the car with him and we cranked up the tunes. Ollie was a bogan, he liked car rides but only if accompanied by loud music. Like his Dad he was a bit of a fan of Tom Petty, so that is what he got. He didn’t want to be in his carry cage and I figured this time he didn’t have to be, so he sat on my lap, peering out the window and watching the traffic go by. When we got to the vet it was amazing. Pretty much as soon as we put him on the table, he fell asleep. It was like he had waited until we were all together and decided ‘okay, it’s time for me to go now’. When the vet put him to sleep we didn’t even see him take his last breath, it was so quick and so peaceful, it was obvious he was ready to go.
I’m crying as I write this, but I am also grateful. I am grateful that we got to say goodbye as a family. I am grateful for all those wonderful years, for all the times he drove me insane, for all the times he made me smile. I’m grateful for the friends we made together and the adventures that we had. I’m grateful for all the times he was there for me when times were dark, when the responsibility for a little animal that loved and trusted me helped keep me going.
As my little sister said, I was literally with him from the beginning to the end – and all the highs and lows in between. As a kitten he used to eat my books. As a cat he is immortalised on the cover of my first published book – pride of place, exactly where he belongs.
Om nom nom!Cover cat
I am a witch without a familiar. He was my best friend. I am bereft but also so glad he was a part of my life for so long.
We buried him in a grove in the forest out the back of our property where he liked to lurk. Eventually we will clear a path down there and put in a bench so we can hang out. He’s got his blankie and his mousies and a tonne of catnip to keep him company in kitty cat heaven.
When I broke the news on Facebook it was really lovely. People from so many different parts of my life who remembered him from different times got in touch. It made me sad, but it made me smile.
So goodbye Ollie, Mr Pies, Piesy, Wolliver, Woozle, Mow mow, Boop Kirtlan. I will miss your chattiness, your attitude, your cuddles, and your incredible ability to find the most noisy thing in the room at 3am. I will miss seeing you at the door when I come home from work, having you steal water from any unattended glass an typing my blogs from underneath your furry butt.
You were the handsomest, bravest, loyalest, craftiest, naughtiest, most loving cat in the world and I will love you forever.
I will end with a million photos of Ollie, because he deserves a million photos.
Disclaimer: I know there will be people reading this who don’t think medication for mental health is a good idea. That is your prerogative. I have tried living both with and without it and have come to an informed decision that I would rather be a functioning human being on cray cray pills than the wretched creature I am without. Please don’t send me articles about side effects and studies saying they will turn me into an evil alien cyborg. Trust me, I have read them. This is not a blueprint for everybody. It’s what works for me. Please respect my decision.
Right, now that that’s out of the way;
I have been on my little blue (sometimes green, sometimes purple and blue) happy pills off and on for 20 years. I found something that made me able to function and achieve in the world and eventually I stuck with it.
Last year my old faithfuls stopped working.
It didn’t happen suddenly. In fact it took me quite a while to actually work out what was going on.
I’d have little ‘episodes’ completely out of the blue. I would be happily going about my day, then have a screaming anxiety attack. My jaw would start aching, then I would realise I had been clenching my teeth for an entire day. I would feel really low and lethargic for no apparent reason or I would be overcome by unaccountable rage.
It wasn’t until I started experiencing OCD symptoms again that I realised something was really up. It was just the preliminary stuff – having to stop myself from repeatedly checking whether the door was locked or the iron was on, counting, having to repeat certain phrases a certain amount of times or something bad would happen – but i knew if I didn’t do something about it things were only going to get worse.
Even then, it wasn’t until I talked with a friend who had been through something similar, that I worked out what might be going on.
Like everything, there are differing opinions about this, but for some people – my friend included – once you reach a certain age (in my case *cough* mid-30s) the meds can stop working as well. The colloquial term is ‘Prozac poop out’
It certainly doesn’t happen to everyone, but I was pretty sure it was happening to me. I was put on fluoxetine when I was 15 years old and there are many different drugs out there now, so I figured it might be time to give something new a try.
My GP wasn’t keen to change my prescription without an expert opinion, so off I went to an incredibly good (and incredibly expensive) head doctor. It’s crazy (‘scuse pun) that you have to spend so much to access decent mental health care in this country and so wrong for people on lower incomes – but that’s another rant for another day.
Brain doc said fluox shouldn’t conk out but agreed that something wasn’t working in my case and thought something different might be better for me in a lot of ways.
Enter sertraline (more commonly known as Zoloft) my new kid on the block.
I won’t lie to you, I was pretty scared. Changing something that has kept you sane for decades is bloody frightening. I remembered what it was like in the black days when I was really bad and I was so afraid of going back there. But what I was doing wasn’t working anymore.
I did the switch over the holidays so it wouldn’t affect my work in any way and I’m glad I did because the first couple of weeks were pretty awful.
I stopped the fluox completely and started with small but increasing doses of sertraline until I got up to what we thought would be a therapeutic level. There was a period of time, when one drug was leaving my system and the other just entering it, that i was definitely undermedicated. I was twitchy as all hell and would start hyperventilating and crying while making dinner for no apparent reason. I was determined to stick with it though, and eventually it passed.
After the first couple of weeks I did begin to notice a rather surprising side effect. I had energy again. I guess because I had been on the fluox for so long I hadn’t really noticed that my normal was pretty much a permanent state of drowsiness. It had become worse over the past couple of years but it had always been there.
I was on quite a high dose of fluoxetine for my OCD and one of it’s known side effects is that it comes with extra added sleepy. Considering how permanently wired I was when I started taking it this was a welcome side-effect. It meant I could sleep and make it through life without bouncing off the walls. Some people don’t like taking it because it makes them vacant and foggy in their mind, but I never had that. I was still myself and I could function without screaming.
What it did mean though was that, in the later years of taking it, I didn’t realise that fantasising about going home and going to sleep at 3pm every day was not normal. That sneaking off for a nap at any possible moment at any time of the day wasn’t something that everybody did. If I got home from work before Paddy did I would crawl into bed and try to sneak some z’s before he got home. He told me later there were a lot of times where he thought ‘where’s Anna? Oh, she’s asleep.’
Over the past few weeks I have felt more awake and alive than I have in a long time. I’ve achieved so many things over the past few weeks that I have been putting off all year and I’m getting back into writing again. It feels amazing.
One of my friends asked if I felt ripped off that I hadn’t done this earlier, but I don’t really. I needed to calm my mind and body down when I was really sick. After years of terrible insomnia it was a blessing. It’s only really been the past few years that it has been a problem, and even then I didn’t realise that it was. I achieved some pretty awesome things during that time. I sailed and scuba dived, I wrote a book. I don’t feel ripped off, but I do feel better than I have in a long time now.
The only other side-effect I have noticed is insomnia, but that is definitely easing up now. And the funny thing is, I didn’t get anxious about not sleeping. Previously not being able to sleep would wind me up like a corkscrew until I had to knock myself out with drugs. I don’t feel like that now. I just read a book until I eventually conk out, and when I do I stay asleep, which is a new and exciting thing for me.
It’s still early days, but so far I have been having very few anxiety symptoms and I’m not getting the breakout OCD stuff anymore.
I feel awake and alive and happy – so roll on 2017!
PS – shameless product placement.
50% of proceeds for Which Way is Starboard Again? now go to the New Zealand Mental Health Foundation. Just click here or drop me a line at whichwayisstarboardagain@gmail.com
I got ‘the call’ from the publisher – Starboard has been out for a year and the copies they have left aren’t moving anymore.
With limited space in their warehouse it was time for the oldies to make way for the new kids, leaving me with the choice of buying up the stock they had left or letting them pulp the excess.
Because I couldn’t bear the thought of my first book becoming garden mulch, there really was no choice.
So I am now the proud owner of 22 boxes of my own book.
My book-babies
All up I sold just over 1000 copies, which isn’t too bad for a first book with a Kiwi publisher. Now it’s my job to move the rest.
I’m still fundraising for the Mental Health Foundation so if you or someone you know would like to contribute to that you can buy it here for $19.99, with 50% of the proceeds going to them
If that’s not affordable for you though, just drop me a line at whichwayisstarboardagain@gmail.com and we can sort something out – I have plenty of them!
Seriously, I have plenty of them.
Other plans for this many books include; building a giant book fort and filling a pool with them so I can swim about in them ala Scrooge McDuck.
I was hoping to make one of those cool book Christmas trees you see on Pinterest but with copies of the same book but I ran out of time before Christmas (I suspect I will still have enough left to be able to do it next year though!)
Any other suggestions for what to do with a stupid amount of books would be much appreciated!
Please don’t think I’m having a cry here. As I said, I think Starboard went pretty well for a first book by a new kid. I just wasn’t going to let what was left be turned into mush. Thank you so much to the thousand plus people who bought it, to those who bought the e-book, to those who got it out of the library and recommended it to their friends. The support has been amazing and overwhelming.
And yes, there will be more. I’m working on a couple of projects at the moment (fiction this time) and there will be a Starboard followup when life lets us do another big trip.
Last mental health awareness week I recycled my coming out of the cray cray closet blog but a lot has happened between then and now so I think it’s time for a new one.
One of the drawbacks of writing a book about being a functioning nutbar is that it puts a whole lot of pressure on you to be exactly that.
You’ve just gone and revealed your biggest weakness to a bunch of strangers.You have told people they can get through it because you have gotten through it. You’ve told them you’re okay so you have to be okay. Otherwise you’re a big fat fraud.
The funny thing is I was okay. Everything was going great. I’d had a book published, I’d made my dream come true. I’d been getting all sorts of great feedback, I’d been in the paper and on the radio, I’d done a bit of public speaking. My life was full and busy, but it was full of good things. There was absolutely no excuse for my brain to break.
In hindsight the warning signs were there. Things had been going so well for so long that I had slipped back into bad habits, I was staying up too late, drinking far too much coffee and having energy drinks for breakfast. Then I was wondering why I wasn’t sleeping. I was permanently wired – jumpy, paranoid, clenching my teeth and counting on my fingertips (an old OCD habit). I was getting slack about remembering to take my meds.
It’s exhausting being on edge all the time. Eventually you are going to crack – and I did quite spectacularly.
It had been a great day. I’d caught up with some very dear friends who were visiting from overseas. It was lovely and sunny so we started the day with a boozy brunch and went from there. We ended up back on the boat that evening. We had a brilliant catch up and loads of fun. Then everyone went home – and I kept drinking (I’m not a big drinker so this is quite unusual for me). I had decided I wanted to turn my brain off and that was how I was going to do it. When Paddy tried to get me to stop I shut myself in the bathroom with a bottle of wine (again, this is not normal behavior for me).
The night ended with me lying on the floor of the boat screaming unintelligibly and refusing to move. It have been quite frightening for poor Paddy. Eventually I crawled into bed, freezing cold, and passed out.
No surprises that the next morning I felt awful. But it was a frighteningly familiar kind of awful – the thick, black hole in my stomach told me this was no ordinary hangover.
I spent the day alternating between feeling like my heart was going to pound out of my throat and just feeling leaden. I couldn’t move. I didn’t want to move. I felt empty and numb.
I finally had to admit it to myself – I was not okay.
I talked with Paddy, who had noticed I hadn’t been ‘present’ for a while. Like I was going through the motions but I wasn’t really there. It was such a relief to finally admit it.
It is so important to let people know when you are not okay, but it can be a massively hard thing to do. When I was a teen living with mental illness I didn’t know how to. I have a letter a friend wrote me when I was about 15 that I keep to remind me how important it is to communicate. It says “it’s like you are lying on the floor crying out in pain but not telling anyone where it hurts.” I couldn’t. I didn’t know how. But for the first time my friend got me thinking about how what was going on with me was affecting other people. I thought by bottling it up and keeping it to myself I was protecting my friends from having to deal with the mess in my head, what I didn’t realise was that what I was doing was even more frustrating and confusing. It took a long time and a lot of trial and error before I felt safe and comfortable sharing with people I cared about, but it was definitely the best thing for all of us.
So here I was admitting defeat and calling in the professionals. I called in sick at work the next day (one of the few times I have ever let myself do that for because of my mental illness) and visited my GP. I would have had no qualms taking the day off if I had the flu or a tummy bug but, despite my preaching in print, this was so much different. I couldn’t possibly show that kind of weakness, what if people thought I wasn’t going to be able to do my job?
There was no choice really. I had to go private. I could have gone into the public system but would have ended up on a waiting list – and when you are a sweating, shaking, twitchy mess, a waiting list just isn’t going to cut it. I was lucky,I could afford it. So many people can’t and that’s so wrong. I won’t start ranting about the state of our mental health system or I won’t stop, but I will say everyone needs access to this type of lifeline. There are good public services out there – they just need money and support so they are available to everyone, everywhere in the country.
My nerves about talking with my work about things proved utterly unfounded. They were great, and totally fine with me leaving an hour early once a week to take my brain in for a tuneup.
So I sat down with the head doc to see what we could do. We decided not to mess with the meds because they seemed to be doing their job, it was just me being rubbish about taking them. Instead we tried to unpack some things. We talked about what was going on in my life and every time I went down a new tangent she would gesture towards the carpet and mime putting something down. ‘Okay we’ll put this one in that basket and come back to it later. By the time we were done I was convinced she was going to run out of space on the floor for all the imaginary baskets.
“So basically you’re saying I’m a basket case then,” I dad-joked. This was to set the tone for most of my visits. We would talk about stuff, I would get uncomfortable and start cracking jokes. By session three she worked out we weren’t getting anywhere. Every time we scratched a surface I would throw walls up by trying to make her laugh.
In the end she said to me “you seem to have a real problem with having a mental illness”. I was outraged. “Don’t be ridiculous! I’ve written a book about having a mental illness, I tell people there is nothing to be ashamed of because, there’s nothing to be ashamed of. Of course I don’t have a problem with having a mental illness!”
But I had to be brutally honest with myself – I did. I had to be okay because I had told the world I was okay. I’d told everyone that battling with your own brain does not make you weak – but I wasn’t drinking my own Koolaid. Do as I say don’t do as I do. It’s okay not to be okay, but not for me.
Realising that was a turning point for me. I actually started working on things. We reached a natural conclusion where most of the baskets were empty or at least only part full. I was looking after myself, taking breathers, easing up on the coffee and booze and getting my medication levels up again.
I still get twitchy at times but I am on top of it now. I’m enjoying life and I’m healthy again.
I guess my messsage is- and it really is – it’s okay not to be okay. The busiest, toughest, most outspoken of us are all allowed not to be okay and realising you aren’t okay is the first step towards fixing it – no matter how many invisible baskets you have to use.
PS – this is not a recipe to follow for everyone by any means. Talk therapy works for some people and it doesn’t for others, medication works for some people and doesn’t for others, exercise, getting out in nature, eating and drinking healthy -it’s the same deal. I find a combination of all three – meds, talking and making time to get out and about works for me, but none work on their own. It’s a process of trial and error and whatever works for you is totally legitimate.
Six months ago I lost my idol. The man very much responsible for me being me. I was devastated at the time and so was much of the world. David Bowie was such a huge part of so many lives – it was impossible to believe that someone who was so brave, intelligent and downright magical could be gone.
I said everything I needed to say in a blog I wrote at the time but what I didn’t share was a tattoo I got two weeks after.
It didn’t seem right at the time, the internet was wall to wall Bowie and it just seemed a bit soon and a bit twee. I got it for me, it was part of my grieving process and I wasn’t ready to share it with the world.
It all just sort of came together. The idea popped into my head fully formed while I was talking to my Mum on the phone. I wanted the black star from his final goodbye album, but that on its own was too dark for me.
Then the Aladdin Sane lightning bolt flashed through my mind, cutting across the star.
It represented everything that was sparkly and spiky and magical about him, that was it. That was my tattoo.
A friend of mine recommended a tattooist (Craigy at Union Tattoo) who just happened to have a cancellation, so what I was expecting to wait a while for happened within two weeks.
(Unfortunately the only decent pic I have of it is the one taken just after it was done. Have you ever tried to photograph your own wrist?)
It’s only little but it’s perfect. It makes me sad, but it also makes me feel strong and I smile every time I look at it.
It also turns out to have a very practical purpose.
I wanted the design on my wrist but didn’t really think too much about which one. In the end I just went with the one I didn’t wear a watch or fitness tracker on. It wasn’t until I was doing pilates (yes I do pilates – I may not be particularly good at it but I do it!) and I was having my usual issues of working out left from right, that I suddenly thought – I can use my tattoo!
It turns out it’s on my right side – my starboard side. I suddenly had an epiphany – I have a star on my starboard side. I wrote a book called Which Way is Starboard Again? and Bowie has answered that question for me forever!
Next time I’m out sailing, if a boat is heading towards Bowie I’ll know to keep clear.
I also conducted my own nerdy celebration of Bowie on the six month anniversary by helping orchestrate an augmented reality tribute. Before there was Pokemon Go there was Ingress (and before that Geocaching) – both are GPS based games that get you out amongst public art and sculptures and places of significance. My Dad got me into both, being a retired airforce navigator and fascinated with that sort of stuff.
I won’t go into too much detail but basically two warring teams united to create a digital lightning bolt across Lyall Bay.
The details are here (you don’t have to understand the lingo – the pictures say it all.)
Bowie was always an early adopter of new technology – I like to think he’d get a kick out of it.
I’ll end on a quote from a book I have recently read – Simon Critchley’s On Bowie, which sums him up perfectly for me.
“Bowie has been my soundtrack. My constant, clandestine companion. In good times and bad. Mine and his.
What’s striking is that I don’t think I’m alone in this view. There is a world of people for whom Bowie was the being who permitted a powerful emotional connection and freed them to become some other kind of self, something freer, more queer, more honest, more open, more exciting…He was someone who made life a little less ordinary for an awfully long time.”
PS. SHAMELESS PRODUCT PLACEMENT! Which Way is Starboard Again? the book is on sale $19.99 for blog readers. Free postage within NZ
