RUOK? I am… today, anyway

Today is RUOK Day… a day in which we reach out to those who may be doing it tough, to those we haven’t spoken with for a while, and even those we see every day, and see how they’re going. It’s not always obvious when someone is doing it tough.  They can often hide it very well.

The pointy moments, the toughest moments, can come upon us very quickly so someone who seemed fine last week, seemed fine yesterday, may be in a horrible place today.

Over the last few years I’ve been inspired by two friends of mine, Jo and Jack Cunningham, who lost their young son Hugo to suicide. It’s an unimaginable thing. Nobody wants to put themselves into that head space or experience what going through that would be like. Some people would withdraw into themselves after such an event and not want to talk about it at all, and who could blame them.

But Jack and Jo have been amazingly brave, telling the story of their experience and spreading the message of talking about depression. They are committed to getting people to talk about their problems and share how they’re feeling, rather than internalising and facing problems alone.

I’m often guilty of oversharing, but there are some bits I don’t talk about much at all and there’s a reason for that. I don’t want to. For starters, I don’t believe my personal experience is particularly abnormal, interesting or instructive for others. Also, I’d prefer not to be judged more than I already am in life. But, if nothing else, the example of Jack and Jo has impressed upon me the need for people to take a lead and share their stories so that others might see their own feelings, their own experiences, aren’t uncommon or unusual at all. So, putting concerns about over-sharing and humiliating myself to one side, here I go.

So let’s get started

My name is Chris and I have suffered from depression.

My mother’s father committed suicide, and my father had a brother and a sister who both took their lives, so in some respects I was a perfect storm to inherit some sort of predisposition.

From fairly early on, I had a tendency to overthink things, or over-feel things, or something. When I was in year two at school, I guess I would have been seven or eight, I was put on medication for a short while (anxiety medication it was called at the time) after a nun convinced me I had black spots on my soul and wouldn’t get into heaven. I was a pretty religious young kid and the thought of being told I’d go to hell at that age and be separated from my family for all eternity… it didn’t do me any good and I was “off my chops”.

I wasn’t on medication for long but depression hung around across the years like that flat mate you can’t get rid of, who doesn’t help out around the house or pay any rent, but has an opinion on everything and uses up all of your resources.

Now, it’s important to note, I didn’t have a bad childhood. I had a really good one. I had/have really sensational parents, good friends and mostly very good teachers. I was happy a hell of a lot of the time. A couple of particularly bad things happened along the way, which weren’t related to school, the church or family and which I’m not interested in detailing here, but suffice to say I had a more or less normal childhood, with a few traumatic bits and pieces thrown into the mix, and with depression coming along for the ride.

Feeling different from others, feeling not good enough and feeling like you don’t fit in is pretty common to many adolescents anyway… but depression magnifies the experience in your teens while you’re still developing coping mechanisms, still forming significant relationships, still finding out who the hell you are. I think it’s important to bear that in mind when thinking of the kids, teens and young adults you know that are doing it tough – how utterly isolating and alienating it can feel. God only knows how the more negative aspects of social media, including cyberbullying, exacerbate that.

Depression dropped in to say “Hi” a lot over the years, causing more than a few problems (particularly to relationships, where I must have been a nightmare), but the major depressive interlude I had was a full-on breakdown in 1995. I was absolutely buggered. Couldn’t eat, couldn’t move around, couldn’t see a way through it or a chance that things would get better. It lasted for a fair while and I was on various different medications including Prothiaden, Arapax and there may have been one or two others.

After a while I noticed the particular drugs I was on weren’t making me actually happy. Some of the extremity of the depression was diminished, but so was the ability to enjoy. I just felt kind of dull. I often had to get people to repeat things they said because it didn’t register straight away.

So I dropped the idea of medication and tried to rebuild myself in a way that didn’t need drugs. I pulled out of some social stuff, got better at being alone and enjoying my own company, and just tried to simplify my life. I found that, for me, approaching the onset of depression the way I would sport helped a little. Take tennis, for example. When my serve starts to fail, I pull back, slow it down, return to a slower but more reliable serve and simplify. When I feel tough times upon me, I try to pull back from excess commitments, simplify my life, and focus on close family and friends. That’s what I try to do, anyway, and it’s no silver bullet cure, but it helps.

Of course, you can make changes to your life, but you can’t always change the things life will throw your way. The world can knock any of us down. I’ve fallen over a few times and had some other pronounced lows, but these days my medication of choice is my family. I spend as much time as I can with them and they recharge me and strengthen me.

And that’s another point. Depression isn’t the same for everyone. Some people experience it chronically… every day of their life. Me…I’m happy quite a lot of the time and fortunate in that it has become an occasional visitor these days. We can’t really know someone else’s situation even if we’ve experienced something similar, so it’s important to leave our minds wide open and the judgements at the door and understand that we really don’t know what others are going through.

Some people consider suicide. Some go through with it. I’ve never personally contemplated suicide, even when I’ve hated parts of my life. When I first contracted ankylosing spondylitis, I could hardly move (and when I did it was with incredible pain), couldn’t sleep more than an hour without waking up. There’s no cure and when it seeemed my standard of living was never going to improve I sometimes thought.. “you know what God, if I died now that would be okay.” I didn’t, however, want to cause my death. BUT.. and this is a big but… I can see how it wouldn’t take a lot for people to want to take that extra step.

Nowadays they’ve come up with needles for my condition that have slowed down the progression of my illness, have made it possible for me to walk and move around again, and have removed a fair bit of the pain. I’m married with kids and even a grandkid. I eat junk food, tell dad jokes, watch telly and mostly enjoy life. So if you asked me today, am I OK, the answer would be yes. I’m ok today. I’m not always OK, but I am right now. From time to time depression seems to take hold, but for me, it’s not as often as it used to be.

Some key points

One really key point is this… depression can hit even when things in life are going pretty well. There’s no point providing someone experiencing depression with a list of reasons why they SHOULD be feeling ok. Likewise, it would make no more sense to tell a diabetic to snap out of their illness than it would to suggest to a depression sufferer they should snap out of it.

Another key point is this… depression is NOT a weakness or character flaw. I’m not less capable at anything because of depression. If there are things I’m NOT good at, that’s just because I’m not good at them and is unrelated to depression. For instance, I was a dud rugby player simply because I was no bloody good at rugby and for no other reason.

And how about yet another key point…. It’s not true that people who suffer from depression aren’t strong. Some of the strongest people you know struggle with depression. FACT! You know when you think about who you’d like to have with you “in the trenches” when things get tough… the people you can always count on? Many of them have suffered from depression. Bear in mind, it’s not necessarily the big problems or the big stresses that can sometimes undo someone struggling with depression. They may stand up face to face with a real grizzly bear of a situation and yet struggle at other times when, externally, you might think there’s nothing to worry about.

They can handle incredible loads, work as hard or harder than others around them and can be there for their friends and loved ones as much as anyone else. They aren’t necessarily fragile and can often be the most reliable friend in your life. In fact, many of the most creative people on the face of the earth suffer from depression.

Yet, traditionally, society grouped depression under the category of a personal failing. And I know in writing this, there will be some who will judge me that would not be judging me if I was talking about, for instance, a battle with a recurring knee injury.

There have been many times in my life that, due to depression, I have felt lesser-than, or different-from, or just not good enough. I shouldn’t have. None of us should.

Some people are frequently taken low by their gastro-intestinal tract.

Some people have migraines.

Some people have diabetes, some have asthma, and SOME have depression.

And like those other illnesses, it may always be part of them but they may not experience it or be affected by it for great lengths of time.

“In the end, nobody wins unless everybody wins”

Bruce Springsteen

Anyway, that’s an abbreviated, reader’s digest version of my story. It’s unexceptional, fairly common and, clearly, many people have it much worse than I do.  Maybe that’s the point. Many people suffer from depression.

We see more and more stories about it every day. And many of those people experiencing depression take their lives. Barely a week goes by, either locally or on the world stage, where we don’t hear about another life lost to suicide. I can’t guarantee that all of those were preventable by someone merely reaching out, but some may have been.

So today is RUOK day, and that would seem a very good day to try and take the stigma out of depression. It’s a good day to be in touch with people… those who you think aren’t travelling too well and those who appear to be doing fine.

But one day in 365 doesn’t get the job done. The message of RUOK is to be better friends, better family members, better people… to be in touch with the people in our circle more often, and to possibly extend those circles.

We get so lost in our own circumstances that we sometimes forget to check how those around us are doing. So check a bit more, judge a bit less and help where you can.

Here’s my pledge… whether you know me or not, feel free to contact me. You can talk about your experience, you can decide not to share any details, but we are all in this thing together so let’s all help each other. Let’s all make that same pledge.

There’s a great Bruce Springsteen quote that says it very simply:

In the end, nobody wins unless everybody wins.

So reach out. Let’s try to make sure everyone wins. Our time on this planet is far too short as it is without any of us missing out on any part of it.

RUOK?

• Lifeline: 131 114
• Mensline: 1300 789 978
• Kids Helpline 1800 551 800
• Beyond Blue: 1300 224 636

Originally published on Facebook in 2014, reprinted a year later on Goulburn Post website).