2020 In Review

Happy New Year! Around this time I like to write a short summary about the last year, and this year is no different.

And damn, what a year it was. 

Normally I’d speak from my own perspective but this time that’s going to be tough, because each and everyone of us was affected by 2020 in mostly the same way. 

Here in Australia we had the first few months of megafires caused by climate change, which were a continuation of 2019’s megafires that started around August. Many lost their homes, businesses, millions of native wildlife perished and in the cities people breathed in the toxic smoke and had to adapt to wearing face masks. Some hundreds still died of smoke inhalation. Then the rain came and it didn’t stop coming. Homes that were once under the threat of being burned down were now at risk of being flooded. 

Then, when they too seemed to clear, Australia got their first cases of a novel coronavirus, COVID-19, in late January. The infection spread as rapidly as those megafires. The government’s chief medical officers’ encouraged strict hygiene practices such as washing the hands thoroughly with soap for 20 seconds, using hand sanitizer when you couldn’t and keeping 1.5 metres from people. Even that wasn’t enough and the state governments called for businesses to be shut down, resulting in hundreds of thousands losing their job over night. The lines to sign up for the welfare payment, now increased, stretched throughout the street in every suburb. The website crashed. People took out their superannuation early. They did anything they could to survive financially. Rent reductions were introduced, evictions were frozen and compulsory job searching for welfare became voluntary. 

The states declared lockdowns, commanding people to stay in their homes except for essential work, food shopping, medical appointments and just half an hour of outdoor exercise a day. People’s boredom turned into despair as the suicide hotline Lifeline saw an uptick in calls and therapists saw an increase in new patients. People eventually adapted by getting some new hobbies; baking bread, making videos, being creative around the home, turning a spare room into a home gym, playing video games, connecting to others online who were going through the exact same thing as them, and adopting a pet. Some people wanted to help others feel less alone so offered to do things for them, like shopping, if they weren’t able to do it themselves. Neighbours met each other for the first time. Despite there being a mass panic about having enough basic supplies including toilet paper, bread, milk, canned goods, rice etc, people would provide these for free on the street. 

We humans are so adaptable to changes, even frightening and despairing ones that we experienced during 2020’s COVID-19 pandemic, that we began to adopt new ways to live life in the ‘new normal.’ Work from home became commonplace, Zoom meetings replaced overseas work travel, Telehealth appointments took up the bulk of GP and therapist visits, even the arts took advantage of video conferencing to keep their jobs alive. 

It seemed whatever 2020 threw at us we could find ways to adapt to. 

For me personally though, I was less adaptable. Being autistic and having my most severe symptom being a fear of change and difficulty transitioning to it, should have made me aware, but because I had been living independently for a few years I had thought I would be able to manage whatever came my way. Like other young people like me I was confused about the panic buying of toilet paper but I didn’t worry until I was close to running out. When the usual stores ran out I had to look for other places that sold it, but getting to these places gave me a panic attack because they were in new locations. Eventually I had to go online to buy toilet paper, and though it was a bit more expensive buying locally made toilet paper was a better value than buying marked up prices of commercial toilet paper from resellers. 

For the first couple of weeks of lockdown I had zero structure, I just stayed on social media all day. I was constantly watching the news, hearing COVID updates that I had already been updated about three times since I turned on the news that morning. It had made me more anxious about the pandemic and when I went to buy food my OCD was so high I had to buy online, but then that got so booked up that the supermarkets stopped it and then brought it back for people who needed it the most (pensioners/disabled people), which you had to be approved for. Around this time my anxiety was so high that I thought it would have been better if I starved myself to death rather than worry so much about when I could get food delivered to me. 

But eventually I could get my food delivered from ordering online again, and I even got a massive hamper full of basic ingredients, some of which I’d never bought before so I was kept preoccupied with having to learn new recipes. My niece even did a grocery run for me. 

Australia celebrated Easter in lockdown. I baked a damper and some ANZAC biscuits and ate some chocolate I had bought from the supermarket before my OCD had gotten too severe and stored them away in case there was a lockdown. 

I was finally able to distract myself from the pandemic by going back to the video game Destiny 2, and playing it from morning to night. 

Eventually I found my way onto Reddit to make some attempt to make friends because I was feeling lonely. It was my neighbours who despite the lockdown still had each other and that reminded me of how lonely I was. It didn’t turn out too well for me so I gave up, went back to Twitter which I spent an unhealthy amount of time on. 

Around August I had some unusual symptoms, not what you’re thinking. I woke up with what seemed to be an allergic reaction on and in my mouth. After asking around online especially in the ME/CFS Facebook group I found out it could be a fungal infection, Candida albicans to be exact. So I looked up how to overcome it naturally after the medicine I got didn’t work and just made me tired all the time. So I found the anti-candida diet and found myself on Reddit again, getting advice from the candida sub there. Then I was right back into Reddit and chanced upon a sub called Get Discliplined. First I was giving advice and arguing with people for not being sensitive enough toward the people they were meant to be giving advice to, then I started participating in the ‘plans’ thread, which is basically writing down a daily to-do list and sharing it in the thread. This is what helped give me structure and was what got me back into my screenwriting, and I was also encouraged by reading posts from the screenwriting sub too. So, while I was undertaking this strict gluten free no refined sugar diet I was also structuring my day with strict discipline and working on a script. I was finally able to forget about the pandemic. Lockdown had ended, and my state’s cases were down. There were still social distancing laws in place and high capacity venues were closed but medium sized venues were opening up with lower audience numbers, like music venues, the cinema, churches, gyms etc. 

But even after learning how to adapt to the changes, especially the restrictions, when the next COVID surge hit my city the panicking and bad habits to cope came back. And it took a lot to try and overcome them again, but fortunately I did this a lot earlier than before. 

However, the biggest test came in December. My Prime Minister always guaranteed us if we kept the hygiene regime up and followed the social distancing laws, that we’d be able to have a normal Christmas. This probably raised my hopes a bit too much because as it turned out, just a week before Christmas, that restrictions, which had been eased days before, were now tighter. Homes could only have 10 visitors which effectively cancelled my family’s Christmas lunch on Boxing Day, which also doubled as my 35th birthday celebration. I didn’t take it well. I had a mixture of emotions from anger and blame toward my Premier, to a resurfacing of abandonment issues that always come about when I go through a depressive episode. I guess you could say there was a lot of jealousy too, as I looked at those who could still celebrate Christmas with others with disdain. As a result Christmas just didn’t feel like Christmas at all. It was just another day, in which I continued my well structured daily routine, and did some baking and got sick off the food I made because it wasn’t nutritious enough. So Christmas didn’t seem to be worth it. Christmas just didn’t feel like Christmas and it still felt like it never happened. 

But a few months back I had become a Christian again and was reading Devotionals everyday and a few weeks leading up to Christmas I was doing devotional plans, one of which was written by televangelist Joyce Meyer, whom I grew up watching at 4am on TV. In them each day you get a devotional that usually has an important lesson to learn and about 3-5 scripture verses accompanying them. I felt I learned a lot from these, deeply, spiritually. So I kept doing them and so on Christmas Day I continued them and a lot of them had to do with the true meaning of Christmas. And because I often don’t dwell on it because it seems so repetitive to me hearing it every year, especially when I was growing up in church, so I didn’t pay too much heed to the birth of Jesus. But I decided to on Christmas Day, and I felt a peace I hadn’t experienced for days. Now I feel like I don’t need the Christmas celebration, the commercialism and manic gift buying and anticipation of receiving gifts. As a Christian it’s definitely not about that, it’s far deeper. Our salvation depends on that one story I had kept avoiding, so I stopped avoiding it and really dwelt on it. 

I don’t care if people don’t believe it as I believe, but it’s important to me. Through reading the scriptures I have found a kind of mental calmness and clarity that I haven’t experienced from anything else this year or the years before. And it helped and is helping me get through the pandemic. 

By the time my 35th birthday rolled around I was content to just do my own thing at home. The restrictions were still in place so I didn’t have much choice. I’d often spend my birthdays alone but usually in despair and loneliness. But this time I was happy to continue my routine and play some video games. And I didn’t experience all of it alone. My niece, her fiance and my step sister dropped by to give me gifts (gluten free cookies) and wish me well. It was nice to have their company, and when they left I didn’t long for more. I just continued with the rest of my day, which now included eating dinner and watching streaming services. 

I feel at 35 I’ve finally matured enough to be content in my own company, to not worry about how the world sees me, and to live my life according to the Bible, and not to be influenced by the world. 

And also, now that I’m, 35, I am no longer required to do job searching. After five nightmarish years of being forced by disability employment services to apply for jobs I know I can’t physically or mentally do, under the threat of losing my pension if I don’t apply to them, I am free. 

2020 was a trying year for all of us, especially me, but I too adapted and overcame some very serious issues and I feel like I’ve been transformed into a whole new person. 2021 will come with its own challenges but I must remember that I’ve survived through the worst and I can do it again. I only need to remember how I survived 2020 and apply those things I learned when the following years get too much, and then I can confidently face any challenge that comes my way in the following years. 

Autism, Distrust of Doctors, and Mental Health Awareness Campaigns

Trigger warning: mentions suicide, too many times.

Recently Canada held its latest Bell Let’s Talk Day where people tweeted about mental health awareness and for every time #bellletstalk was tagged 5c was donated towards mental health services. Celebrities were especially vocal in getting the word out. William Shatner had tweeted about it with that hashtag about 12 twelve times before I even caught on. When I got the gist I was reminded of R U OK? Day, which we have in Australia so I thought I’d like to join in. But as I read through the many tweets they seemed to be statements I’ve heard many times before.

Such things like:

“because mental health is real.”

“it’s ok to not be ok.”

“it gets better.”

“all it takes is asking someone ‘are you ok?’ to make them feel better.”

It made it hard to post anything because I didn’t want to post anything too graphic or disturbing.

Eventually I went with: “Had rampant suicidal thoughts earlier but got through it. As always. Keep moving on” #nostigma #bellletstalk

40 minutes earlier I had constant suicidal thoughts and was in such a deep state of depression I couldn’t move. So, can you imagine how I felt for someone to write “it’s ok to not be ok?” Sure, it’s ok to not be ok…until you want to commit self-harm. It’s very hard for me to tell the difference between sadness and clinical depression, just like it’s hard for me to tell the difference between happy and hypomanic, and all those emotions in between.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s great that people supported this and worked hard to end the stigma around mental illness, and drowned out the voices of the denialists and trolls, and I’m especially grateful for celebrities that helped get the word out to their millions of fans, but as someone who personally experiences mental health issues I felt like I wasn’t counted in the conversation. I’ve moved past the whole ‘mental illness is real’ thing and I just thought after all these years of mental health awareness we had reached the next step to actually talk about mental health; the symptoms, the heart ache and to actually engage with the suffering. That’s what was so important about #BellLetsActuallyTalk – it opened up the conversation to people with lived with mental health issues everyday. What started as people of colour having a say in a day they felt left out of, soon contributions from all ranges of minorities came in and real sufferers of mental health issues and I took the opportunity to spout all my frustrations with biased and incompetent doctors. I ended it with asking everyone whether disabled people with mental health issues were counted in #BellLetsActuallyTalk as well.

All the Bell Let’s Talk stuff actually distracted me from what I planned to dedicate my entire Australia Day doing, and that was teaching people about Aboriginal Australians, especially their horrid history under English colonisation and their current situation in the communities but by the end of the day I actually didn’t want to change the date or even abolish Australia Day. But more on that later.

For years I have been dealing with doctors who wouldn’t take my concerns seriously. It’s hard enough to have poor communication skills from autism and difficulty even getting words out in a clear concise way because of chronic illness, but then having a doctor disregard it because they don’t think you’re even self-aware enough to know what’s going on, is frustrating and discourages me to keep going to the doctor when I even have physical health issues.

The very first time it happened was before I was even diagnosed with autism. It was along the way. I first thought I may have dyslexia and the psychologist I went to see was entirely dismissive and hit me with a severe depression and severe anxiety label – all from doing an IQ test. This was back in the day when dyslexia was only diagnosed to people with an IQ of 80 or under.  Another time was when I had a painful and constant tinnitus. The doctor looked in my ear and said I said some wax and left it at that. The same doctor was in complete denial when I thought I may have hypoglycemia and asked for a referral to see neurologist because I was having seizures. My psychiatrist didn’t believe me either and it took me a few years to realise that the reason was probably because I reported it as a side effect to Ritalin. The doctor who made me come to that realisation said that there wasn’t anything wrong with having extreme sensitivity to light, and said it’s better to wear sunglasses everywhere to protect my eyes from the sun. Medical professionals don’t like it when you say something nasty about those drugs they’re paid to prescribe you.

None of them were as dismissive as my psychiatrist though. I have cyclic moods, which is basically what I call undiagnosed symptoms of bipolar. My psychiatrist has refused to even asses me for it despite the fact that my symptoms were ruining my life. You can imagine what untreated bipolar looks like. For a long time I saw my mania as a positive too. I couldn’t really commit to a project unless I was manic because I had more energy and more ideas just popping into my brain. In those last days I took Ritalin I just take it to get manic. I could cut a pill in half and still become manic but 20mg (less than 10 year olds are dosed with) was what I’d take to have complete wild ride and often ended up with me going into psychosis and an intense teeth grinding session.

This photograph is a trigger.

Being deprived of the treatment I needed, my mum not believing me as much as my psychiatrist put me into a deep depression and I even used to tell him when I felt suicidal, right at that moment. I’d tell my mum that I felt so suicidal that I’d run out onto the busy road just outside the medical centre, and I was just ignored.

So I gave up. I gave up asking for help, for anything. I embraced my mania and it took a long time to see it as a negative. I let a GP put me back on anti-depressants so I could actually leave my house without having PTSD triggering and kill the delusional thoughts. It worked but 3 weeks later they made me hypomanic. I stayed on them for a year or two then thought it was probably best to have less hypomanic episodes, so I stopped taking the meds and now have less hypomanic episodes but now deal with short but intense depressive episodes.

For the 6-7 years I’ve been aware of my mental health issues I’ve had to develop my own coping mechanisms to deal with them and stay positive about where my life is heading, and just keep getting through everyday. There were no social lessons after my autism diagnosis. I’ve been teaching myself how to read body language, mimic it and how to start and keep conversations going and everything about social customs, except hierarchies because fuck that shit. I can learn social skills, apply them but I’m not joining the collective consciousness that tells you what’s a suitable subject to like, or a suitable way to dress and to only surround yourself with suitable people. If you’ve ever made fun of someone for liking a subject you felt was too nerdy or strange, or laughed at the way they dressed, or thought yourself smarter than them then you are a part of that consciousness.

Likewise, I’ve had to learn similar ways about how to minimize my symptoms of mental illness. It’s been less about learning things from others – although everything I’ve learned from social behaviour can help me regulate my own emotions around them – but is more about employing self-therapies like cognitive behavioural therapy or using the only helpful advice a psychologist told me about anxiety: the thoughts are in no way based in reality.

My seizures and hypoglycemia are controlled through strict dieting; no caffeine, very little alcohol, nothing high in sugar or salt. Because of my often low blood sugar I have to eat small meals every 1-2 hours, sometimes I can get away with not eating until 4 hours later. But if I put off eating when I begin to feel weak and light headed I can end up fainting, but usually just experience a lot of pain, particularly in the stomach and arm muscles. And migraines.

Getting back to mental health awareness campaigns, I think they’re helpful, needed but they need to expand. They need to work out a way to include everyone who suffers from mental health issues and let people tell their stories. Every R U OK? Day I tell people to share their experience with mental illness. At first it was something I just ranted about but it took off and I just thought this isn’t such a bad thing to do. R U OK Day? is usually a day when people are encouraged to ask people ‘are you ok?’ and it angers me because they’re just doing it because they got told to, and they’re just going around asking everyone that. The day is actually about opening up the conversation on mental health so I’ve hijacked the day to encourage everyone going through mental illness to share their story, current feelings and where they think mental health awareness should be heading.

There was another mental health awareness campaign launched in Australia called Mental As. The ABC showed a range of programmes centered on various mental health issues from all walks of life. It was a great way to spread mental health awareness by showing how it affects a variety of people, like comedians, actual residents in a mental institution and people who were living normal lives that were disrupted by suddenly developing bipolar disorder, but there was a strong emphasis on mental illness being overcome or people handling their bipolar on medication. Happy endings are great and all but they don’t reflect the reality for many people in low socio-economic areas who can’t access or afford the services they desperately need, and don’t forget about what I said about biased doctors earlier.

Professor Sir Michael Marmot, director of the University College London’s Institute of Health and Equity, says that mental health issues are caused by the conditions of a lower working class, unemployment and lack of government spending towards public healthcare, and I think that can be true sometimes but I think for many of us those mental health issues are separate; genetic or triggered by the environment, and not just in the way Marmot thinks. I can certainly pinpoint the exact moments my mental health issues triggered because of environment stressors. I can give the date, time, location and even say what the type of weather was when my PTSD developed, but cannot give you any specifics of the actual event. Most of my anxiety and cyclic mood-like symptoms are basically permanent side effects to medication which is why I’m strongly opposed to drugs, all forms of medication except for codeine for severe muscle pain I experience.

But I’m not completely denying what Marmot says. Being low class and unemployed certainly adds to the stress and therefore exacerbates the symptoms of mental illness. I certainly experienced more suicidal thoughts when Tony Abbott proposed changes to the disability support pension and made all recipients under 35 years get re-assessed. Not one day went by when I didn’t feel extreme anxiety or depression. I even had a suicidal plan. My financial anxiety often got to that point in 2015. I actually became so manic that my words became unintelligible. It was my anxiety experienced during the assessment interview that made them decide to keep me of the DSP. And now with the Turnbull government forcing me to into work that has me two days a week looking for jobs that I don’t have stamina to do and none of the social skills the employer expects, I feel a mixture of anxiety, suicidal thoughts, apathy, and complete contempt of my job network consultants who are nothing but pawns of a Gilliard government plan to kick 400,000 disabled people off their pensions and into low paid work. They get no respect from me.

They could take a leaf out of the Centrelink whistleblower’s books and risk losing their jobs by doing the honorable thing and tell the public how much pressure the government wants them to put on people on disability and the dole to just get a job; bullying and  threatening to cut them off their payments at any sign of resistance. And believe me there’s a lot. Not a day goes by where not at least one person argues who gets passively aggressively talked down, or they end up storming out and risk getting their payment suspended.

There’s another source to my anxious and suicidal thoughts: Centrelink are through the Turnbull Liberal government using an automated system developed by the Labor government to weed out welfare cheats by comparing payments with income statements, and after they’ve found ‘evidence’ of the over payments they send out a letter declaring someone one welfare pay back up to $3000-$20,000 in over over payments. Problem is most of these declarations are false. It’s been proven that people either owe less or don’t owe any money at all, and at least 280,000 have received such letters, and the government has extended its number of victims to people on the aged care and disability support pension. People have already become suicidal over it but what do you expect will happen when they target people who are already dealing with suicidal thoughts? Now doing something as simple as checking the letter box gives me panic attacks.

So, there’s a lot more involved than just asking for help for mental health issues. Some people ask for help only to have their concerns shrugged off by doctors and there’s those who can’t even afford to get the right care, especially in Australia where GPs are refusing to bulk bill and the government tries more and more sneaky ways to privatize Medicare. I’m fortunate that I live close to a medical centre that still bulk bills. But with all the extra pressures of living with pre-existing mental health issues and living on handouts below the poverty line in low socio-economic areas with crime, deeply set racism, job instability and rising rates of unemployment and fearing that things will just get so much worse, there’s not a lot of hope people can have to receive treatment for their mental health issues even if they do ask for help.

UPDATE:

At the moment I am seeing a GP who is taking my concerns about having mitochondrial disease and chronic fatigue seriously. He has even given me bipolar assessment questions and has even tried to reassure me of my anxiety about having a blood test taken. And I’m finally looking into my foot pain from having very flat feet. It’s such a breath of fresh air to finally have a doctor that will listen to my concerns.

xSpycraft

My Latest Breakdown

Trigger warning: Brief mention of suicidal thoughts. 

A few months ago I got a large letter in the post from Centrelink. For those not in Australia Centrelink is an unemployment service that provides payments to those who are struggling financially to make ends meet. In these last couple of years my psychiatrist had recommended I go on the disability support pension to take the stress off me from applying for jobs. And it was stressful. I would apply for ten jobs a fortnight, hear back from few employers for an interview and then be left waiting in nervous nail-biting anticipation to find out whether I got the job or not. I’d get a call but it was more for being told they went with someone else and that maybe I should try to be less nervous during interviews.

Being on the disability support pension did take the edge off. Unfortunately, I suffered worse mental health issues in that time and now I think I really depend on the pension to be able to live away from home. It’s a pity though because there was a point in my mid-twenties when everything seemed to be working out for me. I was so driven to succeed in any way I could. I was able to learn anything I put my mind to. I was medicated to focus, be motivated to do any dull task without giving it a second thought and I was hell bent on becoming a famous author, or a physicist, or even the first female combat pilot in the Royal Australian Air Force. But then the truth was finally revealed, which I’ve been writing about for a long time – it was just mania and I had developed bipolar disorder.

I’ve been thinking about that for a long time because I’ve still not received proper medical treatment for it which just seems dangerous and counterproductive to my future plans. I also at times struggle to see mania as a bad thing. Why did the great authors, artists and a few composers find success despite their bipolar when all it does to me is destroy my relationships, empty out my bank account and make it impossible for me to commit to an artistic project or anything else I’ve wanted to accomplish. Another obstacle in seeking treatment as it’s made me a much more sociable person. I used to be quiet, withdrawn and low on energy. Now I’m usually sociable, a chatter box really, and have bursts of intense energy for a few hours, sometimes a few days.

But all this combined with severe ADHD and severe anxiety and the eventual depression that always follows mania, has shown me that I’m more unfit for work than ever before. I may feel like I have more energy but I’m too impulsive and distracted to stick with any task. The only work I’ve been successful doing is volunteering for a music website called The Dwarf as a live band photographer. October has been my busiest month and I’ve been shooting bands non-stop and when I haven’t been shooting them I’m editing photos for days on end, to the detriment of my own physical health.

That letter from Centrelink was a review form for my disability pension support payments, and according to my psychiatrist this meant that the Prime Minister just wanted to kick people off the pension and send them to work. My much nicer translation is they were going through the list of people on the pension, under 35, with a fine-tooth comb, seeing who belonged on the pension and who didn’t. I was a red flag for them because I’m only down as has Asperger’s syndrome, and I’ve been getting letters saying that I could still participate in work, even if it’s just volunteering and I could even be trained up. Actually, there are going to be more services to train autistic people to get them into jobs. And all this time I thought the government didn’t care about us? That was sarcasm.

There were a few hiccoughs getting this form filled out. For starters the second part of the form had to be filled out my doctor and at this time I didn’t want to see my psychiatrist. He’s ignored my plea to be assessed for a mood disorder so many times, even when my mood journal was plastered with suicidal thoughts. At this time I was desperate for a diagnosis and medication. I had stopped taking Ritalin full time late last year and my depression and anxiety was very hard to deal with, to not alter my own personality. What I mean by that is I listened to the thoughts and believed them and my mind and lifestyle was changed to accommodate for those thoughts. Since I went on anti-depressant medication it’s been easier to see those thoughts as merely symptoms and they don’t become a part of me. At first the medication completely dulled my mood or rather equalized them which felt like losing my personality, and then I adjusted. Then the mood issues came back.

Previously to finding this form in my mailbox I had successfully been able to keep my suicidal thoughts at bay. But because of the fact that if this form was not handed in I could have lost my pension this played on the most severest of my anxieties – financial instability. It goes like this: if I don’t have enough money to buy food then suddenly I see myself living on the streets and eventually dying. My poor sister has witnessed my many panic attacks over paying rent when I didn’t feel secure enough with the amount of money in my account. This anxiety turns to blaming everyone for causing the anxiety (sorry sis) and feeling like rampaging through the streets because anxiety and anger mixed together gives one a lot of manic energy. You just have to smash, throw, yell it out of you. But all I smash is my possessions, sometimes expensive and rare sci-fi paraphernalia. I throw my possessions too. And I yell at the air.

But then the suicidal thoughts came back, and not just feeling worthless but planning how and when to commit suicide. Then I found another way to want to stay alive. It has to do with not wanting to make a friend hurt over the suicide over a friend all over again. But I still have to deal with very intense suicidal thoughts even if I don’t plan on killing myself, and it’s a horrible thing to go through every couple of days.

So, me and my sister went searching for a new psychiatrist but time was running out to hand these forms in so I had to wait hours in Centrelink waiting to just see someone, because on calling their hotline made me extremely anxious because I didn’t know how to follow the prompts given to me by a robotic voice. In the waiting area at Centrelink I every half hour discretely ate a snack so I didn’t have a hypoglycemic attack. I still did and felt really weak, dizzy and had blurred vision where I’d just stare around like most autistic people do when they’re under stress. My anxiety was intense too and I started to get in my angry ranty mood where my thoughts turned to violence. I was kind of seeing the worst case scenario in my head. I think it ended with me being institutionalized.

I got the extension on the time to hand in the form but it was recommended I see a doctor who knew me well. That meant going back to mood disorder-denying ‘you just have to work and socialse more to overcome your anxiety/depression/mania’ biased as f**k psychiatrist. Fine. So, I called him up. The next appointment fell on the day my form had to be handed in. Now I don’t know why I didn’t ask for another extension after that, even just one more day, but I didn’t. I’m starting to think I make myself paranoid on purpose. Just so I worry about everything falling apart constantly so everything turns out fine in the end. And now I need to find some wood to knock on.

Basically, if one thing went wrong then the end of the world would come. I even started to refer to October 20, the day of the deadline, as the day the world ends. I think this is why I overcommitted to my band photography. On one hand I was glad that I finally could get to shoot the kind of shows I wanted to, on the other I could lose all this if I was to be cut from the pension, have my payments sliced in half and most of my time taken up by applying for jobs or working in a field I was not even remotely passionate about. I even have myself a bit of a fan following. People have told me it’s a waste of my talent to not do band photography. Even my ex was happy to hear I was still doing it. Nah. It’s not like that. We still mates.

For a few weeks I was able to ignore the looming deadline but in that last week my anxiety skyrocketed and I was still shooting shows and editing photos up to the day of my appointment with my psychiatrist and the end of the extension. And then it rained.

The appointment went fine actually. In the waiting room my writer’s block that triggered every time I thought about filling in my part of the form had miraculously disappeared and I scribbled down a bunch of answers. During the appointment I talked non-stop in nervous-manic energy as my psychiatrist filled out his part of the form, replying with the odd ‘mmhmm,’ to show he was listening to my ramble. I kept talking about my mood disorder symptoms of course, including my impulsive spending which he played down by saying I was buying things I needed – sure, I was just spending thousands instead of waiting until I could really afford to spend that much.

Afterwards, I was briskly walking to Wollongong Centrelink in the rain. I had scoped out two Centrelink buildings before my appointment – as I had arrived more than 1 hour early – to put my mind more at ease. The people inside this Centrelink were nice and friendly, compared to the rush-shove too serious service I get from my local one in Leichardt. I was told that I could leave my form there and that everything will be alright.

Finally satisfied that I was given some clarification about my payments continuing I celebrated my buying underwear, socks and a checkered jacket for only $12.50.  I had one of the most scrumptious Mexican lunches at one restaurant too. And as soon as I arrived at the train station there was a train going to the city waiting for me. I even got to catch the bus home, which was free instead of me forking out some $20 for a taxi home. So, things just seemed to fall in place for me that day.

I thought this meant the breakdown was over but I was wrong. That night I was exhausted and being used to this after dealing with stressful situations I just went with it. But the following day’s things didn’t get better. It was hard to adjust to my normal daily life and I fell into a comfort zone where I didn’t try to push myself more. I thought maybe I needed it after going through months of extreme anxiety, but it was hard to break out of. I didn’t even want to go to another show to photograph a band or edit the remaining band photos. I procrastinated writing this blog post for a very long time. I began to watch a lot of TV or spend most of my time on Facebook.

I’m not even sure if things are better now. I’ve decided to plan my days thoroughly so I won’t have large chunks of the day where I’ve got nothing to do so spend them watching TV or saying stupid things on Facebook. I think my afternoon vodka drinking session which of course made me more manic yesterday taught me that I needed to get more control over my life and especially my emotions, which meant fighting against those impulsive desires. I never been good at avoiding impulses because they’re impulses – you act on them before you even know you are – but if I commit to something that needs more focus and thus requires me to take more focus aides (fish oil) then there may be less opportunity for these impulses to surface at all. And I have decided to put all leisurely activities as lesser priorities, which means TV and internet leisure time happens at the end of the day.

So, I’m looking forward to getting more organised and focusing more on my art, which now means Christmas cards or perhaps a nice canvas painting as a gift. I’m not sure. I haven’t done it in ages. It’s my natural talent but I still need to practice it to create some real masterpieces.

I’m also hoping I get to photograph my favourite band from my childhood, The Living End, this Friday and again on the 6^th of November. Then after that I’ve got a few more gigs to shoot and also a visit from my mum. I do like to keep busy. I’ve been walking a lot more too to help with mood and focus. And I have another appointment with Centrelink next month to keep me on my toes, somewhat literally. I’m just going to keep on doing my photography, playing my therapeutic video games, and having Christmas with my family. Next year is about taking my photography professional. I need to learn more about taking promotional band photos though. I think I’d do better with getting a professional photographer friend acting as my mentor rather than studying in a classroom. My untreated moods, ADHD and my more anti-social symptoms would make it an impossible task to accomplish.

revealed, which I’ve been writing about for a long time – it was just mania and I had developed bipolar disorder.