Constants are changing…

“The way we live our days, is the way we live our lives.”

– Annie Dillard

I have spent over two years trying to regain my mental health and try to create a life worth living. I’ve given up all substances and vices. I’ve been to a psychiatrist; he put me on medication and then changed it from a SSRI to a MAOI. I have worked long hours in a management role within a fast paced and stressful environment. I have studied full-time to get good marks, I have volunteered with big brother big sister on a weekly basis, I have tried to support my family. In my down time, I have stayed within the four walls of my bedroom and written in my diary. This had been my secret escape, the people that read this diary my social connection.

Towards the end of last year, I realised that I needed to balance this entirely sensible, goal achieving activity with some experiences that I enjoyed, things that I felt passionate about. I started to venture out, in controlled environments. I started to make excursions to the cinema, dinner or to live theatre, with one friend at a time.

This year, I have also started regular walking and doing Ashtanga yoga for two hours, two nights a week. Sleep continues to feature less in my routine. I find I am taking 20 minute catnaps to survive. 

“There are at least two kinds of cowards.  One kind always lives with himself, afraid to face the world.  The other kind lives with the world, afraid to face himself.” 

Roscoe Snowden

I haven’t written about this yet. I don’t know what to make of it. I don’t know how to make sense of it.

More recently, I have been back in correspondence and contact with my long time friend B – a ghost story.

The last time I had seen him, he had been anxious, agitated, couldn’t sit still, unable to look me in the eye. I told him then that I thought the reason he had started taking drugs, was after his father died during his mid teens, his mother left him alone every weekend, whilst she went to visit her new partner. I told him that I thought that he had probably been suffering from grief, depression and anxiety about being left alone by both parents. I asked him to consider going to see a psychiatrist and discussing anti-depressant medication. At the end of my visit, I asked him to give me a hug and he appeared to physically recoil.

A few weeks ago, he invited me to meet him down at a park. We looked out across the heavy industrial port side of Sydney Harbour.

He sat still, he looked me in the eye, he smiled, he laughed, and he was completely calm and lu

cid. He had brought along his little boy and seemed to be such a proud and loving father. He told me he had been to see two doctors on a regular basis and had started taking anti-depressant medication. He was like a different person. No, he was like the old B, the person I had been best friends with growing up, the person I had fallen for when I was 18. I noted his change and he said that he felt amazingly better in a few short weeks.

He called me last week to invite me out to dinner, we went to the Italian district of Sydney and ate pasta, bread and drank lemonade together. Given his history, this invite was the last thing I would have expected from him. I had a perfect night.  

After dinner we sat by the Harbour. B asked me whether I ever wanted to have children. I said yes but circumstances had seem to have prevented it. I tried to hide my sadness. He had a child to a woman that he had not loved. I am not ready to discuss the remainder of our conversation. There is too much history between us.  

"We are all, in a sense, experts on secrecy. From earliest childhood we feel its mystery and attraction. We know both the power it confers and the burden it imposes. We learn how it can delight, give breathing space and protect."
Sissela Bok

The next night he took me to observatory hill, just adjacent to the Sydney Harbour Bridge. He told me that he used to shoot heroin here many years ago.

We sat in this old bandstand.

We looked out at the view below.

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Except it was in the dark and city was illuminated by a rainbow of lights.

The view at night of the city is absolutely spectacular. We looked out at the city lights and talked about the past, now and the future.

"We always fold ourselves away from others just enough to preserve a secret or two, something that we cannot share without destroying our inner landscape."
Anne Roiphe

To be continued…