How can I go to Paris if I can’t even do the dishes?

Don’t hate me.

I’m going to Paris on Thursday, but I have been struggling. 

I’m not exactly sure why… but it has been coming for a while. I’m at a bit of a crossroads in my life, and this appears to have freaked me out somewhat. I'm drowning. 

Essentially, my purpose in life is lacking. I still can’t work and I am no longer at uni. (Uni proved to be a little bit more advanced than I was ready to tackle; my program started in second year.)

I had a bit of a mini-breakdown. I withdrew from uni. I fell apart. I booked a ticket to Paris. As you do. When I asked my friend D what he’d think of me if I dropped out of uni to go to Paris, he went silent for a second and said, “OMG. That is like, so totally Bohemian.”

I suppose it is, by definition. Do I want to be Bohemian?

To be honest, I have NFI what I want right now. I think that must be the crux of the problem. Paris is all well and good, but what on earth am I coming back to? And why am I spending money that I should be saving for my future?

I guess I was feeling rebellious. I *had* planned to go to Paris in 2013, so I decided to go anyway. Screw it.  

Being prone to fairly dramatic mood swings, I’ve since questioned the wisdom of this decision. I honestly think that it will work out fine in the long run. I know this instinctively. I’m just freaking out right now.

And when I say, “I’m freaking out,” I guess I don’t mean “me” so much as my mind and body (if you can separate the three). My body is a continued source of betrayal. Apart from depression, since I switched to a different brand of melatonin, I’ve started shaking again.

My mood has been in freefall. It took me a little while to notice. The starting point that I can pinpoint is when I dropped out of uni. I was incredibly distraught and felt like the world’s biggest failure. I couldn’t handle it. I should be able to handle it. Perfectionist, much?

I’ve really got to learn to chill and give myself an easy life for a while. Maybe for a few years even. I’m just used to pushing myself and earning a certain amount of money and having a certain amount of career prestige and wearing nice black dresses to work. But none of that is as important as my health.

So what do I do instead of uni? Panicking, I bought a ticket to Paris. I immediately needed some sort of purpose / self-definition. Je vais être une touriste.

I kinda forgot that being a tourist can also be a fairly demanding “job”. This brings me back to my initial point: Don’t hate me.

I’m not looking for sympathy; eg: Oh, woe is me, I’m going to Paris. Boo le hoo. I’m not even expecting understanding. I don’t really understand what’s going on myself, so I can’t expect anyone else to (except maybe my shrinks). I actually don't really care what anyone thinks, to be honest. At the end of the day, it’s me who has to deal with it, as rational or irrational as it may be.

I just know that I have been feeling utterly horrendous for the past month or so. It’s a bit like the cartoon below...

 The beast...

(Source: National Council for Community Behavioural Healthcare)

Depression is easy to miss sometimes. It’s insidious; it sneaks up, and by the time you realise it’s there, it’s pinning you down and you can barely move. Or see. Or feel. Or care.

I was feeling a bit lost and I wanted to see where I was at, objectively. I have been using an online mood tracker since last November and have found it to be quite effective and accurate in monitoring my mood.

I’ve mostly scored in the “severe” category, with my psychological diagnoses confirming this. However, during May this year, I dropped right down to “mild / moderate”, which was great news.

I knew that I wasn’t going to be in this category again, but I wasn’t quite prepared for the result. I got 76. This is the highest score that I have ever had. If you want to do the test, the link is here. 

I wasn’t quite sure how to cope with this, and I was terribly upset. I mean, what is wrong with me? I know that I’m having a bit of an existential crisis, but this is ridiculous.

The problem with severe depression, or a major depressive episode is that it doesn’t always make a whole lot of sense. It is certainly very confusing for the person affected. You spend a lot of time wondering what is wrong, and if you are actually depressed or not (which always seem ridiculous in hindsight, once you feel better again).

As I mentioned earlier, I likened the feeling to drowning. No matter how hard you kick and gasp for air, something dark and menacing is pulling you down. And all the kicking and gasping is exhausting. Plus, your brain just doesn’t work properly.

I mean this in a literal way. Following my psychologist, Ms G’s advice, I dragged myself out of bed one weekend and walked down to Cremorne Point. It was a stunningly beautiful day, the sun was out, the breeze was warm, the views were amazing. And I felt… nothing.

A glorious day!

Right, I thought, I just need to work up some endorphins. They should boost me up to “normal” again at least. I walked the kilometre or so uphill back to my house. I worked up a sweat. I was out of breath. And I felt… nothing.

This is the point where I really started to get frightened. It’s pretty rare where a half decent workout on a beautiful day will not evoke any positive chemical change in the brain. I felt like rapping on my head to try to elicit a response. I felt like I was in a glass box screaming at the top of my lungs and nobody could hear me.

It took me a while to get the message through to Ms G and Dr J. I’m not very good at letting them see how much I’m sinking at times. Apparently other clients go in with dirty hair and slouch and speak in a monotone. I guess that’s just not how I roll. I put on a mask. Or something.

I saw them both recently and they’d wished me bon voyage and sent me on my way. It was probably a bit early; I was still getting my head around how I was feeling and hadn’t given all the behavioural tasks I’d been assigned a proper go, so I didn’t push the issue.

But the behavioural tasks have had limited success. I am still just going through the motions. I get up, I walk, I cook, I socialise. Sometimes I perk up, but mostly I feel dead inside. I feel hollow and pointless and empty. I realise that everyone I know envies me right now, because of my trip and my fabulously whimsical, easy life. This makes me feel even worse. Guilt is a huge part of depression.

To make matters worse, for some reason, I have been almost constantly hyperventilating for a few weeks now. Not crazy hyperventilation, that you’d notice, just chronic breathing that is too fast.

The problem with this is that it upsets the chemical balance in your bloodstream between oxygen and carbon dioxide. Not enough carbon dioxide puts your body into fight or flight mode. If you can’t stop hyperventilating, you’re always on edge. I’ve had a lot of panic attacks over the last few weeks, and general feelings of unbearable, stabbing, inexplicable anxiety and self-hatred.

So what I have been feeling is physiological, as well as psychological (but can we ever really separate the two?). What to do? I phoned and spoke to Dr J a week ago. He was about to leave the country for an American medical conference, but he still make the time to talk to me. He was concerned, though not surprised.

We decided to increase my antidepressants. Not what either of us would have wished, but he said that two weeks to wait (until Paris) was too long. Had I not been going to Paris, he would have potentially swapped me to another drug as I may have hit “the wall” with mianserin. But I am going away, and so we work with what we have.

Increasing antidepressants is not for the faint-hearted. I felt hungover for about a week. They are über dehydrating. I’m also on the maximum dosage, and part of me will always feel that so many drugs in my system is just wrong. But I’m also not prepared to drift through life feeling like a cicada shell at the end of summer.

*crunch*

As for the chronic over-breathing, Dr J had already left the country by the time that one came up. It may be a result of the increased meds (they tend to make you feel worse before you feel better). I spoke with Ms G yesterday, and she has squeezed me in on Wednesday.

Everyone keeps telling me, “It will be fine,” and it’s doing my head in. “It” being my health, my shaking, the trip. I’m not a moron, I know it more than likely will be. But I’m still scared and concerned at the moment. I'm still shaking at the moment. I actually do realise, in the rational part of my brain, that the trip will be just what I need. But when it’s just me, alone, every night, shaking and swallowing those damn pills, there is nothing about it that feels alright.

Dr J said that people expect that when things appear to be “fine” that we are also expected to be “fine”. But unfortunately the brain does not work like this. It takes a while for things to sink in. He said time, increased medication, Paris and a bit of luck and I’d hopefully start to feel a bit better. Paris is by no means a panacea, but it will definitely help. 

Ms G made a very good point in that anxiety and excitement are two very similar emotions. In my overly-sensitive state, it is easy to understand how my brain could be confusing the two. Think about when you’re excited – your heart rate goes up, your thoughts start to race a little, you breath is shallow and quick. These feelings are akin to panic, physiologically, so she said that it makes sense that I am feeling the way that I am.

I HATE all of this. I hate being problematic. I just want to be excited and happy like a normal person. Some nights I look at the bowl of pills and want to chuck the lot in the bin. But I can’t.

Yesterday I spent $214 at the chemist buying six weeks’ worth of drugs for my trip. Luckily I’m not going to South East Asia; I’d make the Bali Nine look like a naturopath society. Seriously.

But I am off, and even though it took me a about 25 minutes just to choose two bags in which to store my copious medication, I did choose them in the end (see below, aren’t they pretty?). If I can just fling myself to the other side of the world, via China, hopefully things will start to fall into place in my head.

Mexican oilcloth sandwich bags! 

I certainly am plunging into the unknown. The part of me that doesn’t feel (a) literally petrified – in that I can’t move or get out of bed half the time and (b) numb is completely intrigued by what lies ahead.

On my last trip I stayed alone, and only met up with friends twice. This time, I am set to meet up with four lots of friends, and I will be staying in what appears to be a guest house slash headquarters of Gallic hedonism. There will be far more mingling I feel, and that’s going to be good for getting me out of my current context. 

Dans la maison de JSeb!

I sometimes feel that when you travel, you get to be your “perfect self”. You pack all your favourite clothes, your nicest make-up, your best shoes. You update your playlists on your iPod so that you have a perfect soundtrack to your adventures. 

You have no responsibilities and you tend to be more daring in unfamiliar surroundings. You tell taxi drivers whatever the hell you want when they ask you what you “do”. I’m tempted to say “rien” when someone asks me this trip, just to see their reaction.

When you’re on the plane, you’re all packaged up with exactly what you need, and nothing you don’t. Suddenly you’re off on your own, context-less, footloose and fancy free. A blank slate, you could say.  

Somebody hand me the goddamn chalk already.