Manda Propaganda

This morning, someone I barely know changed their facebook status to:

Depression is not a sign of weakness, it is a sign that you have been trying to be strong for too long. If you or someone you know has suffered from depression, paste this to your status to support mental health week.

My first reaction was “Yeah but no… mental health week is in October”, and just minutes after leaving that comment, he had deleted the whole post.

My second reaction was slightly more ranty. I did, however, resisted the urge to change my own status to:

Amanda thinks the statement that “depression is not a sign of weakness, it is a sign that you have been trying to be strong for too long” is ridiculous. Those who have a mental illness or mood disorder are neither victims not martyrs and suggesting they are, or that the issue is caused by their emotional ‘effort’ or lack thereof is singularly unhelpful.

partly because it was too long, but also because as angry as I had suddenly become, I wasn’t in the mood to stir shit and not be able to get my point across in a meaningful way. So I mulled it over this afternoon and I think I have finally figured out why this got me so fired up.

All my life I have struggled with what goes on inside my head. From the age of 9 I was sent to school counsellors who expected me to be able to verbalise my confusion despite being years away from knowing the words to describe it. Through high school I was plagued by the same problems, seemingly of my own making - I acted out, I challenged authority, I refused to toe the line. I just needed to be different, for the sake of being different, though at the time I had well throught out and perfectly valid reasons for wanting to present myself in a way that didn’t fit the expectations of my teachers, my parents and “society”.

After leaving school I lived the kind of life that no one wants to imagine their daughter living, and although its fashionable to lean towards a wholesome “I didnt inhale” defense, I prefer honesty… I took a lot of drugs. This is no revelation; I (semi) openly admit being a recovered addict, and am proud of what I have become since I stopped being dependant on drugs 8 years ago.

There came a point though, shortly before I stopped using, when I got myself a referral to a counsellor and for the first time, made a pro active move towards wellness. I was eventually diagnosed with depression and put on medication. I gave up one drug for another, and became a Zoloft Zombie.

While living with a boyfriend, something happened that made me question my diagnosis. I was in a good mood when it happened. I was recounting something that had happened during the day, talking a million miles an hour and gesticulating wildly. My boyfriend, who was tired from work and exhausted by my exhuberance turned to me and said “I think I like it better when you are depressed.”

Stunned into silence, I fell into the lowest low I had experienced in a long time. Within weeks, he was no longer my boyfriend, and I was taking drugs again. That seemingly insignificant comment though, would prove more valuable than I could ever have imagined.

Fast forward 9 years… lots has happened, I stopped taking antidepressants, then started again, then stopped again, then started again. I saw a counsellor, then a psychologist, then a psychiatrist. I was diagnosed with depression in every instance except one, when a very unhelpful medical health professional told me I had a Cluster B personality disorder and that basically I was a lost cause, unless I was willing to commit to a 6 month inpatient treatment program consisting of ECT, BMT and Lithium. Pass.

This February though, I had a health scare that left me convinced that I had diabetes. I didn’t but thats not the point. The point is that while in my new GPs office I started crying. Then while discussing what I was upset about, I made a joke and laughed about something only partially related, and before you know it, I was crying again. We had a brief chat about the current challenges in my life, and the ones from the past that seemed most pertinent, and she shared her suspicion that I might in fact be bi-polar.

After being referred to the Black Dog Institute and ungoing their examinations, I received confirmation. On March 4th, it all finally made sense. I do not have depression, because like my ex so helpfully pointed out, I am sometimes unbelievably happy. High. Exuberant. Buoyant. Jaunty. You get the picture.

And that brings me back to the whole reason I got fired up in the first place, by a comment that, while trite and ill-informed was genuinely well-meaning. I AM one of those people who have suffered from mental illness and mood disorders. Despite the standard definition of “suffer” I do not feel like a victim and I certainly don’t feel that my “suffering” was caused by something I did or didn’t do. More than that, I don’t feel like my brain broke because I tried too hard. Thats just ridiculous.

There is something wrong with how my mind works, and thats just how it is. Just as some people are born with a defective heart or weak bones, I have a chemically imbalanced mind, it’s as simple as that. As appreciative as I am for the attempts to raise awareness of mental conditions, these condescending platitudes do nothing to promote understanding or acceptance on either side, and implying that blame can be placed anywhere with any degree of certainty is really very dangerous.

I am bi-polar (a lesbian bear from the Arctic circle, get it?), it’s no ones fault… and I’m OK with that.

When I was 16, I experienced my first severe bout of insomnia. Not being able to sleep lead me to night time TV, and the lack of quality programming on the commercial networks forced me to switch on SBS out of pure desperation. It was there I developed an addiction to Football (soccer) by way of UEFA Euro 1996, and more specifically via Frank and David on ‘Fantasy Football League‘, which I began watching religiously.

I watched a fair bit of Premier League Football after that. I was fond of Manchester United (pre-Beckham) and Chelsea, but wanting to avoid being a cliche and following one of the Big Four, I eventually settled on Tottenham Hotspur as my team, mainly because of their rivalry with Arsenal, who I despise. I like the nickname Spurs just fine, but to me they have always been The Totts, and always will be. They are doing OK at the moment, in 10th position as I write this, which is kinda why I like them. They’ll never be League Cup winners, but they aren’t wooden spooners eithers, and when they do perform well I get a nice warm fuzzy underdog feeling. Moving on…

By 1998 I was fired up for the FIFA World Cup. I followed Norway who had a promising start but were knocked out just before the quarter finals. France went on to win over Brazil in a most convincing way, which delighted me no end. I love seeing Brazil lose, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Unfortunately Norway didn’t qualify in 2002, so I followed Germany instead. Karma caught up with me, as Brazil avoided a repeat of their previous stumble to defeat Germany in the final.

Much to my disappointment, Norway failed to qualify again in 2006, so I stayed with Germany who, as hosts, I thought would put in another stellar performance. They did well, coming third behind the champions Italy and France, who fought out the final in an anti-climactic penalty shootout.

I’m pretty psyched for the 2010 FIFA World Cup - its being hosted by South Africa, which in itself is pretty interesting, but also because after a very interesting conversation with a Taffy friend of mine, I have high hopes that Wales might qualify, for only the second time since the beginning of the comp, and the first time since 1958. If they fail to qualify, I’ll follow Germany again, or maybe go back to Norway… we’ll see.

The whole reason I’m writing about football right now is because tonight I was unpacking a box of dusty old VSH tapes and came across one with the letters GMD written on it in nail polish. Back at the beginning of the story, I mentioned watching ‘Fantasy Football League’, and I enjoyed it so much that I started taping it. The late night shows that followed after it really blew my young mind; shows like ‘Liquid Television‘, which I absolutely loved (its where ‘Beavis & Butthead’, and ‘Æon Flux’ started, though ‘Winter Steele’ and ‘Stick Figure Theatre’ were my favourites), and ‘Glam Metal Detectives’, an episode of which is on the tape I found.

I know the contents of that tape so well, I had major deja vu when I saw it. The episode of FFL has the Phoenix From The Flames bit with the scissor kick and the subtitles, though I cant remember the players name. It also has the Incy Wincy Spider bit (long story), and the hilarious commentator quotes (”bolt out of hell” and “like flies round a cheese”). The episode of GMD is the very first one, called One Of Us Is A Robot, which contains one of my all time favourite quotes from any TV show ever… after discovering that Sara is the robot (sorry about the spoiler), George says “I should have realised when she kissed me; she smelled like my old scalextric set.” HA! Thank jeebus someone put it on YouTube (and just recently too!) because now I get to watch it over and over again and revel in the utter insanity of it.

The coolest thing about GMD is that the actual GMD’s bit is only one bit of it. The show was designed to appear like someone channel surfing, so there are fake ads all through it, and bits and pieces of other shows. My favourite of those was ‘Colin Corleone‘, about this loser who lives in a London housing estate but thinks he is the Godfather. The theme music ripoff is so funny, and the kid who yells out from the upstairs balcony “Oi, dickhead!” just kills me. The clip linked is the same one from my tape too.

I love rediscovering old gems like this, I just wish the BBC would get their shit together and release it on DVD. Its too good to be left in pieces on YouTube; it deserves to be seen again in all its glory.

In 1996, I was the nerdiest person I knew. I had just left highschool halfway through the year (dropout FTW!) so my access to the laptop loan pool in the school library was gone. We had a computer at home, but it wasnt good for much. I used to spend hours on it anyway, trying to finish every game of Freecell in numerical order and creating desktop backgrounds in MS Paint.

By the end of that year I had started hanging out with real nerds. The kind of nerds who ran around in their underwear in front of strangers, but also knew how to do amazing things with their computer by using a phone line and a mysterious squeaking box called a modem. They could chat to each other! And to strangers! About anything! It was all they talked about… it was like someone had baked a delicious nerd pie, and I wanted a piece of it.

I asked my mother, “Please mother, let me attach the phone line to the computer! There are strangers I need to talk to!” But she refused; strangers were dangerous. “But mother,” I begged, “My friends are at the other end of that phone line too and I want to talk to them!” But she still refused; I could use the phone line for phone calls like a normal person. “Mother!” I implored, “Access is cheap and I will be able to talk to people from all over the world, learn from them, connect with them, share whole kilobytes of information with them!” But it was all for naught, as my mother had become aware of the fictional misfortunes of Sandra Bullock and needed to protect her children from such ordeals.

It was an embarassment beyond words that I was not on ”Active” (the worlds lamest bulletin board service) and could only check my Hotmail while at friends homes. It was during this time that I started meeting boys, one of whom holds title of “my first love”. He was a beautifully damaged uber nerd with the soul of a poet and the facade of a rock god. He was a SysAdmin, he did IT consulting work and had his own company, and I thought he was the shit. In reality, he was a shit. Small but very important difference. Apart from cheating on me, dumping me at Christmas, breaking my 17 year old heart and sending me on a spiral of self loathing that would last another 2 years, he also introduced me to IRC (where incidentally I met almost every boy I ever dated before the age of 21).

By now we have reached 1998, and it was in February of that year that I met Heath, who was dating a friend of mine, but would become one of my closest and dearest friends. His family became my family, and to this day the whole lot of them rank very highly amongst the people I am fortunate enough to be acquainted with. Serendipitously, Heath lived a mere 10 minute drive from my house, and over the next year or two I became a regular feature on the back porch of his family home, curled up on the old lounge in my Doc boots and fishnets, chain smoking and eating Wizz Fizz, or in the back room on their computer, begging for Channel Ops. 

When my capacity to cope at home was exhausted I moved into my sisters house. She had the internet, and it was awesome, even if she did crack the shits every time I installed anything on her computer. Circumstances changed and I moved into a lovely townhouse with a friend, however neither of us owned our own computers so I was once again without online access. Less than 10 weeks into our 6 month lease, she buckled under the pressure of adult responsibility and moved back in with her parents. I dont recall much of how I spent the remaining time I lived there, and anyone else with sense will also choose amnesia over the memories of a boy named Toby and the shit he put me through. Aside: I just looked him up on facebook and we have one mutual friend. I may need to revisit him at some stage. I just dont hate myself enough right now.

Life gets pretty murky here in late 2000, and I did things I am not proud of. Apart from the fairly troublesome substance abuse problem I was developing, there were things like beginning a relationship with a boy I wasnt interested in just so he would move in with us… and bring his computer. OK, thats not entirely true, I didnt just want him for his computer… we also needed him to pay a share of the rent. Yeah, I suck. To make matters worse, I used this poor boys own computer to meet another guy, who I cheated on him with. Yeah, I know, I still suck. After breaking up with both of them, I used the same poor long suffering bastards computer to meet yet another boy, who, 4 months later I did end up moving in with, leaving the ex-boyfriend to live in a house with a bunch of my friends, none of whom he really got along with. Again with the me sucking. On the upside, he scored some serious booty from another of my friends, so good on him! All’s well that ends well, right? One of the positives I took from this period of my life was the friendship I cultivated with Kevin, who is one of those people I unfortunately may never meet face to face, but who I love like I’ve known forever.

I lived with Paul for a while… around 8 months of our year long relationship I think. He was another uber nerd and taught me a lot of what I came to know. While working a very boring job I also taught myself HTML using Notepad and an online tutorial. Having lost most of my old school friends for various reasons, I started hanging out with a new set of nerds; the people from #sydchat on IRC. We’d go to The Pav every Tuesday night to play pool and talk shit about each other. It was as much fun as it sounds, that is, not much. When my relationship with Paul ended, I moved in with a lovely friend who I worked with, and it was then, at age 21, I finally invested in my own computer for the very first time. I indulged both my insomnia and drug habit with reckless abandon and spent 6 months writing, discovering new music and meeting lots and lots of people… all via the internet. I started my first livejournal as well. No one I knew blogged back then, so it was all very cool and exclusive.

When Trent and I went our separate ways I lived by myself for the very first time. I also got cable. I didnt sleep for months. I didnt eat. I became (to quote Mel) “isolated and weird”. But I was having fun. Sort of. My sister had moved to Melbourne so I spent many a night webcamming with her and playing Yahoo Literati, basically poor mans Scrabble. I started registering domain names and learning how to create websites properly. Blogging began in earnest. It was during this time in 2001, shortly after the Twin Towers came down, that I started talking to Adam. My life had gotten dark and introspective, I was on a permanent come down. Adam was light and fun and as nerdy as me, though he was a gamer while I was a designer. I cleaned myself up and started living a more grown up life.

The rest of the story writes itself… I began making websites for money, I discovered lots of ace music, I met lots of cool people. The internet has contributed so much to who I am and what I have experienced that I cant imagine my life without it. I have a Blackberry that I am thoroughly addicted to, and a laptop that I love so much it hurts. When my marriage ended, the internet was probably to blame, though I find it hard to hold a grudge.

Today is the day the internet is meant to be provisioned at my new place, however it will be a few more days yet until its all set up and able to be used. Its been almost 3 weeks since I’ve had the net at home, and I miss it more than you can imagine.