Monthly Archive

Network Ten newsreader Charmaine Dragun committed suicide late last year. It was just such a massive shock to everyone (seriously, everyone) because she was so bright and her career as a journalist was totally skyrocketing. I remember hearing her doing the newsbreaks on the fm radio station I listened to in highschool. Then she was doing the entertainment news from Ten in Perth, then ‘real’ news stories, then, when the news was run out of Sydney, flew over there to be the anchor.

I the sadness of her passing touched many people here, because deep down Perth really is a small town, but it was more so for me not only because I had known of her for so long, but because I knew exactly what she was going through.

This week’s Australian Story on the ABC was about her life and sudden death. So much of it rang true to me and there were tears; I’m very glad I watched it on my own.

LEWIS BEDFORD, GRANDFATHER: Charmaine’s perfectionism was one thing that worried her very much and yet she had nothing to worry about because what she produced and what she represented was so well done, but it was never good enough for Charmaine.

KIM FRASER, FRIEND: Charmaine was too shy to play the piano for us, even though we wanted her to. I guess it was part of her anxiety about not being good enough.

(Home movie footage of Charmaine as a child, playing piano)
ESTELLE DRAGUN, MOTHER: I would go up to her afterwards and say, “Charmaine that was beautiful, you really did play that well.” “No mum. I did this,” or, “I didn’t play that note correctly, I didn’t put the expression.” So all the time Charmaine was analysing what she did.

LEWIS BEDFORD, GRANDFATHER: We were all happy, you know, we use to congratulate her and think she’d done so well. But you could always tell by her little mannerisms that, I’m not happy about what I did, and yet I could never understand why.

The relationship stuff was even more tear-jerking.

ESTELLE DRAGUN, MOTHER: Charmaine made a decision to leave Simon and come home. Her attitude was always, Simon was going to have the best and that she wanted him to be happy and if she couldn’t give him that happiness then she didn’t want to be part of it.

MICHAEL DRAGUN, FATHER: She found out she was getting this job to read the news in New South Wales and that’s when she got back with Simon again.

…

ESTELLE DRAGUN, MOTHER: When Charmaine was overseas with Simon they spent some time in London and spent some time with Simon’s brother. And one night Charmaine, I think, was just out of the room or she might have gone to the bedroom, and she overheard Simon talking to his brother. And apparently Simon was expressing his frustration with Charmaine’s mood swings, and he didn’t know how long he would be able to live with it.

SIMON STRUTHERS, PARTNER: I don’t know if she’d relayed different things to her mum because she spoke to her mum about her mood a lot more than she’d indicate to me. But we came back from that holiday and it was an absolute high. We just had the time of our life on that trip.

SARAH BAMFORD, FRIEND: Her biggest fear I think was having Simon grow tired of her illness and grow tired of her constant daily battle with feeling good and feeling well and feeling capable of being able to do, you know, the most mundane of things and not feel so incredibly unwell.

There have been times, very recently, when those exact thoughts were pushing me deeper and deeper into my depression. I feel really, really lucky that those episodes passed, that I had a chance to look back on those moments and try to learn something from it … and try not to have any more.

It’s awfully sad that she didn’t have that chance.

Bless you, Charmaine. May you be well and happy now, wherever you are.

Hooray!  Yesterday, M ceremoniously snapped my credit card in half!  We’re just about to go meet his bank manager to talk about opening a high-interest savings account to start saving for a home-loan deposit, but before I can contribute to that, I need to sort out my current cash concerns.

Been reading more blogs about savings and stuff, but I’m being creeped out by percentage budgeting and the like.  I Sigh, this is so hard for me.  I haaaaaate number.  But maybe not as much as I like spending money :P I got paid today, and having done all my bills and rent for the fornight (including a set amount to repay my credit card) I keep thinking about the nice little balance left in my account.  I know that I’m supposed to live off that for the next two weeks, but I like instant gratification, dammit!

So I have decided to have a plan.  I like plans.  And having one might help me be a little more frugal.

So, presenting my 7 steps to get started on the path to financial freedom (cause I know it’ll take more than just “7 steps” to get my there) which includes paying of the credit card, getting that emergency fund up-and-running, and working up to visiting my friends in Melbourne (cause I just got an email from one of them and I REALLY WANT TO GO VISIT!!):

1. Each payday, transfer $200 to credit card.
2. Budget for the fortnight.
3. STICK TO THE DAMN BUDGET!! That means… DON’T SPEND RECKLESSLY!!
4. If money is left over at the end of the fortnight:
   (a) transfer 50% to credit card account; and
   (b) transfer 50% to emergency fund account.
5. When credit card is paid off, transfer $200 from each pay to emergency fund account.
6. When emergency fund is at $1000, open another account for Melbourne Holiday.
7. Transfer $200 from each pay to Melbourne Holiday account.

 As Bridget Jones says:  GOOD PLAN!

Hah.

Yesterday was harder than I thought it was going to be.

After all the time I’ve spent thinking about my Issues,  I didn’t really have much to say actually.  I even kinda didn’t want to talk to her, but maybe I was just pissed off because I had to throw my plastic down before I was allowed to do the session?

I had to do a Suicide Contract because my psychoanalysis report said I was at “High Risk”.  When I tried to explain that was exaggerated cause the weekend before I did the testy thing hadn’t exactly been a high-point, she took a little while to remember the note in the report that warned some of the data might be skewed because I’m unhinged. 

Which seems to kinda defeat the purpose of this test as a diagnostic tool, but whatever.

I guess I also kinda lied about how far I went with my ’suicidal thoughts’ two weekends ago.  I took 3 sleeping pills cause I was totally stressed out over stuff and I wanted to do was sleep so I would stop crying and carrying on, and the regular “calming” dose (half a tablet) wasn’t working.   I told her that bit.  I didn’t tell her that I took the 22 pills I had left in the packet and looked at them and thought about taking all of them.  Obviously I didn’t take them, cause I’m not that clichéd, but I did have the blister sheets in my hand before I eventually drifted off. 

So yeah.  I semi-seriously thought about it.  I called M the moment I woke up and told him all about it, so it all passed blah blah blah.

Anyway, I agreed to not act on any further thoughts before my next appointment with her, to make an emergency appointment if I need to, and to get in touch with M or Little Brother.

The next part of the session was where I sat there fiddling with my hair lackies and couldn’t think of what to say.

Awkward.

It was easy with my last psychologist, Dr S, cause he treated Little Brother and he knew exactly what was up with my family and he Got me pretty quickly.  So I’m struggling trying to open up with Dr H.  M reminded me that since I’m in for like 2 years of counselling, it doesn’t matter that it’s going slow, and maybe he’s right.

Dr H made an interesting observation though.  That my voice gets all tight and throaty when I’m talking about stuff I don’t feel like talking about, and that I get all curt and polite, and I sort of hunch up on the couch.  She’s right.  I could feelmy throat being all tight and constricted.  I hadn’t noticed that before.   But I definitely do it, I know I’m all curt when I speak to Father now.  Cause I don’t want to let my guard down.  And because it’s a massive struggle for me to talk about something things without bursting into tears, and I guess I try to block the crying and weeping with my throat.

Then when I was talking about something I was reasonably ok with (my academic achievements), my voice got deeper, more relaxed, less restricted, and I was more animated with hand gestures etc.

Discovery re self: I blather a lot, but I never actually say what I want or needto say.  Like in this blog.  I’ve been doing posts on superficial shit like organisation and sleep and money but I have yet to talk about my childhood, I didn’t even mention what happened the weekend before last when I considered suicide and nor did I comment on the weird sad/guilty/messed-up feelings I got when Father emailed me last week, trying to be helpful and it ended with me saying “Please don’t start this. I don’t have the time.”

I do want to talk about these things, I’ve hinted at the dodgy childhood thing a few times, but yeah, I find excuses to not write about them.

Homework for week: Read online therapy article on “Mindfulness” and observe the way my voice is when I’m talking and keep a note of what I’m talking about when I notice these voice changes.

Yet another item on my stress list: Money.

Cash. Dough. Moolah.

Whatever you want to call it, I don’t have much of it.

Upon returning from M and my Post-Graduation South-Asian Holiday-Extravaganza, there were three factors which left me in this particular financial position:

1. I had spent all my savings;
2. I had dipped into the ol’ Visa (all it takes ™) to fund some splurge duty-free purchases, leaving me in debt; and
3. I realised that I simply cannot, no matter what, regardless of any previous grandiose stay-at-home-to-save-for-home-deposit plan, live with my parents anymore.

As for Number 3, I honestly had to get out.  As. Soon. As. Possible. (I know keep putting off the back story, but I really can’t find the time to sit down to shift through it all…)

I emailed/rang a bunch of people offering rooms in share houses in suitable locations and accepted the first response because it was in a great location, the room was reasonable, the house didn’t look horrible and the house-mate seemed nice enough (in the five minutes in which I spoke to her).  It was lucky I took it since it was the only response I got, and therefore I ignored the fact that my share of the rent was slightly higher than I wanted, and just submitted to the horrible rental market, relegating myself to not saving as much as I would like to.

My frugality with the new digs included not buying a TV and choosing not to use/share the wireless internet (saving about $40/month) but I had to borrow $750 bond from Mother and $200 from M to buy a microwave.  Whereby Number 2 got even worse.

An “interest-free balance-transfer low-rate credit card” offer was taken up to avoid paying 19.99% on my old student “fee free” credit-card, which was now about to charge me fees as I was no longer a student, but I was rudely awakened to receive less than I expected in my first paycheck due to the fact I was paying back more than I should have to in Fee-HELP because my incompetent university had overcharged me.

Plus I have the aforementioned shopping addiction, so I was buying a few things here and there which I probably didn’t need to buy, but hey, I just started working and I was earning money, I should be able to spend if I want to, dammit.

Then, as I was reasonably making-do, I decided to go to Therapy to sort out my Issues.

Which totally Boned my budget.

At $170 a session, getting Self Actualized ain’t cheap.

While I do get about $110 back from Medicare cause I’m on a “Mental Health Plan” through my GP, I still have to have the full fee up-front, and it’s caused me to actually increase my credit card debt. 

I need to get it paid off before the 6-month “interest free” period is over, but I feel like I’m not making aaaaany headway and it’s bumming me out because I can’t save for anything, including a trip to Melbourne that I would reeeeeally like to do in July.  Plus I can’t shop. 

After I’ve paid for this week’s session today, I am cutting up my card so it doesn’t get worse, because I have budgeted to keep my head above water from this payday onwards.

I’ve been reading a few blogs about saving money, and I have decided to really get serious about “budgeting” and the like.  My next goal is to save up an “emergency fund” so that I don’t need to rely on credit or parents or M for things that jump up to scare me.

Then I’ll work back to the Melbourne Trip, if I can, and then work on saving for a home deposit.  Not that that’s likely in this market (I’m such a pinko, cause I love to blame the freaking market) but hey, a dream is a dream.

Squanderlust on news.com.au had a new post today about “frugal being the new black” and I reckon she’s onto something.  And hey, if I’m on that bandwagon, of course it’s cool now :P

The other day I mentioned that I bought They F*** You Up: How to Survive Family Life by Oliver James with the intention of learning more about my family-induced problems (and how to deal with them).  I still haven’t read it.  I bought it knowing that I am currently spending more than I earn and  knowing that I have at least four six other unread books piled up next to my bed:

• Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
• Princess Diaries #9 by Meg Cabot
• Green is the New Blackby Tamsin Blanchard
• On Chesil Beachby Ian McEwan
• Dreams From My Father by Barrack Obama
• In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

I know like 75% of that list is all v. Oprah’s Book Club, but I swear I don’t watch Oprah [on a regular basis].  There are many more in my bookshelf, hidden away pretending that they have been read, and I swear they are much less Oprahish. 

While tag-surfing the other day I found this post about the soothing effects of buying books and I just couldn’t agree more. 

I think my ‘de-stressing obsession’ is slightly better than my shopping-addiction.  I feel good buying make up and shoes and clothes as well as books, but then later I get all guilty about the first three, cause they are such selfish, wasteful, consumerist habits, whereas books are fonts of knowledge and inspiration and having more of them can surely only be a good thing, right?

This weekend M’s dad brought 2 big boxes of books that were in storage from when they moved two years ago back to their place, and I have unadulterated access to a bunch of fabulous books that I am yet to read, so I will have to remind myself of that every time I walk past a bookstore.

But as I mentioned in a comment on For the Benefit, I have this massive urge to just quit my job and go work in a bookstore, cause I hate my job and I like books, so that makes a whole lot more sense in the Let’s Be Happy Plan.  But since I don’t have the gall to quit my job (because I know I will regret it once I’m less gloomy and awaken to the fact that I am So Lucky To Have Such A Good First Job In my Journey in the Rat Race) maybe I should try to get a Saturday job at a bookstore or something, so that I can try to enjoy the pleasure of being around lots of books on a weekly basis.

Father also has a [massive] book-addiction.  So this could be genetic.  But I like to think mine is not as crazy because I like to keep mine all neat and ordered instead of horrendously higgeldy-piggeldy strewn amongst the rest of his pack-rat crap.  Or wait… maybe it’s worse.

Anyway, there is post has no point. So I better end it now.

[Edit: went home and discovered there were more books in my To Read stack than I had realised.]

Some of the ‘emotional turmoil’ (for want of a better, less stuck-up term) I’ve been going through in the last few months has been about my job and, more generally, about where I am going with my life.

At the end of law school, I applied for (and was eventually successful in obtaining) employment as a graduate lawyer in a top-tier commercial law firm.  It should have been all pretty amazing.  My fellow graduands were in quite a tizz about applications and interviews and blah dee blah.  Most were wined and dined by top firms hoping to recruit the best.

But I basically pulled myself out of the process the year before, when I didn’t bother applying for the usual 3-5 vacation clerkships, and when I took the one clerkship I did get and ran with them, as a 1-day-a-week Research Assistant in my final year.  I was basically part of the family by the time it came to applying for graduate jobs, and I didn’t bother applying for some places because I knew they would look at me as ‘taken’, and one of the two other places where I did apply did just that.

The other place?  I pulled out.  I was so scared about having to make a decision between two places that I just went, nope. I’m here now, I’ll stick with it.  I just didn’t feel as if I had the capacity to make such a big decision.

I’ve done this before.  At the end of high school, after working my tiny little arse off for 5 years, I could have had the choice between law school and med school.  But I ran away from the choice, by just leaving myself with the choice of which law school to go to.  I suppose, by doing that, I really did make a choice, i.e. Go To Law School, but what I’m trying to say is that I hate making choices.  I freak out at them.  Because somehow I feel incapable of respecting my ability to make the right choice.

Probably because I often wondered if I made the right choice in regards to which law school to go to.

But I now wonder if I chose the wrong fork in the Med/Law intersection.

A study last year found that lawyering is the most depressed professional field in Australia, so it looks like I’m about to add to that little statistic.

Not that I’m saying that by choosing med school, I wouldn’t be depressed.  Because that choice wouldn’t change my genetics, or my family, or any of the other causes of my current state of emotional-being.  I guess I’m just wondering if I should have done law.

In my first session last week, Dr H asked me why I chose law.  Blank look.  “I don’t know.  I’ve always wanted to do law.”  “But why have you always wanted to do law?”  Shrug. 

I could never answer that question truthfully in interviews, either.  Here’s one I prepared earlier: “I love solving problems and being challenged.  I know, obviously, that there are many fields in which I could be challenged and solve problems, but I like the idea that as a lawyer, you solve problems that people have in the day to day life in Real World.  Those problems might be about their business or a relationship or about their actions, depending on which field of law you’re in, but they are still everyday, real problems, and I think that helping to solve them through the law is an interesting and fulfilling career path.”

What a load of cock.  Anyway, they fell for it.

I am clearly conflicted by all these lies and deceptions.

I used to want to save the world when I was younger, and I think that was a reason I put in my law school application letter.  There’s a group of Facebook called “Law School: Where Idealism Goes to Die”, and I couldn’t concur with the accuracy of that statement more. 

Sometimes I still want to do that (save the world) but I don’t think I’m strong enough to do that anymore.  (Like my psychological analysis said, I don’t have delusions.)  But there’re all these thoughts I have about the fact that I have proved myself to be being a very capable person, and from values that have been instilled in me from my family, I feel as if I should do something with that capacity, for other people, for the world.  But, back to the top of this paragraph: I don’t think I can do anything.  And I freak.

This quote from Professor Geoff Gallop pretty much sums up my problem (at least on this issue):

The guilt that depressives feel in the face of their and the world’s many imperfections also works against their own liberation. They want to please and isn’t everything that happens their responsibility and theirs alone? The more they do, the more they have to do. It is for others that they act and it is to achieve at the highest levels that they work beyond reason. To do otherwise - and to put themselves and their well-being first — is to fail the test of life that has been created in their own minds. Herein lies the problem for many of our professionals and high achievers — they have lost control. 

That which drives them also has the potential to destroy them and, tragically, all too often it does. As Dr Mamta Gautam said of the legal profession in her Tristan Jepson Memorial Lecture last year: “These personality traits are all very socially and professionally valuable, but personally very expensive”. [link]

So  I went to law school, and then I finished it.  Mind you, I took as long as possible to finish it, because I think I knew I didn’t want to actually Do Law, but then when I did, I was faced with another horrible crisis of confusion.

The big step towards the Big Bad Legal Jungle is not an easy one to take.  Which is why I have actually pussy-footed around in front of it.  I haven’t taken the leap yet.  I dipped my toe in, waved to the people on the other side, and then said, “just wait a sec, I’ll be rightback,” as I walked along on the edg.   I deferred my graduate position and took a 12-month job, which is still in law but not as a law grad.   The Firm were totally fine with it, because it’s a fancy-schmancy job, and it makes me an even better graduate to have in their troop.

This job is my way of justifying going to law school without having to be a lawyer, because I wasn’t ready for that at the end of last year.  I thought the holiday M and I took would refresh me and prepare me but I’m still not ready.  I hate this job.  It is so boring.  I am not being challenged, I do not like it.  Plus. My boss scares the hell out of me (he’s a male Miranda Preistly, I am not kidding, and sometimes he calls out to my co-worker and all I can think of is Merryl Steep going “Emmilyyy” in that deep, low, scary voice).

I should be going to work for another fellow soon, and I know I will suck it up and not just quit, but what I am now wondering about is whether I should go to The Firm next year.  Because it will probably be worse. 

I don’t know.  Obviously I should cross that bridge when I come to it, but I’d really like to be prepared for dealing with the Troll.

There’s an idea that I’ve been thinking about for the last few weeks, which I think is probably pretty stupid, but this post is way too long so I’ll look into it later.

I couldn’t sleep last night.  I tried, because I had bootcamp this morning (and I have missed the last two sessions due to my technical ineptitude/stupidness at setting calendar alarms on my mobile) and I was meant to get up at 5:30. I did get up and go and bootcamp-it-up, mind you, but I struggled to sleep and now I am struggling to stay awake.

My legs were aching, I couldn’t get comfortable, my tummy was upset. (Aw, tummy-wummy’s got a boo-boo? And no one to kiss it beddow? Aw!) There goes that darn Somatiziwhatsit, all acting up again. 

Plus. 

There were so many ideas smashing around in my head. So many thoughts about yesterday’s session, an email I got from my dad, my goals, things I’ve gotta do in the next few days.  It’s been a while since this’s happened to me.  Maybe that’s a good sign?  That I’m more motivated and excitable? Or maybe it bad cause it’s like my craaaazy mania or stress.

Urgh.

Whoa.

So last week my psychologist Dr H tells me that she thinks there’s more to my problems than just depression, right, so she got me to do a psychological assessment, which is basically 300+ questions which are either “false”, “somewhat true”, “mostly true” or “very true” about yourself.

We went through the results and while some of it was exaggerated, most of it was spot on and there was much shoulder-sagging and a few tears.

The Good: I don’t have any problems with drug and alcohol abuse (although the computer-generated diagnosis said my responses on that were so strong that I might be lying, hah), delusions, multiple personality issues, etc.

The Bad: I have a highly inflated ego (duh) but it is probably just to compensation for my horrible self-esteem.  I think this is pretty accurate.  I can once remember describing myself as a megalomanic with an inferiority complex.

The Ugly: I have lots of depression (duh x 2).  And I feel I have no support network. 

Which I really do feel, even though I have M, I know, but I have always felt that I (or more acurately, my ‘problem’, which has taken over my life in the last 12+ months) was just a burden on him.  And I can’t use him as a therapist; he’s meant to be my partner.  And I’m doing a lousy job at partnering him back (more on that later).  But I have never had a really close friend who I shared everything with.  Well, maybe there was L, but I have just lost the same contact we used to have and I feel like I can’t just dump this on her now.

In the end, the my diagnosis is Major Depression (duh x 3) with kinda isolated moments of mania (which explains the ‘drive’ to achieve crazy things like double-honours etc, cause what normal person would even consider something like that) and Somatization Disorder which is a

condition of many physical complaints (including four pain symptoms, two gastrointestinal symptoms, one sexual symptom, and one pseudoneurological symptom) which cannot be fully explained by a known general medical condition. [ref]

Fair. Very fair.

Hrm, according to The Bible Wikipedia, this particular condition was is antiquatedly known as hysteria.

Roight.

Ok, so, my brain is mush these days. I keep forgetting stuff I need to do so I write things I have to do in a bunch of different places on a billion scraps of paper, but never have the right bit of paper to remind me to do stuff when that thing could be done, and so I forget to do it and freak about it later, resulting in my having yet another thing to be upset about.

Le sigh.

So, I decided to get organised.  I was inspired by a bunch of blogs all talking about this ‘GTD‘ task management thing:

[Getting Things Done] rests on the principle that a person needs to move tasks out of the mind by recording them somewhere. That way, the mind is freed from the job of remembering everything that needs to be done, and can concentrate on actually performing those tasks. What distinguishes GTD from other time- or action-management systems is the idea of grouping tasks by the context (defined as a place or set of available resources) in which they are to be performed.

There are lots of ways of GTD-ing, apparently, and I spent many a geeky blog-surfing hour looking at them.  The ideas that impressed me most included using a Moleskine (because I heart Moleskines) and regular old index cards (aka an Hipster PDA) but I ended up making up a system that melds a few of them together. 

I got a cute new pocket Moleskine, hacked [literally] out tabs in the pages, highlighted the tabs and edges and clipped a bunch of index cards to the front with a fat phat Mori Clip and then stuck in some planner pages from D*I*Y Planner.

“Uh. Wait. Why don’t you just use your diary?”, my friend A asked when she saw me with it, knowling full well that I already have one, which just happens to be a Molskine softcover weekly planner notebook.

Because it’s got extra features.  That I put in myself because I knew how I wanted to organise myself.  So nyah.

“I think you do more organising that actual doing,” M said to me when he saw it.

Yeah, he’s probably right.

So I saw an interesting book in the waiting room before my first psychologist appointment today: They F*** You Up: How to Survive Family Life by Oliver James. A quick scan of the blurb showed it’s about learning how to deal with your past in order to fix your present. Sounds perfect. Here’s an exerpt from Amazon.com.

This poem is quoted after the dedication (”To my mum and dad, the principle cause of this book“):

This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

– Philip Larkin

That pretty much sums up most of what Dr H and I spoke about.  She was very impressed at how clearly I expressed everything that’s been going on from day x in response to her question “So why have you come to see me?”

I told her it’s because I’ve been in and out of various counseling sessions for a good part of my youth, so I have it rehearsed.

Found this on BoingBoing:

Sidewalk Psychiatry encourages self-evaluation in transit by posing critical questions on the pavements of New York City. Now your daily ponderings and emotional problems can be prodded and treated on the go - and, best of all, it’s free of charge!

And who said graffiti wasn’t constructive? I’d save heaps in shrink bills if we had that kinda thing here.

Image: Candy Chang