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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.

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.