Time keeps flowing like a river

More than 30 years ago I loved listening to Alan Parsons Project and the wonderful songs. This one didn't need to hit my memory because I've been listening to it off and on over those 30 years. The lyrics are lovely, but I don't talk to anyone about what they mean at the end of this song, Have a look at the picture and see if this means something you really do believe (if you can't read the words look on www.reibus.com.au/quotes.html or Google them).

Have you ever said goodbye forever to your friends? What was the reason? I had no adult friends, just acquaintances, during my single parenthood with my kids. I was far more interested in getting them to grow well. I didn't meet any real friends until 15 years ago - and they are still friends. Since I moved to Aus with my ex husband I can't remember ever making friendships which just stuck to me. I didn't really met any people until after 'he' walked out on me, but now I have. Some stuck with me before and after the hospital, and new friends have appeared since I moved to Redcliffe. They're pretty good for me. I rarely see them, but I talk to them. That works for me.

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I think I hadn't said on my latest blog that I had been at a meeting for the Peninsula Poet's Group. It was my first meeting with them, but they were great. I gave two of my poems that night, and they stood up and applaud me (which I found out was supposed to be the usual for newbies, but I felt pretty happy about that!).

That night I'd met Ben Bracco, who was a published writer as well as in this group. He gave me information about a local publisher, Jeff. I rang Jeff last week and set up a meeting with him for Monday this week. When I sat with him he'd never acted at his age - he's a lot older than me but acted same age as me!! His publication consultancy runs from his home, and he will prepare the book for publishing and either print it himself (under 50) or pass it on to the printer (50-plus). The price for 50-plus books seemed to me to be very good. After asking on FB about a loan, some of my friends answered with some hints. The one which seems to be for me is a crowdfunding Pozible site. This says that a video would be worthwhile, so I've been on Animoto - where I'd done the brain aneurysm one earlier - and have mostly finished my story video to be added into Pozible. 

If anyone reading this is interested, please have a look when it comes on! Any generous donation ($25 and more) will get a copy of my printed book in 3-4 weeks after my crowdfund page is closed.

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What's really winding my frustration up? Right now it's the long... long... long time my application for citizenship has been into Immigration, and still hasn't been actioned. Very early last year, before I'd even been told I'd be in hospital, I had sent in my application for RRV (Resident Return Visa) which would allow me to apply for citizenship after a year. I got the RRV in February, and in March this year, 13 months after that, I applied for my citizenship. 

It is now 4 months since I applied, and why, why haven't they told me that I would be eligible?? I realise that

this is quite possibly to do with my position after my brain aneurysm surgery and my stroke. My income is shared between Australia and New Zealand. Yes, it is very low. No, I didn't ask to leave my job. Yes, I was operated on. No, Centrelink wouldn't have helped me if ABIOS hadn't supported me. Seems pretty real to me, and yet it seems too hard for Immigration to realistically approve it. What would happen to my income? Would Centrelink help me? Would I get enough money for my bills?

 

Would I get assistance with some training I really want to do? Preferably at a local uni course, but if need be it might just be a TAFE course. I have looked through a lot of information about this - web development. I truly believe I could easily do it, because I have created a lot of websites since the early 2000s. Most of those I know are no longer around, but I still have some off-line work from many of them. Madhatter's Maskatorium is still on and was done for a friend but I don't think it's much used because they have changed their baseline. Team Waipa, Tigger and Mig, Just Looking, Forum Training, It's Okay to be Angry and Reibus were our own websites, and I still use It's Okay to be Angry and Reibus.

What really does make the future? I guess I am still waiting because, really, "time keeps flowing like a river". Doesn't it?

Living lost

I  would live with a rich old man. It’s only my dream, but it’s a good dream. I wouldn’t have to marry him, but he’d be rich and would keep me comfortable. Oh yes, a good dream.

This morning I woke up at 5.30am in tears. Pretty usual. My brain sometimes just do whatever it wants to – remembering my history, remembering my presence, thinking about everything I have lost in the last 2.5 years. I can’t forget that my ex-husband walked out on me and moved back to NZ. He wasn’t rich. Left me broke. I was working in the same company – seven years. I was on a good salary. I was kissed by my work manager after my ex left – did I tell you about that? I remember it. I can’t forget it. It cost me my job. Left me broke. I had my brain surgery 15 months ago, followed by a stroke. Yes, I’m sure you know this. Left me broke. I ended up on DSP. I now live alone and in depression. 

Google “rich old man” and see what it will show you. So many rich old men who will find young – young – women and live with them and play with them. Depression? Only me. I would live with a rich old man. I don’t care if he finds other women for sex, as long as he takes care of me. “They” seem to take care of people like Ruby Sommers. 

For the first 5 years living in Australia was a dream. My second ex had moved me over here – his choice. We bought a house, I loved painting it, fixing it, changing it, spending my income from work on it. I had told him before we bought it that I wouldn’t feel safe in “our” home, because I’d already lost two homes in NZ, the fault of my first ex. My second ex seemed very confident, but this turned into the third house. We lost it because of my second ex. I should’ve known that it would have happened. Was I stupid getting married second time? Yes, I now know that I was. Losing that house caused us to break up, but not my choice. I will not blame myself. I will not blame myself for how I live now.

I would live with a rich old man. I would go travelling with him. My second ex and I bought an APVC and had holidays 2-3 times every year. We’d been to Melbourne, Gold Coast, Hunter Valley. I’d been to Gold Coast, Hunter Valley and Coffs Harbour on my own. Not chosen, but ex used to come up with a reason not to come. We’d go to Sydney for his holiday. We’d go to SA to buy his car. We’d go to Melbourne to buy his truck. My very few vehicles only bought in Brissie. I never complained to him about his spending. I’d never complain to a rich old man as long as he spent his money on me. 

I’ve never been anywhere else in the whole world except for NZ. Australia and NZ. Now I can’t go even out of Brisbane. I live alone and in depression. I’d planned on going to Penang and visit my sister, but I can’t afford it now. I’d have loved to go to Europe, to England, to anywhere where it is warm. But I can’t afford it now. My life now is the future of my recovery from my brain aneurysm surgery and stroke. Funny that I’d lost my 7-year job within 2 months of CT’d for my aneurysm. They gave a very different unreal reason. I ended up on DSP after my surgery. Not my choice, I had no choice. 

Am I too old to live with an old rich man? If he’s 70-80, that’s okay. I think he’d probably die before me, but that’s okay. I’d just love him to take me out to meals at lovely restaurants, buy me wine, buy me clothes, update my computer, provide me with a new car. Keep me warm! When he dies he just needs to leave me with a very decent income for the rest of my life, and he can do whatever he likes with the rest of his assets. If I was still working – at the company I’d been employed with for 7 years, on my very decent salary – I would be debt free, afford holidays, afford my car. I was kissed by my work manager – did I tell you about that? He’s still employed there. 

In 2007 Charmaine Drugan, a Ten Newsroom woman jumped to her death. She had depression and was on drugs which influenced suicide thoughts. In that same year Jessica Rowe from Channel 9 suffered post-natal depression. Her husband, Peter Overton, said: “That time was very, very challenging, seeing someone you love so dearly.” Jessica Rowe is very, very lucky to have a loving husband who would stay with her through her illness. Mine left. My manager left. I don’t know any other men. Perhaps that is the basis of my depression. 

ReachOut depression website said: “The official use of the word depression, which is often diagnosed as 'major depressive disorder', is used if these feelings persist for longer than two weeks and start to get in the way of your everyday life”, yet “depression is a condition that can only be diagnosed by a health professional.”I went to a psychologist recently, so I’m pretty sure they know what upsets me – or sends me down. I’d been to psychologists off and on in the last few years – so I know what unsettled me and sent me down. I was feeling pretty happy that I was living okay with it. Until 2.5 years ago. It has returned for me throughout the last 2.5 years, no break, getting worse. And only DSP, not enough income. 

I believe that writing about anything in my blog, even about my depression, helps me in my mind. Will it also help my brain? Will anyone turn up in my life to encourage me to get “better”? I would have lived with a rich old man.

Sad I live alone.

Memories...

Sitting and looking through very old family photos recently turned me to a few tears. When Mum died a few years ago I had sat at the computer and put a whole story together, showing photos of her from around about age 3. She was so lovely, involved in stuff that she had never thrown us in or out as we grew up. 

She wore Red Cross dress up in her teenage years, she loved the beach, she danced with Dad and won competitions. She stopped dancing when she was married and had kids, but she had so many other things to do – ran our home, organised barbecues and holidays for us, took us into swim club, helped us with our homework, bought a piano for us and encouraged me to learn the violin and my older sister the guitar. She would encourage us to play outside with our neighbours’ kids, and we knew what time we had to be back in. 

In the evenings, once every week, she and Dad would play cards in our lounge with their friends. We were in bed… that’s where we were to stay! 

Mum never had any real bad illness throughout her life. She chose, after her fifth child, to have her womb removed, but she was not sick. Her mother, my Gran, wasn’t sick, neither was Aunt Audrey, yet Mum’s own brother, Brian, was epileptic and lived in a hospital home and came to visit us every now and then. He died when I was young (somewhere around 8-9 years old, I think) in an epileptic seizure. 

My Dad was the other man who had been caught out with an injury – he sawed off his left fingers working up at Waikato Hospital before my brother was born. That never stopped Dad from being a successful builder his whole life. I don’t think I know of any other builders these days who survive through their employment with only 1.5 hands! 

My brother, Wayne, had been born very normal. Mum loved him – her first child – and yet he became very sick at around 6 months old. She was so upset, asked around and not listening to doctors who wouldn’t diagnose what was wrong with him. She met a person who had been on a conference in the USA at that same time, and who diagnosed something like gastrointestinal (I knew what it was but now I can’t remember exactly!). Mum ‘fixed’ him, but he had suffered a brain injury which has lasted him his whole life. Still, it didn’t stop him with becoming a poet, volunteering with Red Cross, and marrying about 15 years ago. 

Throughout his life Mum became involved with IHC and workshops in which Wayne worked. When the last workshop he was in, which was in an area which had moved into where we used to live, closed the workshop down, he worked in a venture group there, similar to the Lifeline which operates here. These days he’s still living at his home, with his wife, and – as far as I know – listens to his music. Mostly country. 

My older sister and two younger sisters never seemed to have the problems which came with Mum in her males, although my younger sister, Fiona, has apparently become mild epileptic. I hope she will always survive if she has seizures. They can’t ever be as bad as what killed Brian!

Throughout our youth my sisters and I had so many books. Mum, her mother, Poppa and Dad’s mother gave us books, and we grew up with them. I still remember Poppa giving me Laddie, written by Gene Stratton-Porter. (Actually, I never even knew until I looked up Wiki today that Stratton-Porter was female!) Mum and Dad gave us Enid Blyton – Famous Five, Secret Seven, The Enchanted Wood, The Children of Cherry Tree Farm. I loved these! FF and SS would go with us whenever we went across town to Gran and Poppa’s place on alternative Sundays. Cheryl and I would read one each that day. 

When Mum was younger – before she got married – she loved swimming, and later when we were around she and Dad would take us to the local swimming club. I was somewhere around 7 or 8 years of age when I did my mile certificate. 

Back to the health. Dad had diabetes, and had strokes after he retired; I think the first one was at my sister’s Kinohaku property where Dad had built her a wee cabin. I know that he had had at least 3 of these horrible things. That was what, in the end, killed him.  After he died Mum lived alone, still in the house that Dad had built for all of us (he’d built this second house that he and Mum had together ever lived in!). I moved to Australia in 2005, and sometimes I really regret that Mum wasn’t entirely looked after by her own family. She died in 2007, also from diabetes which she’d gotten a few years ago, and it was shutting her down. We should know about this, but I don’t really think everyone will ever understand, yet diabetes was the only real illness that Mum had. And which didn’t come on to her – or Dad – until they were old. 

At the start of this I spoke about how the men in Mum’s family seemed to get illnesses. Why am I writing about them? Because I am so very grateful to my father and my mother who kept us healthy, kept us in a safe house, loved us.

And I still do love them. Think I will forever.

"I Want to be Alone"

I've been reading a book called "I Want to be Alone" by Barry Stone. According to the cover this is about "Solitary lives: salvation seekers, celebrity recluses, hermit poets and survivalists from the Buddha to Greta Garbo". The first few chapters from 1500 BC up to 1800 AD talks about, principally, religious hermits and recluses, anchorites and ascetics, but the 'celebrity' people we have known about have lived from 1800 until now.

The first celebrity is Emily Dickson. Born in 1830 and writing from the 1850s, Dickinson pretty much stayed within her family home. We know her as a poet, but much of her written poetry wasn't published until after she died. "Locals thought of her as an 'eccentric recluse'", according to Stone.

A painting from Edvard Munch is attached the cover of this book. It was entitled The Scream, and was painted in 1893, and has been a hugely copied painting since then. He lived through his own anxiety, poor health and lifetime isolated existence.

Marcel Proust locked himself into his small apartment and, just before his death, was discovered having written a nine-million word book called The Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal. Do we know this? Many do. A few years after his death his writing soared him into fame - one of the "most popular histories of 'outsider art'".

Greta Garbo was so well known, and by most people still alive these days. Many people just know her for her quotes, which had started with "Gimme a whiskey with ginger ale and don't be stingy, baby". Yet she guarded her own privacy and never contacted anyone who wanted simply to meet her, even after her relocation to New York. She lived alone and walked alone, and became known as recluse. Whiskey, anyone?

J D Salinger lived in Manhattan in New York, and began to write after attending a writers' course in Columbia University in New York. His famous book, The Catcher in the Rye, took him 10 years and became very appealing to young readers whose future thoughts were brought out similarly in Salinger's book. He remained a recluse for 50 years; no-one really understands that.

Stone wrote of others - painters, chess players, movie stars - and the wealthy people in our world, from the 18th century until this era. He also included "secular hermits and recluses", most whom we wouldn't know of but who are now in Stone's book.

What has, for me, made this so readable is the existence of people throughout the life of this world who, for whatever reason, have become names and history on pages, written about by someone like Stone, and read into our minds. How we believe in these people becomes our own future. Why do we read this? Why do these people interest us? Why do we think they're pretty okay? And why do we believe that they were real?

What interested me principally was that people like Dickinson and Proust and Salinger wrote a lot... heaps... but weren't published until after they had died. They weren't, not because they were turned down but because they didn't seek publication. Any writer these days, 21st century, is told they should be looking at self-publishing, because so many publishers are far too busy and will not, ever, taken on Joe Blow who has written his own magni-novel. Sad, but true.

So, reading this book set me off on my own thoughts. Publication, for me, is very important. Perhaps two years ago I would have agreed with self publishing - it seemed pretty okay to me. Now, though, I have my own ABI from surgery last year, and have real problems to work out setting up my own self publication. I don't want to pay any publisher who demands making much more than I would. I don't want to toss my books into the draw and wait until I die before anyone would find them. Eureka? Aren't there a heap of people somewhere in the world who can either publish themselves or get their books published very cheap? Are they making any money, or are they simply doing it because they enjoy it?

These days - so many of these days - it's easy for me to write because I can't work as I used to. Will I find a publisher who will publish me when I don't really have any money? Will I be able to market, talk about, sell my books? I think I am becoming a recluse, whether or not I really choose to become one. That should make me famous!

Whiskey, anyone?     

Stronger in time

I've been down the lowest in my depression, looking at my life a year after I got into this, after my brain aneurysm and stroke. In that year I've had such a lot of stuff I've done, so much that I have forgotten, and so many people I have lost since I moved up here to Redcliffe.

Today I've felt that I am heading back up now. This was due to some huge "thank you's" to some of my friends who understood what I was asking for and were able to give me some helpful information. 

A couple of days ago I had received a registration notice for my car, but I had no cash. I shuffled through my own thoughts: what would I do? Could I go into Centrelink and get the funds? Should I cancel my car insurance which is $46 every month? Would TMR accept payment? Should I park my car up and just go on the bus from now on? If I save something over the next few months would I be able to pay it some time? When would that come?

This wasn't the major oppression in my depression, I hadn't really thought about it. I'd really just thought of cancelling it because I wasn't able to pay for it. But it certainly took over my thoughts this evening, and I put a request out on Facebook to friends. I really had no idea if they even had money. A lovely few of my friends apologised to me that they couldn't help me. 

And then I got a suggestion - did I have a Pensioner Concession Card, because if so I was entitled to a discount. Another person gave me some other suggestions. My brain began to work!!  I went into TMR on internet and found a form, F3937, which I was able to fill out. I'll be headed into TMR tomorrow to see just what a "discount" adds up to. How didn't I know this?? Why is it so very hard for me to be on DSP from Centrelink? That, I'm sure, I'll never really know. But it's something I have been able to think about, and tomorrow I can fix it!

The other thing which came to me was earlier today, when my daughter came to talk to me. She hadn't been here for 2 weeks, had been very angry at me, but I kept saying to her that she didn't understand me and didn't understand my stroke. This morning was supposed to end well, but unfortunately it didn't. I am disappointed with her, but I am so very disappointed in myself that I wasn't able to talk to her. 

In June last year her partner's mother died from cancer. I had come home from PA Hospital in June, after six and a half weeks there, after my brain aneurysm and my stroke. I had wanted to go to the funeral then, but I couldn't. I know that I got angry at them, but that was very much against them not understanding me and was certainly not against them feeling so sad about this. I know that I couldn't really say my words or make myself understood, but way back then it was just too much and I would shut off. 

My daughter has so much work to do. It used to be for me, and last year it was for me, but now it is just for her partner. I understand this, yet all I wanted to do was talk to her. I ended up kicking her out because, again, I couldn't feel that she could understand me. 

All I need to say right now is "I am sorry". I should not have made her go, and now I don't think she'll be back. I earned this and I feel so sad, but maybe I cried myself out today. I think I will live in a dream of the future which will, one day, include her again. 

I love her. I always will.

   

Beyond... what?

Suffering depression is not a game. I went into Beyond Blue to find out how this website could help me, and I became very frustrated with getting on to the site. In the end it told me I was successful, but I needed to confirm a reply to their email to get membership, and I then had to login and “chat” on the forum line. That threw me out completely. I shut my internet down, far less than happy with Beyond Blue than I had been for such a long time. I had never needed to contact then or join them before now, and the stress to join just blew me over. I realised later, when I looked at it again, that it was very good and explained so much about depression. 

I wonder how many people with real depression feel the same way that I did? Do they feel that they can’t really get any support from somewhere like this place, even though the publicity about it always seemed good? How many people do you know who has tried or will try suicide – and does it work? I decided to turn back on and have a look.

I looked at PsychCentral website where they talked about “10 Good Things About Depression”. Right at the start that didn’t strike me as real, because “depression” is not a “chat thing”.

I found depression ReachOut.com which, I thought, seemed like Beyond Blue and was mostly written for young people – those under 25.

The next one, Psychology Today, talked a wee bit about How to Fight Depression and Anxiety. This sounded strange to me, because anxiety is a different level than depression. Many sites look at just general everyday depression. That isn’t mine.

I found a UK website which, for me, did something at my own level. Clinical Depression UK described depression in a way that I could understand it:

“To understand clinical depression, it is essential to understand that people don't reflect reality (events, other peoples' comments etc.) so much as interpret it. The same event can have completely different meanings to different people, even if their circumstances are the same. Depression is partly maintained by how we interpret reality. The 'spin' we put on things. Knowledge about how this happens can turn lives around.”

I had never heard the description like this, but this was so much like what I had tried to explain to other people, and felt I had flopped.

So I went back into Beyond Blue, this time not looking at stories written by so many young people, or people over 80 who sound so good, but looking at the Types of Depression which talked about major depression disorder, clinical depression, unipolar depression or, simply, depression. The webpage had a picture of a woman just a little bit older than me, maybe, but I felt, at last, I had found someone my own age who had depression maybe like I did.

I’m just starting with this. I have never really understood depression, I never thought it would take me over, drag me down and cause me so many problems. I think I used to be ‘strong’ but now I know that I am not. I had a life change more than two years ago, when I was separated by my husband, lost my job for a reason I have never understood, fought that, ended up in PA Hospital for my brain aneurysm operation and had a stroke, have moved twice, and live entirely alone. I am broke for the first time in my life, on an income I can never rely on, have lost things that I used to count on. Like my APVC which I was paying for so I could go on holidays, but lost it because I couldn’t afford it. Like my NZ life insurance which I had to cancel because I can’t pay it. And I had to cancel some small sponsorships which I’d had which kept me feeling good. I still have more to lose. I have felt useless when other people have taken me out because I couldn’t afford to pay for myself. I have felt useless when other people don’t think I really have a problem. I have felt useless when I know I can’t get a job – a real job.

Sometimes I feel good when I come back up, but I can once again be shot down just with another letter which takes something else from me – not that they try, but they don’t know I can’t afford whatever they are telling me I owe. Like today: my car is my lifeline, but I got a letter about registration and I know I can’t afford it. What will happen when I can’t pay it? Do I cancel my insurance for both my car and my contents so I can get just a little bit money to pay for something like the registration? What happens if I have an accident and my car isn’t insured? Or do I just park it up and not use it again? If it is parked up because I can’t pay the registration, what use is the insurance? And what use is the contents insurance? How much do I own, really?

I had fought for so many years for myself, for my children, for my husband, and I enjoyed it. I had felt good, I had felt strong, I had loved my life for the past 25 years, since I had divorced my first husband. I had ended up bankrupt because of him but I lived very close to my family and could just pop in to Mum and Dad for some support. Which I always got. And I worked. Now this is not my life.

I now don’t believe that I have made up a story to support myself. A strong person can only take so much that they fight against, and I have to think I am not the only past-strong person. I have met quite a few people since I moved to Redcliffe area, those with disability which happened to them because of their stroke, and yet I don’t know anyone with disabilities who live alone, without people who care about them. Perhaps they really exist, but how do I find them? And would that help me?

Yesterday I wrote an admission that I have depression. Writing this today about finding out more information has helped me to stay sane, but I don’t know if I will still be alright tomorrow, or the next day.

I just have to try, if I really want to stay alive.

Depression exists...

Depression is life threatening. WebMD describes depression as feeling “sad, lonely, or depressed at times”, and “a normal reaction to loss, life's struggles, or an injured self-esteem”. Yet it tells how depression can take over our lives, becoming “overwhelming, involve physical symptoms, and last for long periods of time”. The Australian Blue Pages Depression Information says that it can keep you from leading a normal, active life, running you down, driving you to fatigue, leading you to thoughts of suicide.

 

I know this. In April 2014 I had a brain aneurysm operation which followed with a stroke which has debilitated me. I live alone, and sometimes with no contact from my family and friends, no visits, my depression takes over me. I shut myself in my home, I don’t know what I could do, I cry, I sleep. WebMD said that I could lose “interest in activities or hobbies once pleasurable”. It said that I could have “overeating or appetite loss”. I knew all this, but I didn’t know what was happened to me. All I understood was that my emotion dived.

For the last 6 months I have been the administrator for Brain AneurysmSupport Australia (BASA) on Facebook. Sometimes this has been my real world. I Google information on BA’s, post so much stuff on BASA, every day. Even when I felt very depressed keeping up the BASA site just kept me alive.

And my dog needed me. I couldn’t kill myself if she was still alive. She is 13 years old, has OCD (Osteochondritis Dissecans) which is fairly common in the shoulders of larger dogs, and she has a real obvious limp. When I got to the real bottom of my depression I wouldn’t even take her out for a walk, convincing myself that she had problems with her shoulders and couldn’t walk.

My depression goes up and down, and recently the bottom was the biggest problem. Being alone seemed to keep me alive because my dog didn’t have anyone else to live with her. But I know that, if I had really wanted to commit suicide, being alone would work for me. No-one could stop me.

My mind doesn’t work anymore the way that it used to. After my brain aneurysm, after I found out I had a stroke in my left frontal lobe which affected my language, took a long time for me to understand that I no longer have my good intelligence. Do you know what Mensa is? 40 years ago I’d tested for it and got in. My intelligence score got me into 1%. I was even close to Albert Einstein (he was estimated at more than 190). After that test I didn’t tell anyone. I have always had my certificate and my Mensa t-shirt, but I did that test just for me. I have always thought very fast, spoken well, understood most things I looked into. Now I don’t. Now my stroke affected my language and my memory. I was never “successful” (read my history, if you are interested), but I did so many things, went around in circles trying to fit in with people.

I danced Israeli folk dances. I worked backstage in the theatre. I learned how to set up and run a small café. I read. I wrote. I drew. I rode motorbikes. I played chess. I learned how to create website way back when the internet was first introduced. I did woodcraft stuff – I still have my own chess table which I made. I took my kids to ice skating and planned end-of-year shows, even with the ice hockey kids. I swam, went to gyms, went on treadmills, lifted weights, loved Body Combat.

And I never left New Zealand, until 10 years ago. I came here after meeting my second husband, honeymooned in Brisbane, and fell in love with the place with such a better temperature than NZ. I had brought many of my dreams over here. I read. I wrote. I drew. I rode motorbikes. I played chess. I created websites. I swam, went to gyms, went on treadmills, lifted weights, loved Body Combat. How different was this?

So many of my dreams have now fallen away. After my husband began to act differently I gave up riding my motorbikes. I no longer played chess. I gave up gyms. After my brain aneurysm operation I have backed away from books, and I no longer write as much as I used to. These days my only real dream is to run my own two websites and three blogs, but so often I just can’t say anything which seems important to me.

Yesterday I took on something which I truly hope will run my depression out of my body. I have applied for a Diploma of Web Development. I already know so much that I will do on this course, but this course will give me a certificate. It is only here, in Australia, that I feel uneducated. It took me two and a half years in my last job to get my Graduate Diploma of Occupational Health & Safety, but I know, now, that I can’t work that. I had done WHS for 7 years, but now I realise that I can’t remember much of the stuff I learned. So now I am going to get a new qualification, and I will be marketing my websites, designed for other people. Yes, I know I can do this.

My depression is real, not just something that I think about when I go downhill. For me, it was caused by the brain aneurysm operation and subsequent stroke, and that is so unfair for me. WebMD says that treatment can include medicines (antidepressants) and psychotherapy. The rules in Australia only allow a person to see their psychotherapist for 10 sessions, and very recently I finished with mine, so I can’t get help, but I am on my way up and I understand what happened. Now, if I can keep myself busy, if I can talk to other people instead of shutting myself into my home alone, I might just stay alive.

Have a wonderful life yourself.