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Zoe

A founder of hsphaven, Zoe hopes to create a space for HSP writers to come together and share their diverse passions and expertise through writing. This has been an important outlet for Zoe over the years; she fondly recalls writing stories as a child at recess and lunchtime and sharing them with her classmates. Some of Zoe’s areas of interest include mental health, healing and self-development. She has a background in psychology/social science. In her spare time Zoe enjoys being in Nature, op shopping, vegan food, music, and art and craft.

An invisible scar

“All those years drifting in space
I have known you well, yet I’ve never seen your face
You turn around, looking at me, laughter in your eyes
And now I can see”
Hayley Westenra, ‘Across the Universe of Time’

Some people grow up believing they’re dumb or ugly. I grew up believing I was a rapist. When I was five, I was accused of sexually assaulting my friend. The story, woven by my friend and her mother like venomous spiders, spread through the principal’s office, the classroom and the school yard, and I was no longer allowed to see my friend. The story did not end at the school gate too. It spread into the houses of mutual friends, into the neighbourhood which I unfortunately shared with my friend, and other schools we both found ourselves at years later. I had a number of friends taken away from me due to the story. I was watched in the yard by teachers and when I went to play with them I was told I had to play somewhere else. I had my enrolment declined at one school due to the story. I had my reputation stained. My friend and I both went to the same high school- the local, Catholic college for girls. Here the story was used as a reason to bully and exclude me, and a couple of my friend’s friends- her assassins- threatened to hurt me if I were to come near her or if she were to get expelled for her slander. As a child I often had dreams that none of this ever happened and we were still friends. But then I would wake up to this reality again. I was told that I was as good as a criminal, a message drilled into me every single day. My friend’s mother did not drive and walked everywhere with her children. Whenever they’d approach our house, her mother would lead them onto the grassy terra strip on the opposite side of the road where they would pass our house as far away as they could possibly get without trespassing on our opposing neighbour’s property. Her mother continued this routine for the rest of her life. Continue reading “An invisible scar” →

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Grieving the arrested self

Sometimes I wonder who I would be if life had dealt me different cards… if I had of grown up in the one place or stayed at the one school, if I was not bullied, if I had not crossed paths with the people I did. Today I dug up some old songs I used to play on the piano when I was younger. With these songs came memories from those days, washing over me like ripples through the lake. It was my first year of high school at a Catholic college for girls and the school took us to stay at Phillip Island Adventure Resort. I was down by the lake with some other girls, and we were instructed to build a raft using some pipes, ropes, and planks of wood. After building the raft using our amature skills, we were to test it. We nervously set off into the water on our shonky raft praying it would stay intact; we didn’t want to sink, especially as none of us were wearing bathers. The whole exercise was a perfect analogy of what the first year of high school is all about. Like the pieces of the boat, we were all, more or less, scattered, trying to form bonds, coherent groups and a coherent sense of self. Over the years, most of us would eventually find our place, find a group of friends and the security that comes with this, and grow in confidence. We would set off from the shore and complete our transformation into butterflies, spreading our wings and taking off into the world. I feel like, somewhere, I have missed out on this. While others around me sail into the horizon, I have barely left the shore as my boat keeps falling apart. By the time I reached high school, I had already been to four different schools and my self-esteem had been annihilated. I was also bullied at this school which led me to move again in year nine. When I look at photos of myself, it’s as though my colours have been washed away. It’s as though a part of me has died. To this day I feel like an outsider. I feel like no one really knows me. I feel like I wear many different uniforms. I feel fragmented, lost, confused, unsure of myself. I feel like a butterfly trapped in a cocoon. Or, as Anneli Rufus puts it, a dud popcorn kernal or bonsai tree.

hourglass-1716428_960_720

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A glimmer of light

“Here I am this is me
What you get is what you see
Look around I am free
And there are no fears in me.”
Delta Goodrem, ‘Here I Am’

It was a beautiful late Autumn day which I spent at the park. After my walk, I wandered down to the lake. I stood facing the nearby path and oval with my back to the lake, letting the last of the light seep into my hungry body. It has been a while since I’ve tasted life without depression. Since I’ve been able to look up at the strangers who pass me by and smile without it feeling phony. Since I’ve wanted to have fun. How nice it would be to play a game of cricket, I thought as I gazed across the empty stretch of grass. How can I play? Who can I play with? When can I play? Will I still want to play tomorrow? These were the thoughts which flooded my mind as I stared, seemingly, into nowhere. Continue reading “A glimmer of light” →

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Shadow

Lately I’ve been wondering whether the things that seem to be my main problems really are the problem. There is something beneath these problems which are giving rise to them. I feel like I may need to change my direction / focus completely. Instead of focusing on the depression and apathy, I need to look at my overactive, manic side and my tendency to care “too much”. Instead of worrying so much about my attachment to therapists where they become the centre of my universe, I need to look at what’s going on with my other relationships and my lack of attachment. And, more broadly, to understand my unhappy relationship with life, perhaps I need to look at my relationship with death, for it is our relationship with death that informs the way we live our lives. Never do our lives hit us harder than when we are on our death beds, which goes to show just how deeply entwined the two are. Check out this post by Gustavo, especially the “Write your own obituary” exercise.

For anyone reading this who is similarly feeling stuck, perhaps it is the polar side that you, too, may need to examine. Light casts a shadow. Opposites are more connected than we think.

yinyang2
lapetus, jpl.nasa.gov
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An account of a “mixed episode”

This is an account I have written about my recent “mixed episode”. I agree with Kimberly over at themighty.com (a great read by the way) that there’s not enough written about what these actually feel like. I also think they could be better diagnosed; I am only just learning about the mixed features of my own depression which have been overlooked by professionals all these years.

 

It is not ordinary depression nor is it mania

But a concoction of the two,

A mad science experiment,

Where the worst aspects of both have been combined. 
Continue reading “An account of a “mixed episode”” →

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Afraid to be happy

Sometimes I get scared when I am happy. When I was a child I had a reoccurring nightmare about a dwarf, like Rumplestiltskin, who would pop up out of the ground wherever I was. I’d be on the playground and he’d emerge through the tire rings. I’d be in the swimming pool and he’d come through the plugs. He’d then drag me into an underground chamber where he would test and torture me. That is what depression is to me. It’s always around, waiting to drag me back down whenever it sees the chance. I fear that cold, dark, secluded place it takes me. There is no life there. My friend often tries to reach me but he can’t. I am apathetic to his love, as though I have turned to stone just like the walls around me.

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Invisible

Every day she’s so depressed and angry and in pain. All she wants to do is sleep but today she was woken by her mother’s guests. Now she must lie awake and suffer. She suffers silently behind closed doors, closed blinds and under the blankets of her bed while laughter fills the house. Her dark room is both her refuge and torture chamber, the darkness seeping into every bone and tissue of her body to the point the pain becomes physical. She breathes and exhales darkness. There are no tears; she lies in a dried up riverbed, thoroughly scorned and beaten by life.

dried river 3

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Back to the start

Note: all names in this post have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals

I sat up till 1:30am last night as I got lost down the alleyways of YouTube’s music videos. The alleyways of memory. From Devil You Know, to Five for Fighting, to Coldplay. Eventually I came to “The Scientist”, a song which always takes me back to Jaspar. Back to the days I was fresh out of high school. The days I thought I’d been through the worst of my mental health and it would all be up from here.

It was enrolment day at Swinburne university. I had just signed up for a degree in psychology and was trying to find the exit to the building I was in. That is when I met him. I didn’t realise it at the time, but we weren’t just lost physically. No, we were also trying to find an exit to a seemingly endless disillusionment with our lives.

Continue reading “Back to the start” →

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My experience with antidepressants

It was late 2016, if I recall correctly, that I swallowed my first pill. I had cut it into eighths and had one of my therapists on the other end of the phone, as it was impossible for me to do this on my own. Up until this point, purity was my holy grail. I ate organic food and worked hard to protect the sacred temple of my body against anything that had been tinkered with by man. My therapist continued to challenge my anxiety-ridden thoughts around this- what only seems like brainwashing now- until finally I managed to take an eighth of the tablet, washing it down with water. I did not sleep that night as I was in shock about what I’d done, but slowly it got easier and easier. Eventually I managed to take a whole tablet and it became a normal part of my routine. I was waiting for the day depression and anxiety, like a pair of boiling hot tongs, would finally release me from their crushing clamp. The day I could sleep, clean up, cook, see people, reply to messages and just do normal things without everything feeling like I were running a marathon. That day did not come. After increasing the dose a number of times, putting up with side effects (at one point I had to take a second medication to counter the side effects of the first medication), and waiting weeks for it to kick in, I finally accepted that I wasn’t getting anywhere. The emotional roller coaster of getting my hopes up and having them dashed over and over again was the hardest part. Yet still, I didn’t give up on this drug business. Maybe another one would bring me relief.

Continue reading “My experience with antidepressants” →

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