Seriously... Depression Pt 1 Before The Fall

I don’t know when I first felt depressed.

I can, however, remember the circumstances where I was picked on as a kid enough for it to sear into my brain, as good a starting point for this essay as any. My family had moved to Australia, and I was short and funny accented. Easy pickings.

I had fought in school once, when I was eight years old, against six year olds, if I can remember correctly. I was defending my friends, or something, but the shame I felt when the teacher gave us a dressing down has stayed with me for the rest of my life.

So when I was teased at high school - I can’t remember being teased as much in the last two years of primary school, even though that was also in Australia – when I was teased at high school, I couldn’t lash out, even if I wasn’t the smallest boy in the year group. Instead, I took it, laughed at myself, made a joke of myself and thus pre-empted any verbal attacks.

Which was fine in high school, kids can be so cruel, but the more time passed, the harsher I became on myself, even when I had gotten beyond the pettiness of teenage years. When you are harsh on yourself it so easily leads to self-loathing.

As I said, I can’t remember when I first got depressed, but I can remember when I first thought of suicide. I was fifteen, and I took a knife into my room. For a week I flirted with the thought of using it, late at night, to plunge through my ribcage and pierce my heart. I don’t know what brought that thought process on, I was doing OK enough at school – by this time we had moved back to New Zealand, no more funny accent teasing.

I stopped flirting with the idea after my paternal grandfather died. I thought it would be unfair on my family to give a double blow in so short a time, but don’t ask me why I thought they could handle the possible single blow of me dying. The knife slipped back into the kitchen, unnoticed.

When I was sixteen, I missed a chemistry project at school. Completely. I hadn’t started it two days before it was due, and had a huge crisis of confidence. The day it was due in, I skipped school. The first time that I can remember doing that without being validly sick. I believe it was Melbourne Cup Day 1992, as I watched horse racing that day, and that is the only race that I watch ever.

I didn't complete the project. I 'convinced' the teacher that I had handed it in, but it must have gotten lost. There was a practical part to the proect where you gave a three-minute speech, but I refused to do it. I believe the teacher thought it better not to push me on the matter. The whole matter was the first major blow to my long-held belief that school grades were actually important in any sense.