It was my desire to reduce the fear and sense of isolation associated with diagnosis, increase awareness and reduce stigma sur

PREAMBLE

Although my real name is not Andrew, I have chosen this alias to protect my real identity, as this story contains some very descriptive accounts of my experience with Bipolar disorder. This sickness has led me to some close encounters with suicide. I wish to protect my family and loved ones from the sigma that still remains even in these enlightened times. In this story, I have tried to capture some descriptive accounts of my depressive and manic behaviour that took me on more than one occasion, to the edge of suicide. There are some factors and events in my experience that I have chosen to omit, as they still today, remain painful to both me and my family. I see little value in regurgitating such details for all and sundry to read about. The chronology of this story begins at a time where I can't specifically recall. Upon reflection, depression had been a factor in my life for so much longer than I had initially realized, perhaps several years in various episodes and intensity. I do know however, that it became starkly apparent during the year of 2001, where my condition and state of mental health had begun to seriously deteriorate. This account of my experience is factual, and absent of theatrical embellishment. This story is not a fiction, it is real, and it happened to me, these events are to the best of my recollection. Far too often, experiences like mine happen to other people as well. To those of you who have had a similar experience, you may read of some similarities in your own feelings and occurrences in your own life.
PART ONE - ALL ABOUT ME
As a child, I spent a number of years as an outpatient at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne resulting from some apparent behavioural anomalies. To date, I am still not fully clear as to what those behavioural issues were. In those days, it was uncommon for parents to discuss such matters with children, so many decades passed before I was to discover the truth about my illness back in that period. While at the R.C.H, I was under the care of a child Psychiatrist tried to make a clinical diagnosis and provide appropriate medical/psychiatric treatment for my apparent condition. There have been many unanswered questions from this period, and although not obsessed, a curiosity about that period had hounded me throughout my adult life. I had been vaguely aware of my behaviours, but many gaps in the Doctor’s analysis remained unclear to me. My mother shared my curiosity, but like myself, had never been provided with any conclusive diagnosis or conclusions. While I was a child, it was my father that facilitated my visits to R.C.H, and as typical of that period, did not share much information with my mother either, as in his mind; he was protecting us from the uncertainty and misunderstanding of what was happening with his son. He shielded my mother and me from the truth with all the best of intentions, and I can only assume he planned to keep a watchful eye on me as I developed into adulthood. This plan never fully came to fruition, as my father died when I was 19, so the mystery of my apparent illness back then remained intact. In recent months, I have attained under the freedom of information legislation, all remaining medical files from the R.C.H on my condition back in the mid seventies. Although the documentation was limited, it did confirm an interesting entry notated by the R.C.H Psychiatrist. It said “I predict manic depressive disorder in adulthood” (manic depressive disorder is what Bipolar used to be called several years ago). This observation was made when I was 12 years old. Although this is retrospective information after I had been diagnosed with the condition in adulthood, it’s interesting to note that the signs were evident as a child before it became brutally obvious in more recent years. It sets the course for the events that would unfold in later life.
I am now in my early to mid forties; I have lived a stable life in a typical middle class socio economic environment. I grew up in a loving and caring family with a mum and dad, an older brother and a younger sister. I am now married with 3 school age kids, and I hold down a secure semi professional job with a large organization, and I have the potential for promising career opportunities should I seek to peruse that avenue. I get paid a comfortable salary, and as such, my family and I have financial security. I drive a flash new car, and have a nice home in a nice suburb. I have a good circle of friends, who know me as a person who cares, and I have been told that I am a steadying influence in times of crisis. I’m someone that people turn to and confide in during times of trouble and uncertainty in their own lives, for they seek my thoughts, perspectives and guidance. I’m a sociable person with a capricious and sometime bizarre sense of humour, and I make people laugh with my quick wit. I’m a deep thinker, university educated, and I sometimes posses an uncanny sense of wisdom in times where the waters are muddy. On the face of all this self-praise, I appear as a person who has it all. I am essentially a happy and well-balanced individual, with a clear direction for my life. I have a sense of priority that involves the people and things that I love, and I build my life around those values. My goal is to be happy, healthy and in control of my life and to contribute the same to those that I love. An integral part of that happiness equation entails the happiness of my family and the other special people in my life. This is my purpose and my philosophy, and it’s my personal value system. In spite of all of this stability, things are not always as they appear on the outside.
PART 2 - BIPOLAR DEPRESSION & MY SELF IMPOSED STIGMA
This story, describes something quite different from the perception I portray outwardly, it’s a story of mental pain and destructive behaviour that was to emerge in my life as I approached the last few years. Although much of this anecdote speaks of some euphoric, grandiose, albeit muddled thoughts racing around in my mind, it is also mixed with, and all too often, episodes of the blackest and most ghastly life threatening depression imaginable. In previous years before this monster consumed me, I had never contemplated the notion of suicide. I had never understood the thoughts that must gather in the minds of those that have taken their own lives, but now, only after I have been on the doorstep of self inflicted death, do I understand the horrors in the mind of those who needlessly die at their own hands.
I suffer from Bipolar Disorder, but I was originally diagnosed as having clinical depression a few years back before the symptoms of hypomania also became apparent. I recall a feeling of deep sadness emerging a few years back, it felt like something was desperately wrong, but I just didn’t know what it was, I can’t quite describe it, but it felt terrible and became progressively worse. During this period, (in the last 3 years or so), I had begun on occasions, to withdraw from my family, and avoiding people who may have challenge me about “everything being OK”. I began to blame my feelings of sadness and unhappiness upon my job, my marriage and my family. At this time, I was in a job that required me to do a lot of interaction with people; these negotiating and problem solving skills began to diminish. The demands upon me in that job were rigorous and often stressful, so I thought to myself that maybe that's what the problem was. The irony here, is that I have previously thrived on stress, and enjoyed the minute to minute, day to day challenges of work, and always coped well, but this all seemed to have changed, I was baffled why this had suddenly altered. There seemed to be a particular cycle emerging within a given day. I would usually wake quite early, several hours before the alarm clock was due to go off to kick start me into my daily routine. This was strangely uncharacteristic of me, as I had always been a solid sleeper. The early waking was in itself not so much the problem, but it was more the desperate feelings of sadness and total despair. A feeling of uselessness, being unworthy as a husband, parent, and an employee. This sometimes caused me to silently sob in my pillow in the small hours of the night, but doing it quietly so as to not alert my wife who was slumbering beside me in our bed. This feeling continued on and off, for a number of weeks, sometimes in blocks of time over months on end. I often felt like I could no longer cope, I just wanted to curl up in a dark place all day and interact with nobody.
Alas, I had a job to do, and a family to support, so in the midst of all this, I continued on with regular life, portraying an outward persona that all was just “fine and dandy” in the life of Andrew. This outward portrayal became a carefully planned strategy to fend off any probing questions by those perceptive people who had the compassion and courage to confront me regarding my state of well-being. I was infinitely fearful that someone might see through a chink in my armour that protected me from others discovering the blackening torment in my mind. There was one particular individual (his name is Colin); who I had some occasional interactions with by virtue of my job, as well as having known him in other roles with the company we work for over several years. He confronted me one day in his easy going, but typical manner; he told me straight out, that he “knew something was wrong with me”. He told me he could read it in my body language and insisted he was going to keep an eye out for me, and he did, (and still does to this day). I felt threatened by this person, and over the ensuing months, I made a conscious effort to avoid him, as I had been obviously “busted”. He must have been a movie director in a previous life, because he was the only person who saw through my carefully rehearsed acting skills. Perhaps however, others also saw it, but this man was the only person who had the courage to step out of the comfort zone and confront me. He did this only with my best interest at heart, he was purely motivated by a genuine concern for me, and it was that factor alone that drove him to affront me. I still recall feeling almost panicked by his knowing glare, his perceptive insight into my muddled head, although I don't think he knew how severe it actually was at the time. This person was later to become one of those people in my life that I would lean very heavily upon, and he remains today, a person and a friend who I hold in the highest esteem, and regard him with respect for his compassionate wisdom and insight into the condition I suffer today. He was later to be instrumental in helping me discard the stigma of mental illness, much of that stigma was self imposed, but be he played a major role in reconciling my thoughts about my mental condition, and how to deal with other people’s misconceptions.
I had become a second rate actor, and a master of hiding the secret disturbance that had been raging in my thoughts. I often used to talk to myself under the shower in the mornings in anticipation of questions people may fire at me during the day about my inadequacy, and its manifestation in the way I behaved. I would stand there muttering and sobbing until the water went cold and my eyes red from sobbing, as I was rehearsing my lines. I wanted to ensure I had a pre planned response to any of those questions that I may be faced with at any given time. I had a whole series of excuses as to why I had lost so much weight, “It must be all the healthy living”, I would reply with a forced smile and a rehearsed laugh. I even went to the extent to share ridiculous and eccentric stories of nonsensical things I had done in my life, just to entertain and play the clown, and to reassure those around me that I was doing all right. Occasionally, as the day wore on, my mind eased, and the storm subsided, but sometimes it didn’t. I concluded from this, that I must have hated my job, but during those periods, I hated pretty much everything, mainly myself. I began to hate going to bed at night, as I knew what was awaiting me when I woke. It’s a strange situation that we usually desire to wake from a nightmare to gain relief from the terror, but in my life, it was waking from the relief of sleep, into the nightmare of being awake and facing the reality of my secret anguish once again.
I can recall one particular morning, I was driving to work and upon arrival, I got as far as the entrance to the plant, only to surrender to the impulse that I could no longer do this. I could not face another day interacting with people, my acting skills had become tarnished and worn and so I needed some time to reinvigorate them. I remember driving past my work telling myself I just need some “time out”, and as such, headed back toward my home. After about one kilometre, my memory went blank. I have no recollection of the journey, but found myself a couple of hour's later, sitting in my car on the foreshore of Apollo Bay in a sobbing and blubbering uncontrollable mess. At first, I had no idea where I was, nor how I got there, but this was the first apparent sign to me that not all was well in my mind. I had not yet acknowledged nor recognized this as a clinical condition. I didn’t know at the time I had the symptoms of depression, I couldn’t associate a name for it in my own mindfulness, I only knew that whatever this was, it was a ghastly feeling. I remember I so desperately wanted to reach out to someone, to tell someone of how I was feeling, but my feelings of inadequacy had stopped me. What would people think of me if I made some bold confession that my mind is a jumbled mess of sadness, despair, and a diminishing will to live? I had no idea what had caused all of this. I had everything to live for, my wife, children, extended family, friends, my job, etc., I had it all, and so what on earth has triggered this feeling that had begun to erode the person I had once been. When I finally contained my emotions, I drove home to find my wife whom I poured out my heart to. She had expressed to me that she thought things were wrong, but assumed it may have been the pressure and long hours of work. In her typical fashion, she had nothing but total empathy and support, and suggested I see our local Doctor to get some medical treatment, and so she made an appointment for me for the following Monday. By the time that week had ended, and Monday had rolled around, I was feeling a sense of relief, so I decided to forego the Doctor’s appointment and return to work. The symptoms had eased slightly, but the next few months still held periods of deep depression, but in varying intensity. They were waves that came and went, and my acting skills were now very much under control, even if the depression wasn’t. It was far from under control, it became a spiralling slide into a black hole where there seemed to be no escape.
A number of months went by, and my waves of depression came and went in bursts, each episode comprising a daily cycle that usually followed a particular pattern of horrendous beginnings, and often easing as the afternoon progressed, (although never completely leaving me, it just improved from ghastly and unbearable, to a feeling of darkness and despair). There were many days, increasing in frequency, where the mood didn’t lift at all. On these occasions, I felt it almost impossible to interact with my family and often disconnected myself from them on weekends and when I got home from work in the evening. My wife had become like a single mother where her and the kids did things together, minus my participation as I had become notably withdrawn from them. I had begun to lose interest in other things I previously enjoyed. I found myself silent and unenthusiastic at the football with mate Ed, where this had previously been a great outlet, and a day filled with passion and laughter, but it had all changed. Ed noticed I was different and asked if everything was alright. I felt like telling him to get f*cked, but I didn’t because I couldn’t be bothered. I had enjoyed playing squash and probably spent more time laughing at my own skill shortcoming than I did actually trying to hit the ball. In the end, I stopped playing completely; I just couldn’t be bothered anymore. The humour that Taryn (my squash buddy), and I shared seemed to have gone. I’m sure she wondered what was up with me, I sense she wanted to ask, but wasn’t sure how. I was sinking, but it was so subtle yet so profound, I didn’t realize how serious it was becoming. I’ve always described it as a storm that creeps up out of nowhere; before I knew it the black clouds surrounded me with no blue sky in sight.
A few months after the episode where I finished up in Apollo Bay, I had changed jobs. Although still within the same company, I was now in a different role, and in a different department. I had nominated myself for this position as a means of escaping my existing role, because I thought at that time, my job was the major cause of my misery. I was later to discover that was not the case, I now feel that it is largely caused by biological factors, more than a reaction to environmental situation like stress. My depression continued to grow to the point where I saw no solution to the predicament, so I began to entertain the idea of suicide, usually in the early hours of the morning when I felt at my worse and on those days where things didn’t improve as the day went on. In the midst of this, I dared not to share these thoughts with anyone fearing the stigma relating to my self-perceived inability to cope, making me feel worthless as a person. Suicidal pensiveness began with a passing thought from time to time, but rapidly grew from a concept, to something far more serious. As this condition deteriorated over time, death had now become more than a notion, but a serious contender on the list of options to end my torment. The evolution from abstraction to being a highly conceivable outcome moved quickly, but I don’t recall a long period of consideration. I don’t specifically remember when it began, but I do remember it becoming apparent to me that suicide was very much on my mind and often in the midst of my thoughts in the later stages; it had become almost an obsession.
PART 3 - A JOURNEY TOWARD A DEATHLY RELIEF
I thought in depth about the impact and aftermath of my passing. I thought of the grief it would cause my immediate and extended family, my friends, neighbours, and workmates. I thought long and hard about the effect it would have on my three beautiful children, and my infinitely supportive wife of so many years. I pondered upon my kids returning to school a few days following my funeral, and my family, sitting around the dinner table in the evenings, minus a place usually set for me. I pondered upon how my kids will be growing up without their dad, and how my middle child, a daughter, would cope not being able to cuddle up to me on the sofa when I got home from work each night as she usually does while we watch television together. I contemplated how my oldest daughter would cope not having me around to share our common and sometimes bizarre sense of humour. I wouldn’t be able to talk to her about things that trouble her, for we have forged amazing father/daughter closeness. I am her mentor, and someone she can lean on when she is moody and uncertain about things. I also thought about my youngest child, a boy, who would not have his dad to wrestle with on the lounge room floor, with his screams of laughter echoing through the house when my hand becomes “the claw”, and attacks his rib cage in a fun filled and loving interlude with my beautiful boy. He would miss out on our occasional visits to a local coastal spot to search for sand crabs as we had sometimes done together, just the two “blokes” in the family hanging out together. I pictured what life would be like for my wife having to raise those children on her own and not having me there to support her and being someone to help, respect, and love her in our jointly committed endeavour to be the best parents we can possibly be. My family needed me, not just the memory of me, but they need me in person every single day, they crave to have me “on tap”, but at that time in my life, I could not see that as a priority through the blackness of depression. I had everything to live for, yet I had nothing to live for, although my life had been filled with priceless treasures, depression “doesn’t give a f*ck” for these things. Regardless of these wonderful riches in my life, I still wanted to die. The notions to instigate my death matched the frazzled thoughts that had invaded my mind. I had explored options such as hanging myself, ramming my car at high speed into large trees, or perhaps finding some sort of toxic substance that would quickly result in death.
During this period, my job entailed travelling from Geelong to Melbourne almost on a daily basis and as such, provided me with ample opportunity to consider my mode of suicide. As there had been some significant road upgrades on the main highway at the time, I opted to travel back to Geelong via Bacchus Marsh so as to avoid the lengthy speed restrictions imposed on the conventional route. It was also a reconnaissance mission as I wanted to survey the practical aspects to executing my death, and so on one of my journey’s back from Melbourne, I took a short drive off the main road from Bacchus Marsh to Geelong, to find a suitable tree that was out of the main view of traffic. I found one, and it was on a gravel road overlooking a quarry of some sort, but far enough out of view not to be spotted by anyone unless another vehicle happened to come along that same road. This tree had a decent size branch that would take the weight and impact of my body weight, but it meant I would need to stand on the roof of my car to allow sufficient freefall. I didn’t care for what happened after that, I was beyond worrying about the trauma it would cause the next person who would drive down that road and find my hanging lifeless body. I had a suitable length of rope in my garage at home, so I checked it that night to make sure it would be long enough and strong enough to take my body weight.
The following Tuesday, I awoke to the decision that today was going to be the day. This was the last time I would awake, and the last time I would walk out my front door in the morning. I would never return home from work to my family as I had done for many years. Today was the day I would die, but the irony in this decision bought about a special feeling, one I had not experienced before since my depression had emerged. I felt an easing, and a lifting of my depression because in my mind, I had arrived at a solution to end this torture. It’s quite ironic that my decision to die offered a long awaited solution, so a feeling of relief emerged that this pain was to end once and for all. I showered, went downstairs to have my morning coffee, gathered my things for work, and walked back upstairs to view my children asleep in their beds for the final time, and to say goodbye to my wife. She thought it was just a regular goodbye as I did each morning, but her context was all wrong. It was actually a goodbye forever, but she knew nothing of my plans to die that day. She would discover that reality later in the day when the police arrived at our door to inform her that I had committed suicide.
Later that day, I was in a series of meetings with the people I interacted with in the Melbourne plant. My role at that time entailed understanding some of the technical and engineering aspects of a major program the company had been in the midst of at the time, and to translate problems into specific actions in the Geelong plant to devise solutions. During this day I had become particularly diligent in spite of my plans to die later that afternoon. I discussed some difficult high priority problems with the engineering fraternity, and was feverishly taking notes on their problems while making outlandish but unrealistic commitments to have those problems resolved. I specifically went out of my way to interact with those people that had the most difficult problems to resolve, and falsely portrayed a passionate and enthusiastic desire to get these things fixed. I was filled with grandiose but fictitious commitments, I’m sure they must have thought I was just really motivated to get the job done, I’m sure they were impressed with my energy and keenness to make a significant impact on some problematic issues.
Despite all of the energy and enthusiasm I displayed on this day, there was a lurking factor behind this highly overt behaviour. I actually had no intentions of following up these issues. I was merely playing games with these people, for I continued to look at my wristwatch that day, calculating in my mind how many hours I had to live. They had no idea as they discussed problems with me, that in a few hours, I would be dead, (even though I knew it myself), so I decided to have a bit of fun with it all. As I walked back to my car that afternoon, armed with countless notes and fictitious action plans, I found myself laughing about the whole situation. I thought it so funny that I had behaved in such a way, but only to pour cold water on their expectations when they discovered that I had suicided only hours after our discussions, and our well mapped out solutions to these problems, was purely a game I played with them. I had never been serious about my commitments to follow through; I was only humouring myself one last time before I died. It was an abnormal feeling to get into my car that afternoon with the intention of going to my predetermined place of death, almost counting down the minutes in my mind how much longer I had to live. I think I must have broken just about every road rule that day with my excessive speed along a busy suburban road, and then my uncharacteristic speed and radical lane changes on the main arterial road that leads to the turnoff toward the Bacchus Marsh area. I desperately wanted to arrive at my destination, climb upon the roof of my car parked beside my tree of mercy that I had picked out, armed with my trusty rope, and hang myself.
For some time, the exact duration I can't recall, I stood on the roof of my silver coloured Ford Escape, with one end of the rope around the branch, and the other end around my neck. Time at this stage had become indistinctive as I made some final reflections upon my children, my wife, and extended family. I can recall thinking about the happy times we had together, the emotions I experienced when my kids were born, childhood memories with my mum, dad, brother and sister, and the impact this action I was about to take would have on those people in my life. I recalled the exhilaration and euphoria when my first daughter was born and laid on my wife's tummy all wet and gooey, crying her lungs out as new born babies do, and myself in a sobbing outburst of emotion that was driven by the amazing joy of becoming a parent for the first time. I told my wife through my tears the she is my hero for what she just achieved. She was later to become my hero again, but for so many different reasons. I imagined the phases this tiny child would go through in her life, the stages she would pass through and with me being there as her dad to experience all of that, and feel a sense of joy in watching her grow up and develop. The notion that one day, I would one day change her life forever with jagged scares of pain by ending my own life, but this had never occurred to me at that time of her birth. I also pondered upon that special and significant time in my life where due to unforeseen circumstances, I would be to play midwife to my other daughter at the time of her birth on the floor of our ensuite at home. Her tiny newborn body was wrapped in a towel to keep her warm while we waited for the ambulance to arrive. My wife and I sat there on the floor leaning against the wall with my arm around my wife's shoulder as we looked in wonder at this miracle birth as we held our brand new little girl in our arms. It was a feeling of amazing peace, both of us shell shocked by the rapid birth of this beautiful little girl that would as she grew older, snuggle up to me every night when I got home from work. And there were memories of my little boy, and how I cut his chord when he was born in the same room, and in the same hospital as his oldest sister. As he cried, I commented on the shape of his mouth, it was a beautiful shape as he cried, and he still has it today. I still see features in my children today that I noticed when they were new born babies, and those features make me smile and bring so much joy to me when I reflect upon their entrance to the world, but this joy was not enough to neutralize the devastation of depression, and my desire to end my life. There were many things about my family I reflected on while I stood there, but I wanted one last escape from my torment before I jumped.
I didn't notice the white coloured four wheel drive vehicle pull up on the opposite side of the gravel track I was parked on, and the single occupant, a male aged maybe in his mid to early thirties get out and approach me standing on my car. I can't recall the exact conversation we had, but it was something to the effect that "it looks like you have a few things on your mind there matey". He was extremely calm, and not in the least bit confrontational in the face of what was my obvious intention. "How about you have a chat with me about it, and we'll see if I can help you sort a few of those problems out". I replied something to the effect that we all need to die sometime, so I guess now is as good a time as any. He kept asking me why I hadn't jumped yet, "what's been stopping you?" he just kept going back to that question until I gave him a reply about having some final memories of my family. Then he just focused in on my family and asked me all about my kids, he asked me their names and how I reckon they will cope with this. He knew that was my weakness, he knew if that factor became the core focus, he would stand a chance of getting me down off the car, minus the rope, and he succeeded. This man was a Good Samaritan and he came along at the right time, I think destiny played a hand in my survival on that day. I’m not a religious person, but if there are any such things as angels, this man was one of them. Perhaps he was sent to me from a higher authority to save me, perhaps not. Maybe it was pure fate that he arrived when he did, I was within seconds of dying, and he stopped me. My specific memories of what transpired after that remains unclear today, other than as I drove back to my home in Geelong He followed me in his car the whole way back. When I pulled into my driveway, he did a “U” turn in the court where I live, gave me a toot of the horn, and a “thumbs up”... and then he drove off. I went inside the house, and pretended nothing had happened. I went to bed early that night.
On the Tuesday of the following week, I was required for another meeting in Melbourne plant, and as was now the norm, I woke to face the usual nightmare of depression in the early hours of the morning. I was still somewhat traumatized by the events of the previous week, and the horror of my close encounter with suicide and its almost horrendous effect on my family had I succeeded. A death in the family is hurtful enough, but for that death to be self inflicted increases the horror many times over, so I had a change of plan about how I were to die. I decided that instead of hanging, I would make it appear as a road accident by “apparently” falling asleep at the wheel of the car. I would slam into a tree at very high speed, and of course, I must have forgotten to fasten my seatbelt that day. This all had to be done out of sight of any other motorist either behind me, or approaching from the opposite direction, as the police would obviously question any witnesses. I knew, of a long row of large trees on the side of the road on the approach to the town from the Melbourne side. I had noticed this in my past entrances to town on previous journeys home via this route, so it seemed like a logical location to stage my mysterious but fatal car accident. Like the previous day, I left the Melbourne plant bound for Geelong, but in a similar frame of mind, I planned not to return home, but to end my life in this mode, thus mitigating the emotional trauma on those I left behind, by removing the stigma component to my death., as suicide would not be an apparent cause of my demise. I recall taking the exit ramp from the main highway onto the road that lead into town, and while doing so, surveying my rear vision mirror for vehicles behind me, and for those approaching from the opposite direction. I could see myself approaching the row of trees, and as such, removed my seat belt so that upon impact, my body would be thrown perhaps through the windscreen of the car, or at the very least causing such grave injuries, it would surely result in my eventual death. But for this to happen, I would need to be travelling at very high speed, and collide with one of the trees directly without any braking. I was continually frustrated by the occasional flow of vehicles coming the other way, or alternatively, travelling behind me. At one point, I pulled over to allow a car behind me to pass, and then waited for another I saw in the distant in my rear vision mirror to pass by me also, before continuing my quest. I rounded several bends in the road at a somewhat high speed, in readiness to make that drastic swerve off the road when the coast was clear, and I was out of view of anyone. With each bend I took, there was another vehicle in the distance heading in the opposite direction to me who would surely have seen me make a deliberate approach at one of these trees. Eventually, I had travelled too far, and the generous menu of trees had diminished as I approached the proximity of the town itself, so this ploy of mine was too risky to do without being detected my motivation being obvious. Having been still intent on carrying out this deceptive plot of mine, I made a “U” turn and drove back to the spot where that road met with the main highway, and doubled back again to make a second approach along the tree infested road, with the hope that this time I could do it without another vehicle in sight. This plot had now become a frenzy of watching for vehicles at my rear, and those coming toward me; each time one went past, another would appear in my rear view mirror. At the same time, I had to keep a watchful eye on the speedometer of my car to ensure I was travelling fast enough to result in my mutilation upon impact. I have little recollection of events after this second failed attempt, other that screaming at the top of my voice in shear frustration the words “f*ck f*ck f*ck f*ck f*ck, continuously and in several bouts each lasting many minutes, as I drove back to Geelong. I had failed once again to end my torment. My voice was croaky when arrived to pick up my daughters from girl guides later that evening, but by this time, I had contained my emotions, and replaced the mask I usually wore to conceal what was really going on in my irrational and twisted mind. That evening, I went to bed early again, and sobbed silently in my pillow, I felt like a failure because I was still alive.