I was a scholarship child. I had shiny hair and shiny teeth and had read my favourite book ten times forwards and once backwards. I had been missing school on Thursdays for ‘Gate Ways’ classes; the primary school equivalent of Harvard. I was twelve, and things were shaping up. It was looking like my box of life chocolates was going to be a bit heftier and more premium than the other kids in my class. Boy, would that girl have been surprised to find patty pans of Prozac pills where the Cherry Ripes’ should have been. Years later, symptomatic of the bravos of society coupled with the crippling consequences of an overactive nervous system, I found myself no longer the nonpareil. Socially postured to win and mentally postured to lose, I was Jack without a beanstalk to claim my golden eggs. Eggless and proud, I have decided to use words as a loom on which to spin my own gold from grievance. In my hardest moments I found comfort in the recovery stories of others and hope that this, too, may bring comfort to another. Besides, capitalism and type A personalities shake hands at the prospect of material gain.  

I by no means consider myself to be of a higher order than Jane Doe or Joe Blow. I am, like everybody, deeply flawed. Growing up, I benefited from a binary system that only saw intelligence one way. I fit into a neat category that suited the profit-seeking nature of society. I was groomed as such to be special. Better yet, to be rich. Heavily dissuaded from pursuing my love of the Arts, I was to supply labour to the right people in the right places. Supply to the demand, primed by years of boater-hat wearing in an old building filled with pictures of Jesus. Despite my long-held proximity to the coloniser’s divine, I found myself no more saved than those who have cast stones upon it. Apparently, a dried biscuit and a sip of Willow Glen Shiraz Cabernet won’t save you from mental illness.

‘Intelligent people’ are statistically more likely to suffer from mental disorders. Alike, some pontificate that Generation Z is, on average, more intelligent than the generations that came before it. Be this true or not, we certainly are the generation to have access to the most information; and we have had since we got our grubby fingers on our first PC or web-compatible mobile phone. From this time on, our brains have been overwhelmed with data from all directions like house sparrows in a crossfire. Our retinas forever branded by flash selfies; our youths on Facebook saw us flit from Farmville, to soft porn, to ISIS beheadings to photos from Tina’s engagement party. We now watch live stream videos of war crimes being exacted on Ukrainian citizens in convenient, bite-size clips on TikTok on our lunch breaks.

When Thomas Gray coined ‘ignorance is bliss’ in the 18th century, it certainly caught on. Our generation have been left to clean up the messes of the greed that came before us. At this, we turn and bow our heads at each other with the symbiosis of our shared experience. The ‘Big Sad’ and ‘Great Fright’ and everything around and in between them are as common to my generation as a straight, white Prime Minister. When the ecosystem on which you rely is crashing down around you and it’s going to cost you one kidney and your first-born child to rent on stolen, drought/flood-ridden land, you’re unlikely to be all sunshine and rainbows. The collective trauma of it all found us participating in our choice forms of escapism: be it backpacking or becoming micro-influencers. As well as indulging in our choice vices: be they nicotine and narcotics or Moscato and Lululemon gym pants. Want to know why our generation has a near-sadistic obsession with iced oat lattes? It’s the small things that help distract us from our grievances at large. We’re magpies collecting shiny things for our doomsday nests. We consumed our way into this mess and we’ll consume our way out of it, god dammit! Besides, it’s hard not to find yourself with a touch of depression as the axe is waved around the tree in which you’ve made your home.

I suppose my select form of escapism is writing my problems down. I feel I can expel my anxieties through my keyboard and save them in a folder on my desktop. I take control of the narrative before it takes control of me. I have Generalised Anxiety Disorder: a gift from my mother. Some of my earliest memories are panic attacks that I had as a small child. My anxiety is largely physical. I don’t necessarily doubt myself or the external perception thereof, but rather, my body goes into fight-or-flight at the drop of a hat. When it’s bad, my anxiety makes me physically sick. I have a heartbeat in about six places at once and will feel so dizzy that I want to throw up. I also experience what many describe as ‘derealisation’. As my brain tries to escape my body, I feel an alien detachment between myself and the world around me. Glaring and invisible and making no sense at all. My panic attacks happen at seemingly random times for no discernible reason. I remember gripping the kitchen countertop to not lose touch with the world around me. I remember crying whilst looking at myself in the mirror. While I could see that I was before it, I didn’t feel as if it was. My eyes and my body were conspiring against me. For power or for pleasure, I do not know.  I was prescribed Prozac for the first time at nineteen. 

It is a little peculiar to consider the fact that your brain is not always a team player. It plays roulette and threatens its own blood supply, often needing pharmaceutical discipline to address its antisocial tendencies. I wanted to scream “whose team are you on!!??” as I sat aboard a hijacked plane where I was pilot but someone else was holding the joysticks. I took my pills with open palms and intestines tangled around each other, each bringing with them side effects deemed tolerable by my physician. I understood that the mentally ill must become physically ill in order to recover. In my case, extra physically ill. Nonetheless, my body had found bed more than it hadn’t in those months; poised to endure what was necessary to restore my brain to serotonergic pleasure. The medication helped a great deal and within months my anxiety was almost entirely obliterated. For some years it ebbed and flowed, but never threatened the steady pace of my homelife. I had won. Years later, last year in fact, I would be troubled to discover that acute mental illness is rarely a one-time occurrence.

I have been on four different antidepressants in the past 8 months. After playing medicinal Russian roulette with my GP, I finally decided to see a psychiatrist (recommend) and landed on Lexapro. It seems to be working. For now, at least. While my path from A to B was despairing and traumatic, and I’m sure the rest of the alphabet is yet to rear its ugly head, I need not bore you with the details. Partly because I don’t want this to become a soliloquy about the hardships of my privileged existence, but more so because I’m sure you’ve seen it all before. Be it in another or in the mirror. Stats from Beyond Blue reveal that one in six Australians is currently experiencing depression or anxiety, or both, with over 25% of Australians set to experience an anxiety condition at some point in their lives. One in eight is currently experiencing ‘high or very high’ psychological distress. As one examines Generation Z the statistics become, unsurprisingly, even more dire, with one in ten aged 12-17 having engaged in self-harm. Unless you are standing in an empty room, your proximity to mental distress is always near. If you are well, know this and act on it with dignity. If you are unwell, know this and act with solidarity.

I am not providing any information that you didn’t already know. This is true. If anything, I am just adding another exclamation mark to an infinite number that came before me. However, there is a catharsis in putting what you already know onto paper. It’s why people journal. Or whatever. I know there is also comfort in reading the echoes in this chamber of dismay we find ourselves in together. It’s why we see humour where boomers see candour. Live, laugh, love? Ha! I’ll try the first one for now. The collectiveness of it all enables us a to share a little of the load and scare off the generations that came before us with our tattoos, sombre faces and discard of niceties. Moreover, it leaves us more unafraid than ever to seek professional help. If you’re going through a hard time right now, I’d recommend it. If not, I wouldn’t discount it from the long-term plan. Life is hard and under the current duress, its’ probably going to get harder. I can offer only words of support and the solidarity of having been there too.

The capitalistic expectations placed upon me in my youth rendered the failures of my mental fortitude a devaluation in my societal offerings. Quel horreur. Not only is our generation the most mentally unstable it is also, the generation bestowed with the greatest expectations. We are to be the caretakers of our ageing families and communities at large while simultaneously the dumping ground for their generational trauma and the conscripted to remedy their failures; be they ethical, structural or environmental. We are the ‘privileged’ generation with our value equated to our output. Think Pink Floyd Brick’s in the Wall stuff. The best place to start healing is to forget about who your parents, teachers and role models decided you were going to be. The second part is to derive value from being and not from producing. The third part is yoga. Ha. Don’t peg me for one of those. Sell pictures of your feet and watch Real Housewives. Who cares! The world is ending anyway. Or something like that.