Ivan:

I grew up in Malaysia with my mum, dad and three sisters. When I was about eleven I remember reading a newspaper article that described what a homosexual was. I felt relieved – suddenly I had a name that described my feelings. But I also felt sad, the article was quite negative. The only example I knew was that if you’re gay you’re abnormal, you’d become a transgender and sell yourself on the street.

When I was sixteen I had my first gay relationship with a classmate. I wanted to share it with my family but I couldn’t. Everything had to be very secretive. I remember crying a lot and feeling so much pain that I had to bang my head on the wall. I started to miss school, my chest always felt really sore and I didn’t have the energy to do anything.

As I got older everyone kept asking me “why don’t you have a girlfriend?” It made me feel like a freak. The lowest point was when I locked myself in my room after having a huge fight with my mum. My sister and mum started knocking on the door “tell us what you want – anything”.

Out of my mouth I said “I want to go overseas”. I had no idea of where I was going to go, I didn’t have a plan but I just wanted to get away.

Leaving the country was the best thing. It gave me the freedom not to worry about what other people thought about me. But it was very sad, I missed my family – they were all I had known for the past 28 years.

I started to see how society can post their values into a person. It was also in New Zealand that I first found out about depression and anxiety.
 I was taking a university paper and one day I saw the diagnosis of depression and I suddenly realized that this is what I had. 
My depression and anxiety are like old friends – they have been with me for such a long time. But now when it gets really intense I know I have to take care of myself by talking to people and getting help.

I remember someone once told me that “you’ll get better if you allow yourself to get better” – you’ve just got to hang in there.

Damian
:

My depression started up when I was about eleven. I was ruthlessly bullied at school. Because I spoke clearly they would come up to me and say, “Are you English?” and then pretty soon it turned into, “Are you gay?”

When I was 12 I started having my first sexual dreams. They were of me wrestling with my friends and on waking I’d think ‘oh that’s wrong’. But it was something deep within me that I had no control over.

I became increasingly homophobic over my high school years. I started smoking cannabis, I always felt anxious and I found it very hard to go to school.

At the same time I began to take part in workshops run by my church. A big part of those was about examining yourself and I think I was starting to see the cracks. I was sort of living two lives.

So after leaving school I held down a few jobs before going on to the unemployment benefit and then, because of my depression, I moved on to the sickness benefit.

For two years my doctor kept signing-off my benefit until one day she said “Things need to change because you’re not getting better.” I was twenty-one when I agreed with her that I needed medication to help stabilize my moods.

I had stopped doing drugs and drinking a couple of years before and was really anti-medication but the doctor gently convinced me to try a very low dose of anti-depressants.

It had a profound effect on me within days. My anxiety about things calmed down and I could start looking at myself again. Part of what the meds did was to take away the bumps and dips so that I could start learning how to manage my emotions in a healthier way.

I went to an out gay counsellor who gave me the opportunity to talk about what I was experiencing. The more I talked about it and acknowledged it the more okay I felt about being me.

It took quite some time for things to come right. I had a couple of relapses and major crashes along the way and even now there are still times I get unhappy. But I now know that I have the ability to take command of that and make it pass before it gets into more serious depression.

Hinemoana:

When I’m sick my depressive mind can make me feel bad about anything. ‘I’m such a weirdo. I don’t belong anywhere. If I wasn’t queer I’d be closer to my family’. But when I’m not sick none of those ideas enter my mind.

It’s funny because I’ve never had a problem with my sexuality. When I was fourteen I fell in love with a girl and I just thought ‘Oh, I’m bisexual – sweet’. It’s never been a huge trauma for me.

Depression isn’t something that ‘just happens in your head’ – it brings very physical reactions. I get tight in my chest and throat, my limbs feel like lead and even small things take heaps more energy. And things that I normally take pleasure in become really hard.

The difficulty with depression is that it comes with its own sabotage mechanisms so the exact things that you know are good for you, the disease tells you that you can’t or shouldn’t do them.
It took me a long time before I could answer it back. I created a really rigorous and regular routine of self-care. I have regular conversations with key people about how I’m going.

For me medication isn’t enough. In fact, I initially had a really big suspicion of it, like ‘you must be really mad if you have to take a pill’. But now I use it as a support to change my life into one that isn’t so stressful and full of triggers.

So the medication becomes just one of the tools in my toolbox, and it’s a toolbox that belongs to me. I know myself and I know this condition. If I have a crap day I have to say to myself ‘What can I do?’ Have I been eating well? Do I need to structure my day more? Do I need exercise or visit my doctor or do I need to spend time with friends?

I remember a friend saying to me once when I was sick ‘Don’t believe what your head is telling you’ and I remember thinking that that wasn’t very helpful at the time because it was my current reality and it felt so real and convincing.
But these feelings and thoughts do pass and when they do it all seems as bizarre as it actually was.

Thanks to PrideNZ.com and the Rainbow Touchstones project for providing express with these stories.

Editing & photography by Gareth Watkins (pictured above).