Tales from a Bruised Mind

My new book was missing something. I couldn’t quite work it out. It was so right but also just missing some extra oomph. 

Then I remembered the foreword of the book. A pretty important part to any good non-fiction book.

Within no time at all, Dad stuck his hand up and said he would write a foreword for my book, A Ballad from a Bruised Brain.

I didn’t give him any guidance or anything. He just went and wrote it, and it turned out to be something really quite brilliant.

I thought I’d share it here with you. It’s just so, so lovely.

…

A foreword by Chris Adkins

We were away camping in Tenterfield for the weekend. Zak was staying in Brisbane with his girlfriend and her parents.  We got a message that Zak had become very unwell and had been taken to the PA Hospital. We didn’t know exactly what had happened. Luckily his girlfriend’s parents were switched on. Our 4 hour drive back to Brisbane was horrendous. Our heads were spinning.

This was Zak’s first major mental health crisis and was a very difficult period for our family to endure.

It was another Sunday.

This was the day of Zak’s mental health crisis number two.

All afternoon his behaviour had become weirder and weirder. He had been in our wardrobe and was now wearing some of my clothes and my tan leather slip on shoes.

He was talking irrationally and becoming increasingly agitated. 

Later in the evening, we knew this wasn’t going to be pretty. His girlfriend left to go home and his behaviour rapidly deteriorated.  He wanted to leave. We stupidly tried to lock him inside the house. 

Then all hell broke loose. He got violent and hurt himself. He wouldn’t listen to us. We called 000 for police and ambulance. We were scared. We had a stranger in the house.

Suddenly he found a way out and ran away up the street. 

I found my shoes discarded 200 metres up the hill in the middle of the street.  Had he gone to his girlfriends house? Had he gone down to the Brisbane River and jumped in?

A cold sickening feeling flooded over me. I thought we had lost our beautiful boy forever.

Two weeks later I took out of the ward for lunch. He was sad. His life had changed for ever. He hurt deep inside.

I said “What do you want?”

 “KFC”

If you are lucky in life, you find love, and friendship, but you can also experience sadness and heartache. 

It is common for young Australians to try new things such as food and alcohol, discover new places and people and to experience all that life can provide. 

We strive for professional success in our jobs and in personal relationships with others, hoping for meaning, fulfilment and a sense of worth and belonging.

Like many young people, Zak entered his teenage and adult years with all these expectations and goals. He had girlfriends and good mates at school. He had interests in cars, photography and flying machines.

But what happens when your mental health deteriorates whilst you are striving to achieve all of the above goals is beyond most people’s imagination. 

This book is an incredibly gracious and generous story, that not only describes Zak’s mental health journey,  but aims to educate and prompt discussion about how mental health is managed in the Australian community and how young people in particular need support early in their careers.

This book is painfully accurate and true. 

It hurts us personally to read it, but that is how it is and as we learned over the past 3 years or so, this story is not rare; it’s experienced by many other families in Australia every day.

This “warts and all” account,  takes us on Zak’s very personal journey as his mental health deteriorates and goes from one crisis to another. 

He tells us how the public health system failed him. It also explains how his parents, close siblings and friends also failed him.

But it also expresses hope and positivity, as “the Health System” that let him down, also picked him up again and set him on a new path of health management, well being and self awareness.

Mental health is a complicated illness. Zak comes from a very typical Australian family who unfortunately didn’t know much about mental health. 

Family and friends need to learn to listen, support and be there. They don’t need to be amateur mental health practitioners. They need to learn from professionals as well.

With Zak’s knowledge and experiences (good and bad), his family and friends also gradually learnt how to respond and provide the support that he needed. 

Unfortunately there is one area that hasn’t improved and continues to fester and damage young people in our community, and that is the toxicity and insensitivity in the workplace. 

Zak’s has experienced this throughout his work life, and it’s not improving, but he is learning how to handle conflict, ignorance and prejudice in the workplace.

It was another Sunday. 

Zak rang and said he didn’t feel well and was going to admit himself to the Prince of Wales hospital in Sydney. But his was different, he was making his own decisions.  

I flew down and visited him in the psyche ward and played the good Dad. A few days later he left looking tired but remarkably well.

“What do you want to eat?”

I looked at him and we both said, “KFC”.

I knew he was “back” and would be OK now. 

He’s looking forward in time. He wants to help others. He knows himself.

It’s not Sunday every day.

…

My reflection on Dad’s awesome foreword

What I took from all that was pure honesty. Pure emotion. A pure and unfiltered feeling of watching your loved one (and son) go through the shitshow that is mental health.

I can’t imagine how difficult it would have been for Mum and Dad to go through that with me. It was a deeply troubling time in our lives. To see their son in that light would have been frightening, and just really nasty.

I did things I wish I never did back then, but that wasn’t me doing those things. That was another, far more angry Zak. One I had never seen or experienced before.

It truly shows what your brain can do, and the power it can have over you at any time in your life.

You may not have ever experienced mental health issues, but you’ll certainly know when you do.

Just don’t give up, and try not to listen to those demons inside your head.

I hope you enjoy my Dad’s words, he is a natural.

Love,

Zak