Warning Signs

Looking back over the last few weeks, I now see there were warning signs.
While channel surfing, I watched just 5 minutes of So You Think You Can Dance Australia and it made me cry. When the young dancer heard she'd made it into the to twenty, her face crumpled and she sobbed openly, genuinely; and tears leaked straight out of my eyes and down my cheeks. I didn't know this girl, I didn't care about her. The effect was sympathetic, physical. Contagious. Like catching a yawn. Those TV producers know exactly how to push all the right buttons. They call that good TV.

Then there were the news, radio and press reports of the Victorian bushfires. Genuine tragedy. Genuinely upsetting. With sad faces and lowered voices, my colleagues discussed it. But none of them crying about it. Just me. When reading an online story about one town, the tears formed spontaneously -in an open plan office - and I had to stop reading. And stop watching the news.

And there were those random times at work when things were just – well –just hard. The client being difficult. Arguments between colleagues etc. The utterly usual everyday office stuff. An inner voice is saying: I could either laugh or curl up and cry right now. But I didn't see it as anything more than work stress. I am, after all, in the most drudgerous phase of my current project. "The joyless part", as a workmate put it. And the feeling passed quickly.

Even the thought of someone acting kindly towards a stranger made me a little teary. Or the sight of a couple cuddling under a shelter from the rain. I guess I'm just extra sensitive this week, I explain to myself.

These were all signs. As was the creeping feeling, the sense that there was something inside me I needed to express but couldn't. Like I needed to scream. Though I didn't really. I knew screaming wouldn't have been the answer. Or go out and get drunk. But I'm a hopeless drinker and I know that wouldn't have been the answer either. It might have been need to do something random and reckless perhaps. I don't know what was inside me so I didn't know how to let it out. I briefly described the sensation to a friend, in a detached, analytical way. As if stepping outside and observing myself. Knowing that this too was a passing emotion and it would evaporate without any screaming drinking or recklessness required. I didn't really believe, so dismissed it. And to prove me right, it seemed to pass.

But it was a sign.

There was also that little voice in my head, over the last couple of weeks, that every now and then would mutter "I think you're depressed" - when it observed minor little behaviours, slight changes in me. Like sleeping in, for example. That's not a helpful voice. It's best told to shut up and go away, because saying is believing, so I'd better start saying something else to myself instead.

That was another warning sign. The failure to say kind things to myself. I didn't even notice the increasing reticence of the voice that normally points out all the good stuff. As if it was too hard to find the good things in each day. Even noting the little things was too much effort.

Swimming laps is a time to think about many and random things. On Friday morning the thoughts went to life in general. Job satisfaction, purpose, ambitions, dreams. The thought trail didn't end well and the general conclusion is that this is not how my life should be and things must change. But we've all had those thoughts before. I gave them no importance and eventually the stream of consciousness moved on to something else.

Cycling along the river one morning I thought : thank god for gravity. Without it I might just float up and away. What else is holding me here to this city, this life?

I didn't pay any attention to these small, separate things. They were discrete and fleeting. But I should have known. Things then got a bit strange.

5.30 on Friday evening after an extremely long week at work in which I often complained to myself at how I'm forced to spend way too much time at the office: people are packing up and it's obvious that I could actually leave with them too, and not stay late for a change. Where there should be a moment of joy, instead for just a nano-second there is a weird pang. A tiny, senseless jab of loss and lostness. Work's over. They're all going off to their weekend lives and family. The ground seeming less than solid for a moment.

The sensation is brief and I push it away. Just some old, knee jerk emotion from the old workaholic me. Crazy talk. This is what I've been longing for all week - to get out of the office while it's still daylight. Hurrah. Joy. I close my computer and go out into the Friday evening traffic and get things done. Personal, non-work things. Freedom. Relief.

I stay up late enjoying reading, watching DVDs - luxuriating in this unexpected gift of leisure time. I don't feel tired. I don't want to go to sleep. That too is a sign. I am in no hurry for tomorrow.

I usually sleep well. But not this night. I wake twice with a feeling that's very familiar, but also very old. I've not had it for a long time. And I'd hoped not to have it again. It's somewhere between panic and fear, but diluted and distant, extremely subtle and impossible to grasp. It lurks behind trees. Won't be seen. And I have no idea what I am afraid of. I search my memory quickly – was it something in a dream? – but it's blank. So I ignore it. I'm half asleep, and soon go back to sleep.

When I wake up properly on Saturday morning (Valentine's Day) feeling normal, all seems fine. But of course it isn't. It's been lurking for weeks and I can feel it's really here now. This time it won't be brushed aside, or rationalised away or killed by ignoring it to death. With some sense of inevitability or resignation, I let it happen. It's bigger than me now. Maybe it's almost a relief. As if I can stop battling and just give up, give in. I'm squatting under the desk, mopping up cat pee where the cat has missed the tray – again – and properly crying now. Spontaneous tears, sobbing - the full catastrophe - but without the drastic intensity of true grief. They're tired tears. Stale. Resigned. And the phrase "emotional hijacking" repeats itself over and over.

I'm sobbing and mopping and thinking there's no focus for this. No single pinpointing problem or event. So I look back over the last couple of weeks and now I see this was bound to happen. I'd failed to notice all the warning signs.