Dealing with Birthday Depression and Birthday Sadness: An Update

Do you get depressed or sad on your birthday? Almost a year ago I wrote a blog entry on birthday depression. This entry has easily had the most hits and comments of all of my posts, suggesting that birthday depression is a huge issue for many and one that is rarely acknowledged.

If you’ve found this blog by googling ‘birthday’ or ‘pre-birthday depression’, please read this earlier entry first. It’s about feelings of depression that can emerge both before a birthday and on the actual day. These feelings can be powerful and debilitating.

Those commenting on the entry were wonderfully honest about their experiences and helped me clarify some of my thoughts about this issue. A year later, I felt compelled to write an update to expand on my ideas about this feeling and describe the emotional landscape on my birthday a year after writing the first entry. Thanks to all the commenters – the brief summing up below has benefited from your shared experiences.

Why do I feel sad on my birthday?

There are many things going on when a birthday comes round:

• The work and stress involved in planning a celebration
•  the desire to have a good day
• the need to feel significant and to be acknowledged by loved ones
• grief at dreams that haven’t come true
• childhood memories of happy or unhappy birthdays (not necessarily conscious)
• general dissatisfaction with life
• for those who have children, the desire to model happiness on the day.

But there is often a huge gulf between the expectations of feeling good and the circumstances of the birthday itself. You may also find yourself dealing with underlying feelings of grief and  low self-esteem.

As if that's not enough, many of us  feel compelled to berate ourselves for feeling bad. After all, this is our special day and we should be enjoying it - shouldn't we?

No wonder, then, that it's hard to get a handle on what birthday depression actually consists of. It can feel mysterious and inaccessible, as if a well of grief were closed up somewhere in the psyche that can't be experienced directly.

Some suggestions

Because depression is a catch-all term that can mean different things, I’m reluctant to give advice about it. The positive feedback I’ve had about the last entry was because it didn’t try to help people avoid the depression, but just described the feeling from my perspective. So I’ve decided instead to simply include some suggestions for coping. Please bear in the mind that not all of the following may apply to you – as the 12-steppers say, take what you like and leave the rest.

• Don’t fight birthday and pre-birthday depression. Expect it, treat yourself gently when it comes, and be aware that it does pass.
• Keep bringing yourself back to the present. Be aware of your body in space, your breathing and the things around you. If you feel like crying, do.
• Plan some treats for yourself - buy yourself little presents and give yourself favourite experiences.
• If you’re planning celebrations and you’re feeling very down, try to make them on a scale that you feel comfortable with. You can always see friends separately rather than together, and spread birthday meetings over a few days or a week.
• If you're feeling really anti-social, don't feel you have to spend the day with others. If you do spend time alone, do something you enjoy or treat yourself in some way.
• Know that grieving and sadness have their own timetable, and can’t be rushed.
• If you are feeling significant distress, share it with someone else who you can count on to be understanding, or get help.
• Notice any small ‘gifts’ that come your way from the world. This doesn’t mean being endlessly positive or trying to make yourself feel grateful. But through the sadness it may be possible to see the bits of the birthday that are good, even if these are small or unexpected. (Sometimes the sadness can make these things stand out more.)

My experiences of birthday depression a year later

I didn’t really get full-on birthday depression this year, which was surprising because I fully expected to. Instead I got angry in the week before my birthday, while on the day before, and the day itself, I could feel a low-level negativity and annoyance, like a bad taste in my mouth that wouldn’t go away.

Depression is a catch-all word for a huge range of emotions and conditions. I’m not sure why I didn’t get significantly depressed, but I’m wondering whether the depression that swamped me last year, and to a lesser extent in previous years, was really a kind of grief. Perhaps I have been grieving for a lost life and now the grieving, while strictly it won’t ever end completely, is at a much lower level.

The anger before my birthday expressed my continuing dissatisfaction with my life today. This tends to wax and wane, but while the energy of anger can be freeing, it did get a bit self-destructive and over-the-top before it simmered down.

I did notice a couple of things about my birthday this year that clearly contributed to the negative feelings. I’ll detail them below, but I suspect that the nature of birthday depression is that it’s very individual, focusing on whatever circumstances are present for the sufferer.

Why I felt down this year – the main suspects

One thing I noticed is how much time it takes to organise a birthday. (And this is someone who doesn’t have to organise a huge party or any large gathering, and has flexible working hours!) I do have to buy my main present (from my parents) and arrange family get-togethers, but this year at least there were virtually no food or cleaning preparations. Yet the birthday still took significant time and energy to plan. I think this is one reason for the negative feelings: my birthday sucks up time and energy when I'd rather be ignoring it altogether.

This in turn brings up feelings of doubt and anxiety about whether I'm deserving of this kind of time and attention, and whether other family members believe that I am.

And this question relates to something else I noticed about this year's birthday – that family members stuck to their usual roles rather than trying to be nice.

Too often in the past I’ve used this blog as a flogging post for unsuspecting family members so I won’t do that here (well, perhaps only a tiny bit). Although I’d deliberately lowered my expectations this year, I still hoped that a couple of ‘recalcitrant’ family members in particular would make a ‘special effort’. Instead, the usual sabotaging non-verbal messages prevailed. And while I wasn’t exactly depressed about this, it fed the sense that I wouldn’t be sad when the birthday was over.

And of course there was the age thing – turning 47.  It’s not so much about looking older, although I’ve feared that in the past, and no doubt will again – it’s about the knowledge that although I haven’t lived much of my life, or barely begun to realise my potential, mother nature and the ageing process are not going to make an exception for me.

The ‘end’ is drawing closer, inexorably – the numbers don’t lie. And yet I’m just beginning to understand the nature of the health issues, mental and physical, that are holding me back. Plus, even though my understanding is growing, these factors are still significantly restricting my life. What I’m getting at is that age itself is a ‘health issue’, and I fear that I’ll never sort the other issues out before age takes over everything!

Anyway, my birthday is over for another year and there is a huge sense of relief in returning to ‘normality’, or my version of it, once more. (Plus, I did get some wonderful cards and gifts that will result in a low-level spending spree at an anonymous but obscenely large shopping mall in a south-eastern suburb of Melbourne.) I wish everyone well who is going through this.

Please note: birthday depression is another term for birthday sadness. If you are having suicidal thoughts or think you may have clinical depression, please speak to your doctor or a family member, or ring one of the numbers listed here. Please reach out and seek help if you need to.

Would you like to share your story of birthday depression? Head over to the Birthday Depression website and share your story with others experiencing the same thing.

If you'd like to know more about birthday depression, I've written an ebook about it, also available through the website.

For a short time if you share your story I'll send you a mobi file of the book for free. 

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Progress report: diet, dogs and trying to meditate

I’ve been meaning to write something about the changes I’ve noticed since going on an incredibly strict food intolerance diet, and thought I'd combine a progress report with a couple of other ‘developments’.

I’m on a strict version of the Failsafe diet, which rules out all food additives as well as two groups of chemicals that occur naturally in foods: salicylates and amines. My diet is also gluten-free, dairy-free, yeast-free, fruit-free, and sugar-free (the first four of these additional restrictions are necessary for some Failsafers, but not all).

I’d been on a diet that had these four restrictions as their basis for many years (though with plenty of ‘lapses’) but never tried to avoid salicylates and amines (in no way am I suggesting that others should follow this diet, especially the extreme version I’m on!).

Researchers have found that not only does the Failsafe diet improve the symptoms of ADHD but it also improves behaviour and mood including depression. Food intolerance has also been linked with a number of other mental disorders.

So, even though an outbreak of hives drove me to this extreme rather than my mental ups and downs, I was curious as to what effect the diet would have on my overall mental and cognitive state now that I’ve been on it a couple of months.

So what changes have I noticed? My memory is definitely better. I’m retaining more of what I read. My thinking is sharper. My mood is also better, except on overcast days. I still get sad a lot, but it passes. I generally feel more positive.

I’m less angry. I noticed this when catching up with a friend recently. She’s a lovely person but a bit chaotic, and sometimes I’d get annoyed when she complained about her life. Last time I met up with her I was amazed at how calm I felt.

My concentration isn’t all that much better, though, mainly because my mind is less tired and quite ‘busy’. In fact, if anything I feel more concerned about particular activities that feel vitally important (for example, writing comments on political opinion sites!).

This feeling is quite compulsive – it’s been there for years in anything related to work or effort; but I think I’m just noticing it more because my thinking’s clearer, and it’s strengthened the sense that I may have a form of OCD, albeit not focused on things like germs and counting. The obsessiveness is also centred on what’s wrong with my body and mind – yet I’ve been less focused on my bodily imperfections lately, though winter could be the cause of this rather than the Failsafe diet.

I still have social phobia. However, there has been a small decrease in my physical anxiety.

The Failsafe diet dismisses sugar as a contributor to children’s behavioural and mood problems. Instead, it links hypoglycemic symptoms with salicylate intolerance. Failsafe also dismisses the scientifically controversial phenomenon of leaky gut, which some believe can cause and worsen food intolerances and an overgrowth of Candida, a type of yeast.

I still have low blood sugar, although I have to admit it seems to be less severe. I don’t know whether or not I have leaky gut but I still feel more tired, vaguer and quite depressed on overcast days, and I still get PMT during which my hypoglycemia is significantly worse. And, sad to say, I still have rosacea – being on an amazingly restricted diet hasn’t stopped me having red, rashy cheeks.

All the changes I’ve experienced are subtle – I don’t feel transformed, just a bit stronger, and I wouldn’t have the confidence to make a major change like applying for an in-house job.

My family and other animals

Sorry about the hackneyed heading, but it was just too relevant not to use! I have ongoing ‘difficulties’ with my family of origin, and these have deepened in recent years because two of my sisters acquired dogs and I wasn’t happy with the treatment of these unfortunate canines. I’m still not, but I wanted to report some progress on that front (I’ve changed everyone’s names).

There are two dogs in this saga. Jordan is a lively, mischievous, ginger-coloured, mostly-cocker-spaniel owned by my older sister, Andrea, and her husband Richard. There’s been ongoing disagreement between me and Andrea and Richard over the treatment of Jordan, who I used to walk regularly.

Sarah is a quiet, chocolate-brown, rather resigned retriever–wolfhound(?) cross who nevertheless transforms into superdog when someone throws a ball in her direction. She’s owned by one of my younger sisters, Therese, and her husband, Tony.

A particular incident around Easter sparked the latest dog fight. Sarah was left alone in Therese’s backyard for the four-day break, with my father visiting and feeding (and playing with her briefly) twice a day. On one of those days she came to my parents’ backyard for most of the day (they live down the road from Therese) and I walked her, and along with my parents gave her some attention.

Sarah is a challenging dog. Loving and calm around children, she hates most other dogs, and anyone who walks her must carry a bottle of water to spray into her face if she becomes aggressive towards a passing dog.

I had never seen this side of her and, thinking it couldn’t really be that bad, didn’t bother with the water on the Easter walk I took her on. But then we passed two dogs and a cat, luckily safely behind the neighbour’s front fence. Sarah suddenly lunged towards them, barking furiously while I pulled desperately at the leash to maintain control – she’s very strong and whimpered angrily when I finally managed to restrain her.

Clearly Sarah suffers from a lack of socialisation – this had soon become apparent after my sister found her through a rehousing service (she was already at least five years old). She had also become quite overweight since I’d seen her last, and was constantly panting even when lying down. All this, combined with my sister leaving her in the backyard over Easter, gave me a sense of despair about her situation that left me wanting to distance myself from Therese.

Since the arrangements to stop walking Jordan ended just after Christmas my relationship with Andrea and Richard hadn’t really improved much (this is beginning to sound like Days of our Lives crossed with Animal Rescue).

Anyway, last weekend I finally caught up with the family, after not seeing some of them for almost two months, at Therese’s place for a Mothers Day gathering. And there were some tiny but significant miracles.

The first one was that after delivering the family to Therese’s place, Richard went back to his place and brought Jordan back with him. Smelling Sarah even before he got to the front door, Jordan skidded frantically through the house to the backyard. He spent the afternoon there with Sarah and occasionally some of the children, trying to steal Sarah’s ball (by some quirk of fate, Sarah actually doesn’t mind Jordan, although she got a bit aggro at one point when he grabbed the ball).

The second miracle was that Sarah herself was looking much better than when I’d seen her last – leaner and healthier. This was because my oldest niece, who’s 16, had been taking her along with her on her runs, and Sarah apparently is too distracted when she’s running to bother about other dogs.

Jordan hadn’t forgotten me. As soon as I went outside he dashed towards me and, as I stroked his head and scratched his chin, stayed by me with a look of relief on his face. Our reunion, after almost five months, was much less gruelling than I’d rather melodramatically anticipated, but I still felt a level of guilt at having abandoned him.

It was good to see him as his same old self, and he was happy and active. Also, I knew that since I’d stopped walking him, Andrea had been taking more responsibility for him. I know he doesn’t get walked enough, and she doesn’t like the whole social scene at the park and so avoids taking him there, as she’s told me. But he seems better integrated into the family. He also spends a fair bit of time inside, I’m told.

Sure, I wasn’t happy as it began to get dark and the two canine pals forlornly stood sentry at the back door, soulful eyes watching the fun inside, cold and lonely and wanting to be part of their human packs, with me going outside to pat and soothe every now and then. But I’m happy about the progress that’s been made, and I just hope it can continue.

Good morning, meditation

I also wanted to report on my recent experience of trying to meditate. When I look back over my adult life, it could be viewed as one long failed attempt to meditate. It seems that when I do start meditating regularly, every time something out of the ordinary happens – I get a cold, or a really difficult job comes up, or a major event looms – I give up meditating. I’m talking about 5 or 10 minutes a day here, not anything heroic like half an hour.

But in all my attempts I’ve come to realise some important things.

There is absolutely no point in me waiting to meditate till 6 pm, which I’ve tried to do in the last year or so. It’s not that I can’t find the time then; my brain just isn’t in the right state for it.

The only thing that works for me is to meditate just after I get up in the morning and before I leave the bedroom. As I’m a morning person this is the best time for my brain; I’m definitely at my freshest, even if I haven’t slept that well. But the other reason is that, because I know if I don’t meditate immediately I won’t be doing it later in the day, it’s much harder to put it off and make excuses. I also know that it’s good for me to start the day that way before I compulsively go to my office and turn my computer on.

Another thing I’ve realised is I don’t have to wait for meditation benefits. I get them right away. Yes they’re subtle, but meditation is like daily medicine.

And the best thing? All the times I’ve stopped and started mean that when I start to meditate again, my brain already has some skill that it’s retained from the last time. So all the stopping and starting hasn’t been a total waste of time.

So far, I’ve managed to meditate first thing in my bedroom, for 10 minutes at a time, for five days in a row. I know that sooner or later there’ll be some crisis that may threaten this, but now at least I can’t fool myself and say ‘I’ll do it later in the day’. It’s first thing or not at all.

(BTW, the picture above isn’t of Sarah, but it was too appropriate to resist.)

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A simple but totally unproven exercise for getting to sleep

(I was very bored with the layout of my blog, so chose another template and mucked around a bit with colours – any feedback welcome, including feedback on readability. I’ve also rearranged the links and added subject headings. Lastly, though you would never know it, I got rid of quite a few labels, but the list is still too long.)

I developed this sleep exercise about a year ago, based on some reading I’d done on the brain. I decided to include the exercise in my blog because I’ve been having sleeping problems for the last few months and hadn’t been doing the exercise for a while. I tried it again recently and it seemed to work. I thought it was worth putting in the blog, but I’m warning you it sounds very silly, and is probably based on childhood memories of sci-fi films.

I would be very interested to know if it does work for anyone else (and if it doesn’t), or if readers make their own adaptations.

The exercise

• Do this exercise slowly.

• You can do it more than once at a time.

Picture the frontal cortex of the brain being turned off (picture the frontal area of the brain, along the forehead, being plunged into darkness as ‘electric lights’ are switched off).

Picture the visual cortex being turned on (picture the centre of the lower back of the head lighting up as if an electric light is going on).

Imagine you are a director giving instructions to an operator sitting at an operating panel that includes buttons. Picture the operator carrying out the following instructions as you give them.

• Produce 200 mg GABA ( as you ‘give the orders’, picture the operator punching the amount in, the substance, and then an ‘Enter’ button).

• Produce 200 mg melatonin (as above).

• Produce 200 mg tryptophan (as above).

Now order the operator to ‘Activate the sleep process’. Picture the operator slowly moving a large lever, like a gear stick, in a downwards motion.

Now, gently focus on any images your brain is producing rather than words. Let the images turn into dreams.

Please note the following:

• This exercise has no scientific validity – it’s only been tested on me.

• I don’t have problems getting to sleep, but waking up too early in the morning and being unable to get back to sleep. I therefore use this exercise in the early hours (4 am to 6 am), and it doesn’t plunge me into deep sleep but light dreaming.

• Part of the reason it does work for me may be habit – ie my brain now sees this exercise as a signal to move into sleep mode.

• It does seem to relax me a bit, perhaps because it occupies the mind.

• If I’m really alert it won’t work – sometimes it acts like a test as to whether it’s worth trying to sleep or just giving up and getting up.

• The exercise is based on my very limited and probably completely inaccurate knowledge of the human brain. The frontal cortex is the seat of active thinking, and the visual cortex is active during sleep.
  

• The exercise refers to sleep-inducing substances that the body produces, and I am in no way recommending that people buy these as supplements.

• The ‘amounts’ of these substances are totally arbitrary.

• Everyone’s different – if trying this exercise produces distress, stop.

I know this exercise is daggy. But it works for me, and I thought it might at least inspire others to make up their own exercises.

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The Age newspaper loves Greens policies, but hates the Greens

This blog entry is a letter that I sent to the Age newspaper this morning, objecting to the newspaper's coverage of the Greens on the previous Saturday. For overseas readers: the Melbourne Age has always been a progressive newspaper but struggles to maintain its role under the current management of its owners, Fairfax Media.

Last year the ALP government failed to get its legislation for an emissions trading scheme (ETS) through the upper house. The scheme was never popular with progressives but was even worse after amendments made following negotiations with the main conservative opposition (the government refused the Greens suggestion of a carbon tax).

With an election due around November this year, the ALP has shelved any reintroduction of the ETS until 2013. Two columnists in Saturday's Age managed to have a go at the Greens for opposing the legislation in the Senate.

I’m writing a general letter of objection to the coverage of the Greens and their policies on global warming in the Age of Saturday 1 May 2010, but also directed at the two columnists concerned, Tony Wright and Ross Gittins. Tony Wright’s column appeared in the Insight section of the paper and Ross Gittins’s appeared in the Business Day section (the business commentators seem to be Fairfax rather than Age journalists – this in no way lets the Age off the hook). For the record, I’m not a Greens member but I support and vote for the Greens.

It’s fascinating that the only direct endorsement of the Greens’ carbon tax proposal is not only buried in the business section of that edition, in Paddy Manning’s column, but seems to have produced a flurry of opposing opinion by other columnists (a spurious attempt at ABC-style ‘balance’?). Manning’s endorsement is also months after the fact – I’m not objecting to the views of this columnist, but to the Age’s willingness to publish a point of view that supports evidence-based policy only when that support is given far too late to matter.

In contrast, the coverage of the Greens in the columns by Gittins and Wright would have conspiracy theorists who fear anti-Greens censorship tearing up their Age subscriptions. It seems that the Age wants to have it both ways: present itself as a progressive paper by criticising government and opposition policies; then trashing, or more usually ignoring, the one party that offers a clear alternative. The ethos seems to be: ensure business as usual while enabling readers to feel vindicated in their anger about the complete inability of the large parties to pursue policies that are genuinely in the national interest.

The media is part of this deterioration in our democratic process. One of the problems is that journalists such as Wright and Gittins have taken on, to some extent, the twisted mindset of politicians. According to this mindset, there are two realities: what’s actually going on in the world; and the need to create an impression of government activity and relevance through spin. This second, alternative reality, born of the Canberra hothouse, is considered by the politicians to be far more important than actual reality, and is one of the major reasons the Labor government has failed to move effectively on just about every issue it has tried to tackle.

Unfortunately, some journalists also come to view this alternative reality as far more important than the real world. It is certainly much more beguiling, because it’s far easier to commentate a never-ending football match than to take a strong stand on matters such as democracy, human rights and social justice.

Take Wright’s column. He starts off in the real world, by giving an impassioned description of a recent Catalyst program that highlighted the effects of global warming on Antarctica’s ice sheet. He then turns his attention to government and opposition behaviour towards climate change, bemoaning the fact that ‘hardly anyone seemed to give a stuff’.

It would be logical for Wright to support the policies of the party that has done far more than either of the larger ones to both alert Australians to the true extent of the dangers of global warming, and to offer policies and targets that actually square up with the science and set us on the road to a renewable energy industry. But in his upside-down version of reality, the version he’s absorbed from the political spin-merchants, the leader of this party, Bob Brown, is an irrelevant ideologue. And the only one left with real integrity is the man who, at the time when the government’s climate change policy was being negotiated, made what was already a dog of an emissions trading scheme even worse – Malcolm Turnbull:

Bob Brown’s Greens … well, they just kept being the Greens, complaining that the government hadn’t taken their proposals seriously, which is another way of saying that they had played themselves out of the equation.

About the only politician of simple integrity still standing was Malcolm Turnbull.

This is outrageous. In implying that Bob Brown lacks integrity, Wright is denouncing one of the few politicians in the federal parliament who actually has any. (Brown’s opposition to unfair increases to parliamentary salaries is just one example.)

In contrast, Turnbull’s principles in relation to the ETS, principles which Wright lauds to the skies, were based on ensuring that the coal industry continued to flourish in Australia till kingdom come.

It’s disappointing for a reader to feel she is more cluey than the paper’s national affairs editor. The ETS (both pre- and post-Coalition versions) was a dog because:

• it offered compensation to polluters, doing the opposite of what an ETS should do, which is to encourage alternative energy, not to enable ‘business as usual’. The Age itself has reported that most of the compensation specified in the ETS legislation was unnecessary

• it locked in, for the long term, both this compensation and a low emissions reduction target, with the distinct possibility that if the government increased the pathetic 5 per cent target, it would be liable for a commensurate increase in compensation to the polluting industries

• the 5 per cent was a furphy anyway, because much of the reduction would have been obtained from investment in overseas carbon sinks

• the 5 per cent was an absolute target, discouraging citizens from making their own changes – for example, if I had switched my electricity supply to green energy, that would have increased my electricity provider’s ability to pollute elsewhere

• no one understood it!

Eminent climate scientists agreed that the ETS would be useless, as the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Wright knows that the Greens were never merely naysayers, but offered a positive alternative, a carbon tax that might have squeaked through the Senate with the support of at least one of the two renegade Liberals and Nick Xenophon. Wasn’t the carbon tax option preferable to what’s happened now, with any action on carbon emissions being shelved till 2013?

This style of commentary illustrates the dangers of political commentators having the main say on climate change in the mainstream media. If the Age is to be relevant it needs to have a qualified science writer weighing up the parties’ climate change policies, not glorified football commentators like Wright.

Let’s now turn to Gittins. He makes an astounding claim in his column, yet doesn’t even attempt to back it up:

But why did the Greens pretend that 5 per cent was nothing when they must have known it wasn’t true? Because it didn’t suit the line they were running. It proves that the ever-virtuous Greens as [sic] just as capable of lying with statistics as the mainstream parties are.

Gittins produces no evidence to ‘prove’ that the Greens are ‘lying with statistics’ – he simply makes the assertion.

In considering the 5 per cent target too low, the Greens were merely listening to the climate scientists. The 5 per cent target has absolutely no relevance to climate science.

Similarly, Gittins seems to think that judging emissions reductions using per capita (head of population) measures would be a good thing. This is simply ludicrous because it would make targets meaningless as far as the actual climate is concerned. (In fact, the pollies would love it if they could use such standards to measure reductions in emissions, especially given Australia’s increasing population, and a couple have tried to do this.)

Again, it’s all about politics, not reality. Tony and Ross, isn’t ‘the greatest moral, environmental, economic and scientific challenge of our time’ worth more than a 5 per cent emissions reduction (on 2000 levels, by the way) and a bag of gold to the big polluters?

A newspaper in which the ‘ever virtuous’ Greens are treated with contempt because they’re more truthful, and the coal-friendly, Machiavellian Turnbull magically becomes ‘the only politician of simple integrity still standing’ may be terminally endangering its reputation as a progressive force.

It’s a shame, because the Age could be building strong customer loyalty based on an unswerving progressive vision, and on a genuine interest in engaging with its readers, rather like the UK’s Guardian. Instead, it seems almost entirely concerned with the advertising revenue it receives from the large parties. Many readers have already migrated online to sites like Crikey and New Matilda in response to the Age’s inability to respond adequately to the slow dismantling of democracy that Howard began and that Rudd has continued to engineer.

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The home front

Last week was a time of a gigantic ‘autumn clean’ that left this blogger so exhausted she has not had to provide the usual excuses for her normally excessive telly-watching.

The clean-up was occasioned by a triple whammy: an annual property inspection by the property manager (usually presaging some kind of rental hike), a visit by a painter to give a quote on the ceilings (fear of the owners prettying the place up in order to sell it, and no, he wasn’t planning a postmodern version of the Sistine Chapel) and most serious of all, the owners themselves, asking politely (it’s their legal right of course) if they could come and have a sticky beak.

It was on for one and all. Well, not entirely. I didn’t clean the windows, and I didn’t dust the tiny horizontal surfaces that abound in this impossibly high-maintenance ‘villa’ (why have only one ledge on the skirting boards when you can have three!).

I damp-dusted everything else though, and rubbed grime off a series of cupboard walls and doors. But the most debilitating job was the garden. With a back and front yard, as well as a driveway, it’s a lot of work to keep it looking reasonably neat. The whole place is really too much for one person, and especially this person, who doesn’t have a lot of energy to spare at the best of times.

( I would be remiss here if I didn’t acknowledge that my dad actually provided mowing services gratis and even returned the next day to dispose of an unfortunate dead rat on the driveway that had somehow escaped both our notice – not a good look if left there for the owners to discover.)

The way I cope with the maintenance requirements of this place is to have a list of jobs that I work my way through but am always behind on. Thus, I am never living in total disarray and yet never basking in the sweet order that my obsessive personality adores.

Except for the last few days, of course. As I dragged myself around in deep physical exhaustion I was able to enjoy the sense of being ‘looked after’ – by me! Of course the house will slowly descend into its normal interim state of semi-dirty tidiness, but until then I’m enjoying the fresh aura of clean.

Even if I had the energy I don’t think I have the will to keep this level of maintenance up, but now I understand why people pay to have these services performed. I’ve also come to the conclusion that the results of zealous domestic work – this sense of being looked after and the visual effects of cleanness – are a compensation for living in unrenovated housing, and of course a way of exercising control over the space.

My mother was obsessive about housework. There was no question that it came first. I internalised this very early, and received her unalloyed approval only when I tried to help her in her endless quest against mess; how welcome were her happiness and attention on the rare occasions I felt motivated to ‘clean the kitchen’ after the evening dishes, removing the conglomeration of administration and junk that endlessly migrated to the kitchen table and benches.

Much of that mess would have been my father’s. He’s a hoarder, and I am only now beginning to appreciate the scale of the battle she has fought with his encroaching, largely paper-based chaos for decades. She’s been physically somewhat debilitated in the last few years, and it breaks my heart in a way that is no doubt excessive to see that his watercolour painting, small political battles and admin tasks now encroach on the dining room and sunroom of their house (his ‘study’ is so chock-full of boxes and papers that he can’t do anything in there besides use the computer).

In my twenties I was able to tolerate short-term messiness, as long as it was created by me and not an overly busy housemate. However, prolonged and extreme untidiness, I now realise, has always spelled chaos to me. I had a friend in primary school, T, whose parents were literary. The two front rooms were relatively tidy, but T’s parents were cheerfully oblivious to the accretions of long-term mess that beset the rest of the place. I once galvanised T and one of her younger brothers to join me in a clean-up of her bedroom; the strongest memory I have of this episode is determinedly sweeping marble after marble from under one of the beds.

Seven years ago I flooded my flat and ended up moving back to live with my parents for over a year, much to the chagrin of my mother. During this time her approach to housework became evident; I remember her once literally sweeping around my feet as I stood in the jarrah-floored sunroom. It seemed to me at the time that she would have loved to sweep me away.

Post-visit relief

After all that elbow grease, the house inspection went almost impossibly smoothly. The owners are an elderly woman and her husband, and the flat has been in the family for decades – the wife’s father bought the three adjoining flats new, and left one to each of his children. I knew all this already, but found out from the wife that the development, one of a small minority of art deco styled buildings in the area, was built in 1937.

I was very curious about who the first-ever tenants were, as I imagined them as some proto-yuppie couple moving into what would then have been a stylish ultra-modern apartment (the kitchen has a wonderful fold-out ironing board, complete with what appears to be original floral ironing board cover, that would have been cutting edge circa 1937). But the owner had no idea who they were, as she would have been only around six when the place was first tenanted.

Anyway, I’d only ever met the husband before, not the wife. The property manager turned up breathless at my door as the couple came up behind her, the wife helped along by her husband, the pair having inexplicably caught the tram. ‘She’s blind, you know’, said the property manager. As well as immediately obliterating my fantasy of this all-powerful landlord and inciting my compassion, the irony could not escape me – much of my cleaning had probably been unnecessary.

However, the husband and the PM both went away to have a good look through. It became clear that the only appropriate thing to do was to sit the owner down in the loungeroom and chat to her – she wasn’t interested in accompanying her husband on the inspection, and she was tired after the tram ride. She was frail and very cluey, with a guttural voice and a strong Australian accent.

I felt for her, because her blindness, seemingly acquired in later life, clearly annoyed her. As they were leaving her husband grabbed her arm and moved in the direction of the large spare room over the hallway. ‘There’s a front bedroom over here’, he said jovially. ‘Come on, I’ll show it to you.’

‘What’s the point?’ she responded angrily. ‘I can’t see anything!’

I have now got over my pathological fear of the landlords, and the whole episode did not suggest imminent sale to me, or a rental hike out of the ordinary. Also, the tattered ceilings are to be plastered and painted if an insurance claim goes through. So I think it’s safe to judge the visit a success!

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