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I did some stand-up gigs recently. They didn’t go particularly well. I didn’t exactly die on stage, but my vital signs were less than robust.
Afterwards – it was probably when I was crying into the McDonald’s drive-thru order box at the hapless teenager who really wasn’t getting paid enough – I realised I really shouldn’t have done those gigs.
I didn’t recognise it before the fact, but I was in no fit state of mind to perform.
The depression that accompanies me, off and on, throughout my life had sunk its claws in and it was not a week in which I was ever going to be a crowd-pleaser.
The best thing, though, about being a comedian suffering depression is that when it stuffs up my performance, the consequences are no more dire than a roomful of underwhelmed people feeling a little bit sorry for me.
I do not, for example, have to deal with the possibility that through failure of concentration I will be struck violently in the face by a rock-hard leather ball travelling at 150km/h.
I don’t have to have international media picking through the bones of my failure, questioning my ability, my character, my manhood.
And I don’t have to deal with the dilemma that if I own up to my problems and pull out, I’ll be jeered, while if I press on and keep stumbling, I’ll be disgraced.
An excellent article among the many that have been written about Jonathan Trott in the past few days came from Ed Smith at Cricinfo.
He made the point we don’t actually know what Trott’s problem is, and those who laud him are rushing to uninformed judgment and doing him a disservice, just as those who condemn or mock him are.
Smith is right – we should wish Trott well, and respect his right to make his own choices, but not turn ourselves into an army of amateur psychotherapists, or burden him with the responsibility of being a spokesman for a generation just when he most needs time to himself.
The spectrum of what might be called ‘stress-related disorders’, or ‘depression’, or ‘anxiety’ is a wide one and differs from person to person as much as you might expect, given the vagaries and idiosyncrasies of the human brain.
I’ve been frustrated myself in the past by how many people claim to “know how you feel”, when they just don’t.
Often this actually shames me, as I’ve been assured “I know how you feel” by people who I know have far more severe struggles than I; but either way, it can be grating to be have people who don’t really know what you’re going through promise you that they know exactly what you’re going through.
It could be Jonathan Trott is experiencing this now.
I do not know what Trott is going through. It would be impossible for me to: not only are we totally different people, but I have no idea what it’s like to play Test cricket, to go through that furnace, to undergo the twin blowtorches of every-second-could-be-your-last Test match batting, and the slavering media.
I don’t know how that can shape the human mind, how it might create issues in the brain or exacerbate those already there.
I can imagine any personal stress would be intensified a hundredfold when you’re batting number three in the Ashes, but I don’t know.
I can imagine that the life of a professional international sportsman is so suffocating, so suffused with constant deep-sea pressure, that those who are not crushed by it are the anomaly, rather than those that are. But I don’t know.
I can imagine if mental health is to be achieved at all, it can never, ever be achieved in the spotlight of sporting celebrity, and the longer you stay in that spotlight the worse things will get. But I don’t know.
But what I do know is voices promising me I’m useless and I’d do the world a favour by dying.
I do know anxiety that kicks me in the stomach and wraps a scaly arm around my neck and keeps me gasping and choking for hours while I try to pretend nothing is wrong.
I do know weary hopelessness that sinks into the bones and stretches out like an eternal tunnel and seems to have no remedy.
I do know our brains have a hundred different ways to attack us from the inside and make our lives intolerable.
I do know whichever method my fellow human’s brain has chosen to use, they merit all the sympathy I have.
And I know if I go to work and fail to do anything particularly productive all day because I’m in the grip of my demons, I’ll get away with it scot-free.
And I know Jonathan Trott won’t.
We don’t really know what this man is going through. But we can say this: this isn’t about sledging, or bouncers, or the silly mindgames that get played when men imagine the stakes are highest.
It’s about a man in dire need of respite, who forged a reputation as a grand stoic even as he fought battles harder than we knew.
If we learn from it, we hopefully learn this: we can’t know each other’s challenges unless we’re willing to let ourselves reveal them; and that episodes like this are reminders that, Ashes notwithstanding, at the end we are all on the same team.
Readers seeking support and information about suicide prevention can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467.