Author: Adrian's Got the Moose

You can find the initial question, and my original answer here. The following is more detailed and personal.

Maybe you don’t want to admit that you need help?

We are rugged individuals, we don’t need help. Admitting you have a mental health issue goes against this. Suddenly you are reliant on doctors, therapists, pharmacists, the faceless goons in your insurance or socialized medical care.

Maybe you don’t want the stigma of having a mental health issue?

Oh boy, informing anyone about your mental health issue is such a roulette spin. Even people who have the same will sometimes react negatively- a former supervisor of mine asked what I had to be depressed about. Get used to shocked, awkward looks, slow shuffling steps away and excuses to leave your presence, as if you are about to pull out a knife and carve them up. Hopefully the more people who admit to having issues this will change, and the statistics back up how having mental health issues is probably more common than any particular religion. This is what drives me to casually mention my depression and medication. Plus its fun to watch people’s reaction once you are self aware and objective enough.

Maybe you don’t want to be confronted by therapy?

Therapy doesn’t work without a solid dialog of honesty, otherwise your therapist would just be an over=qualified life-couch. Its not a pleasant experience, ripping apart aspects of your personality, having it poked it with a stick and then finishing your session, and trying to walk around like a normal person. It’s why I tended to go to the beach or a long walk after my sessions. I can only say that it is worth it, especially when, like me, you spend most of your waking hours trying to suppress your neurosis.

Maybe because after diagnosis, meds and therapy are only the starting point in your recovery?

At least subconsciously, I thought taking Prozac and attending a few therapy sessions would magically solve all my problems. Frustratingly, this is not the case, three years later I am still working on trying to exercise more, socializing more, and generally acting like a functional member of society. The therapy helps me pay attention to some of those issues so I can work on them in a constructive way. Prozac takes the edge off the worse of the depression and anxiety, which allows me to make some better choices. It also helps not being on the verge of a panic attack every time I reverse a ute between two other vehicles.

Maybe you don’t want an anti-depressant dependency?

Don’t get me wrong, you will take my Prozac and Axit out of my cold dead hands, but im not comfortable with the idea that realizing that I am out of them makes me feel rather nervous, long before any withdrawal symptoms become manifest. This makes me wonder how much I have in common with the junkie looking for the next fix.

Obviously I miss travel, but its strange some of the aspects of travel that I miss. I miss that first gasp of air when I leave the airport, away from the air conditioning and duty free perfume. I miss walking the streets of a city for the first time, gauging the vibe of the place. I miss waking up on planes, having no idea of the time or place, entirely dislocated from reality.

Trump has lost the US election, of course he can’t admit that he lost, the bankruptcies, failed marriages and his university having happened to someone who just looks and sounds much like him. To be honest I was expecting him to win. Apart from it keeping with the completely fucked up year we have been all having, the kind of people who voted for Trump the first time are unlikely to have changed their opinion since then.

The COVID-19 pandemic marches on. The Western Australian premier, Mark McGowan, has a ludicrously high approval rating, mostly due to standing up to other states insistence that we open our borders. This ties into Western Australian’s constant feelings of playing second fiddle to the eastern states.  Meanwhile people are acting as if having to wear a mask in public is the worst thing ever, as if healthcare workers (and chemical sprayers like me) haven’t been wearing P2 masks without much fuss for years. The word persecution gets thrown around a lot, mostly by people who have never experienced it due to their white, middle class privilege.

An aspect of my personality that I wrestle with is a tendency to obsess about a TV show, a cult, an individual or a particular song.  Much of this is similar to slowing down to gawk at a car accident. A typical example of this is my current fascination with the cult known as Jehovah Witnesses, im convinced I know more about this cult that its members. A more positive example is Strange Weather, by Anne Calvi, featuring David Byrne (from the Talking Heads). Something about the dueling vocals, the lyrics I can’t quite understand, and the broken flower aesthetic in the film clip  keeps me watching and listening again and again. At least it makes a nice change from hours of Nick Cave and Russian folk music.

Something I had been avoiding with two moving houses was going through a largish wooden box filled with keepsakes, letters, photos and other paraphernalia. I haven’t opened this box for at least five years. I was planning to downsize this box.

Here is a heap of scarves, photos and a camp blanket from my days as a Cub and later a Scout. Being a Scout was a big part of my childhood, and going through all this elicited a strong feeling of nostalgia, and sadness that I have lost contact with all the people who I cared deeply for.

A pen from a funeral home I did some casual work for.

A stack of letters from an ex lover. I thought I was in love, and apparently that’s the thing that matters. Hindsight is a bitch, and as soon as I ended things I realized how fucked up the whole thing was. As I skim read a few of the letters, I feel a sharp pang of regret, quickly receding into a cold detachment. How can someone whose happiness and presence was so important to my well being now only licit an awareness of misplaced affection? I wish I could have felt so indifferent eighteen years ago. The only thing I keep is a book she gifted me, with an inscription from her on the inside cover.

A certificate for my climb of the Sydney Harbor Bridge.

Photos, yearbooks and notebooks from school leave me feeling cold. My school days were not that pleasant, half because of a caustic, Catholic environment, and half because I was a gloomy, awkward child with undiagnosed depression, anxiety and chronic low self-esteem.

A small pen-knife, gifted to me from my grandfather, who used to own it. I can remember cutting a finger while cleaning its wickedly sharp carbon steel blade.

Letters from two former friends, both women. One friendship ended without a whimper when I realized that the only reason I continued with her was my on/off infatuation with an idealized version of her. The other ended after the usual drifting apart when she got engaged to an ex-cult member who I couldn’t stand. and I decided I didn’t have the energy for either of them anymore.

A bag containing Thai Baht; coins and notes, and the VOIP calling card I used to call Mum during that trip. It was my first solo trip, and nothing was ever the same.

An order of service for the funeral of a school mate.

You come to me to seek my wisdom over this backpacking deal, while my passport gathers dust due to This Fucking Virus, so I guess I have nothing better to do when I should be in Iran, so here we go.

Don’t plan too severely:

All you need is your outbound plane ticket, travel insurance, a packed bag and your passport and debit card. The best plan is a vague one. Have a list of places you want to see and things to see and do, Unless this includes festivals, there is no need to plan every day in advance. Much of the beauty of backpacking is you are able to stay as long or as little as you like. Get somewhere and feel there is a bad vibe? See the sights on your list and get out as soon as possible. Love it? stay a month. I know an Australian who has been in Don Det for two years (lucky, drunk bastard). Besides, any strict plan will seldom survive past passport control. In this manner you can accept invitations for things that you didn’t plan on doing.

Pack light:

Make it your motto, your mantra, your shout into the void.

You will notice the more people travel, the less they take. My first solo trip I spent a small fortune on on shit I didn’t need that spent a month in the bottom of my pack, only to be donated to Saint Vinnies when I got home. I learned to despise that backpack. Now, my essentials (not including meds, clothes and toiletries) are:

1. Kindle (a game changer, no more stalking book exchanges)
2. Smart phone
3. Travel wallet and contents
4. Travel towel
5. Sarong
6. Universal charger and cables
7. Reusable water bottle
8. USB rechargeable key-chain torch
9. Sleeping bag liner
10. Stash-able day-pack.

Travelling light will allow you to walk a few kilometers to the bus station instead of taking a taxi, save money on checked luggage and catch planes in the nick of time, and get out of airports while that family is still waiting for their entire possessions at the carousel. Its also worth noting that taking heaps of clothes mostly amounts to a lot of dirty laundry stinking up your pack.

Get off the Tourist Trail at least a little.

In many places that have been dealing with tourist hoards for generations, its possible to not experience any culture shock or challenges to your worldview. All I can say is the good stuff all happens outside of the tourist traps. Ask the staff at your hostel where they go for a meal. Go down a back alley of a market and get a haircut. Help a local clutch start his or her car. And learn to squat and love the bum gun.

This post was inspired by a post in a Facebook group I am a member of. Since I saw it it has been deleted.

Bangkok, Thailand-

Waiting in the lobby of my hostel, with me was a drunk, half asleep Thai woman, wearing a skin-tight dress. She spotted my backpack and asked where I was going, which was Kanchanaburi. Except my pronunciation was so terrible I had to show her the name in my guidebook before she understood. She took it upon herself to teach me the correct pronunciation, so every few minutes she would rouse herself from the couch, demand “Where are you going?” and painstakingly corrected me, until I got it right, where she would give me a thumbs up, then slump back. This continued for an hour, until I was picked up.

Selchuk, Turkey-

Waiting on the side of the road for a bus I was suspecting was never going to show until the high season, a middle aged Turkish couple in a battered Mercedes drove past me three times, waving at me each time. Next time they pulled over, the wife hopped out and said the name of the town I was staying at, then ushered me into the front seat of the Merc and got into the back, and the husband drove off to Ecabat. When we arrived at the main street, both husband and wife got out and shook my hand, and I murdered the Turkish phrase for thank you, then returned to their car and drove off. I watched them get back to the intersection of the highway. This couple went out of their way to make sure I got back safe, without a word of English between them, and with only a handful of words in Turkish from me.

Hanoi, Vietnam-

I walk through an unmarked door between two shopfronts, down a long hallway ending in a family’s living room and then go up a wooden staircase, which dumps me into a cafe. I order the specialty of the house, coffee made with whipped egg instead of milk or cream. I take a seat at one of those typical low and brightly coloured tables so common throughout SE Asia, and drink my coffee while reading Hemingway, knowing I will probably never feel this cool and content for the rest of my life.

Koh Rong Samloen, Cambodia-

When she tapped the ash from her cigarette into the shell-ashtray by my naked toes, while I sung to the song playing on the stereo (you can be addicted to a certain kind of sadness), I realized that this unrequited love I was feeling was not, and should not go anywhere. This was immediately followed by intense self-loathing, and I decided I couldn’t deal with this without getting horribly drunk, or stoned. I did both,. which of course was a terrible idea.

Vang Vieng, Laos-

After a day tubing down the Mekong and drinking an alarming amount of the local beer, and a disturbing number of free shots of the local moonshine, I ended up in one of the most notorious nightclubs in South-east Asia. I ordered two vodka drinks to get my free singlet, turned around to hand one of them to my female companion, discovered she had disappeared. I sculled both, then ordered a beer and tried to find everyone else. When I found them, Gangnam Style began, leading every Korean in the club storming the dancefloor. By the time that finished, I was starting to feel sober, maudlin and out of place, and departed soon after.

Fragments:

Istanbul: If you want me to buy something from your shop, I highly recommend not telling me I am acting like a Jew when I decline. It took me a moment to realize you were insulting me.

Amman: Time to pack up and make a move. This is a personal ritual exactly three days younger than my first solo trip. How many rooms have I done this? Item by item turning a room that was my bedroom into just another room. Nothing left of me but some trash to be taken away, my scent on sheets to be washed away, a line in a ledger and a vague memory.

Wadi Rum: Even here, I can’t get away from the shitstain that is Jordan Peterson.

Jeresh: While leaving here, I can’t help but fantasize that I have become a a local legend around here. This strange, solitary westerner, dining by himself, assumed to be an American before a local woman asked a restaurant owner to ask me. An unshaven figure asking at a dozen Samsung shops for a two-metre USB-C cable, before admitting defeat and buying a beer instead to head back to his hostel. A wanderer around the ancient ruins.

Jericho: Me feeling jealous of a cat, being petted by an exquisite Danish woman, who speaks flawless English with a slight Scottish accent, and reads Harry Potter in Arabic.

Ben Guiron Airport: My passport contains pure innocence, but stamps for Indonesia and Turkey were viewed with incredible suspicion when I left Israel. I don’t know what they thought I was up to in the eighteen hours I spent in Istanbul, maybe buying black market plastic explosives?

Various places Jordan and Palestine: The strange thing I noticed is how well traveled, and older my fellow travelers were. No one getting there first stamps on a passport backpacking on their gap year, no one there because it was the cheapest flights to the cheapest beer. It didn’t mean every interaction was great, but it certainly made for many interesting discussions.

Jeresh: One of the idiosyncrasies of Jordan was on non-tourist buses, local women could not sit next to men not of their families. This led to meaningful looks, a face-saving offer of giving up my seat, fare refunds, and me still not sitting next to a Jordanian woman with unlikely red hair peaking out from her headscarf, and flashing dark eyes. But that was never going to happen anyway, I only mention it so someone else knows about it. Did keep everyone happy however, and proved myself to be a reasonable member of the bus riding community.

Jerusalem- 29/11/2019

The obvious thing I noticed, as many travelers before me have, is most Israelis abrupt, often aggressive demeanor. Many Israelis think nothing of pushing in front of queues, or yelling a coffee order from across a cafe. When I boarded a train to get to the Holocaust Museum, an older man stopped dead as soon as he entered the train, and a local woman yelled at me for some reason, which seemed a tad unfair. Soldiers are everywhere, uniformed and armed, at street corners, bus stations, and especially the Old City as previously mentioned. What I found even more bizarre is how often you see them in jeans and hoodies, with rifles slung, riding on trams or just walking around.

I found the staff at the capsule hotel I rested my head to be lovely, keen to help and to have a chat. The manager was keen to ask if I was having any problems, and worked to solve them, an older man working in the evenings helped with suggestions and gave me a decent primer on how many Jews are conflicted about visiting the Temple Mount. A young worker in the morning I left gave me great advice on getting to the airport ( which was thwarted by the train to Tel-Aviv being oddly cancelled, which everyone seemed to be confused about, but his efforts were still appreciated). The painfully beautiful and only woman working there told me that many Israelis will stop everything to help someone when asked, and I did experience a Hasidic Jew giving myself and an earnest American woman (he listened to her but answered as if I asked, which is a strange way of dealing with his religious rules) which tram to get back to central station. But this seemed to be quite an exception. For the most part I kept to myself and avoided eye contact, to save myself the disappointment.

So it was the Muslim Quarter I lingered to hang out, to drink thick Arabian style coffee, to get surprised, but genuine smiles when I took the time to pay in exact change. all the while Israeli soldiers stood around belligerently.

The charitable part of me wants to excuse their behavior on Israel being a young country, besieged on all signs by countries dynamically opposed to them, and they overcompensating. But I can’t help thinking that many people visit once, and never want to return after such a frosty reception.

Jerusalem- 28/11/2019

After checking into my capsule hotel (I was thoroughly sick of dorms by this point), I walked to the Jaffa Gate, the closest gate of the Old City. I made my way through the Christian Quarter to the Church of thje Holy Sepulcher, where it is believed that Jesus was laid to rest after his crucifixion.

The architecture is incredible, the paintings are incredible, and everything oozes ancient worship, opulence, and attention to detail. I was treated to some excellent singing by my fellow tourists, even if it did start getting repetitious.

I queued for an hour and a half to enter the chamber where Christ’s body was laid for three days. I wanted to hear angels, feel uplifted, something. Instead, I felt mildly bored and claustrophobic. I genuflected because it was expected of me, and because I knew it would have been what my departed, deeply Catholic grandmother would have done if she ever made the pilgrimage here, and I left what was left of my Christianity in that cramped stone chamber, and out of the church into the sunlight.

I walked next for a short while through the nearly empty Jewish Quarter, which seemed to be mostly high-end jewellery shops I neither had the money or the inclination to experience.

The Muslim Quarter was much more interesting, perhaps because it’s the only place in the entire city (Old City and modern) Where Muslims can feel somewhat comfortable. This quarter contains the Temple Mount, a site that makes the Church of the Holy Sepulcher seem uncontroversial. The al-Aqsa Mosque is one of the three most holy sites in the world to Sunni Muslims, which is built on top of the ruins of the First Temple of Judasim. Every time I tried visiting this site it was closed, bizarrely reienforced by Israeli soldiers, standing obnoxiously at the entrances.

I spent a few happy hours walking through the Muslim and Armenian Quarter, which were complete with barbers, optometrists, doctors and pharmacists. Small walkways led away from the main thoroughfares, quickly becoming quiet, strictly residential affairs, I spent ten minutes kicking a soccer ball with a few young lads before I realised light was fading and I departed. I think I started to fall in love with the casual history and the ancient, crumbling gates.

After one attempt to visit the Temple Mount, I discovered the Cotton Merchants Street, which in its day featured two traditional bathhouses, now filled with stalls selling cheap jewellery, souvenirs, and spices, complete with IDF soldiers guarding the entrance to the Temple Mount, with rifles slung and glaring disdainfully at the kids. I purchased a few Palestinian flag bracelets and stickers from a bemused stall owner, as Arabic school children spent their pocket money.

During my visit to the Muslim Quarter I bumped into Colin, an Australian I had met in Jordan, who recommended I visit the tunnels under the Western Wall, so the next day I visit and attempt to buy tickets, however, I discover that they are all sold out until after I fly out, so I limit myself to the famous Western Wall itself. Its a wall, I wrote a prayer using a pen borrowed from a tour group leader, on a piece of Japenese paper from my travel wallet, folded it carefully, and placed it in between a crack in the wall, stepped back and felt slightly silly.

What struck me, and probably struck most visitors, is the sheer density of historical and religious sites, and how close they are to one another. From the Western Wall, you are only a ten-minute walk from the Temple Mount. Maybe a twenty-minute walk from there you can visit a number of the Stations of the Cross, which for me was a truly bizarre thing to visit, understated as they are compared to their depictions in any Roman Catholic church. Ten minutes from there you can visit the Church of Holy Sepulcher, the holiest site of Christianity, but ignored by Jews and Muslims.

Jerusalem- 28/11/19

Crossing into Israel after so long in Jordan and Palestine was intensely jarring. After so many huge roadside signs stating that you are heading into a Palestinian village and that it’s not safe for Israelis- in English, watching the reverse made me want to scream. I was on a public bus filled with Palestinians, we drove along ten-metre concrete walls before stopping at a checkpoint.

Following the lead of my fellow passengers, I get out of the bus and join the line, with passport in hand. But the bus driver orders me back on the bus, and I comply, not wanting to cause a scene. Two soldiers enter the bus to check IDs of myself and the Palestinians that meet the age/disability requirement. I hand over my passport, and its barely glanced at before handed back to me with a grunt. A gentleman behind me is asked his age (53) and was told next time to get off the bus. Another gentleman in his seventies apparently needed further questions and was ordered off the bus. After quick checks of the Palestinians waiting outside, we depart. The man was still outside waiting as we pulled away. The last I saw of him was as my hand was held against the bus window in a pointless gesture of solidarity, but he never saw me as the bus pulled away. I only realized then that my interaction with the soldier was conducted while I was still wearing my hat and sunglasses, which I never would have gotten away with usually.

Bethlehem, Palestine- 25/11/2019

By the time I reached Bethlehem, my trip was almost over, so I could only afford to spend one night there.

I visited the Church of Nativity, Which while being a beautiful church, was an underwhelming experience, and confirmed my lapsed Catholic opinion that Christianity is more interested in the death of Christ than his life or teachings.

After a long walk, I arrived at the Walled City Hotel, a hotel owned by the artist Banksy to increase people’s understanding of the issues facing the modern Palestinian people. I could not afford to stay there, but I could visit the museum.

The perspective and visual storytelling was fascinating and heartbreaking. The strongest exhibit was an old fashioned telephone, with the label “If it rings, answer it” which with some trepidation, I did. “My name is… from the Isreali Intelligence Service, we are going to bomb your house, you have five minutes to get out” This left me deeply unsettled.

The hotel is alongside a corner of the seperation wall betweeen Palestinian Bethlehem and Israeli Jerusalem. The hotel features a free service where you can create your own stencils to use to spray paint the wall. I couldn’t think of anything to add, so I just walked along the section of the wall, taking photos, glaring at the security towers, and trying not to cry.