R U OK today?

You can be forgiven for thinking this is aliens trying to communicate in their native language. "Ruok?"

Today, I was stopped by a little old lady with a tiny little dog and a walking frame who politely asked that I help her cross the street. If this sounds like some story I'm about to make up, well, that was my first reaction too. Is this real? I'd heard of Boy Scouts helping little old ladies across the street to earn badges, but actually having a little old lady approach me for help crossing Sandgate Road on my way to uni seemed like something straight out of a sitcom.

Naturally, I smiled and told her of course I would help, so feeling surreal I took her to the edge of the street, and surveyed the morning peak hour gaps. I nearly had a heart attack when her puppy got a bit too excited on his leash before it was safe to go, almost pulling her into traffic in the process. This was going to be harder than I thought.

However, channeling my 9-year old self, my Cub Scout training (all 8...? maybe? months of it) kicked in, combining seamlessly with my muscle memory developed over a childhood of Frogger on the Atari. Sure enough, making sure the old lady was safe, I helped her wheel her frame thingy over in a blazing fast time with her dog enthusiastically straining on his collar adding precisely +1DP (dogpower) to our logistical endeavour.

I was late to uni, but I stopped to chat with the old lady who thanked me and told me her name was Lydia. She told me she was 92 years old and informed me that "my son would be very upset if he knew I crossed the road by myself." I smiled and told her I was walking to uni and was studying to be a teacher. She was very pleased and told me a little bit about her son who worked in agricultural science, who had just come back from Africa.

I helped her to the chemist and continued walking to uni thinking about what had happened, wondering what it would be like when I got old, whether it would matter if traffic was bad on Sandgate Road when I was 92 or if flying DeLoreans would make that obsolete, and before I knew it, I was walking across the bridge to the Hunter Building on campus and I saw a heap of these tied to the railings:

I thought of my morning detour with amusement, went to class and sent a few emails and I tied up a few loose ends with people. I saw my old lecturer from last semester and had a chat with him while he complained about some bureaucratic form the university was making him fill out. I saw a friend on Facebook having a rough time with a relative in hospital, and I invited him around to talk if he needed a sympathetic ear. We ended up having a great old chat and I am left here now he has returned home thinking about what a big R U OK day I've had. I decided to write this blog not to talk about how spectacular a Boy Scout I am, but to reach out to my friends and family in the spirit of the day and ask, R U OK?

Some people think this day is kind of lame. Text-speak grammatical issues aside, a lot of people have issues with being asked "Are you ok?" on a day like this, cynically (yet correctly) pointing out that the person inquiring hasn't inquired about their well-being until a national day kind of 'forced' them to. I understand that logic, but I want to just use this blog to give my A+ Willskis seal of approval to R U OK? Day.

See, a couple of years ago, I wasn't walking to uni of a morning with the opportunity of helping little old ladies walking across busy roads. I was in a dark place in my life. One of the low points. I had just been let go from a real estate writing job I had taken, for failing to pass an employee exam regarding the various styles and architectures of common Sydney homes. I had just also been the victim of a pretty bad violent assault at a night club while out with a group of friends from Bathurst. I've included pictures to show what I mean, but I have to warn you: they are pretty graphic/gory. I unsuccessfully tried to include 'spoiler' buttons but here's the spoiler in case you don't want to look at them -- I had my right eye socket fractured into a million pieces in June 2011, with the surgeon who operated on it kindly and quietly explaining that the blows I received were akin to my eye being hit with a pretty decent hammer blow.

Basically the night started like this,

and turned into this.

















(Second warning: GORE).

"John McClane got nothin' on me."

Within the next few weeks, I was looking a whole lot like this.  (Again, if you're a big fan of my face, best not look.)

I thought I took the actual incident in stride (my friend can attest to me trying to make the paramedics laugh with bad jokes in the ambulance -- I can remember that like yesterday) but the doctors told me to 'be prepared for some Post-Traumatic effects'. They told me it would be weird if I didn't get PTSD, or some variation of it.

Anyway, my eye eventually healed after the surgery, there was no lasting brain damage, and I was set to return to work. I figured I would get a little leeway, but four days after returning to work with my gross eye I was let go. Things were shit, I was renting a very expensive glorified room as an apartment on my own, I had no income except the savings my recently deceased grandparents had squirreled away for years in order to leave to me and my brother, and I was in a big city that was becoming more and more intimidating and hostile seeming to me. I was NOT fucking OK.

I am still here writing this blog today, able to tell you about my new life as a uni student with a new spring in my step helping little old ladies like Lydia, because of the people who reached out to me in that time of need. I was anti social. I was depressive. I was irritable and unpredictable. I was a shadow of my former happy self, and a mockery of my potential self. Even as my eye healed, and the scars began to fade into what I now have (which I'm convinced has Harry Potter covered), I found my rose-coloured glasses of youth were lost (not unlike my actual glasses that night :S) and I discovered the true mental torment of depression, something I had long dismissed in people who evinced it like it was some kind of character flaw.

So thank you to all those that asked me if I was OK during the tough months, and indeed all the months that have led me to here, to now, to my fingers on this keyboard writing this blog after this very eventful and thought-provoking R U OK? Day. Thank you for those who saw the innate value of human connection, on all levels, from the superficial to the mind-numbingly deep. And thank you to those who continue this day and it's traditions. Mental health is one of the great challenges of this century whether you believe it or not, and I feel like only the true human compassion (like that which the little old lady sought in me this morning) is all we as humans have left in a world that seems to be afraid to care. So for anyone that does care, I AM OK right now, but I am still grateful for those who didn't abandon me when I wasn't. For all those that are feeling abandoned, I hope someone has reached out to you to help. And if they haven't, well, consider this me asking you all if you are OK. If you are, great! If you're not, and want to talk about it, I'm here to help, because I'm eternally glad for the people that were there to help me. So if you want to talk and no one's listening, leave me a comment, send me an email, tweet to me, send me a facebook message, whatever you like, and I promise I'll lend an ear (or my good eyeball). After all, what's the point of being human if you can't vent about it to other humans once in a while?

Until next time,
hoping you're OK!

Willskis

If you would like to donate or participate in R U OK Day in your community or whatever, check this site out and it'll tell you all you need to know. And you'd be a fuckin' champion, just sayin'.