There is something you can’t see in this photo that was taken recently by local photographer Raimond De Weerdt as part of his creatives of the northern rivers project.

He didn’t miss it but it's something that exists every minute of every day.

Let's go back 12 months to before the devastating floods of 2022 and after a fabulous Christmas and New Year celebrations. Life was slowing down and I should have been looking forward to a chilled life ahead.

I was fitter than ever before and running daily pushing myself as far as I could go.

I was well as can be expected in the Covid times we have had for the last few years and happy I hadn’t had it.

Things were freeing up with less restrictions allowing us to plan for things like holidays and social occasions.

Most of all I had time after years of running life flat out with work, Council, community work and some time for family, yes I have to admit I got the work/life balance wrong over the past few years.

But something wasn’t right.

At that time, I had my six monthly check in with my doctor booked so I decided to ask some questions about some things that were bothering me.

I started by saying my memory was shocking and that I could remember briefings about sewerage and wastewater but not conversations and events with my family.

My balance was terrible, and I was becoming the guy who when he stood up would take a few steps to the left before settling or I would walk down the hallway and bump into the wall or door frame and doing exercises that had me balancing on one leg were a joke.

There was a third thing, but I honestly can’t remember it as I write this, and that is not a joke.

We spoke about these things and what they might mean before I blurted out the question “What does depression feel like?”

I know what it is and the chemical imbalance within the brain etcetera, but what does it actually feel like?

The doctor looked at me and said it included many things such as what I was asking about along with other things like tinnitus, ringing in the ears, which I have and had been getting worse at the time.

She pulled out a checklist and went through it and after a long conversation, sorry to whoever was after me in the waiting room, she said I ticked too many of the boxes for it to be anything else and she said that it had probably been around for a long time.

It seems that I had been managing it in many ways for years with things such as drinking and then giving up drinking, exercise which is good for those chemicals in the brain, but I was also using it as a distraction as well. Also working flat out and not having a mental shutdown time other than sleep, which is another issue all together.

So, there it was “I was suffering from depression and I had found my own way to manage it for who knows how long”

Now that I had time on my hands and was not constantly doing something that kept the brain distracted the black dog had come to bite.

The more we talked the more I understood that some of the things that I had pushed aside and thought I had dealt with were actually panic attacks and anxiety, not just grumpy bad moods and tiredness.

In the end, I walked out knowing a lot more about myself and what was happening to me and a much-needed prescription to help get some control of this beast in my head.

The doctor also told me with the medication things will get worse before they got better, and never a truer word has been spoken.

I had to then come home and start telling the family about something that I didn’t understand and really couldn’t explain but I needed to let them know what was going on.

Next to be told was my friends here at the Lismore App because I just needed to take a break for a couple of weeks so I could get my head around what was going on. Ha, what a joke that was as I haven’t written a thing for 12 months now.

Then the floods hit and like everyone in the community life became busy again as we tried to get our lives and businesses back up and running again and as before being flat out busy was a great distraction from the dog that was biting me, and my troubles seemed so small in comparison to what so many others were going through.

Since then, I have learnt so much more about what I have been going through but in real terms, I have only just scratched the surface. I have been lucky enough to talk to others who suffer this awful problem to find out that what I am feeling and what I have been doing to deal with it is much the same as many others.

I have had several long chats with the doctor as we tried to get the level of the medication right and to see what the next steps might be. It also seems that it might not just be depression, but the letters PTSD have been thrown into the mix.

All in all, 2022 was a tough year especially when you throw in finally having covid run through the house one person at a time, a minor motorcycle accident that was more of a bruise to my ego than the extensive bruising to my body that I received. The medication helps with many things but also sucks the life out of you in other ways and since the Covid episode, the desire and motivation to exercise and do a lot of other things has disappeared which makes me feel so much worse about myself.

Eating has become my friend and with that, the kilos have come rolling back again making me feel worse about myself.

These things really are the “Catch-22” of life at the moment.

It wasn’t all totally bad as my second grandchild came along, I had an amazing road trip adventure with my youngest son as we explored our wonderful inland areas of Birdsville, the Simpson Desert, Birdsville Track, Lake Eyre, Flinders Ranges, Coorong and the Great Ocean Road to name a few of the iconic spots we visited over our three weeks away.

And most of all I realised that I truly do have an amazing family who have helped and supported me in their own ways through these tough twelve months.

My journey with this black dog is a long way from over but I will get the beast to heal at some stage into the future with the help of my family, friends, and my actual brown dog.

Mental health issues can hit even the strongest people, myself included, and it makes asking R U OK even more important and for me it's having the strength to say no I’m not.

If you or someone you know has a mental illness, is struggling emotionally, or has concerns about their mental health, there are ways to get help.

Call Lifeline 24/7 on 13 11 14, adults can contact Beyond Blue via their website https://www.beyondblue.org.au or the Black Dog Institute https://www.blackdoginstitute.org.au/.