Family, identity and loss

So I am 48 of Pasifika descent. Ah I was brought up in the lower Wairarapa, ah born in Wellington. A Kiwi kid so um wasn’t born in the Islands, so grew up on Weet-Bix and Marmite. Growing up in the lower Wairarapa, we were the only Pacific Island family around and Dad wouldn’t teach us anything about Fiji or Rotuma, the language or the customs. He wanted us to blend in with Māori families so that we would be treated sort of normal.

He um, when he came to New Zealand, he came in the time where economic boom was happening and then obviously was asked to move back home during those dawn raid years. Ah he wanted to get out of Auckland. He met my mother. So they got married and ran away down to the Wellington area. So that’s where I came about.

Growing up I guess in Wairarapa, people were accepting us kids as half caste or having different parents. I remember going to school events and my friends would ask me where my, oh who dropped me off? And I’d say mum, and they’d go "Oh where is she?" and looking straight at her and just go "Oh it’s, it’s that white lady over there in the hat", and they all sort of couldn’t believe it. So growing up with that was quite different being away from our family.

We’d get together at Christmases, and my cheeky uncles would buy us like soap on the rope and all that type of stuff and ask us if we knew how to use it. Um just real cheeky stuff, like real sort of racial little digs at us. Although Dad didn’t bring us up ah in a Pasifika way, by the way the acted, by default he did. And I didn’t really get that until um I took my first trip to Fiji with a rugby team and I saw a lot of the other New Zealand-born Islanders were very much the same, so that really connected me to who I was as a Pacific Islander.

I’ve always been ah a sportsperson. Always been active in sports, whether it's rugby, basketball, just gymming. So um that was sort of my, I guess my identity growing up. I was all about sports. How to be a better athlete, try and get into that whole mind gym type of thing and get really positive. Um yeah so that was my world. Uh furthering on, once I couldn’t play rugby, ah I got into martial arts and I’ve done quite well at that. And I really like the philosophies around martial arts and how that helps not just me but how I can influence others.

So I was getting through life thinking yeah, I’m getting … building all this resilience, I’m building all this strength. Had some good friends along the way that used to send me heaps of quotes and help me ah, become who I am, be stronger. Um so yeah … very lucky that, during my sporting career I, I met a lot of people that inspired me to be better and have that raw mental toughness. And I think I carried that on through into my work, into my passion with teaching and um coaching. So everything was going really well.

I met my first wife and we had two children, and that was a big change for me. It was and it wasn’t. I had a philosophy that, you know, these two young humans came and they moved in with me not the other way around.

But I don’t know, something fell off the line I guess. My wife had a job which meant she was working all the time. The stresses of trying to keep up with chasing a professional career in sports, um trying to study, trying to be everything, um not seeing my wife because she worked so much, I sort of felt quite alone. And ah the mind started to wander, the hands started to wander, and ah I sort of got really distracted by a lot of things. I did a lot of dumb, stupid things, um sort of cheated, lied about gambling. Um I was playing rugby so I was doing that normal play, drink, party. Do that every weekend. Um so I ended up having this double life. Um all good at home – well wasn’t really all good at home but you can fake it and then look for the next ah outlet.

Um so that played a big part. I wasn’t happy at home. I wasn’t 100% happy with what I was doing. I got to a stage where I knew I had to leave but I had the kids to think about so I stayed for probably 7 years too long, um and that was 7 years of always worrying. Every time my phone rang, it was like, oh no, she’s ringing because she’s caught me out. She knows what I’ve been up to. And that was just stressful in itself, you know. Trying to cover tracks, trying to hide messages, that whole thing. And um that was, that was real stressful. But during all that, my relationship with my wife was getting more and more toxic. I started to resent her and hated her. Um it wasn’t until my daughter said to me one morning "Hey Dad, why are you always so like sad?" And I sort of come to her um like I don’t know. It was like I’m trying to hide all of this, no one else really sees it but my daughter sees straight through everything and can tell me you know what’s up?

And from there, I just thought I can’t show my kids that this is what love or a successful marriage looks like. So, I um had to call it. I called … made the decision to, to leave finally, and I thought if my daughter can tell me this at the age of 13, she’s ready to cope with what was about to happen with separation and everything. And coming away from that whole experience, although it was my call, I still had that feeling of being a bit of a failure. A failure in um, as a husband, a failure as a father. Um and that kind of didn’t really resolve that.

From that traumatic whole divorce thing, everything you have to do for going through divorce, um I sort of yeah, I got around a bit, had a bit of fun, but it wasn’t meaningful. I still felt like I needed a connection but I just yeah, I played up and um yeah, it just wasn’t right. And then coping with being alone ah and life change.

Nothing really sent right after that. I spent a lot of time trying to find out who I was and what I wanted to do. Um I had a good set-up but it just wasn’t, you know, I was getting old. Like I must’ve been getting pretty close to my 40s and I just thought, hey, I really should have my shit together and I should be advancing in my career but I had to take a whole bunch of steps backwards.

So that played a huge sort of downward spiral and then when I met people and expectations, it sort of get … made me freak out about, shit, I’m going to get into another relationship. It’s gonna be the same. And it just … was really hard to find someone.

But then I met my second wife, and it was, it was really good. We had, we had fun, I mean we had so much fun. Um there were a few red flags but, you know, while you’re going through that stage, you sort of shrug them off even though I knew they were a little bit odd. We were ah at a bar and some girl had walked past me and she started dancing in front of me, and she’d come out … my um, well, my partner at the time, she came out and saw this girl dancing in front of me and thought that I was um initiating something and that was I was being sly. So we had this huge as argument right then. That night, I was going to leave and just drop her off because we were in her home town. I was going to drop her off home and just keep on driving – but I didn’t, I thought I’d give her a chance.

And then the next time it happened, we were away at another event. She goes to the bathroom, same type of scenario. Someone walks past, says something to me and I was like, oh, what? And I just didn’t hear what they said. So what she saw was me chasing someone to talk to them. So that ended up in a big, messed up night.

And that's happened a few times. So it’s kind of made me um anxious about going to events – going big crowds. Like, watching people, if I’m watching too hard, she would comment. And it actually made me feel like I couldn’t go to enjoy myself when we went out. Especially now, when she moved to my town, I know so many people, and so when they stop and talk, she’ll just keep on walking, she wouldn’t have interest, she would think, you know, something’s up.

So, it’s things like that um when she would … say we're in the car and there’s music playing, you know, normally you would say to someone, "Hey, can we skip? I don’t want to listen to this." She would say, "What the fuck is this music? Turn this shit off!" And it’s like, you don’t have to ask like that, you need to talk nicely. She’d be like, "Why should I have to talk nicely for? I just want you to do it." But that would be with a whole bunch of things. Like if I leave something out, she’ll go, "Hey, are you going to leave that out? I’m sure you weren’t brought up to do that kind of stuff." And I’m like, yeah, I’m finishing my coffee or finishing what I’m eating. I’ll put it away afterwards. So she was always sort of … instead of saying, "Hey, turn the light off", it’s like it just became, I don’t know, they sound like real little things, but it’s like, all day, all these things. And it’s just annoying as fuck.

But um yeah it is tiring, it’s exhausting, because it’s like you always have to be wary of what’s happening. I had to … and I felt like I was always adjusting to suit her, but she wouldn’t have adjusted to suit me.

The um the other part, I am getting to where I started getting anxiety and depression, although you know, I’m just getting anxious. Um I was working, um I was just in a work environment where it was like I got thrown under the bus a lot. And um because I was a team leader, ah every bad decision I made or every good decision I made, it wouldn’t make everyone happy. So, you know, getting thrown under the bus and being, and then being sort of taken to task, saying I wasn’t competent, it was quite hard to take. I’m a um kind of a leader where I, I let the team make a lot of the decisions and try and do everything for the team. I’d go to bat for the team, stick up for them, um because that was my role. That’s how I like to … I don’t like to micro-manage, I like to make sure that we’re all making decisions together. But, you know, sometimes that would backfire and I just couldn’t handle it.

Um at that time, my wife got um diagnosed with an illness, so I said, no, I’m not going to be the team leader, I’m going to sit back and focus on her. Um but that kind of made it worse because now I was a part of the team and still getting thrown under the bus because they thought that um, I don’t know … it was just weird, just, I think because I was a team leader they wanted me out. And they questioned the way that I, I did my work, but you know. You know when you know you’re not um, you’re over your job and you just want to get out, and until you do get out, you feel better. But um, I think it was a mix. It was a mix between what I was going through or experiencing with my wife and work. So there was all these pressures.

Um and somewhere along the line, they just got too much and I felt myself getting anxious. I spent a lot of time like self-doubting, um self-doubt, like um even going shopping. Like my wife would write something like bicarbonate or cooking chocolate and me knowing that she just wants some baking soda, I didn’t want to get it wrong. It was like one day, I just freaked out in the supermarket, like I know what she wanted but she just wrote it wrong and I was too worried that I was going to get it wrong. And I just broke down in the supermarket and had to get out. I was like, and I couldn’t … I get to the carpark and I thought what the fuck’s going on? You know, it was, it took me a while to realise, fuck I just had an anxiety attack right there and then. So that was the first sort of time that I experienced that.

But just um getting more and more down on myself. Trying to find ways to get through the day. Um and it just, just got too much. Little things would um set me off, um whether it was the kids, um someone at work. Um during that time it was COVID, so watching Facebook or social media when everyone was having their, their ah – what do you call it? – their professional opinion on Facebook, and getting involved in those conversations really got me quite wound up.

And whatever it is, with a combination of everything, you know, I just, I just freaked out, I couldn't handle. Didn’t want to be at my job. I wanted to spend less time at home until um I said to someone at work like, "I’m not … not handling this. What can I do?" So they sent me to um the doctors, get a package of care, start talking to counsellors, and um ended up having to take like a month off work just before Christmas, which was good. Gave me time to think but it really only gave me time to unwind, and then as soon as I unwound, it was Christmas and New Years. And after Christmas and New Years, I was back at work. So when I got back to work, I was back at square one.

Um ah it got really bad, like whenever anything would trip me up, it wouldn’t be just like, oh fuck, I’m going through a bad time, I would spiral. So, I’d say, oh fuck, you know, this is bad, I must be ... like especially if it’s a fight with the wife, it was like the way she says things, it’s like, oh fuck, I must be a bad person. I must be really making a fucking meal of work, I’m not doing my stuff. I get really low, really down, depressed. I didn’t want to go, I couldn’t even be around my workmates. So I’d make every excuse like oh, I’ve got a hui ah across town or hey, I’ve got some work to do or hey, I’d ring in sick, you know, just um to make any excuse not to go to work. Um started looking for other jobs to do um hoping that that would be like out of the environment and um feel better. But um even going through that it was like fuck, am I going to take all this with me? It’s gonna be just another place where I’m gonna be not happy.

So it was a lot of, a lot of thoughts like that. It was like I need to do something but what am I gonna do? I felt a little bit trapped. Every time my wife and I would have a fight, it wouldn’t be like, I would think it was the end, um get really depressed, because I’m passive and she’s aggressive, she'd get me to a point where I’m so wound up.

But um like I went through like thoughts like of harming myself, but I … it was only thoughts at that stage. Um I ah came across something that said this guy was talking about how he was thinking of committing suicide but it wasn’t that he wanted to die, it was that he wanted all the pain to stop. So I really resonated with that, and it was that was it. I just wanted all the craziness to stop. I just wanted the thoughts to stop. I just wanted the frustration to stop.

That feeling of being helpless just to all go away and there were only certain parts of my life that I could um, like things I could do to stop the thoughts. So like my sports, I could go for a run and just concentrate on the tempo and just keep running and thinking. Swimming. Um I could jump on my bike and go out into the country somewhere and then just turn around and come back, but I knew that it was something that I could start and finish and feel good about.

So I was trying to find ways to, like through breathing techniques or calming techniques, just to stay sort of balanced. Get one little success at a time.

Um, I’ve I only started medication in this last … in this last event, um so that’s helped in a way. So, my one and only, my last, as we used to say, um because she’s had to um deal with my mental health over the last year or so but she kind of doesn’t help. When people say comments like "get over it" or "you need to" or "you should do this" or da da da, you know, it … it takes away. Um, yeah it’s like, you’re trying, like people say you struggle, and I, I like don’t mind saying I struggle, because it means I’m trying. I haven’t given up. But when you’re struggling, you don’t need other people to start putting you down and saying … for them to say that it’s easy, it’s easy to get over it, just get over it. I’m trying, I’m trying to find everything I can so I’m out of this funk. And when it comes from someone that … when it comes from someone that’s supposed to love you, it’s the worst.

That just means a lot of self-healing first. Like figuring out, getting back to who I am because a lot of people have noticed that I’m, I’m, I’ve changed. They’ve noticed that I haven’t been as happy and open. Just means like all the financial stuff like selling the house, going through the lawyers and just having no, no ties. Yes, she was the love of my life and then she showed me a different side and that shit just shows me that she's not there for me when I needed her the most. And that’s, that’s gutting. It hurts, but I need, ah I need to get back to me or else I’ll never be … I’ll never be in a position to be right for her. So I need to be open and vulnerable about what I’m going through and how I’m surviving it and how I’m struggling, then break that um, that stigma that mental health or mental wellbeing is bad and that there’s something wrong with you.

Because the more people I talk to … I mean so many guys I’ve spoken to that are coming out saying, "Yeah, I went through a bad spell", "Oh yeah, I have problems with this" or "My wife’s telling me I’m not present enough" and just helping guys. And as I’m helping them, I’m helping myself so I just want to know that, one day once I get back to me, that my story is just going to help others. I’ve just got to get through this chapter.

Yeah, I just feel for those guys out there that don’t come from a health background, that aren’t so vulnerable to be able to speak out. You know, I’ve got the training, I’ve been through, I’ve helped others. And if I found it really hard, I know that guys out there that don’t have those skills must be finding it really, really hard. So all I want to do in my work is create spaces and places for men to open up in the way that they want to open up. So I just want to have a brighter, brighter future, and I just want to be happy and get back to me. And help others get back to them. Amen.