In her first media interview – which she undertook in a bid to lift stigma around the prevalent mental illness in the wake of comedian Robin Williams’ suicide – Fifi Trixibelle reveals the full extent of the demons she’s endured since the age of 11.
She also spoke of the pain of losing her beloved sister Peaches, who died of a heroin overdose earlier this year in a horrible case of history repeating itself after their late mother Paul Yates died the same way.
As a little girl, she feared she was losing her mind when she was suddenly hit by an avalanche of depression, Fifi told the UK’s Mail on Sunday newspaper.
“I woke up crying about everything and nothing,” she said. “I remember thinking what the f*** is going on in my head. Why do I feel like this. I felt very confused as to what was going on in my mind. I thought I was going crazy. I was a generally happy child and all of a sudden I wasn’t and I didn’t know why.”
Following her mothers’ death, the then teenager Fifi went on alcohol binges and dabbled in drugs in a reckless period that she accepts could have killed her. Later she comfort ate in an effort to suppress her pain, ballooning to a size 20.
Of her sister Peaches’ death, which she emphasizes is unrelated to her depression, Fifi said, “[it] is like a piece of me that has been taken. A piece of my heart and my soul has gone. She was my baby sister. She will always be my baby sister. Often I’ll sit and have a chat with her, tell her what went on that day. I go to our local church and light a candle for her.”
Today Fifi is in a better place, recently engaged with a job in PR, a settled life and a healthy body weight. She deliberately stays away from the spotlight that her family name inevitably attracts but has assumed a role caring for her father and younger siblings following Peaches’ death.
Her interview was motivated by the belief that “someone with even the smallest amount of influence” should speak out about depression, although she hasn’t ever discussed it with her rock star father.
‘Depression is nothing to be ashamed of, it affects an awful amount of people and yet there is still this ugly, shaming, misunderstood stigma around it,” she said. With depression you can have everything in the world and nothing. It affects people of all walks of life.
‘When it takes hold for a couple of days it wipes you out. There have been occasions where I have been unable to get out of bed, unable to shower and to eat. You exist in this gloomy shell of a person. But you learn how to deal with it.”
If you need help with depression, visit beyondblue.org.au or if you need to speak to someone, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.
