I was on a treadmill.

I was angry and lonely and unhappy much of the time. I used alcohol to feel good about myself and I felt ashamed that I did. "Is this all there is," I wondered? "Is this as good as it gets? What’s wrong with me? I live in a lucky country -- a place that thousands of desperate people were literally dying to call home and here I was feeling unhappy?"

Like millions of Australians I'd read news stories in 2001 about drowning "boat people". I suppose I'd felt sad for these people, in a distracted world-weary kind of way, but the truth is they were only a fleeting tragedy, forgotten as soon as I turned to more pressing news on the sports pages.

For the record, 353 asylum seekers -- including 150 women and children -- drowned on 19 October 2001 south of Java when an overloaded 19 metre boat sank on its way to Australia’s Christmas Island. The vessel – now known as SIEV X – sank within 10 minutes of foundering. Forty four people survived the sinking. The youngest to perish was a baby aged three months old. Among those to survive was an eight-year-old child who had lost family members.

What was wrong with me? I could shed tears over a lightweight Hollywood melodrama like Briget Jones's Diary but I was almost unmoved by the plight of drowning babies off Australia’s coastline.

My emotions were numbed. I sometimes felt the edge of an emotion welling inside me – fear, sadness, shame – but I’d learnt to withdraw to a place where I couldn’t be discomforted or uplifted. Somewhere along the line I’d severed a chunk of my humanity – and my capacity to feel and talk about my feelings were stunted.