Even before coronavirus, there have been times when Alannah Hill wouldn't want to leave the house for days on end.
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When she did, it was only so that she - a fashion designer and author - could go to work, only to fall apart when returning home again.
Hill calls these times the "silent silence". Those times when she tries to laugh the loudest and puts on fake smiles in public because she doesn't want people to know that all she wants to be is at home in her "blessing gown". Because she knows that what is looming is a "Nervy-B". What may sound like the name of a hip hop act, is actually Hill and her late mother's term for a nervous breakdown.
But what triggers such an emotional response?
For Hill, the list is long. Christmases, birthdays and weddings are out. Fights with her son, Edward, can also send her into a tailspin. She can even be triggered by an encounter with an enthusiastic fan of Alannah Hill - the fashion label she walked away from in 2017 and still bears her name.
"It happens all the time, and you learn to sort of stuff it down," Hill says.
"If I see a father with a little girl and he's being nice to her, I'm just mesmerised. And then I switch and try to make it sound like he doesn't love her and she won't talk to him when she's older.
"There are still pains of jealousy at my age and if someone's had a great childhood, I can't warm to them."
Having shared her past in her first memoir, Butterfly on a Pin (2018), Hill's latest book The Handbag of Happiness is all about the moments that fill in the time between milestones. As Hill says, it's the misunderstandings, the misdemeanours and the misadventures - the lessons learnt from little moments and the remnants left in the wake of defining events.
Where Butterfly on a Pin revealed her Tasmanian childhood with her chronically disappointed drunken father and the sexual abuse from a family member when she was 12, The Handbag of Happiness discusses, among other things, the scars left behind.
"I actually thought I had no words left in me after Butterfly. I was exhausted," Hill says.
"And what little family I had, my sister who I was close to, said, 'If you write one word of the past I will never speak to you again'. And she hasn't. She lives in the next street and she hasn't spoken to me because she didn't want me to write any of it.
"There was also a lot of healing in Butterfly on a Pin. I found it quite therapeutic. When I finished it, there was no feeling of euphoria. It happened about a year later. At the time it was just too difficult and I feel completely different now."
It's the type of healing that - at least so far - has been a permanent one for Hill. It's not the temporary high that comes from a $4000 Miu Miu handbag - the item which is the book's namesake. It's one that has given Hill the realisation that she needs to stop trying to replace the childhood that she lost.
She still has her days of silent silence because she's human. And she knows that during those times, she needs to watch TV, listen to Leonard Cohen and light a candle of gardenia, lavender or rose.
Over the years Hill has learnt to put her mental health first. She says this was part of the reason for her departure from Factory Z, the company that owns the Alannah Hill brand.
"I was constantly on the battleground and fighting with a lot of men for my rights, identity, talent, creativity and wage when I was at Alannah Hill," she says.
"But here's the thing, love, it's the reason why I feel I let myself down because in the end, over a period of years, fighting with men - over my rights, whether I was allowed to talk to the press, how I looked and how I was ageing, what I should design and ultimately, feeling controlled and marginalised - it eventually wears one down.
"I often wonder, did I allow men to drive me out or was my mental health more important? I like to think it was my mental health."
You wouldn't know it listening to her speak, but she says she gets flustered when the "feminist vibe" comes up in conversation.
The word reminds her of burning bras, Germaine Greer and being politically correct.
"I'm often politically incorrect. I've only recently discovered the real reason I have two bins!"
Instead, she refers to herself as her own title of HumFem - a cross between a humanist and a feminist.
A HumFem, as Hill sees it, is someone who lives by instinct, more than anything, but still holds a focus on taking back the oppression of women by men.
"I understand the calamity in the workplace for young women, but unfortunately, a lot of men are preprogrammed and wired to demean and scorn women," Hill says.
"This gives men a poor image because I think men are mostly good. It's why it's so important to show young boys and young girls how to respect and be kind to each other.
"Show me a girl when she's seven and I'll show you the woman. Show me a boy when he is seven and I'll show you the man.
"It's back to the old cliché. It all starts with respectful, kind, thoughtful parents and unfortunately, a lot of people still don't quite get that."
It's clear that Hill, with her willingness to offer up advice - which is often coupled with her chosen pet name 'love' - she genuinely wants to help.
So it seems ironic that Hill refers to her latest release as the anti-self-help book. Not because The Handbag of Happiness is of no help at all, but because she didn't want it to be a book full of platitudes. She wanted it to be a collection of anecdotes about the million ordinary problems of 21st-century life.
Sure, there are chapters about her ongoing personal response to her childhood - "the idea of trauma is that you can get over it, but you can't, and you instead learn how to manage it and know what triggers you". But there are also stories about how she has embarrassed her son or how she went about juggling a career as a single mum, which others can easily relate to.
Her relationship with her son is a running theme throughout the book. And how could it not be? As Hill says in her dedication, Edward is the sun around which she revolves.
But, as is the case with most mothers and their teenage children, Hill is simply embarrassingly uncool to her son.
It's hard to think of Hill as the embarrassing mum. As one of the country's most trailblazing and iconic fashion designers - complete with her own Alannah army that dresses in her image of bold red lips and bejewelled beehives - how could she ever be considered uncool?
"Can you blame him, love? Did you read 'The Ball Gown of Wrongness'?"
Like all of the chapters in The Handbag of Happiness, the tale about how Hill embarrassed her son is paired with a fashion item.
The Blessing Gown is named after the dressing gown Hill reaches for during the silent silence. The Baby Bonnet of Delusion refers to the first months of motherhood and how she tried to fly around the world with a six-month-old son and a nanny who was missing in action.
The Ball Gown of Wrongness, however, is all about the type of scandals that can only arise around the school gate, including the time Hill wore a ball gown to school pick-up (and a meeting with the principal).
Now, she says, Edward is more vocal about what his fashion designer mother wears in the public eye, including for a recent photoshoot.
"He was very concerned because the brief was 'Courtney Love sexy', which was very wrong. And he said, 'Mum, you just can't. You're going to look like an old cougar trying to look sexy'," she says.
"He's concerned about how I appear to the public. He said 'Look, it reflects on me. Do you understand that Mum? It reflects on me.'
"But look, he also thinks Brad Pitt's an uncool dad."
Well if that's true, at least Hill is in good company.
The Handbag of Happiness, by Alannah Hill. Hardie Grant Books, $29.99.