I’ve sat down a few times over the past few days to try and write what I’m about to write. It’s serious, I’m being serious, but I’ve neither the time, nor the perspective, to prettify this up with well-crafted sentences or sweet phrasing. Some things just need to be blurted out. This will be raw, and therefore will be hard for me to say (or publish).
Routines are safe. Routines – monotonous though they may be – are predictable, carried along comfortably by the grace of timetables.
A few things happened last week (no, I won’t go into them) that have forced me to address the possibility that in some respects I am no different to the twenty-three year old me who had a breakdown; that despite marriage, two children (and my own semi-breakdown again at twenty-seven), and the death of a parent I have not evolved very much – or at all. I sometimes wonder if instead of facing the pain directly I placed myself in a stasis bubble and when attempts to break free from this fail, when I recognise change needs to be made, I back away from everything: people, life.
A number of things occur when I have an anxiety attack: my skin, particularly around my face, feels like tiny insects are crawling just underneath the surface, I get hot, breathe quicker, get sensitive to noise, and my heart rate increases. Worst of all, my mind stops and the internal barraging begins: the you are a failure as a human talk. It’s just there, I can’t escape, and I want to – I want to run! – but I stay in my chair. This time, I reached out to a friend (she knows who she is, thank you x) and managed to calm myself down with her help. A relief, yes. But my eyes are open now.
This was an ugly post, I do apologise.
My brain can be an ugly place, too.
I suspect I will regret making this public, but I honestly think I would regret not acknowledging it more.
Don’t call it bravery – it’s more like an attempt at peace.
Now, with a few days of nothing but reading and television to decompress, I can look to the calendar with some sort of resolve again.
