Anxious

 

My version of the 'felt cute might delete later' selfie. Felt vulnerable yet open, might delete later...

I've always said I champion writing about Mental Health, being open, maybe helping someone out along the way but I've been hypocritical these last few months. In fact, I've barely written anything at all. The first sign that something was *off* was when reading my own WIP felt like reading something I couldn't access... These words, where had they come from? How had they ever flowed when now I couldn't edit a paragraph? Writing suddenly felt like trying to shape static and even the excitement of a plot playing out in your mind (where it's easy! Where you're not even having to shape it...) disappeared.

So I just... didn't write.

And then the rest crept in. First, everything felt heightened and primed for *something* all the time. Every scenario felt huge. I lost my perspective then my faith. People could be as nice as pie and as reassuring as possible and I simply wouldn't take it in. Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, whatever, whatever. Arrows on armour.

What I think was really building and what felt (feels?) like the root, was that I just don't feel like *myself* anymore and this construct, of what I *was* hangs over me, making me ever more susceptible to feeling detached and frightened, like pieces of me are melting away, soon to be followed by what's left of my mind...

Because that's the real fear. The one that says that this is big and huge and terrible this time. That this isn't like any other time I've been anxious, that it's *the* time. The time when it will escalate beyond anything I have comprehension of. I constantly imagine what it might feel like if it gets worse which then makes me feel worse which then convinces me it is getting worse and wahoo, a carousel...

Where I'm here, sick of following 'rules' and 'reasonings.' Irrational and intrusive thoughts are my new companions and I've tried playing by their rules but it hasn't got me anywhere.

So, words. Just a few. Just a start.

[Less intense content will resume tomorrow.]

Misunderstood

 

I think we're well used to being misunderstood as a teenage concept. The way that when you're at a certain age the world just doesn't get you, you don't fit in, you don't have a place. Every grievance feels huge, every slight disagreement earth-shattering and heavy. When you're trying to figure out who you are, governed by chemicals and changes you've never had a concept of before of course you feel like no one gets it. Like no one has ever been there before.

And then you grow older but maybe you still feel misunderstood. Maybe this time you misunderstand your purpose and your journey and what it is you're 'supposed' to be doing. You might make choices different from those around you - uni? Job? Both? Neither? You might feel like whatever you do choose, you're missing out on something else.

Then whilst everyone lives their best life on social media, posting highlights and perfectly curated images you might feel you've misunderstood your youth. Like you're doing it wrong because you're not that happy, that popular, that adventurous.

As the world turns and rocks the bigger bite of being misunderstood may come back. Those around you might not see things like you do and the teenage white-hot indignation burns again. How could they think like that? You seethe, only this time about war, religion, abortion, race or someone's sexual rights. So you try and you try to explain and to educate and advocate but still the fog grows stronger - how could THIS be misunderstood.

Later, maybe it's children or not having children or how you choose to raise them. Maybe it's your career path or maybe it's just as simple as...

That feeling when you've tried to explain how you feel but it's gone wrong. When you want to share the emotions in you but they become mixed up or lost in translation. When you're on the edge of a group or a project or a gathering because everyone else just fits together better. Or simply, when you just don't even know what you want or you need or you feel...

It's common. Is what I'm saying. A feeling no less frustrating than when it very first arises. One we can all understand.

I'm on a podcast!

 

Delighted to share that I'm over on the fantastic Happy London Press podcast reading my short tale of seas, dreams and secrets.

It'd mean the world (the ocean?) to me if you'd have a quick listen HERE and whilst you're there enjoy the other wonderful treasures on offer.

If you want to read the story the traditional way, you can find it in my archives HERE. 

Under the canopy

Under the canopy, the sun shone only in dapples that caused shadow and light to strike in a kaleidoscope. The resulting distraction danced under heavy leaves and across imagination. Not a bird was heard to sing here and the quiet lulled and dulled them within moments of their entry, Izra's heavy warnings to take care, stay upon the path and not touch, instantly gone. Pushed from their minds by a canopy that squeezed. Barely a head above them it hung, entwined vines reaching like the hangman's noose to brush unsuspecting shoulders, jolt unsuspecting throats. The ground underneath them was no more forgiving, coarse, filled with obstruction; tangled roots lying half-risen from their muddy graves, their exposed flash of white the startling stretch of shallow buried bones. Then the trees. Huge. Whispering. Each one broader than the last. The hidey-holes within them... uncountable.

“This place could send a man mad.”

Negative

Someone has force fed me a lemon whilst I've been lost to sleep or daydream. It's the only reasonable conclusion I can come to for the scrunched-nosed, puckered-lip face I'm wearing all the time at the moment.

Someone has force fed me a lemon, sneaky sneak and subtle, squeezing bitter juice into my mouth to run as muttered curses and complaints every time I speak.

The pips stick in my throat. Bullets. Tears. Blocking the path to a proper breath and making smiling hard.

The pith falls like snow and settles on my lashes, blocking every view with irritating specks. I can't see a pretty picture anymore - only one sallowed by the smudges in my vision.

Someone has force fed me a lemon and I'm so damn full of it that all I do is snarl and snort and write-off and hide away.

It's a negativity lemon.
And it's squeezing me from the inside out.

Mountain side snippets

Through the low mist that hung thick across the hills, came the first glimpse of a township at last. It was Theon who noticed it, having pushed on ahead whilst another sodden downpour slowed the rest. Their presence was now reduced to distant mud squelch and Tharan’s muted curses and in this new quiet he stopped, squinting into dank grey at silhouettes that unfurled on the hillside opposite.

“Hey!” Hardly daring to think they might have found their way at last, he turned, right back into driving rain with his mouth cupped so his voice might have some hope of carrying. 'Hey. Hurry. Something stands ahead.' Clawed by wind he turned eyes forwards once more then, through the deluge as a huge gust howled its fury and the fog drew back. Yes. Underneath its desolate blanket a hillside dwelling did indeed hide out and he took a shaky step towards its outline. Cramped. That he could see even at this distance, all narrow streets in a tangle that rose steep, slick with mud and cold and grey and empty, no fire-light to cut through the dark.

---------

Leading, like he had for the seemingly endless entirety of this furtive venture, Theon's temple pulsed. Aware, that each step was bringing them deeper into a world of which they had no measure. The hillside path was tough. Feet slipping, rain beating. The streets deserted as they'd seemed from afar but also not. Teaming with shadows, playing with the corners of their vision, flickers of movement in the rotting structures they passed.

The last light was fading fast, soon the dark would come and he craned his neck, searching for any sign of where they were supposed to go. Whilst he did, the walkway steepened further, snaking deeper into the hill so that as every bend was reached, the rock conspired to hide whatever lay upon the other side.

Mistrust grew. Hanging like a fly over meat. Hands drew to weapons concealed in heavy cloaks and still it steepened, jutting corners closing in, mountain-rock towering and pressing until they were single file and moving at barely a crawl.

Vulnerable.

Scaremongering

 

The news is a lot right now. And I don't mean that in the sense of not wanting to be aware of what's occurring for a second. I don't mean it in the sense of wanting to bury my head in the sand and ignore the privilege that would allow me to do that. I don't even mean it in the context of struggling to deal with what is actually necessary to know.

I mean it in the sense of all the extras. The click-bait. The headlines drawn up to draw in. The think pieces from those who have literally no more understanding of this complex situation than we do but have a column or a slot that they now choose to fill with their hot take.

Things are serious, scary and sad enough without this. It's not a story it's reality, real people's reality (also the reality of MANY more people elsewhere in the world) and much like the pandemic, climate-change and all the big stuff that's filled the last few years, it does not need dramatizing any more.

*breathes*

There's not a lot else I can say right now. Love to you all and if you need to chat because you too, cannot deal with the constant in-your-face shouts, you know where I am.

(Hiding, editing)