Behind the scenes: Anxiety

I get a little tired of people asking me why I can’t just ‘snap out of it’ or ‘shake it off’ when I feel depressed or anxious. I’m not a dog and depression and anxiety aren’t drops of water. It’s rather difficult to articulate what happens in an anxiety attack, but I’ll attempt it anyway, if nothing else to prove that I do not lack determination or courage!

It feels like there is a trapped, feral animal, pounding on the door to be let out. If I let it out, there will be tears and blood and savagery. Fear and anger. Helplessness and rage. Flashbacks from the past, imagined doom from the future. Sometimes opening the front door, stepping past the threshold and feeling the world on my skin is like exposing my nakedness to the harshness of searing heat and burning cold, all at the same time. My heart beats in a panic rush, trying to lunge into my throat. My chest tightens, my ribs contract. Every breath feels like a crisis, pushing precious air through paths that are collapsing.

The phone rings and my heart drops through the floor of my chest, somewhere into my churning stomach. I want to scream, pee, swallow air through a gasping mouth, all at the same time. My eyes push against my head, the sockets ache. Someone says something to me, asks a question and there are flashes in front of my eyes, like electrical circuits have clashed horribly and I feel blinded temporarily. Hot and cold flashes on my skin. My arms, legs, back, neck feel clammy and scalded, at the same time. My clothes chafe against my skin and the rising heat permeates my skin. I force myself to stay awake, terrified of sleep, of nightmares, of a new day starting at the end of a night.

And while all this is happening, I have to work, live, love, cook, talk, laugh. There are two of me. One that surges with the anxiety, holds it at bay, is soaked in it and fights the battle everyday, sometimes forced to hide behind shut doors. The other does all the other stuff, the normal stuff that people need to see. Sometimes the battling me leaks into the other one and my hands shake, I feel dizzy, my mind struggles with simple thought like a senile mind childishly putting a puzzle together, incorrectly. I get confused by the days of the week, change in my pocket, how to drive a car. I can’t make any decisions, not even what clothes to wear.

So there, that’s what my anxiety looks like.

Once upon a train journey

I could pretend that through the branchfuls of sky I can glimpse God

That the light fingered clouds are something more than

Magic to a child

Below, blinking houses

packed into the ground

Sucking space

Red bricks bleed

White fronts pale

Man and Superman I see.

God I imagine.

A difficult Saturday's journey

I found myself fleeing last Saturday. Fleeing from my home and from my own inability to be unflinching and steady. My depression had been building all day, with Malcolm's exhaustion not lifting, Seth rejecting and challenging me, and having to attend a most tedious, middle-class-aspirational gathering where I felt isolated and out of place. By the time I served up dinner, I was barely managing to hold in my tears and failing totally to engage my son’s toddler energies. When we somehow approached bathtime and it looked as if my overtired son’s violent, screaming, physical protestations would cause him to hurt himself in the bath, Malcolm forced himself out of bed and came to my aid, to try and calm Seth down. Seth rushed into his arms like an oppressed being and something in that action snapped my tenuous restraint. I screamed in despair and frustration and rushed out of the room. I had a brief glimpse of Seth’s face as I passed him. There was nothing there but a fearless, uninformed child’s shock, but I imagined much else growing there, over the years to come. I’ve read that this is typical of people who suffer from anxiety – an inability to deal with the limited present and an insistence on imagining a threatening future based on the frightened spectre of past events. I glimpsed things in my son’s face that weren’t there and I was repulsed. So I ran and kept running until I was in the car and drove away, running still.

It’s difficult to describe what I felt while I drove for the first hour. Great waves of earth shaking sobs racked my body. My mind flailed around desperately, looking for refuge. Family, friends – no I couldn’t turn to them, couldn’t let them see me this way.  I thought of the church I take Seth to on Sundays, because I could go and sit in that familiar place and be broken there, and relative strangers would comfort me. Strangers who in their Christian duty would never turn me away, who hadn’t already tired of nursing me, whom I hadn’t bled dry of empathy. Then this vision rapidly turned rank –strangers who would pity me, tell me words that I knew would heal nothing, and then ever more after that, on smiling and sunny days when I would be winning inside, these strangers would come to me, place concerned hands on my arm, pity in their eyes and ask me how I was feeling. They would make my darkness laugh at me, at how helpless I had been. No, I could not turn to these kindly strangers.

St Mary’s appealed next. I have always been able to … well, nod to God there, at the very least. I’ve never been very good at listening to God, but I’ve been able to talk to God, a little bit, at St Mary's. People have worshipped at that place since the 11^th century and I have felt their piety flowing through time towards me, I have felt the distant pulsing of their living faith in the air. I have imagined St Mary’s existing in a different dimension in space, somewhere where the world stills and God holds your hand. You have to step out into that space, leave your world behind and enter God’s world. I have always liked walking into St Mary’s through the narrow, overhung path, through the ancient cemetery, approaching the building from an angle on the side. It’s like seeing the building through a portal and needing to chase it, quietly, meditatively, fixedly, as I walk towards it. Old, old Time rests among the graves. When I get to the door, the building straightens out in front of me, and as I open the ancient door into the church I give up the unwitting struggles I put up against God on most days.

So when my soul was floundering, I wanted to take refuge in St Mary’s. And then this vision too, was cast aside by my breaking mind. I saw myself alone on a dark night in an old, abandoned cemetery instead, where there was no God, no grace. It was as if I had stepped through that portal like countless times before, only to find that my space with God had moved coordinates and I was trapped in an imitation of it, dark and lonely.

So I kept fleeing, my foot firmly down on the pedal. The road signs told me I was heading to Canterbury. The word ‘Canterbury’ gave me a sliver of hope. Why? I didn’t know. But relieved at the idea of having a destination, I kept driving, fleeing to somewhere now, and not just from.

By the time I reached Canterbury, I knew why I’d headed there. Canterbury was the place of promise, of new beginnings, of new love for me. I bought myself a new life in Canterbury years ago. I was running to that promise, to remind me of all the way I had come.

I was now a little less frantic but I was still fleeing. I had no desire to stop anywhere or see anyone, so I kept driving and soon found myself headed back towards London. ‘London’ on the road signs brought on a little twinge of the old anxiety. The bright lights and busy streets of London have always excited me. But I felt old that night and excitement seemed like a thing for the young, I felt drained at the thought of it.

I drove on, managing to calm my soul into a kind of stupor, like when an intemperate animal has been shot with a tranquilising dart. A fallen, unwilling, winded heap of a soul. When I feel this much edge to my depression, I try to achieve an utterly numb state, a state where no sensory information is allowed to register, no thought is allowed to take root, where everything around becomes white space, until I can get myself into bed and seek oblivion in exhausted sleep. Afterwards, I try to deal with the guilt, shame and fear in a rationalised, systematic fashion which would make any therapist proud. But first, the numbness must be brought in, to stop the internal laceration.

So I forced myself into that state of numbness while I drove. I didn’t dwell on the stream of headlights and backlights flowing through the rolling landscape ahead, red on my side and yellow on the facing side. These things normally give me pleasure and I like feeling the motion of the lights. But that night I didn’t let the faintest pleasure in, or the insanity might have forced its way back in. I drove in that white space, trying to see, hear, feel, think nothing until I got home to bed.

After a while, something tiny, like a little germ wriggling its intrepid way through, did force its way into my conscious mind. The ticking of the indicators as I changed lanes. It was indiscernible background noise at first, but it grew clearer and very real, like the insistent rhythm of a beating heart under a suppressing hand on the chest. With each tick, into the white space came a drop of peace – not pleasure, just peace. (Kind of like my friend Kalyani’s pictures that I like very much – drops of vivid blue mixing and swirling frame by frame in a bowl of water.) The ticking walked in on my numb consciousness, politely and sympathetically, speaking in soft tones, until my mind turned to hear and listen.

It told me to remember all those long drives I had shared with Malcolm. He would talk with wonder of Roman engineering that gave us some of the roads we still drive on. He would tell me his fantastical stories, how wizards fought for power and precocious children changed the destiny of worlds. And always, I would fall asleep, his voice wrapped around me like silk and dreaming of slow dances and warm sunlight creeping in on resolutely dark corners. It told me to remember the true nature of the love that awaited me, patiently, in my home.

When I got home that night, a few hours later, I saw Malcolm at the window, waiting for me. I walked in and sat on the couch. He brought me a glass of wine, said not a word and drew me into his arms. Later, we watched some pretentious post modernist twaddle on TV and laughed together. I had stopped fleeing, at least for this night.

A tale of love, healing and a curse

At the age of 33 my husband was diagnosed with ME/CFS. There is apparently no cure, just ‘managing the condition’. I watch my geriatric young husband stumble through his days in a fog of exhaustion and confusion. Every failed attempt at raising a limp arm or formulating a weak thought burns a welt on my consciousness.

Alternately, I rage at the universe, pray fervently and sometimes beg, curl up into a ball of defeat, turn up my chin defiantly and cope.

In my secret reckonings with God I ask why, if he is the loving father that I believe him to be, would our lives be tossed around in a mighty sea in such a careless way. And always the answer comes back: 'ask yourself what you have done, ask that hungry, all-consuming darkness in you what it has done to your love'.

(PS: Thought of e e cummings’ ‘anyone lived in a pretty how town’ today.)

Once upon an indifferent time,

there was a damsel much damaged.

She sat by the wayside and dreamt of a prince

who would kiss her withered lips.

One evening of brew and kindling touch,

the promised prince arrived on a dream.

After much singing and dancing around trees

the damsel and the prince were wedded in bliss.

There followed the interminable middle,

as happy as tale endings are.

Many moons waked and sunsets dawned,

they lived the fairy part of the tale.

The prince couldn’t stop the falling in love

and he fell into magical healing powers.

The damsel’s deadened damaged selves

grew animated languorously.

Many more moons and sunsets passed.

‘Til once, under a suitably stormy sky,

the damsel stared at a terrible truth:

the prince was slowly crumbling away.

The random curse of a careless witch:

at the highest of his helpless falling his

spirit would leave him, and take with it

all his love and youthful years.

On that fateful stormy night

the damsel’s hungry distress rose

and cried out for love’s sustenance,

while the prince crumbled like paper in flames.

Thus was the dismal denouement:

the prince became as dust in the air;

the damsel was left for all her days

with fragments only half alive.

Night Terrors

3 AM. Another night spent awake and alone, shaking in the memory of my child screaming and pushing me away, recoiling from me. Health Visitor  says this is Night Terrors. What has he seen that has blighted his tender mind so? Thought of Sylvia Plath's poem 'Child' and borrowed heavily from it.

Child,
you scream in fear and recoil from me.
Have I unguarded let you look
into my infinite churning despair?
Did I fail to silence an anguished wail?

Once we imagined meandering tales
in bedtime shadows and warm yellow lights,
we flew with dragons of faraway magic
and soared with the moon on the wing of a giggle.

Am I now the ceiling without stars
That haunts your clear eye?

Poppies at a Cenotaph

By the busy roundabout near my house
stands a tall colourless monument
stubbornly still, as the traffic whirls.

I must have passed it a hundred times;
it tells me the commute's end is near.

Today as I passed the silent stone
I saw at its feet wreaths of poppies,
and I stopped for the first time, transfixed.
Poppies of paper - fragile and brave,
confronting gently the passing day.

The obelisk reached quietly up
into the autumnal English sky,
the inscription of names fading away.
There was courage and sadness in its shape.

I knelt down. The ageing monolith,
paper flowers and fading names
gathered me up into their space.
Someone had seen. And remembered.
Someone had stopped and cried red tears.

(Bexley 2006)

Evenings spent alone indoors

I lie in my tomb, dreading, listening

to half heard conversations and distant footsteps,

I sense living on the other side,

Excluding me, condemning me.

Inside, imprisoned in my mind,

There are eyes, disapproving,

And contorted smiles,

Shadows of utterances,

Unclothing and shaming.

At every scrape at the door,

I perk up hoping for someone to call.

Nobody comes. Nothing happens.

I run from them and long for them.

The failure of anonymity,

The isolation of insanity.

The magic little pills explode in my head

In a ritual of death and resurrection.

Sleep brings on the death fantasy

And the stilling of the cosmic hostility.

But there is always a waking from the death-sleep,

As the chemical fog melts away

And old enemies circle around.

(At University, 2003)

Memory of a young Namboodiri

An ancient house of stone
And a statue of stone.

Incessant chanting in a dead language,

Flames dancing in the dying day,

The kiss of incense on the quietened soul.

He arrives after his ritual bath,

Honest: in wet thin cladding.

Caresses and adorns the stone

In gold, silk and sandalwood paste.

He bathes, feeds and worships the stone.

The young watch and their spirits move,

In tender, exciting, rising piety.

Hands folded, eyes wandering,

Foreheads ablaze with godliness,

The hair on his chest gripping their hearts,

The mysticism of his chanting

And the purity of his lineage

As potent as an aphrodisiac.

They worship the man as much as the stone.

God, Love, Worship and Shoes

On a dull Sunday morning

We gather outside the church doors:

Mothers and fashionable children,

Fathers with bright prams and new babies

(Eye shadows sparkle and lipsticks smile at

Expensive watches and crisp perfumes).

Smiling men in dark suits

Welcome each one personally,

(Their ties shine in their trendiness)

Pat the children and wink at them

Shake hands heartily, laugh grandly,

Exchange kisses and

Predictable jokes.

Each one is welcomed, each one is loved.

So much studied and practised love.

‘Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God;

And every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.

He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.’

The tall walls rise to meet

Hands joined in prayer.

Heaven dangles before hope filled sinners.

My head bowed, I see

The lady next to me has lovely shoes,

Red, that match her suede jacket.

I look at them and admire them;

My shoes aren’t all that bad either.

A tall leather affair that cost a week’s pay.

I must get a dress to match.

God does not speak to me here.

(Bexley 2006)

Grumpy young woman

The alarm shrilled into my warm, comfortable world. The perfect period of thoughtlessness was shattered. I opened my eyes, my senses and my consciousness, shocked by the rudeness of the alarm tone. I had selected it so carefully the previous night from all the tones on my flashy new mobile phone. I chose what I thought was meant to be the most musical, the most soothing of the unimaginative list. It had sounded this morning like a hundred other chunky, rusting, metal-bodied alarm clocks that have huge pegs on them and constant wind-up needs.

Instinctively, I turned to my husband, to grasp at some of the pleasantness that had been killed. He was up already.

‘Jesus! It’s late! Shit! I’ve got so much to do at work,’ he said, as he rushed into the bathroom.

I turned away and tried to bury myself in the bed, desperately searching, and not finding.

* * *

I reached work early and thought that should please The Powers. I smiled at my new boss who was heading a project to which I had been assigned only two days ago. After a long minute, I decided smiling brilliantly at the side of her perfectly shaped and pointedly averted blonde head was not making me feel like a morning person. So I went for some free mud coffee and held the flimsy cup in a sort of cuddle.

* * *

Outside, it started drizzling, then forming puddles that refused to be drained away and then pouring malicious globules. The data on my screen was rushing up at me, waiting to be analysed. I stared at my screen with growing horror. My co-workers sat around, stone cold. Everyone typed away busily, haughtily, perfectly suited to their job descriptions. I turned to ask C for help, but when she replied with a voice treated with contempt and condescension, I gathered my tattered dignity around me and continued to work quietly.

My dignity suffered larger and larger holes in it over the next few hours. Soon, it barely covered my nakedness. My head throbbed with impotence. The thought of unpaid bills hammered nails into my brain, as if into a coffin.

* * *

I only have two university degrees in English. I have not been equipped by that glorious seat of enlightenment to deal with the obscenities of technical jargon and appalling grammar, combined. Tears welled up in my eyes as I read on my screen:

08/11/05 13:00:20: updated by SCAutomate CITTSI
Please advise engineer that:
IFolder is finish and working fine, Outlook is configered, IE is working fine, WLAN is configert, Timezone is set and Unisys is working without problemes. Please send now a technician on side and patch the NB in the correct VLAN. Planned is 57.20.155 and at the moment is the NB in 57.20.144., Please call the WSM to send the QIP after the change. //EKR@WSM

This was what I had been thrown into for the past two days. I felt violated. What chains circumstances trap us in, when simply walking out of a door seems like giving up a lung.

* * *

It was over for the day. I stood at the bus stop, trying to raise my slumped shoulders and bowed head.

Forty five minutes later, standing in the same spot, but now with my heavy coat tightly wrapped around me, my head was still quite low, as were my shoulders.

* * *

I watched the man walking into the fish and chips shop with horrified fascination. He had parked his battered car on the double yellow lines on the bus stop. He didn’t look concerned or apologetic. His unconcern, more than anything else that day, rankled me in my cold, bitter state. I wished I was a witch, so I could make The Bus appear just then, bearing down the road towards the bus stop and the offending car, protesting and threatening with Its great Big Horn. Retribution in Red. Justice. Hellfire and Brimstone. I willed with all the coldness of my body and warmth of my frustration for the miracle to take place.

While I stood and waited for a sign, I watched the man closely. He was of the jiggling variety. I am not sizeist, sexist, faithist or anythingotherist, but he rubbed my sensibilities raw. Clumps of loose flesh jiggled as he moved. Close cropped hair with too much hair gel. Gold watch fastened too tightly on his flabby wrist. Thick gold rings, five of them, and a thick gold bracelet. Tracksuit and white trainers. Pink, stretched face unmarked by any evidence of thought.

In the shop, he squinted at the Menu Board, prominently displayed, with large red letters. For agonising moments, he struggled to decipher the complex text of

MARINO FISH BAR

HADDOCK        £2.45

COD                 £2.45

SCAMPI            £2.15

EXTRA CHIPS   £0.95

This achieved, he turned to place his order with the smile-less, life-less flesh mannequin behind the counter.

The gravity of the scene was broken suddenly by the loud, uncultured blaring of the car’s horn. The man turned, with a gaping smile further mutilating his features. In the car were a brood of children, all clad in uniform tracksuits of pastel shades. In the front seat was their mother. She was faceless in the presence of white material stretched over her great bosom and grand gold hoop earrings. The family shouted/conversed for a few minutes across the span of the surging yellow line, the pulsing bus stop and the path leading to the fish and chips shop. The mannequin waited with programmed indifference while Father discussed with his distant family the difficult choice offered by the menu, then plied his body slowly to the car and back. Again, he tried to place his order. Again, his family’s summons intervened. This went on for some time, excruciating in its slow passage, while I fumed and the mannequin breathed.

I turned my eyes to the top of the road; that horizon where The Bus would appear to smite down these vulgar offenders. The sky gathered in greyness and gloom, but It did not appear.

Eventually, Father completed his slow and ponderous task of fetching greasy articles for the consumption of his beloved family. As he carefully balanced a mass of great grease-splotched packages in his massive arms, his face contorted itself into further pinkness. I watched the horizon and hoped. I believed in justice. Oh, I believed in sweet, sweet justice.

Father waddled forward, Mother’s gold hoop earrings shook and her bosom heaved, little heads bobbed up and down in excitement like birds being fed, the car slowly came to life, stayed, moved forward a little, stayed, moved forward and stayed on the double yellow lines, while fish and chips were portioned out generously. Then it drove away, carrying the subtlety-violators away, unaffected. I was left betrayed, cold, lonely.

* * *

The bus arrived an hour and a half late. I gathered my fragments and boarded it quietly, allowing necessity to defeat my indignation.