Scaredy Cats

Not in Kansas any more

If there’s one really bloody hideous thing that comes gift-wrapped with the onset of a breakdown it’s this: fear. And not just any fear. I mean the sort of fear that makes sweat run down your back and freeze in the crack of your arse. And once it has set in it isn’t half a bastard to shake off.

It’s only recently struck me that this hairy demon of terror pervaded my every waking – and unconscious – moment when I was in the midst of my nuclear size mental meltdown. There was the fear that I was going mad, that I’d already gone mad, that I was going to be locked up, that Kraken Junior would be taken away, that my family would abandon me, that I’d never recover, that my mates would turn their backs on me, that I would never work again, that I would never contribute to society again, that I would never feel happiness again, that I’d forever be branded a failure as a human being, that the Tories would drag me through the streets and rub my nose in my illness and that the next time I decided to make a cuppa my shrunken brain would fall out of one ear with the pressure of it all. And that’s just when I was awake. When I was asleep the nightmares took over wonderfully efficiently, thank you very much.

This fear was one of the worst things about being on the business end of a breakdown. I continuously felt as if I was one utterance away from being bundled into a hospital van or left to the terrifying earnestness of the Social Services. Each time I was met with support the black-hearted little bastard sitting on my shoulder would whisper fresh threats into my ear.  “The GP will think you’re nuts”, “You think that counsellor will let you walk out of here?”, “That psych’s going to call the police on you”, “You think the therapist will let you see your kid again?”.

Which, oddly, was how the darkness became punctuated with the tiniest shards of joy. I recall telling my counsellor that I was having suicidal thoughts and he received this news with such a stunning lack of shock that I almost inverted myself with relief. He didn’t call in an armed unit, the Social Services or even press any hidden panic buttons. He just said, “OK” and proceeded to chat about it as if we were discussing the scandalous price of chicken breasts in Tesco.

You know those films where the star can see a huge friendly rabbit or some other weird creature but no one else can? The fear is like that. You feel it, live it, eat it and sleep it but no one knows it’s there. Not a single soul. So telling someone that, if they look slightly to your left, they might see that frigging enormous black dog slobbering all over you is one fuck of a leap.

It’s a leap that’s worth, well, leaping though. With every admittance of my mental state the fear has gotten smaller and smaller. It’s still there, the hairy little bastard, but it’s got one of those stupid little Alvin and the Chipmunk voices now, rather than a booming James Earl Jones number. The cold sweat still runs down the crack of my arse from time to time but something I’ve learned keeps me ploughing on though it: all I’ve done is get sick. And now I’m getting better. Perhaps there really is nothing to fear but fear itself after all.