Author: M

Taking a while to let go

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May 15. 8.32pm

As it got dark, my brother arranged a short motorbike ride (him barefoot, me holding on and laughing at the lack of a shred of protective gear) to the west side of the island so we could watch the pink sun set fire to the clouds over the sea, before returning to the Sangthien stage for his evening set. The lovely Thai waiters settled me at a table under a palm tree in view of the stage and the sea, with an apple mojito full of rapidly melting ice, as my brother joined the owner on stage with his guitar. 

Framed by a huge ornamental heart made of straw, the stage is draped with fairy lights against a backdrop of the evening sea. Gentle waves wash over the beach as they sing chilled tunes including ‘Feeling Good’ and ‘Everything’s Going to be Alright.’ My brother improvises a song about last night’s storm which kept Magan, the owner, awake checking on the electricity all night. ‘Magan is my man, my man’. After a few more relaxing tunes, I notice a group of young men gathering at one end of the restaurant. A recording of a deep voice (my brother’s with special effects) announces that it is time to turn off the lights for the start of the Fire Show. The leisurely lounge music gives way to a fiery display in which a crew of glorious grinning topless young Cambodians twirl fire around their beautiful bodies to a banging Prodigy-based soundtrack for which my brother provides the energetic drums. The acrobatic young men fling fireballs into the darkness, twirl flaming hoops around themselves, and spin musical rings of light around the restaurant.

They are fucking amazing. I’m torn between trying to capture it on video and experiencing the utter beauty and energy that is so mesmerising and intoxicating that I’m crying with sheer love and joy for it as the pounding bass and drumbeat pulse through my whole being.

The expert waiters dodge the flames as they deliver cocktails and Kai curries to the many guests; a woman with a baby walks through the display nonchalantly.

My brother on the drums shouts to me – ‘They will take a photo of you!’

‘What?!’

‘With the fire, they’ll come to you!’

And sure enough, one glorious fire boy is suddenly spinning a ring of fire right around my face and someone is taking photos up close. 

Zero risk assessments, I absolutely love it. The finale is a series of immense Catherine wheel effects of spinning sprays of sparks that fill the beach below the bar. The energy and beauty is intoxicating and I am brim full of love and gratitude as I settle back at my table with another mojito for the rest of the night. 

In a few hours in Melksham they will choose their new mayor. I wish for this much bliss and love and peace to be in the room when they vote, but I realise I am lucky enough to have bought my ticket out of it, and find all the love of a gorgeous sunny Thai beach resort, a few thousand miles away from the people I care about in Melksham. I know the stress and fear and confusion of it all and I love how far away I am, but sad for those who I love that are still troubled by it. 

I wish I could give everyone a week on this beach, with this deliriously healing and beautiful warm breeze. It is like anger and fear can’t even exist here, the purpose of the whole island is pure bliss. Everyone here is either choosing peace or providing peace. The purpose and values of everyone here is beauty, love, peace and leisure. 

Leisure. Recreation. Re-creation. It takes a few days to undo the heavy complex tangly web of duties, jobs and fears that you might arrive with, but the complete gorgeousness of the place gently teases all that out of you until you are clean and peaceful and your biggest priority is to sit with your feet in the clear lapping water until the sun sinks low enough that it’s time to move on to the next peaceful beautiful place. 

We had our family zoom last night, our weekly intercontinental gathering which this time included the hilarious moment in which Thailand brother, in his separate little zoom box on the screen as always, suddenly knocked on my door and popped into my zoom screen. Oh how we laughed. And then someone noticed my haircut and I said, ‘I know, I’ve got rid of that long boring frumpy look!’ London brother apologised for always calling me frumpy. I said, ‘Well I was, I chose frumpy and boring and safe and good. That was my story.’

‘Yeah you need to work out your new story now.’

‘Maybe it’s scary because your story is actually something absolutely amazing.’

‘You know sometimes we hide our lights because we think it will upset someone.’

‘Oh yeah, you know that quote – our greatest fear is not that we’re rubbish, is that we’re absolutely amazing or something.’

‘Exactly.’

New York brother said, ‘I like to think that I should live each day like I time travelled back in time to change something for the better. You don’t know what it is, but you know you have to do something to make the future better.’

‘Ooh nice.’

Right now I can’t imagine doing anything important, I’m just loving sitting still for a while.

My Thailand brother outlined how he came up with his priorities. For 30 days he meditated for an hour and then wrote down fifteen dreams. Crazy, brave, beautiful uninhibited dreams. Which included things like ‘Own a lion’ or ‘Speak 100 languages.’ At the end of the month, he looked at every day’s list, and although it kept changing, there were some constant themes. And from that he found his five pillars – Music, Love, Friends, Travel and Languages. And then it became clear. If any activity, person, conversation or task isn’t in service of one of these, then it is not a good use of his time. And he won’t do it.

I like that. To be so clear what is important to you that you can easily say no to what is not.

May 16. 7.39am

Thank you for my speech to text facility so I can write while walking along the main road that runs all the way along the skinny island of Ko Samet. In an attempt to get my body onto Thailand time I said goodnight to my brother at midnight and settled down to sleep. I thought that if I happened to be awake at 1am I might tune into the Town Council meeting just to see who was going to be mayor this year. I’m sure it wasn’t a good idea to dip back into my old job and I did feel a ridiculous surge of fear as the opening public session involved the usual criticism – some of it directed to the tasks that were dropped when I left. But I will take this as a benchmark of improvement that I quickly got over it and saw the value in the feedback being articulately but angrily levelled at the council.

I’m glad I was there for the next bit in which the mayor gave a lovely speech about his first year in office and all the brilliant colleagues who had made it good. Because I was on my own with it all I sent a few messages to people in Melksham who might be watching the meeting too, and immediately felt ridiculous to need to reach out from thousands of miles away just to remind people I still care and hope that they still care about me. So I accept that the whole letting go of Melksham project of this adventure is a gentle gradual untangling.

The thing that is ironic about this trip to Thailand is that it is directly because of my recent challenges in Melksham that I am here. My current wander on this road through the magic morning jungle is in response to and rejection of my previous job in Melksham. (Let’s not forget it is also paid for by my savings that I earned from that job). It is because of that place of confusion, stress and obligation that I found the strength to depart to this place of tranquillity, emptiness and peace. 

So I am grateful for the unhappiness and inauthenticity which provided enough contrast to push me to seek the happiness and truth that lands me in a tropical piece of paradise the other side of the world.

Lessons for today:

*Bring Mosquito spray for goodness sake woman. 

*When you pop on to the beach to film the fire show from a clever sideways angle, you need to stand WAY back because those sparks go about 30 metres along the beach. 

*Veggie pad Thai has eggs in it so you will displease the vegan gods with that order. 

*But chicken coconut soup is completely vegan if you ask for it without the chicken (mai kai) 

*If you are in a cabin with huge windows overlooking the main path, remember to close the curtains before taking a shower. Or you will emerge all refreshed and grinning, and suddenly be aware of your unrequested exposure, and have to hurriedly pull the curtains closed. 

*If you hurriedly pull the curtains closed in a Sangthian Resort cabin with too much force, they will fall apart and you will be left with a crumpled pile of curtain and rail that, while hilarious, offers little privacy from the aforementioned  immense windows. 

* That quote I was trying to remember is from Marianne Williamson:

‘Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? … Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you…And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Ko Samet

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May 14. 20.52 Thai time.

We have arrived. Ko Samet is the tropical magical chilled out little piece of wonderland that my little brother has spent years travelling to discover, and I just plonk right into it from rainy England. 

And after a two hour drive from Bangkok, a half hour leisurely sunset boat ride (surrounded by stacks of cabbages, a crumpled tarpaulin and a pile of passenger bags), followed by a very bumpy taxi jeep ride – from the winding bustling scooter filled streets of the main bit of Ko Samet, to the dark jungly bit dense with insect sounds and the clang of speedbumps – we arrived at this gorgeous Sangthian beach resort, where my brother quickly dropped my stuff at his cabin, put my oat milk and tofu in the fridge, and we came down to the beach bar where he immediately jumped on stage with his guitar to join the owner, Magan, and the other performers there. 

And so I sit on my beanbag chair, at a low table, with a huge freshly opened coconut on a plate with a straw, as the most delicious warm breeze swishes over the crowds of happy drinking people at rows of tables under fairy lights and palm trees with a soundtrack provided by my brother and his friend who owns the place. 

It’s too fucking beautiful. 

May 15.

I slept. 

Like 10 hours. Feel all wierd now. Very peaceful. Maybe too peaceful. On a little walk along the beach on my own this morning I realised I was sad.

Sad for the people I love who aren’t here. Who don’t get to share this. I keep taking photos – people asked me to – but I’m reluctant to remind everyone they aren’t here. The stunning sunshine and warm breeze, with the constant sound of gentle turquoise waves on soft white sand, the tropical birds in these jungle trees, the strings of yellow blossom hanging over the path, orange petals dotted around the sand, purple flowers bobbing over the flagstones, it’s all just too beautiful. Why would I want to show people in England that they don’t have this?

And so I spent a very chill day leisurely meandering around the various resorts along this East half of the island, some with my brother, some on my own. A little concrete path winds through the chalets, bars and restaurants of the beach, nestled between pink blossomed trees and palm trees and statues and mini temples and sun loungers and signs about respecting nature and leaving only footprints. A plate of vegetarian Pad Thai accompanied one beach, a coffee was enjoyed on another, and all with this unreal beautiful warm breeze off the pristine turquoise sea lapping at the beaches of all these little oases of hospitality and smiling Thai people. I spent one hour sitting on a rock with my feet in the ridiculously warm water, another hour on a bench watching the waves, and a couple of hours talking with my brother about the nature of reality. 

As I made a heart out of the orange petals on the ground, he sat on a rock gently asking me to explore how much of what I think is real is simply my thoughts, and how many of my thoughts are my own? ‘Thoughts happen to us the way smells happen. They just arrive and we decide how to respond. We live on the idea that I am my thoughts, but what if there is no thinker?’

Every now and then I get a glimpse of his metaphysical mind, of the sense of emptiness and simplicity with which his life is a magical experience of unfettered unpretending authenticity. It’s nice to be near it and get snippets of it but I am far from living into it.

For now let me settle for an acceptance of the fact that life is bigger and lovelier than I have let mine be, that the nature of existence could be something higher and more profound than I have been worrying about, and that if I sit still and listen to myself long enough I might get in touch with something that provides even the slightest hint of a direction to clarity and peace.

What I think you think I am

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7.42 UK time (22.43 Abu Dhabi) 

I have been exploring the options on my inflight screen and discovered that next to the map icon you also have the ‘Mecca Pointer’ which shows you the direction and distance to the Holy Land, and when your next prayer time is. There is also a tab for the ‘Full recitation of all the verses of the Holy Quran,’ which is indeed a delicious sounding recitation in Arabic. It’s several hours long though so for my cultural enlightenment I choose from the music range, a friendly looking man with a headdress and a sitar called Abadi Aljohar. Lovely voice, lots of jingly bells and sitar strumming, like the soundtrack for the bit of an action film where they land in Egypt.

Or the soundtrack for my flight in which I absorb the wisdom of Jay Shetty. He smiles at me with excellent teeth and green eyes from the cover of the book and tells me that he will explain how I can, one: Let go, two: Grow and three: give. 

It is quickly apparent that he is exactly the travel companion I need on this exploration as he starts off by quoting Charles Horton Cooley’s synopsis of the problem of identity: ‘I am not what I think I am, and I am not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am.’ 

Well no wonder it’s so hard. 

I have avoided the sentence because it’s so cliche, but I really am on a quest to find myself. I need to find out who I am when I’m not encased in the patterns of destructive behaviour that have turned me into a person I don’t think is actually me, and who has become exhausted, depleted and disillusioned with herself. The whole church doctrine of ‘live for the sake of others’ is one I didn’t let go of, to an unhealthy extent that manifests as self destructive workaholism. How much of it is me being a kind and caring person and how much is it a desperate need to be approved of as the good girl? Some untangling to do. And maybe some people to disappoint. 

‘It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’ s life with perfection’. Bhagvad gita. Nice. P3.

After an introduction on the importance of knowing what your values are, Mr Shetty says something that I think is the motto for my adventure: ‘When we tune out the opinions, expectations and obligations of the world around us, we begin to hear ourselves.’

21.14. Descending into Abu Dhabi. They play us adverts for how great the city is. A child nearby screams in the pain were all feeling as our ears suffer the altitude change. Ow. Jesus ow.

May 13. 10am. Abu Dhabi airport is a shiny buzzing place. Very international, very 24 /7. At 3am it was quiet – ladies polishing shelves with spot-lit handbags, Costa workers slouching on their phones, bins being emptied – but still fully open. The departure boards showed flights right through the night. In among all the western commercial glitz, there are the many prayer rooms, the red crescent charity collection box, and the robes. Elegant men with neatly trimmed beards, in flowing down to the ground white robes, with perfectly swished headscarves held in place with a black band. Beautiful. And the stunning women, gliding elegantly through the duty free, full body black robes flowing silently, head dress nearly framing perfectly made up faces. 

1128. I love watching the terrain below. You get a real sense of the immensity of the world. There are rugged grey and brown mountains, with wildly meandering rivers outlining the contours, and then nestled in safe little alcoves, near the rivers, are clusters of tiny little white buildings. Humans have explored and settled wherever they can, like insects building their colonies. 

As we took off, the impressive geometric rows of Abu Dhabi – with shiny great buildings along ruler straight roads and perfectly arced crescents – spread out to the edge of the city, and then there was just vast dusty desert. Humans have built a stunning congregation of wealth and opulence in the middle of this sparse and sun-bleached terrain, which would have started as a simple settlement millenia ago, when some wandering tribe decided it was a good spot to pitch their tents. The essay on the problem of overpopulation is for another time, but for now the perspective up here, of seeing how the story of humanity and our need for survival and connection is helpful in reminding me of my place in it all. If I had been born here I would have different values, priorities, and fears. And my unique set of personality bits and bobs arrived because of who I was surrounded by, the church doctrine I was infused with, as well as the geography of the Wiltshire countryside and how our settlements grew up around those rivers and hills just like the middle eastern children growing up in those white buildings 40,000 feet below me.  Here I am, the result of civilisations growing and reproducing and popping out another human who is wired for connection and driven by the fear of loosing it. My whole identity is based around an urgent need to keep connected, that I only deserve if I please everyone around me, even the ones I don’t like. Because the fear of disconnection is irrationally terrifying for a very powerful part of my brain. 

Is this the bit where I start to talk about where it all went wrong in Melksham? Perhaps that story isn’t ready to be told yet.

7.15pm. Half an hour till Bangkok. If you don’t arrange your own sleep on a plane, sleep will grab you suddenly and will really hurt your neck in the process. With not even a jumper to support my head, I’ve slept a head bobbing hour or two full of confusing dreams. Snippets of colleagues, countries and quests. And in my last few minutes I grab a bit of Jay Shetty. He’s very keen to get me to understand my values, and suggests that every time I’ve done something I regret, it’s because it wasn’t aligned with my values. I haven’t fully pinpointed what they are now but I can begin to work out what they’re not, by what I regret. And I regret the things that I did because someone else wanted me to and my need to please them was greater than my own sense of self and value. He says in order to find out what they are, look at what you admire in others. This is great homework as I have just written out a stash of thank you cards outlining the qualities of the people I admire. 

Strength, integrity, stability, compassion, care, wisdom, authenticity. 

I didn’t realise as I was scribbling out lovely words that these are the values of the people I choose to spend time with, and the qualities I wish I had more of. The qualities that hopefully this trip will help to identify and strengthen.

Which is a good thought to hold onto as we start the descent into Bangkok.

21 days away

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May 12, 5.20pm UK time.

I’m somewhere over some snowy mountains between London and Abu Dhabi. My hangover headache is still lingering and the buzzy happiness of getting my plane has worn off now into just tiredness, but even though I have three seats to myself on this half empty Etihad flight, the sleep doesn’t arrive.

As I wandered through the departure lounge my London brother called for a goodbye chat and asked, ‘What are your goals for this trip?’

‘Good question,’ I said. ‘It’s pretty much to get strong and clear in my head, to recover I guess, and come back brave enough to make some clean decisions about what next.’

‘Good.’ he said. ‘I think you need to stop doing what everyone else wants.’

‘Yeah I know. That’s like, my whole problem.’

‘People who keep trying to keep everyone happy end up as….’ 

‘Victims,’ I said. ‘I know. I need a spine really.’

So maybe this is my quest to grow a new spine. I don’t even know what that will look like. All my strength has been directed towards what everyone else wants and I dont know what it feels like to stand in the integrity and strength of my own spine. The strongest thing I have done was said no to my job. Because it was all wrong for me. Still doesn’t mean I know what is right though.

Mum phoned as well, with some chat about times and stopovers and how lovely it will be to see my Thailand brother and my New Zealand brother. When she said goodbye she said, ‘Well I’ll be thinking of you. I won’t pray for you, but I’ll think of you.’ 

‘Oh you can pray for me mum, I’m happy to have your prayers, just, not those weird church people.’ 

‘OK love.’ 

So with my mum’s prayers – and an Islamic journey prayer that Etihad Airways offered us all just before the safety video – plus a phone full of messages of love and support and godspeed, I embark on this little adventure. 

I’m aware that having the space, money, time and brothers to enable such a trip is a complete luxury, but here goes the start of my savings for a house. I’ll have no mortgage for a long time, and no kids at any time, so I get to adventure away my savings in exchange for my mental wellbeing.

Heathrow Terminal 4 has about nine WHSmiths in it, and realising that – on a journey where I will spend a combined 53 hours in airports or planes – I haven’t brought a book, I wondered if one would jump off the shelf at me. Books on leadership, management, clever business, smart thinking…. no not this time. It’s not time to try to fix broken systems anymore. A bright orange ‘the art of not giving a fuck’ looked like it was going to be caught. Yes I like the idea, but it feels like the title is doing all the heavy lifting. Instead, in my search for peace and balance, I have found ‘Think Like a Monk’ by Jay Shetty, which contains the promise that it will ‘shift your focus from self image to self esteem’ which feels like what I need right now. So much of my life is built around what everyone needs me to be, and I have to let go of that and work out who I am without all the people pleasing pointlessness. I learned early on as a child in the Church that my safety and value was derived by how much I kept everyone else happy, so I can see where the pattern comes from and why it’s so deeply entangled in my brain.

Talking to Teresa the other day, I said, ‘You know, I am clearly not a fan of Rev Moon, but he’s the reason I exist, and all my siblings, and right now the fact that I can go to Thailand and new Zealand, I mean, that’s cos I have brothers there because my mum had loads of kids cos Rev Moon said to. So, like, thanks.’ 

The not great and the wonderful can be all a bit entwined. 

Lessons for today:

* The new Elizabeth line will take you free from the Heathrow Central bus station to terminal 4, but there’s a half hour wait that needs to be factored in.

* Do have a piss up with people you love in Melksham but maybe not the night before you have to get yourself to Heathrow at 7am.

* Do bring a water bottle. Even though you can’t bring a full bottle through security, you can drink it and then fill it right back up on the other side you silly woman.

*Do bring a few Berocca tablets. 

*There is a postbox in the departure lounge but you need to know the address you’re posting to. 

*Stop picking up your phone during the flight to check for messages. There are none. 

Grateful for:

Sue and Colin at the bus stop this morning, baffling the sleepy travellers with a flamboyant display of flag waving and frivolity that my partner had to join in with – before his coffee. 

The hug from my love like he didn’t want to let me go this morning. 

The lovely people who gathered in the pub across the night, and the card that everyone signed for me, and the 2000 Thai bobbin notes in the envelope. Wow. Thank you. 

Gloria for being an absolute angel of beauty and love, buying so many rounds and sharing plates and vegan snacks.

The many messages and texts today to make sure I’d got the bus and wishing me well

My love for letting me borrow his fluffy black hoodie as we were leaving the house and I realised I’d probably need it for the plane. I really do and it’s so snuggly. 

Leanne at Glow hairdressers for my surprisingly excellent new haircut. As she chopped off great handfuls two days ago, I grinned and said I haven’t had it this short since I was a teenager. 

When I was 17 I went to America to save the world. All my passion, energy and bravery was totally exploited by the Moonies, but I had it. It was real. It was me. I need to find that same strength and use it for what I want now instead.

Penultimate

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There is a lot to say.

In 24 hours I will be unemployed.

This comes as a result of a fascinating journey of emotional strength and weakness, a serious of bizarrely complex events and situations, and a chaotic kaleidoscope of emotions that I aspire to organise into a coherent set of articulate conclusions in the next few weeks.

For now let me just hold onto this moment. The last strange day of ‘belonging’ to something that has taught me a whole world of things about humanity, our organisations, and myself, including my breaking point, which is, what a surprise, not dissimilar from previous breaking points.

I now have some time, some imminent distance, some access to wisdom and a powerful incentive to explore it all in order to find the strength and clarity to not do this to myself again.

Parkrun

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It is life-changingly good.

My job started getting stressful and I could feel anxiety crawling back around my skull as autumn approached so I started running again. Just a quick fifteen minutes off into the countryside and back before work. Nice. I mentioned it to a colleague who said he’d been meaning to join parkrun. Really? I’ll go if you’ll go. This weekend? Why not!

The first one destroyed us both. I was nervous, not sure where to go, what to wear, how it worked, what the barcode was for, but after a few minutes in that jogging crowd of lycra and leggings, I felt at home. Just keep running, and if it hurts, just keep walking.

I had expected pain, breathlessness, exhaustion, mud. What I had not expected was a cheerful marshal in high viz, full of applause, encouragement and smiles at every corner of the route.

Keep going! Great job! Nice pace!

Thank you, I gasped back, confused, and then grinning. How absolutely awesome.

My colleague was miles ahead, he passed me on his return lap, making great progress, shouting cheerfully ‘I’m in agony!’ as he passed.

I slowed down when it started hurting, watching rainbow leggings and ‘250 runs’ T shirts overtake me.

As I approached the final bend, with that last uphill back into the park, I could hear the cheers already up ahead. Strangers applauding and welcoming me to the finish as I arrived bewildered, broken and breathless, but smiling. My colleague and I were both doubled over in pain as we stumbled back to town, regretting the lack of watm up, but full of grinning elation at achieving 5k on a Saturday morning.

That was six weeks ago. Since then I have beaten my personal best (almost) every time, donned purple wig and witch hat for the Halloween event, gone running three or four mornings a week, and noticed an incredible improvement in my energy, focus and overall mood. Anxiety is right down, happiness is much higher, and I have that smug sense of acheivement at the start of most days.

So, to pay back my gratitude for the fact that we have an amazing parkrun in Melksham, today I offered to volunteer as a marshal. And if I thought running made me happy, then without a doubt, smiling, encouraging and clapping for 145 strangers made me even happier.

So that all day I have been giggly and jovial. Chatty even. Confident, a bit. Calm, in my soul. And at bedtime I curl up to sleep on a night when my love is working nightshifts, and instead of the sleep hypnotherapy or weighted blanket support I needed to sleep on my own last year, I am now unable to sleep because I’m simply giggling into my pillow, brim full of love and happiness for the world, and all my gorgeous beautiful people I get to share it with.

Thank you parkrun, thank you volunteers who make it happen, thank you for the perfect mix of social, physical and mental reward that provides an intoxicating and addictive cocktail of endorphins, dopamine, oxytocin and seratonin.

As we stood in our high viz at the bridge today, cheering on the runners, I was saying to my marshal buddy that I’m sure the NHS must love parkrun, at which point my lovely doctor – who prescribed me anti- anxiety meds last year – came running round the corner in glorious green and black leggings, smiling and saying ‘thank you marshals!’ in an out breath, as she sailed off to the finish.

I flipping love it. I absolutely recommend it.

Thank you.

Night sweats

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So they are back. Or they were back last night. Let’s not make this a regular thing please.

I’m more and more convinced that work is keeping the anxiety at bay. I had a huge deadline at work to get a few reports done, so I spent all last week and most of the weekend totally lost in the intricacies and complexities of community issues. I loved it, grappling with and arranging the information into coherent conclusions, in neatly colour coded tables with carefully cropped illustrations. Loved it. Focused, sharp, on a roll.

Finished at 5pm yesterday. Felt a bit weak and headachy, of course, so I curled up on the sofa with my love for a lazy evening. Having kissed him goodbye for his night shift, I settled in for an early night, but realised I was feeling a bit wierd, some sort of uneasy. So I double checked the doors and appliances, switched off everything I could, and put some nighttime music on to get to sleep. Which was fine. Until 1am, when I was suddenly wide awake with a cough, which triggered the requisite instant spiral into anxiety.

Really? I thought. Is this Coronaphobia again? From one cough? The surge of heat was the same, the sweating burn all down my back.

Seriously? What do you need, body? I haven’t got time for this, I need to be up at 6. Why so flipping hot all of a sudden? You want one layer less? How’s that? Duvet off, weighted blanket on, what combination do you need please?

I drank some water, cooled down a bit, rearranged my pillows, put the nice delicate sleep music back on and instructed my errant limbic system to let me sleep now please. But by then my stomach had joined in.

Ooh, we’re doing anxiety?

No we’re not, we’re doing sleep!

Well I think you’ll find…

Fine! To the bathroom then. Impressively quick response there, guts.

I know right?! (My guts were pleased with their result.) By which time I was shivering again.

I turned the fairly lights on – if I’m going to be up all night I’ll have pretty lights thank you – and managed to arrange just the right configuration of duvet, hot water bottle and pyjama sleeves to reach a manageable temperature, and did a search for the soporific sound of Mr Kabat Zin on YouTube.

I got back to sleep eventually, allowed myself a lie in till 7, but what a surprise, I was trembly, weak and wobbly all day. Made it to midday, checked my reports were on the website – all seven of them – and asked for the rest of the day off.

And now I sit here and look at my anxiety. What exactly are you trying to achieve please? I’ve stopped taking you seriously because I know your tricks now. You only show up at night, when I’m on my own. You attach yourself to a cough, which is a sneaky way of making me think you’re here for something else, and you never, ever show up when I’m at work. Even during the crippling debilitation of my worst ever full week of wretching panic attacks, my body calmed itself enough for the few hours I was at work, before resuming in the form of violent shakes of breathless terror as soon as it got dark.

It’s like a child smearing jam all over the table while I’m right there in the kitchen. No don’t do that, I say, exasperated. And the child just grins and keeps doing it. No, you need to stop it, now! The kid shakes her head, giggling, knowing she can get away with it because Daddy’s not here.

I know what you do, anxiety. You wait till I’m on my own, till I’m not doing anything important – you wouldn’t dare interrupt my actual job – and you flood my body with those pesky messages of fear when you know I’ll have to listen to them. Well I’m telling you now, little girl. You can stop it right now and clean up this mess because I don’t have time for this tonight.

Here we are at bedtime again. I’m ready with the music, fairy lights, a range of blanket options and my cosy hot water bottle. I’m ready to look her in the eyes and say, not tonight love. I have not got time for your games tonight. I’ll take you for a walk tomorrow before work, so if you want that very precious bit of outdoors time, you need to let me sleep now.

Alright?

Thank you.

7.20am. I slept so well. But woke up now with that familiar full body exhaustion. I remember this, once I stave off anxiety there’s three days of feeling utterly wiped out. This is how I wasted so much of last year. Several days filling the darkness with TV until the fear went away, then a few more days of either knocked out fast asleep, or struggling to find the energy just to sit up. It will pass.

But what I came here to say was that I had a dream just now. I have a recurring dream of screaming at church members. Usually for nothing, usually they don’t pay attention, usually I immediately regret it. This morning’s dream was similar: I was at a church event, and our martial arts teacher was training us for a special project which I discovered was to euthenase his wife. She was fine with it and it was all out of love, he explained. But I was furious. I screamed at him and the class the truth, adding, ‘How dare you teach these 12 year olds these little karate chops to get them to do something that they will regret for the rest of their lives?! What the actual F***!’ The teacher stood there apologetically, and the kids nodded and wandered off.

This is different from the usual dream because they listened to me. I was coherent and correct, and I stopped the bad thing from happening.

In the next scene I was part of a ballet production similar to Swan Lake, in which I was one of a cluster of black swans that gather in a circle, and as the music – ‘It must have been love’ – reached its key changing chorus, we all lay down, fanned out, to reveal the emergence of the glorious, beautiful black swan. She was standing on a table (it was an amateur production) in her exquisite plumage of black and deep teal, an emblem of immense power and triumph. I was grinning with the utter bliss of being part of this spectacular moment, looking up at my fellow swan shimmering in her aura of beauty and elegance, surrounded by the love and support of her circle of Swan sisters.

So what’s that about?

I’d like to think it’s some breakthrough in my subconscious battle with my fears, complete with some closure about the church, combined with bits of TV from last night, but either way, I need to get up now if I want to try to go for a walk before work.

Day 19: Nature

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How lucky that we’re in Wiltshire, where bits of gorgeous green countryside are never more than a ten minute walk away.

I hadn’t realised, until I spent a year in a second floor flat, just how much I require the outdoors. I’m sure all of us do, but maybe, for those of us that live in the countryside, it’s just a part of our lives enough that we don’t realise how essential it is until it’s gone. Until we’re told to work from home and stay indoors and ration our outdoors time. I don’t know if the lack of a garden last year contributed to the anxiety, but the panic attacks did start three months into my gardenlessness.

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