Eye of the Storm
When I was an obnoxious teenager my mother used to tell me that I ‘lived in the eye of the storm’-this is because, on the rare occasion I was calm I would then-pardon my french-lose my shit a few hours later. It is no secret to some that I have a personality like night and day, instead of me, myself and I, there is simply me and I. Me, is an outgoing, bubbly, fun-loving socialholic, do-anything-for-a-laugh riot kind of gal. And I is an introvert who wallows in a pigs trough of self-loathing. Each morning I get up, wash my face and put on the Me mask. Me is who my friends want to see, Me is who works wants to see, Me is who I wish I was. Unfortunately I am not Me. And this is my conundrum.
Every day I circle the drain, I-who is constantly on the brink of being picked up by the sort of emotional mayhem that flattens barns, rips up tree trunks and destroys homes, I am afraid.
So let’s lose the purple poetry and what have you and talk about what’s really going on.
During my first year of University I was diagnosed with GAD, generalised anxiety disorder. At the time I boiled this down to moving to a different country on my own-it was a big change, especially for a eighteen-year old fresh out of high school. In third year my mother was diagnosed with Breast Cancer and things only seemed to get worse. The problem with a lot of mental illnesses, (anxiety disorders included) is that all day you have this little voice in the back of your head that tells you: ‘This is your fault, you did this, you’re not helping, you’re a horrible piece of shit’. And that was third year for me: study, panic attack, study, panic attack, study, panic attack. There was nothing I could do to change the fact that my mother had breast cancer, and because she wanted me to finish my degree, it meant that I couldn’t be there for her. The thing no one tells you about cancer is that it’s painful to watch, to be the spectator, and to know that no matter what you do-there’s nothing you can do. You’re useless. Just like that little voice has been telling you all along. Useless.
At high school, at summer camp, at University I was the a-typical jester-the idiot who would do just about anything for a laugh. Whether that was putting on a Gorilla costume and traipsing through the woods during a game of man-hunt, or dressing up as William Wallace to hand in my dissertation: ‘FREEDOM!’. You know when they say a small guy with a fifty-thousand pound car is compensating for something? Well so are the comedians who tumble down a flight of stairs with a smile on their face. It may have made you laugh, but inside their pulling teeth. It’s really no surprise than those who makes us smile, are usually not smiling themselves-not in the inside anyway. Stephen Fry, Jim Carrey, Mel Gibson, the late Robin Williams, why are there so many actors with mental illness, isn’t it obvious? Because those of us with it spend everyday of our lives acting-trying to act like we actual give a flippin’ crap about whether we keep our house, job, car, faith, life. Trying to pretend like we actually look before we cross the road or don’t hold our breath in the tub-just for kicks and giggles.
Perhaps the worst thing about it forgetting who you were before it, and knowing that you’re slipping. When you’re at work, and there’s a million voices surrounding you, clucking like chickens, and they’re asking you questions, and they want your help and they’re complaining over something so insignificant, so stupid that you want to stand up and yell:
THE MISTAKE YOU MADE WAS THINKING I GAVE A **** IN THE FIRST PLACE.
And your heart won’t stop beating, and you swear that you’re losing feeling in your arm-and god is that how heart attacks happen? and there’s that feeling in your throat, like you’ve shoved a million cotton balls down it and you just can’t catch your breath, and it’s backed up on the freeway-all the emotions, the thoughts and the feelings.
But you’re fine. That’s what you tell them and that’s what you tell yourself.
How are you? I’m fine.
Then comes the eye of the storm. Only it doesn't last minutes, or hours or even weeks, now it comes and goes in months. Months of 'I don't know, I don't care'. A case of severe apathy. So numb that you no longer find pleasure in the simple things, you eat but are not satisfied you smile with straight lips. When the doctor asks you explain your nihilism-it's all meaningless you see.
And now I come to the thing many have waited for, many have asked over the years, the great mystery-solved at last. Why do I change my hair colour so often, why am I addicted to the hairdressers you ask? The answer to that is simple: because I can’t change who I am on the inside-but I can change who I am on the outside. So go ahead, ask me how I am next time my hair goes from black to red.
I’ll tell you I’m fine.
