[13] Go Hug a Tree

[1] The Day I knew I Would Die

[2] Shutdown     

[3] Not Dying, Apparently     

[4] Eleven Minutes     

[5] Throw Everything At It     

[6] Ivory Tower     

[7] Two Weeks, Twenty Doctors 

[8] I Feel a Little Faint

[9] Dinosaurs     

[10] No-one Even Noticed     

[11] Remember, Remember     

[12] New People, New Places

[13] Go Hug a Tree

In the middle of all these awful feelings, I would have done anything to feel better. The period was probably the busiest I had ever been in terms of trying new things. True to say a lot of them were things I clutched to in a desperate hope they would do some good, or that they could launch me out of this awfulness and in to something more bearable. In addition to walking more steps than I did the previous day, I adhered to all sorts of schemes and plans which promised to cure me in one way or another. Some were complete lunacy, like the time I read that dark chocolate can improve mood, and ate three bars of dark chocolate a day for a week. (No change in demeanour. More feeling sick).

I tried meditation. I’d never been anti-meditation, but neither had I been an advocate. To tell you the truth I’d never really tried it, but I was desperate, and I resolved to enter in to anything I tried with an open mind.

Initially, the meditation was short chunks of time – five or seven minutes of guided quiet-time, and I found pretty quickly that they were a peaceful part of my day. The only peaceful part of my day really; the rest of the time my mind felt so dark and my brain was spinning so fast there wasn’t a moment to spare for anything else. Those precious few minutes became a secret hideout for me, where I could stow myself away and none of the scary anxiety monsters or fearmongers could find me.

Sometimes I would bring myself back in to the room after a meditation period and feel the fear and sadness close in on me right away. Quite often the thought of re-entering that world was unbearable and I would reset the tape and do the exact same session again to stave off the evil. Sometimes it worked, other times the evil had already set up camp in my brain and trying again was futile.

A lot of the things I could have tried, and did try, were quite stigmatic; things practiced by very odd looking people who still used phrases like ‘groovy’, and ‘hip’. But I didn’t really care. I was going to try them and give them my full energy in the hope of re-establishing some balance in my life and maybe even a little freedom from the torment.

Meditation is one example of those things; if I’m honest, I was guilty of some pre-conceived idea of what it would be and the kind of people who practiced it. For me, the process of slowing down and noticing things seemed to work, so I kept doing it with obsessive rigour. I suppose the point I’m getting at is that I didn’t really care how wishy washy something sounded, or what pre-conceived ideas I had about it, I did whatever I could to make myself feel better.

Do whatever feels good. Do what makes you feel better. Try things. If hugging a tree makes you feel better; go hug a tree. If sprinting until you run out of breath makes you feel better; do that. If Jesus, Buddha, or the Prophet Mohammed works for you; talk to them. Shed any preconceived ideas you have about any faith, scheme or potion, and open your mind with the intention of learning about yourself and the world. Some potions will be nothing more than snake oil, some schemes nonsense, and some faiths unfulfilling. But something, something, will work for you, and you don’t have to resign yourself to the fearsome status quo because something seems a little too way out for you. 

[12] New People, New Places

[1] The Day I knew I Would Die

[2] Shutdown     

[3] Not Dying, Apparently     

[4] Eleven Minutes     

[5] Throw Everything At It     

[6] Ivory Tower     

[7] Two Weeks, Twenty Doctors 

[8] I Feel a Little Faint

[9] Dinosaurs     

[10] No-one Even Noticed     

[11] Remember, Remember     

[12] New People, New Places

It’s been a few days since the last post. I’ve been on holiday, and the experience made me think back to a time when going on holiday seemed like the last thing in the world I would be able to do. ‘Me? Go on holiday? Absolutely not. Those kinds of things are for other people. I will be lucky to ever feel brave enough to go on holiday again!’

The thought of going somewhere I hadn’t already been was unbearable. The idea of meeting someone I didn’t already know; excruciating.

It sounds awfully pathetic, I know that. But when you’re in the thick of it there’s nothing pathetic about it. You do have some kind of sense that you’re being a bit wet, but the fear of everything is too big and you can’t concentrate on anything outside of yourself.

We had been to America the summer before all this happened. Three weeks of driving from New York, to Washington DC, and on down to the tip of Florida. They were three of the best weeks I had ever had, sharing this mammoth road trip with my fiancée. But now, paralysed by fear, I couldn’t even go to the Waitrose around the corner from our house, let alone go to another town. Another country was entirely unthinkable.

I couldn’t see how I would ever be able to enjoy new places again. The thought of going somewhere I didn’t know the surroundings, or the people, or the quickest way out was terrifying. I honestly thought I would have to spend the rest of my life going only to places I had already been, and even some of those places were questionable.

I started walking. I had left work by now, and I just started walking. I set up the health app on my phone and started counting steps. We had recently moved to a new area, and I didn’t know my way around at all, but I would set off when my wife left for work at around eight thirty, and just wander by the river and across the park and see how much distance I could cover. Or rather, how little distance I could cover.

I made it five hundred steps on that first day. That was barely past the Waitrose car park and in to the park behind. A woman was coming towards me with a dog, and she scared me. She was tiny. Her dog was tiny. Neither of them was threatening in any way, but that wasn’t how my brain saw it. My brain saw a hundred possible awkward scenarios, and a thousand things which would be devastating. The woman might say hello, and I would be forced to say something back. The dog might rub itself against my leg. The woman might not say hello and I would smile at her like an idiot and she would think I was crazy. I could say hello, but I might be left hanging in some awful unrequited greeting. All manner of terrible things could – and certainly would – happen if I passed this woman. So I turned around before she – or her tiny dog – could get anywhere near me and I went home.

Each day I set the app to count my steps, each day I took ten or twenty more than the previous expedition. All the time, my eyes were slightly funny, and it felt like my brain was on fire; an invisible fire to everyone in the outside world, with flames that flickered and licked the inside of my skull and occasionally convinced me I would die because I was too far from home.

But I forced myself out of the house each morning, and I continued to put one foot in front of the other. Five hundred steps became a thousand. A thousand steps became five thousand. Soon I was walking ten thousand steps before nine thirty each morning. I walked over 250 miles in two months, all along the same, well-trodden parks and river paths around my house. And the whole time I was totally scared to death.

[13] Go Hug a Tree 

[11] Remember, Remember

[1] The Day I knew I Would Die

[2] Shutdown     

[3] Not Dying, Apparently     

[4] Eleven Minutes     

[5] Throw Everything At It     

[6] Ivory Tower     

[7] Two Weeks, Twenty Doctors 

[8] I Feel a Little Faint

[9] Dinosaurs     

[10] No-one Even Noticed     

[11] Remember, Remember

I sank down in to my seat with more anticipation than I had felt in a long time. People began to filter in and sit around me and my wife; some in the rows in front – the VIP rows, that they’d spent £5 more to sit in than I had less than two feet behind them. They did have wide faux leather arm rests though; my arm rests were thin, and covered with a simple blue felt-like material the same as my seat. They would get exactly the same view of the screen as we would, but I bet the superior arm rest gave them a warm feeling inside that I wouldn’t experience.

Spectre was finally here. Truth be told I had descended in to an obsession with all things 007 since Daniel Craig arrived, but much as I would love to pontificate, this isn’t the place for thoughts or theories on the re-booting of the Bond Franchise. Suffice to say I loved Casino Royale, and thought Skyfall was a masterpiece. I even seemed to enjoy Quantum of Solace more than most other people on the planet. So I was excited to settle down in the blue felt seat behind the Very Important People and finally see Spectre in all her glory.

Except as the house lights went down, something else rose up inside me. A sickly feeling. A hot face. A slight sense of claustrophobia. I knew what it was; I was about to come face to face with my own nemesis, my own Oberhauser, or Blofeld, or whoever Christophe Waltz turned out to be.

The trailers continued to play, with their trademark machine-gun cutting, as if the editor felt it necessary to include a small portion of every single camera shot from the entire film. Only all the trailers were silent. Or at least I thought they were. I could hear people shouting and I could even pick out the distinctive voice of the man who says ‘Coming soon…!’ in every trailer for every film ever. But it was all muffled, subdued, as if it was coming from the screen next door, not twenty feet in front of me.

And then it wasn’t subdued any more. Until now, it was as if I was stood at the dead end of a corridor and I could hear a torrent of rushing water somewhere close. Now, it was like that scene in the disaster movie when the water blasts round the corner and our favourite little character is fully doomed; sounds, colours, fear, all came crashing in, battering my head and heart, and I thought I was about to die in the dead end of that corridor.

How wonderful, I thought. It’s not like I’ve been waiting to see this film since the morning I sat like a goggle-eyed child watching the initial press launch. Why did it have to happen now? Why couldn’t it have happened when I was dragged along to watch the fifteenth instalment of the Hunger Games? Then I would have been glad to have something else to deal with.*

Anyway, the hot face continued, the sick-feeling got worse, and the walls of the cinema felt like they were an inch from my face and about to squeeze the life out of me. I remembered vividly the episode in the office almost a year ago, now if I didn’t get out of this cinema right now, I knew I would die.

Except I didn’t die. I couldn’t die just then. I was here to see Spectre, and I’d paid a monstrous £10.99 for my little felt seat. I took deep breaths; I relaxed every part of my body and told myself I would survive. Everything told me that I wouldn’t be alright, I would certainly die any moment, but I kept telling myself I would survive.

‘It’s a panic attack’, I kept saying. You remember these from before. You haven’t died from one before, and you’re not going to die from one now. Besides, there is popcorn, you like popcorn. Stay alive for the popcorn.

As much as I told myself this, and as much as I sucked in the stale oxygen that lingered in Screen 8 of the Vue cinema, I honestly didn’t think I would come out the other side alive. But as the trailers finished and 007’s latest adventure opened to the sound of beating drums in a glorious four and half minute non-stop tracking shot through the streets Mexico, everything faded and melted away. After ten minutes of total unbearable fear and certain death, as quickly as it had come, it had gone. I was back to being a normal, non-panicking human.

And what of Spectre? Well, it was a shame that the majestic opening shot was the best – possibly the only good – part of the film. The most disappointing thing was that my silent and terrifying panic attack in a cinema full of people was the most intense part of the whole evening.

*Before I offend any Katniss Everdeen fans, I should point out that this is said with tongue firmly in cheek. Also, my wife has never dragged me to any of the Hunger Games films. She is in fact a very nice girl who never drags me anywhere horrible. Actual truth – tongue no longer in cheek. Anyway, I’ve not seen any of them, nor have I read the books. But I did see a trailer for the last one and I kind of feel like I’ve missed out… Any thoughts…?

[12] New People, New Places  

[10] No-one Even Noticed

[1] The Day I knew I Would Die

[2] Shutdown     

[3] Not Dying, Apparently     

[4] Eleven Minutes     

[5] Throw Everything At It     

[6] Ivory Tower     

[7] Two Weeks, Twenty Doctors 

[8] I Feel a Little Faint

[9] Dinosaurs     

[10] No-one Even Noticed

‘You’ll be alright, just be brave’.

‘Just get on with it’.

‘It’s just a little bump in the road, you’ll be fine before you know it’.

There were a million other phrases that friends and family would use to tell me it would be ok.

Admittedly some of them were stumbling over their knowledge of English vocabulary in some kind of awkwardness or another, trying to find something to say when they didn’t really know what to say. But honestly most of them just plain didn’t understand. They didn’t understand that I was in pain. Not physical pain, but an odd kind of mental anguish experienced by only a few.

I think that was the problem. None of the people I spoke too had any experience or point of connection to what I was going through. No-one except my wife, who sat with me day after day, night after night, and put up with it first-hand all the time. She couldn’t quite get her head around what was happening or how it felt, but she saw what it was doing to me and understood from there. But no-one else did, if I’m honest.

I felt sad, and lonely, like nothing would ever be enjoyable again, and like I was completely useless at absolutely everything. I couldn’t go to the shops on my own; I don’t know what I thought would happen, but I knew it would be awful and that the world would probably end. I knew I wasn’t capable enough, mentally or physically, to get out of the house and walk anywhere.

Had there been some grotesque abnormality on my face, people would have understood. Had I lost a leg or another limb, they would be able to see the pain I was in. But the reality was I had nothing ‘wrong’. People didn’t know that I could simply be sitting watching television and launch in to some kind of full-blown terror-panic-lunacy episode, where I would be feeling sicker than anyone in the whole world had ever felt in their whole life, and my heart would be beating so fast I thought it was going to explode. People wouldn’t understand how I felt like I was trapped in the burning wreckage of my body and couldn’t escape, or how the terror would rise up in my mind without a moment’s notice and cripple my entire life and my entire future. And I couldn’t explain it to them. I couldn’t find the words to explain just how terrifying it was. I still can’t.

And without any ability to put the fear in to words and make people understand how I was feeling, I was totally lost. It was as if my whole body was burning itself to death from the inside, and without any visible signs on my skin or my face, no-one even noticed.

[11] Remember, Remember