An exploration of my anxiety

Lock down is a funny thing, it makes you look inside yourself and see parts of yourself that you have otherwise avoided……I have to admit this is not fun, and to see the ugly side of my personality is certainly not ……… pretty.

I vaguely remember a time when I was a positive person and I actually enjoyed life and other people’s company. I always wanted to go out socializing and do new things, I loved my job and I would do anything to help anyone. Now I find myself looking for any exit route out of my own head and most social situations ….an almost impossible task.

If you have known me in the last 10 years I have to say I am sorry! It could be for being flakey, we may not have got along, we may have lost touch…… there are any number of things this could be, but please believe me when I say this, I am so very sorry!

I don’t know when it happened, or if it happened over a long period of time but there is this ball of negative energy I can feel in my stomach, it is heavy and unyielding, and it is always there. I think about it 24 hours a day, I wake up and my first thought is that I am a bad person, I think about every little comment and interaction that I have had, and I worry what effect my actions and words have had.

When did I get so self-centered? was I not quite a well-rounded individual at some time or other! I know I was a lot easier to be around, some people may have used the word fun…...crazy thinking back to that time…...I want to know that girl again.

I have had a privileged life, and this is highlighted more in light of what is going on in the world. I grew up with my mum, step-dad and brother, we always had food on the table and a roof over our heads, yes we didn’t go on many family holidays but let’s remember that that is a luxury not a necessity, but as a child I really didn’t have it that bad, which makes me wonder where this all started.

The first major impact on my life was my parents splitting up when I was an infant, I don’t remember it, but I was moved away from my extended family and taken up north away from them. It wasn’t all bad, I was really young so I only remember fragments of this, and I don’t remember my mum and dad being together so really how can you miss what you have never really had. But maybe that’s it, maybe it is the extended family unit that I feel that I missed out on.

Both of my grandparents have passed away now and with each passing I felt like a voyeur of my family’s grief. I didn’t get to see them every week when I was growing up like my cousins did, as we lived 160 miles away. When I was growing up, I didn’t think that I missed it, again how can you miss something you haven’t had. However, looking back on it now and seeing the relationships that my friends and my cousins had/have with their grandparents, aunties, uncles and cousins - I really do feel that I missed out. Just seeing the level of closeness that they had is heartwarming, but it is also heartbreaking as I will never have that.

Another defining incident was my house did blow up with myself and my brother inside it, which surely had a lasting impact on us…..we were in first school at the time and it was my step brother and his friend that did it….crazy I know!

It was a Saturday night, I think around September time my parents were out and their weekly dalliance to our local pub, my 16/17 year old step brother was in charge as always when they went out…the pub was literally a 10 minute walk from our house…….what could go wrong!!

Well everything, this night was quickly to become a defining night in both mine and my brother’s life. It will go on to affect us and manifest itself in our lives in a variety of different ways, both of us not talking to the one other person that could understand the trauma of that night, like a silent understanding between us just put it in a box and hope it doesn’t come back out.

So, what happened? I remember it so vividly earlier on in the evening I was playing outside with my friends when I saw Paul* climbing up the front of my house to get into Kevin’s* room. Now you see Kevin’s* room was at the front on the house with his bedroom window just above the front door, so everyone outside of the house could see what was happening, but to my parents in the living room they were none the wiser of the young boy scaling the front of our house with a bag full of lighter fluid. To make things easier for the would be Spiderman our front garden had a fence around it with a gate just off the front door, making the perfect stepping stone to the small ledge above the front door which was about 6 inches wide, that it led itself nicely into Kevin’s bedroom.

It was out of the ordinary to see Paul* climbing up the front of my house to get into Kevin’s* room, usually he would just go through the house like any normal person, but to be honest I didn’t think much of it, I was outside playing and to be completely frank I didn’t really like either of them so I paid it little mind.

After my parents left to go out that night, Kevin’s* friends piled into our house, there was nothing unusual about this, Saturday night, free house part from your younger stepbrother and sister of course that was going to happen. So, in came Paul*, Paul’s* sister Sharon* and her friend Chrissy*.

They all came through the kitchen and straight up to Kevin’s* room ignoring us, I was ok with this, but my brother really wanted to hang out with them and be cool, but Kevin told him to stay downstairs. We passed the time by playing ‘Moving target’ on the sofa, I had to jump along it trying not to get hit by the pillow that was being violently thrown at me. Suddenly I hear my name being called by Paul* asking me to come upstairs, I was standing at the bottom of the stairs asking why they wanted me up their …..I didn’t want to go up, when Kevin* comes out the bathroom and tells me to stay downstairs and he glares at Paul*, I have to be grateful to Kevin for that.

My brother is then called up and sent back down….I don’t know to this day what happened when he was up there, but I do know he wasn’t up there very long. 999 what’s your emergency theme tune has just started playing….it’s quite dramatic…when I hear an almighty BANG!!!!! I jump up in a panic and run to the unlocked back door, when I get there I remember that my mum always told me that if there was an emergency go out the front door, by the time I am running back towards the front door my brother is at the door unlocking it and people are running downstairs screaming and shouting, I am pushed back into the living room in their haste to get out, by who I don’t remember but it was one of the guys from upstairs.

I don’t remember getting out of the house, what I do remember is that everyone was out in the street looking at my house, Kevin* was screaming that he needed help, that he was burning, people were running in to it trying to retrieve whoever was stuck upstairs. My neighbor was so brave going into the house to find what I now know to be the 2 girls. I couldn’t find my brother I didn’t know where he was, but I did know that he got out safely before me. I remember being in the middle of the street in my PJ’s all alone watching the pandemonium feeling so small and frightened with no one there who wanted to help me.

I was just an innocent little girl who didn’t know what was going on around her and was completely overwhelmed by what I was seeing. No-one had tried to take me in and shield me from this, I was being pushed and shoved out of the way, all I wanted was for someone to stand with me, to help me, to care about me – even my best friends parent from next door, just stood on their drive watching not making a move to try and find out if we were ok…….I think that was the moment where I have felt the most alone and helpless in my life.

Eventually when the ambulances had arrived someone must have realized that the young girl standing alone in the chaos must have come from the exploded house, they took me into the ambulance checked me over, at this point 2 of the older girls in my street, who were my idols came and said that they would look after me. Normally these girls wanted nothing to do with me or my brother, so it was quite strange that they wanted to take me in, they did hang around with Sharon so maybe that was the connection, I don’t know but I am eternally grateful to those girls for their kindness……..we sat in one of their houses and just watched silently through the window……..I still didn’t know where my brother was.

I don’t really remember anything else from that night, I don’t know where I slept, I don’t remember finding my parents or my brother, I can’t remember a lot of what happened after that night…..what I do know is I have never been the same since.

I tried in my older years to bury all of this sadness I really do believe that events can mark the land and change the energy, so I felt my only option was to move away from my hometown to London to try and find a sense of self and a sense of purpose.

I didn’t go back home to visit too much, I told myself it was because I was always too busy with work, but let’s face it I was in my early 20’s making decent money, with a great job….I was just having fun. I would however make an effort to call my nanna and grandad at least once a month to check in, the conversations were always lovely but maybe always a little surface level as we didn’t have that foundation of closeness that is built when you are young. I don’t have any memories of my grandparents saying ‘I love you’ I tried saying it a few time but I felt uncomfortable like I didn’t have the right to say it for some reason……..if I’m completely honest I have always been shy around my family …….I’m scared they won’t like who I am.

This could come off as me being distant, or aloof it was never my intention I just felt largely uncomfortable and hugely shy in my family’s presence. Christmas was always a time of great discomfort to me, this should be a time of joy and reveling in family time but to me I have always felt out of place, like I said earlier I have always felt like my family don’t like me and tolerate me because I am there. Now don’t get me wrong my family have never done anything to make me think this, this is my own neuroses……..it is not just my family that I feel like this with, I have the same feeling when I am in my group of friends, at work, with my boyfriend, his friends and his family …….again no one has done anything to make me think this.

I’m just throwing a few ideas around here, I am no expert but this could go back to when I was a school I had quite an interesting friendship group…I’m not sure if we all particularly liked each other, I can honestly say that I only keep in touch with 2 or 3 of my school friends. School is hard at the best of time, and girls are mean. I felt so lonely at school and was always worried about being left on my own, what would I do if all of my friends were off on the same day. I remember something like that happened in science I was the only one left on my table and I just felt like I was on show to the whole class…...I wanted to cry.

There’s another memory I have where 2 of my friends and another girls from our class were doing a song in our classes assembly, the other girl was off sick for the week and they convinced me to do the assembly with them……I didn’t want to as I’m not a singer or a dancer and felt really uncomfortable but I did it because it was incredibly important to my friends. Well after the ‘performance’ I felt humiliated (they made me be Diana Ross in the Supremes) and literally wanted to forget the whole thing. In my third lesson after the assembly I found out from another girl in my year that they had been saying that I ruined their performance……..I felt hurt and betrayed, by 2 people I thought I could trust and that would have my back.

I also think I have an inferiority complex with my brother, he was the first boy grandchild and possibly my mums favorite. I think the time that I most felt this was when my brother graduated and went out with his friends to celebrate, he called me up to pick up one of his friends who was too drunk, but when I got there he was being carried over to my car with a dislocated knee. I was obviously going to take him straight to the hospital with his friend Andy*.

Long story short I was going to take him to the closest A&E which was Ashington but he was drunk and wanted to go to the teaching hospital….because I knew I was right I kept going to A&E but he turned vile, he told me I was the worst sister in the world, if he could choose he wouldn’t be related to me and lots of other awful things I can’t remember….Andy* told him to stop but he wouldn’t….I took him to the hospital he wanted, dropped him off and left, I was devastated in tears driving home.

Once I got home I got a call off another of his friend’s telling me he had been arrested for drunk and disorderly…... he had basically been threatening to a nurse because he was in so much pain, they were telling him he needed to go the Ashington (the original hospital I wanted to take him to). I wasn’t going to tell my mum…...what could we do till the morning anyway, but his friend insisted, and I did.

Well I was not expecting the second tirade of abuse I got that night. My mum was livid, she was screaming how dare I leave him like that, she didn’t care what he had said to me I should never of left him in that position, if he has a criminal record and can’t get a job it is my fault, she will never forgive me. My dad was over from Thailand for the graduation, he and my step dad tried to tell her to call down but I basically got chased out of the house…….I slept at the harbor that night cold and alone, waiting in my car until I could sneak back in the house.

As I am writing this, I am beginning to realize there are a lot more stories I could share, but what good would that do? Then it becomes a woo is me type of essay. The reason I am sharing this is to try and actually deal with what has happened in my past.

The 90’s were a time of you fall down, you get back up…...it was the optima of stiff upper lip, keep calm and carry on…. all of that great British nonscience. It was made hard for us to talk about what was troubling us, even now when I mention it now to my mum how I feel, she tells me that I need to learn how to be resilient, and she is right, but I do think this is something that kids need to be taught from a young age in a safe environment, give them the tools to handle what life throws at them, so they don’t need to carry it around with them ……like I am doing……guys its heavy, let’s not do that to them.

As a nation we need to make it ok for everyone to share their stories, create a safe place to work through our past trauma’s and now more than ever we need to be kind and supportive to one another, as this government does not have our best interests at heart.

So why don’t we……...why don’t we look out for those close to us, if you think you see someone struggling to hold themselves together on the London tube for example…give them a smile…….it might just change their life.

Thank you for reading this I tried to keep it as clear as I could, but my mind is a creative mess and like to jump around in storytelling

*Names have been changed.