Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.
On 8 January 2013, the CAT team come to my house for the first time. After I reported daily panic attacks and suicidal ideation to my new GP, he has pulled out all the stops. I am self-conscious. Surely I’m not that bad, am I? But he points out that’s what the system is there for. So I think ‘fuck it, I want help’ and accept it.
I am 35 years old, and outwardly my life looks pretty good. Engaged to be married to my long-term boyfriend, we had planned to buy a house and have kids together. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? Isn’t that what the whole point of life is? More and more, I seem to be surrounded by people whose only goals in life are these things.
The only problem is that deep down, I don’t really want to do any of that, and lately my body has been rebelling. I’ve been waking at 5am flooded with fear and desperately wishing there was a ‘way out’. Why do these seemingly normal actions feel like a coffin lid shutting?
For two weeks, the CAT team’s visits and phone calls are the only thing that get me out of bed. I write daily ‘to do’ lists that consists of ‘eat breakfast’, ‘shower’, ‘eat lunch’ and ‘eat dinner’. These actions feel surprisingly hard to achieve some days, but each day I do a little more.
My doctor has started me back on antidepressants, after 12 months spent detoxing from them in the hope of having a child without medication. My adrenalin-filled body reacts violently to the new medication, and I suffer nausea, physical aches and mental confusion, but after six weeks the fog clears.
I write a list – what would I really do if I wasn’t so scared? Top of the list is the one thing I’m most scared to do: ‘Come out as bi and (potentially) date a girl’.
However, at first the guilt eats into me like acid. My boyfriend – fiancé – is a ‘nice guy’. How could I do this to him? And what will my parents and family think? Brought up to view the end of a long-term relationship as the ultimate failure in life, I am torn between two equally fearful options – being the ‘good girl’ and staying, or being authentic to how I feel inside at the risk of losing what feels like everything.
I make a bargain with myself. I can give up on life entirely, but only after I’ve done a few more enjoyable things – I list the books, tv series and movies I wish to see. I buy a ticket to a concert in July. ‘Just keep going until then,’ I tell myself. I laugh at the absurdity of bribing myself with pop culture, but it works – day by day, I take more and more baby steps.
Flash forward three months, and I’ve moved out. My ex and I have negotiated to share custody of our dog, and I’m sharing a unit in Thornbury. I have a new office space, and I am managing to work enough to support myself, even if it’s not the most lucrative year for my business.
Three months after that, I’ve made lots of new friends in the lesbian community and have even braved a couple of dates, albeit rather disastrous ones.
Most of the terrible things I thought would happen haven’t come to pass. Rather than terror at being on my own for the first time in years, I feel exhilaration. Rather than sorrow at leaving behind so many beloved objects, I find I enjoy living with fewer physical possessions. Rather than feel anxious about the future, I increasingly feel excited by possibilities.
In August, I fall in love and start dating my first real girlfriend. It feels both completely natural and totally unexpected. Can this really be happening so quickly?
Those first CAT team horror days seem like something that happened to someone else. It is remarkable how quickly a new normalcy asserts itself.
I no longer need bribes to keep myself going, but I realise I don’t have any other life plans – but it doesn’t matter. Whatever I do now it will be more governed by my own intuition and less by what I think I’m ‘supposed’ to do, for I have lived and felt in my own body how incredibly bad that can be for me.
Doing the thing that scares you most, confronting the thing you’re least willing to confront, can be the most liberating action of all.