Overcoming Mental Illness

One of the problems with social anxiety is that it is all too easy to follow what your head is telling you, rather than what your soul is singing out for you to say. Few people realise how difficult suffering from social anxiety makes forging friendships and relationships. Something as simple as a conversation or question to a “normal” person takes on a Herculean perspective when the shadowy spectre of a “panic attack” looms on the horizon.

There are many moments in my life, and I’m sure in the lives of many, where we have been unable to say what we really want for fear of rejection, judgement or merely ‘getting it wrong’.

I used to write a lot of these thoughts in my journal, but I have been unable to write a journal for many many months now since something was said I’ve been unable to forget. 

Sometimes these regrets from our lives need to be expelled from our minds, or at least an attempt should be made to do this. One way to assist this expulsion of stored regret is to write an unsent letter; a letter you would love to send but know never could. It helps to form your mistake into words rather than have it dwell and burn inside you for all time.

This is one of my unsent letters:  

“I don’t know where to start.
I’ve thought about writing to you so much.
Whenever I get a pen near paper or fingers near a keyboard I freeze up, the words vanish, and I sit staring into space. Scared, full of sorrow and regret. How do I say what I need to say? If you were sitting in front of me now, watching me with those ever thoughtful eyes, you’d just say “…spit it out Addy!” and I’d take a gulp of beer and do just that. That’s what I always needed, a kick up the arse, and you always knew how to give me one
*laughs*
*sips on beer*
WHY DID YOU LIE TO ME?
I could see them you silly girl dancing in your eyes, they were dancing there with mine! Why did you lie to me? *How* could you lie to me? Didn’t you trust me? Didn’t you believe in me? Did you think I would judge you?
[Arrrghh! Silly stupid questions all of them. I've been where you were. I've said those lies. I've lied far more to you than you ever did me.]
But couldn’t you tell I…? Grrr. Wrong question.
Always with the wrong questions. It shouldn’t be:
WHY DID YOU LIE TO ME? No no no.
It should be:
WHY DID I *LET* YOU?
Of course you were going to lie to me! I’ve done the same thing over and over again, always lying, bending the truth. Never the truth, never what actually happened.
WHY DID I *LET* YOU?
Why did I let you think I didn’t care? How could I have done that? You needed me, you were reaching out to me, practically begging me to say something but I just sat back and said nothing. I let you lie to me over and over again and when you finally told me I just couldn’t believe I had let you go through this by yourself. I think I was scared of you finding out about my past, about the things I had done. The things I had lied about.
But that’s not an excuse.
There is no excuse.
You needed me and I wasn’t there and I am so very sorry.
I wish I had said something.
I wish I could turn back time and take hold of your hand and just look into your eyes and say “…please, don’t lie to me…you can talk to me, I’m here for you no matter what,”
It may not have changed a thing, but it would have been said.
And then you may have understood.
If I had only said those words, which danced and skipped on the end of my tongue, you might have realised how much I care about you.
I wasn’t there for you.
Not like I wanted to be.
And now you are gone, lost to the winds of time.
I can never find the right sentence to let you know how much I miss you.
Can never get it right.

You were my best friend; and you never knew; I miss you,”

And so 2007 is slowly drawing to a close…as my clock goes (AEST) there is a mere 25 and a 1/2 hours left as I begin this post…and as with most people at this time I am thinking of three things:

1. So, what are my chances of a New Year’s pash…
2. Blimey, better get cracking on making some resolutions…
3. The internal-analysis of the last twelve months…

Well I can categorically tell you that my chance of a New Year’s pash are zilch (zero, nada, nought) unless I somehow manage to enter a manic phase in the next 25 hours 27 minutes - the chances of which are pretty slim! And what exactly is the point of making resolutions anyway?

My mind however has been mulling over the last object on this list with a kind of exasperated urgency. Voices, songs, screams and agonised yelps are haunting my every waking moment. The thing I find hard with my bipolar is getting all the ghosts to shut up, they’re just there, constantly, bickering away at my soul until I am nothing but a cowering wreck on the floor.

So let’s for a moment, just a moment (allow me that) forget that the events of the last eleven months happened. Let’s rewind the clock and take a peek at the year that wasn’t, a year that this time twelve months ago was going to be one of the best of my life, instead of the bitch year from hell it became!

[NOTE: From this point on everything not in italics is what could have happened if 2007 had gone the way I had hoped/whereas everything in italics is what actually happened]

…click here if you’d like to read more about my year that WASN’T/WAS…