The Other Me
An ongoing serial about neurosis, beginning with anxiety that burgeoned through my teenage years, and grew into issues also with depression and OCD, amongst other things.
The Other Me
‘Looking For Answers’ i. One evening, I was watching TV when my sinuses spasmed, then closed-up. It became almost impossible to breathe through my nose – possibly hayfever. Dr Warren tried various medications: sprays, which did nothing; and an antihistamine, which simply made me insatiably thirsty. Hayfever had begun to affect me the previous year, the year of Black Saturday, when horrific bushfires had razed Kinglake. I wondered if the loss of trees, or all the soot in the air, were perhaps somehow the cause, as I knew others who’d never had issues with hayfever but had now begun to suffer from it. Sometimes, I also began to feel a…
The Other Me
‘That Same Old Feeling’ iv. New Year’s eve, I was invited to a get-together at a friend’s. The day was like most others: I woke in pain and feeling low. I caught up with a friend, and for a bit was able to forget everything going on – or at least push it from the forefront of my mind. After my friend left, I was going up to the house when a massive surge of anxiety and imbalance hit. This wasn’t a panic attack. It felt like something had gone wrong inside my body, inside my head, and the anxiety was a response to that. I called my friend, saying…