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
‘That Same Old Feeling’ i. The next day was my birthday. My friend organised a birthday lunch at a local pub fifteen minutes from home – a local I’d been to a few times, so there should’ve been no fears of unfamiliarity. But I was short of breath and anxious the whole day. The following day, I had a meeting with the editors of a fiction magazine for whom I’d done reading and editing, and again the same problem arose. I felt like the friend I drove up with had to babysit me, and I used all my tricks to avoid panic. I was infuriated. I’d survived for a week…
The Other Me
‘The Lurking Shadow’ vii. I obsessed about everything in Queensland. The worst of the flu cleared over the next couple of days, but I stayed on the antibiotics just in case. My neck and back bothered me. The shortness of breath nagged at me. One night we went to a local pub for dinner. The trip flared my agoraphobia. I told myself I was hundreds of miles from home, I was fine living at the retreat (well, most of the time) and, now, driving another couple of kilometres to get something to eat at a local pub was going to bother me? It’s something that happened whenever we went out.…