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
‘Shut In’ v. Writing was my best therapy. It had always been my best therapy. I could live vicariously through writing, but I could also vent and make sense of the thoughts tumbling around in my head; I could be biographical, through events, through characters, through emotions, whilst writing fiction; I could tell and share stories with the world around me … if I could ever make it. Because making it was another matter entirely. Once, there’d been an unassailable self-belief that it would happen, but now I was pushing past my mid-20s, had a couple of (unpublished) novels, a handful of screenplays, and lots of short stories behind me,…
The Other Me
‘Shut In’ iv. A lot of things made it easy to live in such a self-contained environment. The internet was an enabler where I never had to leave the house. I could chat with people from across the world, or roleplay games for entertainment that gave me a vicarious taste of the world beyond my door, I could do my banking, order books, and have almost everything I used to have, but now have it at my fingertips. For my writing, I could look up Hollywood production companies and pitch screenplays overseas, or even network with people here – not that anything ever went anywhere. A few times, contact led…