I'm Walking Away

It's Friday morning and the alarm is wailing again; the third time in a brief show of annoying sounds at ten-minute intervals and I have no choice but to get up. After silencing it, I lay there for a brief moment, feeling the dread of another day fill my lungs. I have to get  up. I can hear the rain, I can envisage my office chair and the light blue computer screen ushering me to log in for another eight hours of emails, paperwork and pressure. My hair has two dents in it on either side, the signs of the to-ing and fro-ing from another restless night's sleep.

I have to get up.

I haul myself to the wardrobe. I ironed these shirts on Sunday night with tears in my eyes, and we've somehow managed to reach the fifth and final one. I lay it out on my bed, with my jet black trousers and look at them forlornly. They signal the start of something horrible. I find myself by the kettle, wondering if I have enough time to burn my mouth on a scalding black coffee with three sugars before I go, hoping that's the cure to the latest battle inside my head. I stayed in bed for too long. I don't.

I grab my ID badge and make for the door, but often I can't open it. My hand shakes and my eyes fill up with tears, knowing it won't be for the first time that day but I force myself through it. The shame of being this way physically pushing me out into the morning air. I start walking. Dragging my feet along the pavement, wiping my eyes as I do so. Maybe if I listen to some music, I'll feel okay. I don't.

I reach the main road, a short distance from my flat and real life hits. The walk towards town is a hub of activity. Dodging in and out of commuters from the train station, trying not to walk into excitable school children and even worse, their parents. Still dragging my feet. Still wiping away tears. "I must be stronger", I say to myself.

I'm not.

"That car is going quite fast, what if I walked in front of it?" A whole raft of reasons stop me from doing so. The kid walking towards me who's life I'd taint. Fear of physical pain. The thought of my Mum telling me why I just didn't tell her what was wrong. But at least I wouldn't have to go to work.

"But it's Friday", I tell myself. "This is as good as it gets."

It's 9am and I'm here now, with no escape route. I make myself that coffee, with the sole aim of using up some minutes. I look at the clock as I sit at my desk, sipping it. 9:03am. I haven't enjoyed a single moment sat at this desk. Or indeed any desk. All I want, with every single fibre of my being is to go home. There's no pressure at home, however self-made that may be. No mindless small talk from colleagues who don't seem to be as perturbed as I am. None of them have tears in their eyes like I do.

It was 5pm last Friday when I wished everyone a good weekend, my final act in a week full of acting. It's always the same. I had escaped to the toilet a few times on Friday to cry. This is no way to live. I've started a new job recently, but I know it's not that because I was like this at my old job too. Constantly running downstairs to the toilet by reception to cry. I walk out of the door, at 5pm on a Friday and my mind immediately switches to the level of dread and fear I will have on Monday morning.

There is no escape.

Monday morning came round. You can guess what happened. On Tuesday morning - yesterday - I was at a zebra crossing, seeing a car come speeding off the roundabout and I stood still. I stood still in the middle of the road on purpose, part of me wishing he wouldn't or couldn't stop. He did. So I carried on walking. Reaching my office chair, someone actually asked me if I was okay. I've become the master of covering up my true feelings over the years, so something really must be wrong if someone notices.

It's Wednesday now. I managed to get through Tuesday, with even more trips to the toilet to control my breathing and to cry some more in the midst of full blown panic attacks. But I got home and I crashed. A night of panic attacks and more tears ensued, not knowing who to turn to or what to do. We've had these conversations before, but it's always going around in circles. Always the same questions. Always the same answers. Constantly feeling as if I should just be able to get over it and move on as if there is no deeper problem.

Last night was dangerous. At one point I started writing a suicide note to Mum and Dad, but I just didn't know what to say. The notepad and pen is still lying where I left them, still damp from the tears. A couple of hours later, I found myself popping every single pill I had, a concoction of anti-depressants and run of the mill paracetamol, staring at them on the bed for what felt like a millennia before emptying them into the bin. I've not been that close since the night I was on top of that damned multi-storey.

All of this because I am deeply unhappy going to work.

For as long as I can remember, I've thought about what I can do to change this. Trying to rewire my brain into a mode of happiness that makes my life sustainable as well as bearable. I've tried changing jobs, changing offices, internal transfers, going to university, taking time off here and there, going to the other side of the world. Nothing has worked. I'm stuck in a non-stop world of stupor and chronic professional unhappiness, but this morning, while being signed off for two weeks by my new GP, it struck me.

It's on a daily basis now that I'm thinking about cars hitting me en route to work. This isn't a new thought. It's been happening for years. It's a daily basis that I have to steal a trip to the toilet or round the corner to cry. Again, years. It's a daily basis that waves of unhappiness hit me, totally ignored by myself because my brain has been wired to say, "do not quit because quitting is weak." It's all of this, and more, that has led me to FINALLY question why I do this to myself. Is being seen as someone who grafts hard and acceptable in the eyes of society more important than my sanity? My life at the moment consists of walking into a bear pit every morning, somehow making it out alive and then choosing to walk back into the same bear pit the following morning. Sooner or later I'm going to be eaten.

Why do I do it to myself?

Throughout this whole war, there has always been a common denominator and that is work. Some, (probably most) people see it as weakness. "No one likes going to work" my Mother would say, but how many want to be run over while walking there? How many cry every single day? How many have constant nightmares about going to work?

Could I quit? Wouldn't that make me weak? Giving up and becoming a scrounger? Surely that's not acceptable?

Society - and certainly some close to me - would dictate that I have a responsibility to go to work. "You keep on fighting and working for you have no choice". But I do have a choice. I really, really do and provided it's financially possible, I think that's what I'm going to do. Sitting in that doctor's office, (ironically an office that used to house an acute mental health bed) it just hit me so hard, like a slap to the face on a cold winter's morning, that this is something I have to do and screw everyone who thinks it's a sign of weakness. I can't keep sending myself into that bear pit every morning knowing what happens next.

Being broke and everyone thinking I'm a loser is a price worth paying if it keeps me alive. As dramatic and as OTT as that may sound, that is the reality. It's not something I'm rushing in to. I certainly have a couple of weeks at least to work out what happens next, if anything, but I realised something pretty big today. Happiness isn't born out of what other people think is right.

I don't want to be that person who wakes up at 2pm and watches Jeremy Kyle all day. As a lot of you know, I have a lot of volunteering things going on as well as my book. Things that I ENJOY doing and have CHOSEN to do; things I can do at my own pace with no pressure. I, along with many other people, have been conditioned, even guilt-tripped, into thinking that we MUST go to work for someone else because otherwise you're lazy. I am not endangering myself anymore to appease that view.

Ultimately, I hope beyond all hope that people, especially my family, understand that.