Strangest Thing

"Sometimes when I go to exertin' myself I use up all the air nearby and grown men faint from suffocation. Stand back" – McMurphy.

After a back splittingly painful week there's a sign of remission. Is it the effect of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy? I doubt it – this week's session did away with the therapy and we talked about getting a job. Perhaps a little cognitive manoeuvring was thrown in under the radar, but basically it was a practical process. Somewhere, psychiatrist RD Lang explained how he chatted convivially with a patient for a whole session, only to call time for the patient to say, "Hey doc! We never talked about my problems!" "Well, have a think about that before next session, hey," he replied. Perhaps living is a decent enough management technique, when such a thing can be done. Alas for me, the next CBT session will have us back to simplified cause-effect analysis, and how to interpret supposed irrational thoughts.

But over our pleasant chat I realised that going to China for a year isn't going to ruin my life, that I can't sign up to a course this September anyway, so leaving it another year is no biggy... things like that. My therapist gave me career advice, such as answering my question – "Is it OK for someone with mental health problems to work in mental health?"

"It's the wood hiding among the trees," she said with a laugh. "Join the club."

Today, a few insurmountables reached conquering distance. A CRB check is in the mail, the TEFL qualification is almost done.

But the real shift is noticeable because of a certain kind of consumption. For about 6 months or longer I've been on a diet of minimal everything. I shuffle around the house like a hedgehog, somewhat scared to open a cupboard to get a glass lest one not be there, fearful of turning on the TV lest I can't find the remote, panicking when I have more than two windows open on the computer, blaming an cruel world when I realise I've run out of cornflakes. 

I generally drink endless water, partly to avoid caffeine and partly because the appetite for tasty drinks has vanished. But today, whilst reading One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, I fancied a coffee. I got out the grinder, opened up a pack of Zapatista grown coffee beans from Chiapas, Mexico, and ground them down into a fine dust. Then I threw that into the cafetiere and drank it down in the sunny garden. One whole coffee. After that I played an Aphex Twin record on the record player and wrote this. 

Why grind coffee when there's instant nearby? Because it's better. Why play a record when YouTube is right there? Because it's better. Caring about that stuff is new. Apart from YouTube being a terrible service, with irritating adverts and intermittent buffering, and shithead twats writing crap underneath the videos which become more compelling than the videos themselves, music lost all of its charm of late, as if my head can only take so much sound before it starts to overspill, taking floating parts of porous brain with it. Today, no telling why, the peril of information was distilled into a soothing whiskey, and for the first time in a long time, I felt the groove.

Diary of a Reclusive Antisocial Introvert – 12 june 2014

I pen this alone in a cheap hotel room in South Kensington, having ejected my travelling companion from not only the room, not just the hotel, but the entire city. She's gone to Chichester – a neat coincidence of visiting a friend and leaving me alone. But it's no "woe is me" moment, because I couldn't be more relieved.

Since she arrived for a UK trip for which I was happy to tag along, I got progressively worse. That is – anxiety, irritability, frustration, an inability to converse, and IBS. It peaked on Wednesday when we visited the Harry Potter studios in Watford. I know what you're thinking – Harry Potter, if not causing the problem, at least exacerbated it ho ho. But on the day in question I was indifferent to everything, thereby barring the potentially nausea-inducing Potterness. Instead, I was emotionally drained, and the victim of intense stabbing pains in unmentionable areas.

Sadly though, my lack of fun rubbed off on my poor friend, who got increasingly upset with me, all the while apologising for something, for being somehow responsible for my predicament. All I could do was quietly attempt to console her, to feign interest at magic wands and Dickensian potion shops, and try not to squirm so much from the agony.

Whilst my problem has a physical dimension, there is no "cause". I've been probed and tested and examined and sent on my way with a slap on the back and some pills. The effectiveness of them comes and goes arbitrarily and it's incredibly hard to conclude that medication is working – put me in another location, with other people, and the whole constitution changes. Hence, anxiety is deemed to be the villain.

As was the case when my visiting friend and I went to a barbecue at my father's house. This was the weekend before we went to London. Eating events leave me lacking appetite and small-talk. I slowly nibble on burnt ribs and precariously balance a corn on the cob on a weakening paper plate, all the while some well-meaning neighbour is piling burgers on me and discussing the weather. They talk about jobs and relationships and houses and holidays, none of which I have. I finish barbecues hungry, tired and hopeless, and bewildered at how such an event can be so emotionally unsettling. 

During this particular barbecue I was able to sneak off for a nap under the pretext of an early trip to the airport. The next day, back at my mother's house, I was able to steer clear of the family because of a recent bust-up with them due to my perceived laziness. (I'm often in bed, and hence not working or doing housework, which has led to resentment). Following this strange weekend and the rather morbid Harry Potter experience, I was not surprised when my friend decided to escape for a day.

And it's been a pleasant day spent alone – only mild-to-minimum pain. Has the relative calm been because I'm alone or despite it? I don't know. I had the chance to visit other London friends, but didn't risk it. Instead, I went to the Royal Academy of Arts, got bemused and disgusted by the ugly wealth exhibited in Mayfair, and drank tea by the side of the road. I wanted to share experience with an unknown someone, but that someone ends up being an inner voice. Being alone is like Stockholm Syndrome: you depend on it once it's caught you. Nowadays socialising is almost unbearable, or at best a chore. Humans have become like another species, and talking to them requires careful micro-management, deep breaths, the need to express things accurately and concisely to avoid the panic of my interlocutor not understanding. Even social networks make me sick. Few people stick by you when you can't handle being around them; those that do get tired. It's a bummer because I like people in theory. As Bill Hicks said, "I'm a misanthropic humanist." 

We live in a world of awakening voices. The voices of LGBT(QIA+), of women, of various minorities which have experienced some form of oppression or suppression. The voice of mental health is getting louder, as it has been since Freud ruptured Victorian notions of psychological normality, and the trend has continued with people like Stephen Fry, Davina McCall and Alastair Campbell coming out of the depression closet. If this makes for a more understanding and less judgemental society, then all for the better, but I can't help thinking that rampant "celebritism" and all the twisted values it promotes is one of the factors driving people towards a gloomy sense of inadequacy.

In this age of personal brand identities, introversion and even depression is sometimes sold as a Unique Selling Point. Myers-Briggs initials are thrown about on dating websites like OBEs or PhDs. Depressed Twitter users share their plight with followers using the hashtag #depression. The Introvert seems to offer something more than your everyday citizen – a quiet, brooding intelligence, something unspoken, subversive and mysterious. But not everyone is a Nietzsche or a Kurt Cobain or a Romantic poet, with hidden brilliance trapped far below like an illuminated pool in a dark cave. Not everyone is a protagonist in a slow-burning success story.

Of course I'm only referring to myself at the end there. If writing poetry, tweeting about depression or reading about Davina McCall's hard times has any  positive effect for anyone, then it's worth it. It's good to talk, so they say. As for my own rather invisible brand of mental illness, I've said just about all I can.