All Aboard: A Journey Through Anxiety

You know, it’s a funny one, isn’t it? Mental Health.

It feels like I’m on a train. The carriage is full. There’s passengers in every seat, happily getting on with their lives. Perhaps they’re heading to that important meeting they’ve been preparing for. Perhaps they’re on their way to visit family, or on their way back from a holiday, or heading to a first date. They’re happy. Or, at least as happy as passengers on a train can be. 

We’re speeding up, and I can feel every bump of the tracks below. I look around, but nobody else seems to notice. Faster, and faster. Bump. Bump. Bump. Still, nobody even looks up. I can feel my heart pounding.

It’s that quiet kind of anxiety. The kind where you can think and feel and act like everything is fine, but there is something in your gut telling you to be aware. You feel your heart skip a beat occasionally, and there is a mild lump in your throat that just won’t go away no matter how many times you swallow. That weird kind of am I okay? Am I hungry? Am I horny? Have I drank enough water today? You go through a checklist because you don’t instantly recognise it as anxiety.

I’m still in the carriage. Still, nobody else has noticed anything is amiss. I think I just saw a light flicker, but I can’t be sure. We’re heading for a tunnel. In the distance, I can see lights. We need to slow down otherwise we will crash, but nobody else realises we’re going too fast. 

I try to stand up, but I have a seatbelt on. Since when do trains have seatbelts? I fumble; my brain and my hands are from different countries; they can communicate, but it takes a little while to get there. Why is it taking so long to do something that I know how to do? I’ve undone seatbelts a million times before, why can I not do this one easy thing when it matters most? I get up, trying to walk down an aisle that is positively too small. Each aisle-seat-sitter has their elbow over the rests, and there’s someone just ahead messing around with overhead luggage. Get out of my way, I need to stop this train! Why does nobody else realise the train needs to stop? 

Basically, yeah. That’s what my descent into mental illness feels like. This isn’t my first train crash - I’m diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, and feeling really burnt-out on my journey for an ADHD and Autism diagnosis. Last year was tough: a divorce, break-ups, learning to live alone for the first time as an adult, debt, vet bills, car problems, and professional challenges. Don’t get me wrong, there was a lot of good stuff last year too! There was just a lot to contend with. It felt like every area of life was caving in. No matter how much I tried, I just couldn’t seem to get it right. I’m aware enough, I know what’s going wrong and I know it needs to stop. I just don’t know how.

I’ve made it, though. We didn’t crash. It’s been a tough ol’ time, but I am excited about the future. I have learnt a lot about myself over the last 18 months. Psychology is one of my special interests, and I find it really fascinating to look inside my brain and try to work out why I’m behaving in the way I am. I’m a very self-aware person in a lot of ways, which makes it even more frustrating when it feels like I’m a passenger on a train with so little control. It’s like I know what the problem is, but I… 

I. Just. Can’t. Stop.