Art Is The Light At The End Of The Tunnel: Part 2

Perhaps it is people who don't indulge in the creative arts who don't see the restorative qualities they have. Over the last few weeks, after an initial period when I pretty much spoke to no-one besides my mother and just did what she told me to do because I felt swamped by any kind of decision-making, I have indulged my passion of theatre making as a kind of refuge. As a way of reminding myself who I am and waking my soul up. Back at work today I felt guilt because I imagine this looks to the outside world like I've been having a jolly. They might be right they are also wrong. Nothing I have done recently has come easily. Not even the 'fun stuff'.

If I could have afforded to go and do nothing lie by a pool for a week and read a book, perhaps that would be deemed a more appropriate form of healing? And it would have been healing to create a quiet head space and get lots of vitamin D but like I said I couldn't afford it.

Returning to work today has also been hard, though I doubt anyone could tell. Well, that's the problem with poor mental heath isn't it? Unless you are running around with underpants on your head saying, "Wibble", who would know?

And so yes when colleagues ask if I am feeling better I say, "Yes", because I am feeling better, than I was. I don't feel BETTER. I am not well, not quite me yet. I am still healing and imagine I will be for a while.

It's hard to understand, unless you have experienced it, that while your illness is not physical it is not without physical symptoms. Last night I had hideous anxiety dreams and broken sleep. Today I am tired, my shoulders, neck and back ache. This morning I had a dodgy tummy and all day I have had intermittent chest pains. I also know that that is probably as bad as it will get, and hopefully tomorrow will be better. It certainly can't get any better if I hide away. Returning to work is part of facing my demons and finding healthier ways to overcome them. I have to own my own sanity and take some responsibility for my own health. But if it does get bad again, and I have to realistically assume that it could, I can deal with it. And I know that my love of the arts will be a massive help in getting better again, once I am over the worst of it.

Art Is The Light At The End Of The Tunnel

Since it is Love Arts Festival at the moment, a festival looking at arts, mental health and wellbeing, it seems appropriate to come clean about what has been/is going on with me.

I think as an artist no-one will mind if I say I have been in a dark place recently. A place, like a cross between a hamster wheel and a dark tunnel, a relentless place filled with anger, despair and self-loathing. But as an artist I think many of you will understand when I say that it is mainly due to my art (and the support of friends and my incredible Mother) that I am beginning to pull myself out and feel like myself again, which just makes me even more grateful that I have made it a big part of my life.

Going to Devoted and Disgruntled, at the beginning of the month, felt like being in a war zone. It was too much all at once. Too many people, too much noise, too much choice. I wanted to be there but I wasn't, really. I spent all morning resisting the urge to run away. The pains in my chest were near constant and I felt sick. I stayed because I wanted to support the event itself. I had been looking forward to it for so long. But I was removed and I little numb and got very little out of it as a result.

Since then I've been making plans and rehearsing for One - getting my funding from Arts Council England was a massive boost, although even that felt like more pressure than I could handle, initially - I went back to High Spirits, a local choir, and I took part in an open call for community singers to be on the Hope and Social album. These were all good things (singing really is one of the most joyful things you can do) that were incredibly emotionally draining, just to find the strength to get there in the first place, but each one made me feel more like someone I actually recognised and liked. Me. 

I've been doing The Reservation again this week (more dates to come) and that has been tough. Don't get me wrong I am immensly proud of The Reservation and I want to do it but... I suppose I knew it would be tough. A 14 hour day is tough at the best of times but when you have been off work for the best part of a month it's a really BIG investment of time and energy. As soon as I was finished on day one I was overwhelmed by relief and a flood of emotions. Not because it was too much but BECAUSE IT MATTERS. I had been so afraid that I couldn't get through it and I hadn't even realised how scared I was. But I did get through it, I enjoyed it, and day two was even better. Today I have the post-performance blues, but I always get those so I'm not too worried.

I have never looked in to art therapy, I suppose I have always just naturally had that in my life without thinking about it as such, but having recently felt the specific benefits of the sanctuary of the creative brain space I can see why so many people think it is so important. According to Love Arts “One in four of us will experience a mental health problem in our lifetime”. That seems like a lot to me.

This is only one of many things I am doing to improve my own mental health, including reducing my caffeine (for the anxiety attacks), looking in to meditation and natural remedies (for the sleep issues) and most importantly talking to someone who can help. The next stage will be returning to work, which terrifies me but thanks to all this I am building up stronger defences to make it manageable at least. I have to keep reminding myself, this is just a difficult patch. I am lucky that I am not someone who suffers ongoing clinical depression. And I will, of course, be continuing with my art and doing all I can to make that the highlight of each week. To say it has kept me alive is a slight exaggeration, but only slight, and I am grateful to have had the access to it and the ability to use it. I'm sure there are many who don't.

Don't panic

I suffer from panic attacks, mainly when I home alone at night. I would have said 'suffered' until about a month ago when I had my first attack in 9 years...

This is a piece of text I wrote about my experience which was used in the performances of Wherever I Lay My Hat in 2010.


Panic
I used to have panic attacks. I’m not entirely sure when they first started. I think it was in the summer after my first year at University. One night when I was home alone I woke up suddenly, for no reason that I could see, feeling alarmed. I assumed some noise had disturbed my sleep. And I think that’s how it started. The years of broken sleep.

I realised as time went by that mother’s next-door neighbour often left the house at unsociable hours – for work or fishing? But I lived and died by the motion-sensor activated light in his back yard, believing it to be the signifier of my imminent demise. Mum casually blamed my love of Stephen King novels and it seems funny now. But then again, I don’t think I ever told her how bad they were.

In my second and third years at University it got a little better. I was rarely alone but then I went to Drama School. My landlord found himself a new girlfriend with more money and a nice, big house, and suddenly he was never at home. I was alone most of the time. Far away from my friends, family and the man I loved. I felt isolated and vulnerable in every way and at night I was convinced there was someone in the house and they were going to kill me.

I began to dread going to bed and as time passed I started to panic about having a panic attack. I was locked in a battle with the night. I felt small and helpless, exhausted by lack of sleep and the seemingly inescapable situation. As I went to bed I would check all the doors were closed and locked, sometimes taking a knife to put under my pillow. Then I would push the chest of drawers in front of the bedroom door, pull the covers over my head and pray for a quiet night’s sleep.

As they continued to occur I tried to combat them by forcing myself to confront my fear, get up and go downstairs and check that the door was locked and the house was empty. I would get drunk before bed if I knew I was going to be spending the night alone, a tactic only any good on days when I wasn’t working the next day, in the hope that I would pass out and sleep though. Though it was a gamble as it had a tendency to increase my need for mid-night toilet breaks. Otherwise I would stay up until I was exhausted and then crawl fearfully to bed.

I don’t think it is a coincidence that the attacks stopped about two years later after I moved in to a small flat with an older male friend who was home a lot and made me feel welcome and safe. And I don’t think it is a coincidence that they were at their worst while living in the house of someone I barely knew during the unhappiest year of my life. What I have never understood is why they started in my old room, in my Mother’s house where I had lived for seven years previously and always felt safe and loved.

Thankfully I haven’t had a panic attack for eight years now.

Having beaten them once I know I can do it again but feels like a backwards step in my mental health and I don't think it is any coincidence that my moods have been very low of late. This time though I don't intend to try and do it alone. Next step, the doctors... Wish me luck.