The Other Me
‘Shut In’ viii. The first time I’d come out of major issues with anxiety and depression, it was with a sense of triumph and liberation. I was free. It was like overcoming an illness, and putting it behind me forever. Of course, I was only twenty-one, so I was still at an age where I had a sense of invulnerability about my health, and the prospect of my future was new and exciting. I didn’t feel that this time. This time, there was a sense of tentativeness, to come back out into the world and yet have this hang over my head, an unwanted visitor who could strike again. You…
The Other Me
‘Shut In’ vii. It was like yesterday when I was in my early twenties, playing indoor cricket, socialising, bartending, and trying to make a writing career for myself. Now I was in my late twenties, with little social activity, still writing, and still living at home. Still locked away in my fortress of solitude. Everybody accepted me as a hermit. Everybody saw me as too fragile for the real world. So I just lived the way I knew how. Stan and I still caught up, although not as much we used to. As had occurred with my other friends, he’d moved to a house well outside my sphere of comfort.…