• The Other Me

    The Other Me

    ‘Shut In’ v. Writing was my best therapy. It had always been my best therapy. I could live vicariously through writing, but I could also vent and make sense of the thoughts tumbling around in my head; I could be biographical, through events, through characters, through emotions, whilst writing fiction; I could tell and share stories with the world around me … if I could ever make it. Because making it was another matter entirely. Once, there’d been an unassailable self-belief that it would happen, but now I was pushing past my mid-20s, had a couple of (unpublished) novels, a handful of screenplays, and lots of short stories behind me,…

  • The Other Me

    The Other Me

    ‘Hello, Panic, My Old Friend’ iv. Dr Warren had an analogy that the anxiety was like a snowball. Unhindered, it would gather momentum and grow bigger and bigger, but put a big enough block in front of it, it would hit that block and splatter. That sounded good to me, but right about now, anything would sound good to me. With that in mind, Dr Warren prescribed me a sedative: .5mg of Xanax three times a day. Unfortunately, Xanax wasn’t a medicine you could get with a prescription over the counter. You needed government authorisation. Dr Warren said he’d file the request and the authorised prescription would come to me…