The Shadow Without

2009

That Other Me is a series that explores the immediacy and intimacy of various mental health episodes I’ve experienced throughout my life.

The pain in my shoulder blade extends like a fault line up to my neck. This has been a concern on my junket to Queensland: this neck problem, which not too long ago had the muscles in my neck spasming.

I’m in the room of my rustic retreat. The spa is filling with tank water that has a yellow cast. That triggers new fears: the water can’t be healthy. It must be healthy because others have used this hot tub. I don’t know if they’ve used it healthily. Surely they wouldn’t let people use it if there were issues. What if my skin has a reaction and I’m stuck here in Queensland getting treatment? Then they’ll treat it. But I’ll be stuck here without a ticket. Planes fly out all the time.

The to and fro is a pitched battle between two enemies with inexhaustible artillery and soldiers to sacrifice.

Earlier today, the neck tightness was so arduous I called a masseuse. She was very careful and marvelled at a knot in my shoulder blade. When she was done, my body felt sorer, which was why I thought about the spa. Worried she’d done more damage, I texted my best friend, who had experience as a masseuse. She told me with a deep-muscle massage, it often gets worse before it gets better.

This is something else that contends for territory in my head – a third hostile force that meets up with the concerns for my neck, and allies.

The distance from home exacerbates the situation. At home, I can just lie down. Or make an appointment to see my long-time GP. Familiarity. Familiarity is security. So far from home, if something happens, what do I do? What if I get stuck here beyond my return ticket? What if I never get home? How will I live? What about work? What about money? What about …

Everything?

Even if none of these fears are grounded in possibility, they expand so extremely they’re impossible to contain. They terrify me and I try to mollify them, like they’re bullies I can satisfy with my school money. But the thing with bullies is once you give them something, they always come back and want more.

Always.

And that angers me until I identify these aren’t armies of individual worries, that they’re not three opposing forces, but a singular entity that’s driving this in many forms – a side-mind of anxiety that has niched in some part of my brain, like a ghastly spider living in some inaccessible crack in the wall.

Never before have I been able to oppose any of my anxiety with the indignation I feel now. But it’s not just indignation – not that way, at least. This is pure pissed-off’edness. I’m sick of this shit. Sick of these things raging in my head. Sick of them leaving no space for me to enjoy myself. Sick of having battled them for over twenty-five years. Sick of losing so much to them. Sick of them always invading.

For the first time ever I see this anxiousness as an individual entity, this malevolent shadow that is mocking and derisive and condescending. It doesn’t care about me because it’s dominated me for so long. I’m not human to it. I’m a plaything. It might be a demon that sees me as occasional entertainment, the way a dog has a favourite squeaky toy.

I tell it to fuck off, to leave me alone, to stop, to fuck off, to fuck off, to fuck off and just leave me to be me so I can have a life without any of this occupying my attention and demanding my energy.

Getting into the spa, I decide I just want to be me, although after so long I don’t know what that looks like, and it knows that and doesn’t care.

My rage doesn’t burn out, though – not this time.

I don’t overthrow it.

But I see the shadow.

The entity.

I see it.

And, for the first time, that’s some sort of win.