Wait… There’s more?!
At this point I’m walking like a crab, drinking a lot of tequila… what next, I hear you ask?
Well, the combination of that absolute shitshow I won’t even call a relationship, the stress, four years of heavy drinking and drugs, and being untreated had obviously left its mark.
Not exactly surprising.
And what came next is what some people might call a string of unfortunate events.
What I like to call an absolute clusterf**k of “oh come on, really?”
It was during Covid. I was in another relationship. Unhealthy, from both sides to be honest.
I was constantly getting colds and chest infections. I was exhausted all the time. At work I’d make these ridiculous coffees to keep me going. Four heaped teaspoons of coffee, one mug, a splash of hot water, drink it like a shot, then repeat a few hours later.
And somehow I would still fall asleep sitting on the toilet frequently.
YouTube yoga (shout out to Adriene) and rehab before work, yoga at lunchtime at the gym, and yoga again when I got home. Hot water bottles constantly. Special chair for my back.
Weekly physio trips. (just to be clear this wasn’t through NHS, she was a holistic physio I met through my business, I needed a lot more but I am so grateful to her)
All of that just to sit at a desk and still be in huge amounts of pain.
So it’s a few years later and I’m in my third marketing job.
Then one day my friend casually said, “Why don’t you buy a house?”
And I thought… yeah. Why not.
So I did that.
Apparently moving house is ranked as one of the most stressful life experiences, which in hindsight feels like quite important information.
Look, at this point bad things had already happened and I was trying my best.
But…
I can see now that things like getting a full tattoo sleeve and buying a house during all of this probably didn’t help.
Anyway…
The first week of moving in…
I lost my job.
So naturally I became what only a completely rational person would become.
A lockdown gremlin. Smoking weed and drinking ridiculous amounts of alcohol.
The thing is, that kind of coping had gotten me through the really tough period before, it’s all I knew.
But this time my baseline was already completely wrecked. Adding to that massively was not too long before one of the most important people in my life passed away.
So I was a mess. Days of drinking and smoking from morning to night, and then after an argument with the person I was with, led me to having one too many bongs…
say hello to the biggest whitey of my life. Wow.
I genuinely felt like I was dying.
It lasted hours.
Then days.
Over the next few weeks I started getting palpitations and other symptoms that were pretty distressing and lasting longer than usual.
But honestly, by that point I was quite used to weird symptoms, so I carried on.
Until…
I was out in Manchester one evening, going to see a candlelight orchestra performance.
I was really looking forward to it. With it being lockdown I had not been out in ages.
It also meant I hadn’t been in a busy environment like that for a long time. That didn’t particularly bother me, but I imagine it contributed to what happened next.
I started to feel so tired.
At first I joked about it.
“Bloody hell, I feel a bit off tonight.”
But then it intensified.
Something felt really wrong. I felt my heart slow right down. I felt like I was almost unable to move.
But I was still trying to laugh it off.
And then it happened.
A big loud noise. A pan dropping and making a massive crash sound from the kitchen of the restaurant we were at.
Boom.
Welcome to the era of panic attacks.
And DPDR.
Oh, you thought we were finished?
No, no.
This is where things take another turn.
That was the moment everything shifted, from something I could push through to something I could no longer.
This was the beginning of another long chapter.
And another glimpse into how the systems that are meant to recognise and help people can often miss what’s actually happening and, in some cases, make matters worse.
And this…
This is where I start saying grrrrr a lot.