Please Forgive Me
I didn’t know I was anxious. I thought I was busy. It wasn’t until the trees started looking good I knew something was up. I don’t mean they looked pretty. I mean that while I was driving the car they were looking like a good option to drive into. “Just one little twitch of the steering wheel and it will all be over” the voice would say. I bet most people know the voice. It’s the same one that beats us up for not getting things perfect all the time. The same voice that says I’m too busy to do anything fun. Ever.
I was exhausted. Running on fumes. Racing on empty. My senses were constantly on high alert, I was strung out, worried, filled with drama and conflict, my thoughts constantly rushing and almost never actually slowing down to breathe properly. I thought I was busy. But I was just overloading my own plate with shit I didn’t really need to do if it came down to it. Trying to please everyone else. Trying to achieve things. Trying to be somebody. It wasn’t until the thoughts of driving into trees were becoming a daily thought that I recognised there was a problem. Could I have got help earlier? Probably. I’m a big advocate for getting help. I couldn't count the amount of times I’ve encouraged others to get help. Get help. Getting help is smart. Getting help is brave. Getting help is having courage. Getting help is doing the right thing. I’d spoken to counsellors before. I’ve done the therapy. I know the lines. I’ve talked myself stupid. It wasn’t until it was an ‘every-time-I’m-behind-the-wheel-alone’ occurrence that I thought “Oh, maybe I need some actual help. I can’t be thinking like this. I need help”.
I went to see my GP the next day. When I told him what was happening and the thoughts I was having he suggested hospitalisation. Hospitalisation. That’s a large leap, right? That’s a bit dramatic. I’m not actually going to kill myself, I don’t want to kill myself. It’s just pretty much all I think about and it's starting to feel like an easier option than actually continuing to live like this. What the hell is happening to me? I’m not anxious. I mean, I know my heart beats fast and every now and then I feel like I’m literally being skewered through the chest but maybe I’m just getting older and it’s like, angina or something. It’s not anxiety. I’ve done that. I’m all over that shit - it’s managed. I still do everything I have to. I’m also not depressed because I mean, really, my life is pretty good. I’m not sad or crying. I just want to die.
So, it turns out prolonged severe anxiety can do a lot to your body. Feeling like a human shishkebab? Anxiety. It can also burn you out to the point that you are actually depressed after all. Good to know. So I said, “Ok, if that’s what you think I should do, let’s do it asap”. As in before I convince myself of all the reasons not to. I like to think that I can soldier on. I’m a doer. I’m pretty tough. I’ve been through some horrific stuff in my life. I can move mountains. I don’t like losing. I don’t give up. I don’t give in. I don’t back down. I don’t like being a failure and here I am failing at life.
The truth is I wasn’t ‘failing at life’. I was struggling. I had been struggling for a bloody long time. Pushing through. Doing the things. Being the glue. Being the strong one. Being the rock. Holding shit together. Through some pretty rough shit I might add. Without my family in close proximity. In a community I felt like I didn’t belong in. I was alone a lot and I wasn’t doing the one thing that had, since I was a kid, helped me to process my stuff, helped me to make sense of the world and understand myself and undo my inner knots; music.
Having fibromyalgia had kind of stripped back my priorities to the things I had to do and none of the things I wanted to do. Run after kids. Rest when I was sick. Clean the house. Rest when I was exhausted. I had guilt already from not being able to do more. Music had become an afterthought, then a luxury, then a selfish pursuit that took me away from my family and time and energy that was better spent looking after them or doing the “things that needed to be done”. Can I tell you that list of things that ‘need to be done’ never actually ends? You’ll just keep putting shit on the end of it. If you don’t put your own self-care on that list, you won’t get to it. I put ‘self-care’ on that list purely because it helped with the fibromyalgia. Bathing. Exercise. Learning. Not music. That wasn’t self care. That was just selfish.
After a few years, music became painful. I stopped listening to music on the radio. When a guitar was pulled out I found myself withdrawing, moving away, finding something else to do because the truth is it had become so painful, not being able to do the thing I loved. It didn’t help that I had these dreams about what I wanted to do with my music. Dreams that had been put on the shelf so long they’d actually grown mouldy and had holes in them. Even thinking about how that felt back then I still get those heart-attack-vibe chest pains. Apparently if you suppress your emotions for long enough you’ll get actual physical pain. Shishkebab pain. The kind you can’t push through even if you’re tough as nails. Joy.
When I got the call saying the hospital was ready to take me - it happened quick - I wasn’t in a great headspace (obviously). I kept thinking things like “What about my family?” Shit. Shit, shit, shit. I’m letting them down. I’m not the glue anymore - I’m a mess. Everything is gonna fall apart. I’m gonna scar them for life. I’m a failure. I’m an actual failure. What a shit wife. Who does this to their family after everything we’ve been through in the last few years? This is gonna break the kids. This is going to break my husband. I can’t do this. But another voice, one I recognised from a very long time ago, back when I gave up drinking and got help for that, said “You are no good to them dead. You need help. So you’re going to do this. You are going to practice what you preach because one day, if they need help, you’re going to show them that people who need help, get help”.
Strangely enough, three weeks is both an eternity and by the end it doesn’t feel like enough time. When I first arrived I sat in the waiting room, filling out the forms, I was thinking about the people behind the desk; “do they think I’m batshit crazy?” Thinking about my husband “Is he going to hate me for this? He hates me. I’m sure he hates me. Why wouldn’t he hate me? I know he’s gonna feel like I’ve just bailed and he’s left to pick up the pieces. God - I hate me”. Thinking about the people already in there on the other side “are they batshit crazy? Are they the kind of ‘throw-your-shit-at-the-wall’ crazy?” and the kids “I hope they’re going to be ok, God I hope they’re gonna be ok. This is huge. Who wants their mother in a loony bin?” All of the things. All of the feels. All of the guilt. Yet, walking my own talk “people who need help, get help. I can’t tell anyone else there’s no shame in getting help if I’m pouring shame upon myself for getting help”. The shame pouring still continued.
When I first went through to the other side I was assigned my room. Funnily enough it was just like a small hotel room. I’ve been a touring musician. I’ve seen many hotel rooms. I’ve seen many terrible motel rooms. This was nice. I wasn’t as scared. Except for the feeling that I was going to lose everything I had worked so hard for. Who’s gonna love me now? Who’s gonna want me now? No one. That’s who. That fear just grew by the second.
The next morning I had to get a blood test and I sat next to two men. I didn’t know it then but I would get to know these men well. Well enough to know that they were decent, loving, whole-hearted, sane men. Who along with the rest of my group had probably given too much of themselves for too long and come to the absolute end of their tank. I was grateful they weren’t throwing crap at the walls but it turned out no one actually did that. It was an in-house program for anxiety and depression, not an actual old school mental asylum like you see in the movies.
There was a grand piano in the lobby. Ha. Can you imagine that? Here I am, ignoring my music until I make myself sick and I end up in a hospital with a grand piano in it. The irony. There was an art room as well. With a keyboard. Also with no one in the room occasionally. Within the first couple of days I found myself sitting at it, staring at the keys. I pushed the power button. I played an F#minor chord. Words came out of my mouth.
“I know I let you down”... ouch. I felt like I let everyone down. My family. My husband. My self.
“I wasn’t there, when you needed me ‘round”... the song continued to come out. In slow motion. The words uncovering, discovering themselves…
“I didn’t listen, when you had so much to say… you knocked at my door and I turned you away”. All of a sudden it hit home. I had ignored my inner voice. I had ignored it. Door slammed my self.
“When I know what you need and I kept it from you. Trying so hard to be what they needed me to”. That was exactly what I had done. Tried and tried and tried to make everything and everyone around me better and completely lost myself in the trying.
“I was hearing your voice, but not heeding your call. Til it got to the point - you made no sound at all”.
In therapy I discovered that I really did have severe anxiety and depression. My childhood combined with a few choice experiences as an adult and my own conceptions of how ‘things should be’, and a mountain of other things over the past decade had finally caught up with me. Like a rubber band I had been stretching, stretching, pushing, trying, striving, stretching, trying, pushing, striving, all the while my anxiety growing, my heart rate climbing, my symptoms being pushed down and ignored, pushing through, stretching until I snapped. Like a rubber band with no elasticity I pretty much felt just like that; I didn’t even feel depressed - I wasn’t sad; I didn’t have the energy for sad - I was empty. I kind of just felt like I had nothing left. No steam. It was all too hard. I’d ‘burnt out’. All that chest pain? Anxiety. Not being able to sleep? Anxiety. Trying to control even the most stupid minutia? Anxiety. Trying to fix the whole world? Anxiety. I should have known. I think somewhere deep down I did know but I ignored it. Kept pushing through - I’m a trier, I'll give myself that.
Hearing other peoples’ stories was liberating. God we laughed. It’s funny hearing someone’s inner thoughts when they’re so ridiculously cruel and so familiar at the same time. I could have so much compassion for the other people in the room. Their stories, their symptoms, their heartache. How they got there. Why they were trapped there. I could see so clearly how they had over stretched themselves, given way too much of themselves and burnt out. It broke my heart. For them, and for me. Att the very same time it made thigns a whole lot clearer. I was having the exact same experience because I had been doing the same thing.
Where was my compassion for myself? Why was it so easy for me to want these people to do what made them happy and live their lives in ways that brought them joy but when it came to me I was like the harshest prison master in the world. “Push through. Try harder. You should be better. You should be braver. You should, you should, you should”. Conditioning is a thing. Having those voices in your head that tell you that “you’re not pretty enough, you’re not smart enough, you’re not good enough, you’re undeserving, you’re unworthy just as you are so you gotta hustle”. You better make yourself worthy. You better try harder or no one is gonna love you. No one is gonna want you. Let me give you the tip - that line of thinking isn’t very healthy and it certainly doesn’t actually work. If anything it drives people away. People can smell it. You can’t earn love. You can’t earn worthiness. That’s what grace is for.
People can smell through the trying. You become controlling. Obsessive. Desperate. All that low self worth can’t be covered up with acts of service or gifts or anything outside of yourself. When you don’t love yourself and actually show yourself love, that hole on the inside just gets wider and the more it takes from your life and swallows it whole. I tried for so long to ‘be ok’ when I wasn’t. Looking back I realised that wasn’t loving for anyone. If I had of looked after myself properly and actually allowed myself the space to do the things that brought me joy I would have had more in my tank for myself and others included. But I didn’t. I kept stretching and it would have been scary to watch.
“I didn’t mean to lie. When I said everything was fine. I didn’t mean to be callous, I didn’t mean to be cruel. When I put everything first but you”.
The lines of the song kept writing themselves and when the chorus came I realised that the song was for me.
Please forgive me
I know not what I do
I never believed I was abandoning you
I was trying so hard, doing all the right things
But for letting you breathe and letting you sing.
There it was. Some twisted part of me had been trying to do all the ‘right’ things instead of what brought me joy. I look back now and think what on earth? Why wasn’t I allowed to do what brought me joy? I still haven’t got it figured that out entirely - but it doesn’t matter as much as the realisation that music, for me, is life.
My psychiatrist actually said “You are wired for music. If you don’t do music, and actually let it take the space in your life that it deserves, you’ll die”. I’m paraphrasing - I can’t remember the exact words he used but I do remember thinking “he’s an actual psychiatrist. Isn’t he supposed to tell me I have some sort of personality disorder and prescribe me pills for life and send me home a mind-numbed zombie? Surely I’m nuts, no?”. Nope. My most important thing that I needed to do for my mental health was music.
My psychologists recommendation was similar but more prescriptive. “I want you to play piano for at least half an hour a day”. I’m so glad she put a number on it. I was still somehow tightly obsessed with getting things right, or following the rules so her having quantified measurable daily activity for me was a blessing. Playing the piano does something for me. I play guitar - it’s my primary instrument if you don’t count the voice - but a piano is so expressive. A real piano vibrates through my body like it’s radiating something magical. It's visceral. I’ve learnt since there’s actual science behind that - it’s not just magic, but sitting at the piano, with my hands on the keys, playing music and letting it fill a room undoes the knots in my belly. It eases the ache in my chest. It silences the voices in my head and connects me back to my heart. It takes the whirling thoughts and the dots that I’ve gathered and it makes a melody - a story. It gives a voice to the unspoken somethings that go on inside me. I guess that’s why I’m a songwriter. It’s probably what makes me good at it. Yes, now I actually think I’m good at something and it’s something I love. Go me. That’s a win.
I had an event to go to straight after leaving the hospital that required a ball gown. So during my stay at the hospital one afternoon my husband bought me a ball gown. I put it in the cupboard in my room at the hospital and that evening I wore it down into the lobby. Like an actual freaking crazy person. I’ve never felt so mad in my life. But I was excited too. I knew I was becoming ‘me’ again. Stuff it. I’m not going to worry about what people think, I’m going to do something that brings me joy. I did my hair and makeup and with no shoes on and a beautiful floor length navy gown, I walked down to the lobby. Two of my new besties did the rounds telling everyone I was going to sing. At 7:30pm a handful of people gathered around the grand piano while I sang. A few more gathered. Maybe around twenty by the end. Some patients. Some staff. A man I hadn’t met sat in a chair with his eyes closed listening with tears running down his cheeks. I sang my new song. There were a few tears. Someone came up afterwards and said they’d heard me from their room and come downstairs to let it wash over them. It was the first time they’d come out of their room since check in. Another said that was the best therapy they could have asked for. I cried. I sang. I cried. They came one by one afterwards and hugged me and thanked me.
I realised that music is actually not selfish. That thing, that thing that brings me joy, that heals me and gives me expression and life, when I do that for me, it does the exact same thing for others. It’s almost the opposite of selfish - the self isn’t there. It’s hard to explain but when I give myself fully to the moment it’s almost like it has absolutely nothing to do with me. I’m just the vessel.
I wasn’t to know what would happen coming home. I had no idea what life would bring. I didn’t know that I’d go on to do songwriters retreats, that my therapy would be my fuel, that my new strength would be my drive and that within six months time I would have a song being played on national radio, a song being played on CMC, an acoustic album coming out and patrons helping me to do what I do and to bring my music into fruition. I didn’t know that I would have a community of people around me, encouraging me, loving me, supporting me, and loving me back to life. I just showed up. As I was. Without pretending I was great. Without smiling through it all. I let myself feel. I let myself be broken. I let myself heal. I let God worry about the rest. The most important thing was I let myself breathe and I let myself do what brought me joy. I’ve written so much since then, but the lines at the end of the song I wrote in hospital were the words I will continue to honour:
“I promise you this, whatever else life will bring… I will harness your breath and be hearing you sing”.
Do what brings you joy. For gods’ sake, do what brings you joy.
XOMC
PS: If you or someone you know needs mental health help - lifeline is helpful. Call them on 13 11 14. If you’re in imminent danger call 000.
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