Everyone’s anxiety levels are spiking at the moment as we contend with the corona virus pandemic. This gave reading Jessice Burkhart’s anthology LIFE INSIDE MY MIND : 31 AUTHORS SHARE THEIR PERSONAL STRUGGLES a particular relevance.
Burkhart’s book features well crafted essays, covering a range of anxiety conditions, that stand out because of the candour and gutsiness of the writing.
Crissa-Jean Chappell describes her Obsessive Compulsive Disorder as a tentacled monster who squeezes its tentacles around her brain.
Amber Benson’s ‘Therapy : The Gift I Give Myself’ reveals how Amber has struggled with anxiety despite her parents being prominent in the mental health field; her father was a leading psychiatrist and her mother a psychiatric nurse with an undergraduate degree in psychology. Amber finds that she doesn’t cope well with anxiety and allows herself the gift of going into therapy.
I teared up at Francesca Lia Block’s beautifully wrought story simply called ‘Dirk’. Francesca’s world was always lit up when she was around her closest friend, the ever colourful, always flamboyant Dirk. She found out too late that Dirk’s manic depression would cruelly get the better of him.
The candour of Jennifer L Armentrout’s ‘Escape Clause’ shines through. The escape clause refers to exiting out of life when life’s difficulties become too difficult to bear.
” And the Escape Clause is too late. For the most part everything in life is fixable, but the Escape Clause isn’t. You can’t take back ending your life. You don’t get a do-over. You don’t get to experience the regret…
” Writing this essay is possibly one of the hardest things for me to do. I almost wish I couldn’t put my name to it. It’s not shame or guilt driving. I am a private person, so sharing something like this isn’t the norm for me. But I think about the seventeen year old me, and I think about all the others who deal with depression in silence.
“I think about the stigma and ignorance surrounding depression. that still persist to this day. I think about the fact that I’m not the only one who lives with the Escape Clause in the back of their thoughts.”
Amy Reed’s ‘Twins’ describes “my addiction and depression are twins. They were born together. They have the same source, the same tangle of trauma, silence, chemistry and blood.”
Reed’s addiction. like other stories in the collection, was to alcohol.
“The effects of drugs and alcohol were always different for me than for my friends. I seemed to always get higher and drunker than everyone else. I get sicker. I threw up and passed out more often. They knew when not to stop, but I didn’t. They could take it or leave it, but I couldn’t.”
Reed’s essay points to her using alcohol to numb her feelings and that she has worked out she will only get better when she is able to deal with her feelings rather than run away from them.
Cyn Balog’s ‘Objects in the Mirror’ details an obsession with body image. She ends on this note.
“I’ve made peace with myself now. I’m never really pleased with what I see in the mirror. But I don’t obsess (much). I don’t dwell (much). I don’t wake up at four anymore to get ready and I don’t tell myself I’m worthless.
“You’re not either. I promise.”
Some stories take one by surprise. Like Sarah Fine’s battle with anxiety called ‘Some Stuff’. The thing with Sarah’s piece is that not only is she a published author but she is also a prominent clinical psychologist.
Fine’s essay ends on this note.
‘I’m going to smile, and this time I won’t be clenching my jaw and baring my teeth. I’m going to explain that I chose to be open and honest instead of buying in.to self stigma. I’m no less a professional for having lived through all of it. I’m no less a person. Like everyone else. I’m more than the sum of my experiences – I’m what I made of them. And when I was given the chance to share those experiences with readers who might be looking for connection and validation and hope, I took it.
And it was worth it.”
Connections and validations can be found everywhere in LIFE INSIDE MY HEAD. A revelation and an outstanding read.
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Title : Life inside my mind
Editor : Jessica Burkhart
Simon Pulse, Simon and Schuster, New York
Paperback Edition
April 2019
ISBN : 9781481494656