I thought I’d got away with October.

I should learn that I never get away with October…

October is a DARK month.

October is a month I struggle.

October is a month in which I go backwards, to my very worst places.

October is when I am weary to the bone, but cannot rest.

It is when my heart is in my throat choking me as I lie down, so I can’t swallow and I can’t breathe, until my breath is all I can think about – and it won’t go in or out quite right and I am lightheaded with it, without it, with it.

It is when sleep is slow to come, and when it does the dreams drag at me, thick like treacle, wild and hopeless, and I am pulled in and out of awfulness not really knowing when I’m conscious and when I’m not.

It is when I wake up in a sweat, shaking, feeling sick, coming to with a sharp bump of reality and a descending doom and miscellaneous fear that settle deep and heavy inside me.

It is when I struggle to get up, to put one foot in front of the other to get to the shower, to go through the motions of every day under a fog that mutes everything – in a body that isn’t quite mine.

It is when I fixate and obsess and forget and abandon and lose sight of what’s important and what’s not.

It is when I stop eating because I am too full of nothing, or everything – or when I eat everything to drown the nothing, to bind the everything, to block it, to feel better.

It’s when I drink too much to forget. It’s when I exercise too much to hurt.

It’s when I pick at my skin.

It’s when I am too scared to open my email, and my ears buzz and my head fills with static and I feel dizzy with dread.

It’s when all the worst times and worst memories come back, flowing down well-worn grooves and I can’t tell what’s current and what’s not, what’s true and what’s an echo.

It’s when I feel clawingly desperate, with an unfounded but profound certainty that I’m going to lose everything, and I’m powerless to do anything but watch it slip away from me, water through my fingers.

It’s when everything feels too big and too hard, and making a cup of tea is too enormous a challenge to accomplish, and leaves me exhausted.

It’s when I am on the brink of panic always, ready to fly or fight but knowing deep down I’m not fit to do either and someone will see, someone will find out.

It’s when I stop doing things or seeing people because I can’t, because I can’t explain this, this heaviness, this wrongness, because I don’t fit in, because I am a beat behind – too aware of myself and the dull wall that separates me – out of step, other, unreal.

It is when I make plans I can’t enjoy and watch moments I should be happy slip past without touching the sides, without feeling them at all.

It’s when I feel too much and too little, all at once, all the time, over-sensitised and numb nerve by alternating nerve on confusing repeat.

It is when I am a ghost in my own life.

Maybe this is why October is mental health awareness month, because maybe it is a month in which the sun goes down and the grey mist rises for lots of other people, too.

So if you are here, l want to let you know that October doesn’t last. In fact this is the final day.

And more days will come afterwards, in an inexorable row, and eventually you will start feeling them again.

The mornings will get lighter.

You will remember how to breathe.

You will be able rest in yourself, as yourself, again.

You just have to hold on and wait.

And so do I.

Take care.