Desperately seeking monotony

I haven't been sleeping well. It's oppressively hot here in England, especially at night, I had Covid which made me choke on my own phlegm every time I laid flat, and we're moving house soon, so I have fifty tasks on my mind at all times. Also, our country is going to shit.

How's that for a cheery opener.

Insomnia crept into my life in my teen years, wrapped its dark, insufferable tendrils around me, and never really let go again. I don't recall when this occurred, exactly; all I remember is that one day I slept fine, and the next I didn't. I'd spend hours surfing what I have geriatrically named 'the old web', reading forums and fan theory websites, anything to put off the moment when I would have to fall into bed. I'd watch the same things at a low volume: Friends, or Buffy, or the hilariously of-the-moment movie Blue Crush. I had to have something to drown out the silence. And I'd lie there and think the same thoughts in loops over and over again. Tossing and turning until the early hours, ready to haul myself out of bed and crawl, zombie-like, to school.

I had OCD as a teenager. (We're going there right off the bat today. I'm too tired to fuck around.) I didn't realise OCD was a real thing, not just a Monica Geller thing, until my mid-twenties. I still remember the realisation: 'Oh! That's why I had to switch my light on and off a certain number of times. That's why I could never look away from any changing number - like on a CD Walkman or a digital display of a DVD player - if the last digit wasn't either 3 or 7. That's why I convinced myself my parents would die horrible, sudden deaths if I screwed up any of my small, torturous rituals. That's why I couldn't stop imagining it, this endless catalogue of misery and pain, that's why I couldn't switch off the bad thoughts even if I wanted to!'

(I thought, to myself, at the time of realisation.)

'I wasn't just weird! I was mentally unwell!'

Do I feel better for knowing this? Slightly. Maybe. But the truth is, when I get really anxious, some of those old thought patterns start creeping back in again. I can't switch off the 'bad thoughts'. Particularly now, as a parent.

When I brought my daughter home from the hospital, I was overwhelmed with the sudden terror of how small and delicate she was. 6 pounds 1 ounce; she looked like a tiny, perfect little doll, too small for her car seat, to small to be a real human, surely. On the way home from the hospital, I sat in the back of the car and held her hand. I couldn't take my eyes off her for a moment. Love and fear roaring through my body in an endless rush.

Sometimes, in my sleep-deprived, unguarded moments, a wild thought would cross my mind: what if I fall down the stairs holding her? What if I drop her? What if I fall asleep cuddling her in the rocking chair? And I'd try to shut those thoughts down, but I'd already be envisioning them. I had never loved anyone in the same way that I loved her (and my son too, who arrived in a whirlwind as an early Christmas present three years later). I love my husband equally, obviously, but in a completely different way. The love I have for my kids makes me feel incredibly lucky, but quite vulnerable.

And I don't think I need to tell you what's been going on recently in the UK that's been keeping me up at night. I look at my daughter sometimes, and I'm scared for her. She's growing up. I have to let her be more independent. Time ticks along no matter how much I wish it wouldn't.

But the news, you know? An eleven-year-old girl, desperately loved by her own mother, was grabbed in a headlock and stabbed multiple times in broad daylight on Monday. Another mum and daughter, out in another city, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

I watched my own daughter cartwheeling her way through Bath today. Free as a bird. Not quite self-conscious enough to hide herself away just yet. About to turn eleven in a couple of weeks.

What do I do with this? How do I cope with this?

I know that bad stuff happens to kids all over the world all the time. I do get that, and I do care about it. I'm not trying to be insensitive; I suppose it just hits you harder when it's close to home because everyone is constantly talking about it. Every time I think about those little girls in Southport, I cry. I can't imagine. Just the absolute worst thing.

Once I read a theory (I believe it was in Dave Tomlinson's How to be a Bad Christian) that heaven and hell are around us all the time; there are points in life at which the barrier between here and there becomes thinner than usual, which he called 'thin spaces'. I imagined this like a porous membrane. Some things are so good that you feel transcendent; some things are so fucking evil that the only way you can describe it is hell on earth.

It's just hard. You have babies and then they grow up but they don't stop being your babies. And you have to let them go out into the world and just hope to god that people will be nice to them. That people will protect them. That people will keep them safe.

There is absolutely nothing I can do with this fear. The problem with loving anyone, really, is the fear of losing them. It's the price you pay. Mostly I can live with that, because it's just the way it is. But sometimes, something happens that brings it all into sharp relief and I suddenly think, oh wow, I have two healthy, alive children, hearts beating away in their chests. I am hit with the sheer luck of it. And I can't do anything but just hold them a bit longer and try to live in this exact moment, right now, when nothing is hurting them, and they only feel love.

Look, it feels really stupid to talk about video games now.

I want to talk about coping mechanisms. I like to clean when I'm stressed. But Post-Covid, my energy levels have withered away to nothing. Recently I spent 45 minutes pulling out weeds and chopping back ivy in the garden, and then I had to spend an hour lying down, which is not a helpful task-to-recovery ratio. I'm trying to build my strength back up in increments. But in those 45 minutes, I felt at peace for the first time in weeks. It felt so good to move my body, to do something productive. To clear things away. To allow my mind to completely empty of anything except for the task in front of me.

Only my body won't allow me to do it. So I've been power washing the shit out of Lara Croft's manor instead.

Video games have been a coping mechanism for me since I was eleven. The origin story of this, I do remember. I was being badly bullied at secondary school. I used to come home and play Spyro: Year of the Dragon for hours at a time, charging my way through the levels (literally) until I memorised them back to front. I would reach what I can only describe as a state of total zen. Focused on absolutely nothing, actually. Not thinking about, or even really seeing, the game. Pure muscle memory and a totally blank mind. I'd do this on my worst days, because it was the only way I could actually empty the thoughts out of my head.

Since then, my reliance on video games has become slightly more complex. I rely on them for a lot of things: entertainment, emotional release, good storytelling, inspiration, human connection. I need them for a lot of reasons. But recently the noise in my head has reached such a fever pitch that I need nothing more than nothingness. I've always struggled to settle on one thing in my head. My thoughts are always bouncing and flitting around, swapping from one thing to the other. It's exhausting, you know? I find it so hard to quiet my mind.

Seeing as I'm baring my weirdest quirks here, I used to get sleep paralysis a lot when I was younger. I get this noise in my ears before it happens. Like my brain is full of bees. They're vibrating in my head. And I can hear it, but I can't stop myself from slipping into semi-consciousness. So even though my mind is like:

My body is like:

So I half-wake, and I can't move. One time I dreamed a large spider was working its way slowly up my chest; I tried to wake up Chris, but I couldn't, obviously. When I eventually woke him up I was annoyed at him as though he should have known, via hidden psychic powers or maybe some kind of osmosis, that I was in distress.

Anyway. That's what my brain was like the other night when the riots were happening. Vibrating with anxious energy. I could not have another thought in my brain, it was too loud and too much. If another thing arrived for me to think about, I would simply fold up like an accordion and cease to function. So I PowerWashed, baby. I simulated power washing. I cleaned windows. I cleaned doors. I cleaned fountains. I cleaned things I previously didn't know the name of. (Quoins. Did you know about quoins? Because I didn't. I'm not going to tell you either, I think this is something only architecture nerds and PowerWash Simulator enthusiasts should know.) I cleaned until everything sparkled and, like eleven-year-old me, I no longer felt anything. And that night, I actually slept.

I'm not sure if this is coming across as complimentary or not. I mean it as a good thing. It's weirdly moreish. Every time I hear that little 'ding!' when I've cleaned an area, I feel better inside. And so I just keep doing it, again and again. I've heard that PowerWash Simulator has some lore I haven't discovered yet. I've only done a little bit of the main game, so I'm not sure. But for me, at this moment, it provides me with what I need. I can completely zone out. I've spent a few evenings power washing this week. Sometimes I listen to Regular Features. Sometimes I sit there in the quiet. Every time, I completely unwind. And it sounds silly, but I'm genuinely grateful for this small escape.

The older I get, the more aware I become of the need to take care of myself. I think that, even if I had therapy of some kind, the ghost of OCD, and insomnia, and sleep paralysis, and the general fear of losing the people I love will probably remain. The crucial thing is that I deal with it properly. The fear of something bad happening to my kids could turn me into a paranoid wreck. I could become overbearing, intrusive, clingy. I could damage my relationship with them. Perhaps permanently. It's so easy to tip from 'protective' to 'suffocating'. And I know from experience that growing up in the latter environment is really hard.

So I have to deal with my shit. As parents, we all have to deal with our shit, because if we don't, it affects everyone in the family. I journal, I talk to people, I go for walks, I move around when my body allows it, and, when it all becomes too much, I switch on the kind of video game that allows me to totally disconnect, for a short while, until I feel a little bit better. And it's not exactly self-care, is it? That would be a stretch. But it's nice to have.

And I regret ever being disparaging of PowerWash Simulator. Clearly, it is brilliant. I now want to buy a real power washer and, you know, hose everything down. Everything will be clean.