The Meltdown, Part 1..

The day is upon us. The day it all comes pouring out, when the fuse is lit and your mind and soul finally cave underneath the twenty tones of pressure of repressed emotions. It’s the day which the anxious and depressed of the world like to call The Meltdown. How do you let your family know how you feel you ask? Usually the answer would to be: pick up the phone, call your mother, call your father, tell them you’re not happy. At the end of the day they are your family and they will love you until the bitter end. They will love you if you are the CEO of a Wall-street entity. They will love you if you were working at MacDonald’s. When you are children, it is really hard to appreciate how much your parents had to change their own lives just so that they could raise you. In some cases they have to bail on their own happy ending just to give you one. It’s the most selfless thing a human could possibly do, and it happens everyday.

The thing is, you are rarely reminded of this. Me? It just hit me like a fucking brick wall. Like I was painted red and thrown bare arsed in front of a raging bull. Like most of us, i kept everything bottled up. For almost a year now i haven’t told a single soul how i feel or what I’m struggling with. I failed my first year of university and told everyone it was down to my insomnia; throw something people don’t properly understand into an argument and you’re almost always going to win. I sat down with the parents and babbled about how the course was difficult and i wasn’t sleeping, and they supported my decision to try again. Little did they know, the real reason  to my sudden lack of academic capability was due to my anxiety and depression. I was not happy. I had no passion for what i was doing and i was forcing myself through it everyday. Sit in lectures until you’re got piles; if you hate what you’re putting yourself through, none of it is going to sink in. Now you may be reading this and be pondering as to why i didn’t just tell my parents i hated it and i wanted to drop out, but here comes the thick of it.

People like me, and I’m not alone, get so caught up in pleasing other people that we drain all of our own happiness out of our souls, and feed it to those who we deserve that happiness. We never feel like that’s what we deserve. To my parents i’m a straight A student, with no flaws, who’s always happy. How can i tell them how much i’m suffering? It would break them, and I’ll be damned if i’m hurting my family.

However, picture your mind as a lake. Lake Michigan, Lake Windermere, I don’t give a fuck. If you fill a lake with water, the water level rises. When it is sunny, the water evaporates and goes back into the sky, the water level falls. But what if it is never sunny at your lake? It rains everyday, without fail, but nothing ever comes to take the water away. Eventually the water has risen so much that it overflows, chaos erupts, you drown everything around you as far as the eye can see. Death and destruction; pain and fear. To us suffering, it’s all the same.

Little did i know, when this happens, your family is there to listen. They love you. Your mother breaks down wondering whatever happened to her baby. Your father breaks down, exposing a side of himself you have never seen before. But after all this, there is a brief moment of sunshine, so strong to evaporate all the hurt and the pain, and you finally experience happiness after all this time. I love my family, they love me, i feel like a new person. Go to your parents, your siblings, your fucking dog, just go find someone or something to confide in. Don’t let your lake overflow.

Maybe this is the start to a year of summer. What next? Well, I’ll tell you next time.

As always

Peace

Francis

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