Anxiety, Depression and Rock N Roll Reapers

It’s been almost two months since I became a published author. I’ve been overwhelmed with the response to my first novel ‘Reap Sleep Rock Repeat’. With the exception of my two daughters, I consider it my greatest achievement and am thrilled it has connected with so many of you.

It may surprise you to know that elements of the book are autobiographical. No, this isn’t me admitting that I died and appealed my death. However there are many parallels between myself and Ben that I didn’t necessarily notice when I was deep in the writing process. To be honest Tom and I aren’t exactly polar opposites either!

Like Ben, I too have struggled with my mental health over the years. At the age of 22, I suffered through a panic attack for the very first time. I genuinely thought I was dying. That day the rain was so torrential that it caused Morpeth (a market town in Northumberland only a few short miles from where I was born) to flood. It was so severe that families and loved ones were separated by the flood. Thankfully I didn’t live in Morpeth but the bus ride back to Durham was one of the scariest of my life. From that point on, I experienced what I now know to be panic disorder. It wasn’t uncommon for me to experience panic attacks two to three times a day. They were so debilitating that I can barely remember late 2008 and early 2009.

Mental health wasn’t spoken about as openly as it is fifteen years on and my employer at the time referred to my panic attacks as my “little episodes”. They didn’t feel little to me! Sadly I didn’t have the confidence or the strength to push back against what was essentially discrimination. If not for close friends I worked with at the time, my experience could have been so much worse.

After a brief reprieve, my panic came back with a vengeance in the summer of 2009 following a break up. At that point I finally reached out for counselling after a very scary reaction to beta blockers. Therapy radically changed the trajectory of my life. I was no longer bothered about working in television or radio. I wanted to help others and their mental health.

I went back to university and paid my way through a counselling degree. I also returned to my old secondary school and volunteered as a counsellor there once a week, all while meeting the love of my life, getting married and having our first child.

Why is this relevant to a novel about Reapers in Hawaiian shorts and legal battles in the AfterLife? Mental health has been such an important theme throughout my adult life that it inevitably found its way into my work. Ben’s panic, his social anxiety, even his death anxiety are all just as much mine as they are his. In a way I wrote a book so focused on death to try and face my own intolerance of uncertainty about the other side. I really hope the way anxiety is broached in the book resonates with all who read it.

Life is funny though and in my 30s, my mental health struggles have been defined by bouts of depression rather than anxiety. I’m happy to say I’m in a great place currently and it’s thanks to my amazing wife and my own exploration of my mental health that I can spot the warning signs and keep myself on the right path, which leads us to why I’ve written this post in the first place.

Yesterday marked four years to the day that I worked my last shift in my old job. After spending half my life at that point in retail, it felt like a dream that I was finally leaving to pursue a career in mental health. When Facebook kindly reminded me of this anniversary, I had just finished work on the latest chapter of ‘Reap Sleep Rock Repeat: Turn To Dust’. I don’t want to divulge too much but depression is a significant theme in my second novel in the same way anxiety was in the first one.

I will say that there is a new character who I’ve thoroughly enjoyed writing. Perhaps they like Ben are helping me convey my own experiences of depression. For such a difficult topic such as depression I’ve tried to keep it relatively light. That’s always been my way. Last night, I looked back over the kind words left by my co-workers and friends from four years earlier then returned to the chapter I’d just written. Bear in mind that this is only a first draft and these words may change or not even make the final manuscript. However I couldn’t help but feel a pang of emotion when I read these words I’d written for Tom. They’ll make much more sense in the finished novel but they helped me realise how far I’ve come. Hopefully someone out there will take comfort from Tom’s words too.

“It may be grey and miserable here, but it’s beautiful on the other side. I hope you make it someday.”