Riptide

I’m not sure the recommended accompaniment to 20 mg of beta-blockers is a slug of flat white, but it works for now.

Stimulation, tranquilization. Push, pull. Like the tide. Like the sea when you watch it from the dunes, the froth sucking in and out.

Everyone uses sea imagery to talk about mental health. The sea is something we all know, but don’t really understand. Like space, but splashier.

I am afraid of change and I’m not one for trying new things. So here is one more maritime metaphor:

Arriving at work with an anxiety disorder is like arriving at a swimming beach with all the red flags up.

You look around for someone to tell you not to get in, but everyone else seems to be okay. They’re splashing about in the surf shouting things like Resilience is an important soft skill! And Tenacity is crucial to our industry! So you do your best brave face and get in, wading as confidently as you can in a swimsuit that feels too small, with all your soft fleshy vulnerability on show.

There are lifeguards. They might be able to get you back to shore, but to get their attention you need to be in quite obvious trouble. Stuck in a whirlpool. Sinking into quicksand. Shark attack.

They’re unlikely to notice if you’re just doing a bit of drowning.

Especially if you’re doing it quietly. Having words with yourself in toilet mirrors. Stemming erroneous tears with the back of your sleeve before the person next to you wonders why you’re staring at a PowerPoint with watery eyes.

It’s not easy to gasp for air quietly when you’re out at sea with briny lungs and salt in your throat. But you have gotten good at it. You know the quiet corners of the office where you can go to gulp great lungfuls into your chest.

It’s not their fault. You’re hardly screaming for help.

Besides, the lifeguards are the people who will be interviewing you for your next promotion. Conducting your reviews. Holding you up to other beachgoers and deciding who’s most capable in deep water.

They want strong swimmers with experience of swimming strongly. Of leading other swimmers toward a shared swimming goal. An ability to manage difficult swimmers. You don’t want to be the difficult swimmer yourself.

Asking for armbands seems like a bad idea. Even if they say that’s okay. Even if they pin up posters that say Let’s Talk About Mental Health.

Asking for armbands says: “I can’t swim.” Even though you can swim. You can do front crawl and backstroke and great joyful belly flops into the water. You can hold your breath and duck beneath the waves and do handstands in the shallows.

You just can’t right now.

Right now, you want the armbands.

You really, really want the armbands.

But you look out to the sea. The others are swimming about, diving under the waves, body surfing. They’re wearing wet suits. They look slick and seal-like: made for the water. You don’t have a wet suit. Your skin is thin and prickled with goosebumps. They’re not scared of sharks or sharp rocks. They don’t lay in bed thinking about them.

You imagine how wearing the armbands would look. Scratchy high-vis blow-ups strapped to your arms as you waddle to the shoreline. You picture the other swimmers’ faces when they see you coming down the beach in orange kiddie wings. They’d know. Imagine they knew.

“I’m fine, you say.” You try not to look at the posters.

And then you get in. You get in the sea, even though you know you’ll struggle to stay afloat.

You attempt your best front crawl, but the sea around you is a thousand droplets of terrifying things, an inexhaustible flood of thoughts. There are the tendrils of seaweed that wrap around your ankles, jellyfish that lash at your legs. All you can do is blink the salt from your eyes and resort to sculling the water, occasionally waving at the shoreline with a big smile.

“I’m okay!” You shout.

Before long you find yourself treading water in the calm gap between the waves: the flat bit that signals a riptide. To the lifeguards, you look as though you’re bobbing about in tranquil waters. Like you’re not doing much at all, actually.

“She’s not performing,” one lifeguard says.

“She needs a bit more presence,” says another.

Not everyone knows how to spot a riptide.

You do. You spend most days trying not to swim into one. You know it’s not visible from the surface, but it’s there, underneath. It always is. And you’re in it again, back there, in the break between the waves.

Suddenly everyone is very far away. You can see the others getting out, shaking their towels, reapplying their sunscreen. But you’re still out at sea, on your own.

You know if you swim too hard, you’ll get tired. You also know if you don’t swim hard enough, you’ll be swept away.

So you take another slug of lukewarm coffee and another 10 mg. You tread water.

In a riptide, you’re supposed to let the current take you: stay on your back, look up at the birds wheeling above. Rest. Conserve your energy until you arrive at warmer shallower waters further down the bay. Then you can crawl gratefully to a sunny spot of sand and bask in the evening sun and feel your energy coming back.

But that looks lazy. We’re not here to lay on our backs, floating, resting, letting ourselves be carried to safer ground. So you have to stay there, somehow, in that flat slick of calm water with a current surging beneath your toes.

“It’s lovely!” you call back to the shore.

-Abby Ledger-Lomas

Abby Ledger-Lomas works in audience research which means she knows a lot about people and their behaviors (and also the telly they watch). She has recently begun to transfer some of this knowledge into a novel because apparently that's a nice easy place to start for new writers. She lives in Manchester (the UK one, not the one by the sea), but will always love her home city of Liverpool more. Twitter: @ASLLomas.