Breaking Down

It was February 10th 2015 when I finally cracked and despite seeing things more clearly now, back then I just didn't see it coming.  I can remember driving to work and feeling this strange sense of calm, serenity even, and found myself tuning in to Classic FM.  I'd never been able to listen to classical music, finding it too overwhelming and conflicting (let alone middle-aged), until the Christmas time just gone when the chat and hype of Heart just became too much to take in. I can see now that my head was filling up and starting to reject external stimuli in a bid to process what it already had.  I was like a neglected filing cabinet stuffed full of unsorted, unstapled, unread papers spilling out of folders and drawers as out of control as the magic porridge pot spewing unchecked all over the floor.

I had been working in India for a couple of weeks and was returning to the UK office on a Monday morning.  I opened my inbox and there was a string of whinging emails.  Could no one get life in perspective?  Something I have struggled with since leaving the Army in 2008.  Why sweat the small stuff- its exhausting.  But there was also an email from Stalker 69 and I froze. 

Stalker 69 was a pervert masquerading as an old boy travelling the Golden Triangle on his own having a well-deserved break from his terminally ill wife back home.  He came and joined me for coffee where I was working in the hotel café in Delhi- I thought I was having a nice  chat with a fellow Brit abroad until he came back moments after taking his leave and offered me the 'opportunity' to see the inside of an executive suite.  Staggered, I was lost for words.  When he came back a third time an hour later, taking a more aggressive umbrage with my refusal  of his offer, I was still unable to just tell him to f**k off.  I felt uncomfortable, ashamed and unclean.  I went back to my room and stood in the shower for half an hour.  It wasn't like me to react like this, to take something so personally.  Was I ok?

So when two weeks later, he had tracked down the general enquiries mailbox at work and sent me an email thanking me for coffee and offering me his contact details I couldn't believe it.  How dare he.  He knew that he had made me feel uncomfortable.  Why would a 69 year old man think that a woman thirty years younger than him should be interested?

My team were talking to me but I wasn't hearing them.  They were getting further and further away and I couldn't process their voices as well as the panic in my head.  The team meeting was in five minutes.  I had to get myself out of the office.  I got up and headed to the Ladies across the landing and as soon as I had closed the door,  I just remember turning to face the full-length mirror and starting to cry, uncontrollably.  I couldn't stop.  I knew something was wrong and that frightened me as I could usually control or suppress uncomfortable emotions. But I couldn't do this anymore and I needed help. I stepped out.

I couldn't think.  My head was empty.  But I couldn't stop crying either.  One of the ladies in the office came and put her hand on my shoulder.  She told me firmly that I wasn't well and that I needed to go and get better.  It was like having a broken leg, I just couldn't see it. She did me a huge favour just by saying that; I needed to hear someone else tell me that I wasn't well in order to give me the courage to address this myself.  Otherwise I would have simply returned to my desk, buried everything again and continued to limp on doing myself perhaps irreversible emotional, physical and psychological damage. Little did I realise that this was just the beginning - just the  top drawer of that filing cabinet opening itself just far enough for me to walk into rather than skirt round.