I live life to the full. I pack in more in some days than others do in a week. I socialise, I work, I organise and plan. I plan and re-plan and change plans. If I’m your friend I will be there for you if you need me. I throw myself into everything and people always tell me to slow down. To relax. To take some time to be myself. To look after myself. But I don’t. I can’t. I’m terrified of not having people around me. Of solitude. Of having to face up to the demons inside of my head. Of finding the time in my life to look at what I am doing and working out where I want to be. Because, in all honesty I have no bloody idea.

I seem to lurch from one thing to another. No concerted plan or design. Rolling with the onslaught of waves that never seem to stop coming. Just as I pick myself up from one thing another comes rushing up to take its place, pushing me back over, throwing me back. Like a wind whispering in my ear “know your place” forcing back. And I’m standing here drowning and everyone thinks I’m doing a great job at staying in the water. Well I’m not.

I don’t know how to get out. I don’t know if I want to. Because getting out will mean examining all of the things that took me to this point, and I’m not sure I’m ready to do that. I’m not sure I ever will be. And so I’ll keep riding the waves and battling with the tide in the hope that one day, soon, it will turn. That it will run in my favour. That I won’t have to work so God damned hard to just stay where I am; on an apparently even keel.

And the pretence will remain, as will the illusion of peace. Because all the while no one knows you are drowning, they don’t have to reach out a hand to help you.