Let me try and explain what it feels like. I’m assuming of course that you have no idea, but there would be no point in my writing this if you didn’t.

It’s like someone’s gone out and left a light on in a house. It’s a 100 Watt bulb. But it isn’t just one light. They’ve left every light on in every room. And three televisions on as well, tuned to different programmes in different languages. Blaring out. And the stereo. The stereo is playing a thrash metal band whilst the wireless on top of it hums a crackly Bach Cantata. Both phones are ringing. And the microwave is making popcorn. And the dishwasher’s washing knives. And the glare of a computer’s monitor burns flickering fragments of half-glimpsed data into the world. And a washing machine spins laundry, round and round and round, again and again and again…

No. No, forget all that.

Just imagine a motorway. At night. Like those long exposure photographs you see of just lines of the bright white and red lights of cars whizzing past like electrons along a static path.

Imagine each and every car is an individual thought, yet thoughts you can barely distinguish as individual because they are moving so quickly, and you’re already exhausted from lack of food. Know that somewhere in the blur of lights is the crippling certainty you are simply spiralling further and further into debt with no way out. Know that lost in the haze you can hear the tooting hooting Judas that maybe you shouldn’t have been so cocksure in quitting your job now that you’re seriously considering prostitution as a way of paying the rent you’re so heart-stoppingly behind on. You can just make out the familiar engine of every relationship you ever attempted, never lasting more than a year, some barely lasting a month, and always wondering if it was your fault that it ended. Always wondering if all your relationships will end before they begin. Sense in the dizzying chaos the irrational but concrete certainty that maybe, just maybe, you’re not remotely worth it at all. You know that you don’t even try anymore, that you’re just another frightened human with absolutely nothing special to their name at all but the excuses they made and the particular brand of TV trash they watched instead.

Be aware of everything you know and fear.

Keep it all in mind - shove it to a corner for now. Let it set your pulse racing in terror, but now think of everyone you call a friend. Everyone you’ve heard say they love you - people you would go to when you need help, support and comfort as you have so willingly helped, supported and comforted them.

Now imagine they’re all gone.

Imagine they’ve moved to another country. Imagine they no longer respond to your emails or phone calls and try not to think if this means that you are suddenly no longer to be considered as worth their time. Imagine calling out to those around you, but they look away, or don’t understand what you’re saying. Imagine the first person you ever met, the person you thought would always love you no matter what, has reminded you of how utterly insignificant what you’re feeling is. How whatever it is you’re going through is peanuts to the problems of real people. Imagine realising you have nowhere to go. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide from the beast as it closes in on you, sits on top of you, its weight upon your chest cracking and splintering your ribs as panic pushes its full weight down onto you. Panic, and then the cold and damp clasp of utter despair. Imagine the certainty that you are lost.

Imagine realising that you’re totally alone.

Imagine all that. Imagine that this must be what it feels like to slowly lose one’s mind as one loses all things - money, love, friends, self-belief. Imagine feeling yourself succumb to crippling blind panic. What do you do?

You keep going. That’s what you do. You carry on.

You survive.