If
depression is a black dog ambling in your footsteps full of your scent then
Anxiety is a Black Hound of Vengeance full of unpredictability.
Compliant and well trained one moment the next a vicious attack dog set upon you by your own hidden enemy, whose grip
is hard to release. He comes in the shape of the crippling panic attack: a
ravenous beast with gluttonous needs. That hound has returned: with full force. The beast turns each day into a lottery of symptoms.
Powerful physical side effects that turn the legs and bowels to jelly, are fuelled by his presence: sometimes he is shooed off tail between legs and sometimes he stays for hours scenting blood. I will expel the hound. If I could dispatch him with one fatal strike from a metaphorical broadsword like the barbarian hero above I surely would, but he is more than flesh and bone. He is more pervasive but he is beatable.
The hound's nemesis is normality and as I see people going about their daily lives unencumbered by dread and fear, the normality of day to day life is something I crave right now, and it is something that will and must return.
I empathise with other sufferers at these times and recognise that expressing the feeling is important both for writer and potential reader. The cheery disposition that I hope punctuates most of my outpourings will eventually return: this I both hope for and know.
