Hi guys,
If anyone read my book ‘Me and My Mate Jeffrey’ and took something from it please go on to http://www.irishbookawards.ie/vote2015 and give it a vote to win Irish book of the year, in the non fiction section.
For anyone that hasn’t read it, see below for the prologue of the book to give you a sense of what it’s about. My aim was to share my story and experience of mental health challenges, with the hope that it may help others.
Next week on A Lust for Life we will be uploading some podcasts of me reading chapters of my book, also including my process of how I wrote the book and dealt with sharing my story.
Thanks for reading and for voting!
Niall
Me and My Mate Jeffrey – Intro passage:
Prologue – March, 2012
It was as if it had been lying in wait, ready to pounce when the opportunity presented. For days before The Voice live shows I walked around with a mounting discomfort, beginning in the pit of my stomach, rising into my throat and leaving me short of breath, while at night, my thoughts rushed so fast I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t have much experience of television so I put my unease down to performance anxiety. When my legs came from underneath me inside the dressing room just minutes before we were due to go live, and my breath stopped coming, I knew this was panic at its worst.
For many years I’d struggled with attacks of this kind, as part of a condition I have called generalised anxiety disorder, but it wasn’t ever something I talked about. Not even those closest to me knew the extent of my condition, and I had been fiercely protective in my efforts to hide this part of my life from everyone around me. Curled on the floor in the private confines of the dressing room, gripped by overwhelming fear, time seemed to come to a halt and when I willed myself back to reality, I moved through slow motion. I could hear the sound engineer rapping on the door, ever increasingly as the minutes to transmission ticked by. I tried to call out but not a sound came, it seemed nothing could pull me back as I folded up tighter, breathless, choked and apoplectic with terror. I didn’t know how I could survive this one, punching my chest to try to find a breath, pulling my shirt until it tore. But in the midst of this madness, something new became clear to me. I knew that if I got past tonight, I could not go on like this. Something had to give. The secret I had kept for years and guarded with all my life for fear of stigma and alienation could not remain secret for much longer.
Support Our Campaign
We rely on the generosity of the public to fund our work and so far together we have achieved great things! Please do continue to support us so we can provide future generations in Ireland with the resources to recognise and talk about their emotions, and equip them to navigate the ever-changing world around them as they grow
