Anxiety. Bandied about willy-nilly these days, isn’t it? Clearly there’s very few of us who don’t experience it as a facet of modern life, to some extent. Job interviews, crowds, public speaking, public transport, public toilets, pubs. For me, it started when I was about nine, identified easily enough by a stomach ache, intrusive thoughts and repetitive behaviour; the sentence echoing in my head, the need to touch the gatepost exactly three times, the counting of red cars and the certain knowledge that my mother was going to be (inexplicably, given our location) eaten by a shark. 

This month I had my first gig in around five years and I am not exaggerating when I say that the two weeks leading up to this were, on the anxiety scale, a solid ten. Out of ten. Ten being A Lot of Anxiety. 

I formulated a cunning plan to manage this, which was to cancel everything else I was supposed to be doing and cocoon myself in my bed. With Star Trek Voyager on the TV, a repetitive game on my phone and a steady supply of Orange Twirls at my side, I felt just about shielded enough from The Bad Thing to carry on existing. 

Unfortunately, I was very much aware that in order to make forty minutes of music palatable to a rag-tag mixture of strangers and stalwart friends and family, I needed to actually write a set list, learn to play everything on the guitar and the piano and ensure I knew the words to the songs and had the strength in my voice to sing them. So twice a day for two weeks I dragged my sorry self out of the bedroom for an hour and worked at it. Most days ended with the following internal monologue: “Obviously I’m going to have to cancel it. This is not suitable for a human to endure. I am composed of ninety-five per cent chocolate and will simply melt under the lights. Why would anyone want to listen to me butchering Bonnie Raitt?” (Not physically, you understand. I’m sure she’s safe and well and not watching Star Trek. She’s possibly never even eaten an Orange Twirl.) 

Yet on the day of the gig, despite the lack of appetite, poor sleep and snippets of slightly incorrect lyrics reverberating around my head, despite my hands continually forming bizarre chord shapes, despite the absolute catastrophe of my new shoes not having arrived and my subsequent fury at their obvious theft (they were in the garden), I started to experience a kind of grim determination which, observed from a positive perspective, may have been a little bit like calm.

And when I took to the stage I remembered that my anxiety, large as it is, remains smaller than my will to perform. In fact, the voices in my head and the rock in my stomach became almost imperceptible in the shadow cast by the light of the first chord. It certainly wasn’t perfect. I made some mistakes and I was a bit hunched over the guitar and the pedal kept moving and I forgot to say thank you to everyone at the end. But there was clapping, and I found myself surprisingly keen to do it all over again. 

I know myself well enough to understand that it’s unlikely I’ll approach any aspect of my future with complete serenity. But at this moment I find it is possible to believe that, through performing my music, I can conjure a kind of temporary screen which filters out the fear and self-loathing and makes space for some joy. And that’s enough for now. 

Ps. shout out to the prescription drugs which also helped with the above.