A miserable 'personal essay' - sorry it's late.
This is fictional so feel free to be ruthless
I have always been afraid of everything. People being
able to fall asleep without brushing their teeth is a mesmerising thing to me.
I have gone to sleep without brushing my teeth once in my entire life and I had
nightmares that I coughed all of my teeth out. I also brush my teeth
immediately after smoking, or drinking a fizzy drink (which I do neither of
regularly, but will accept when there is nothing else).
Even more unrealistic things also keep me up at night.
If I have a stomach ache, it can only be appendicitis. I cook meat until its
cremated and eggs until their nuked, for I fully believe I will get food poisoning. Sometimes I even randomly choose to slow
down my pace in case I have Vertigo and don’t know it – I wouldn’t want to find
out the hard way. Every night I lock every door in my house and check them
three times, because I think someone will enter my property and murder me. I
start panicking about whether we have enough milk, even though I don’t buy
milk. And then I get up to switch off all the plug switches off three times too
so that a spontaneous combustion near a TV socket doesn’t fry me in my slumber.
Sometimes when I visit airports or railway stations,
and instead of being excited about the trip, I somehow manage to convince
myself that anyone with slightly bloodshot eyes or clears their throat must
have Ebola. When I lost my virginity, I had sex with another virgin and used a
condom and yet I still couldn’t sleep for two nights because I was sure as shit
that I’d had HIV transferred into me.
I’d hug my boyfriend way too tightly, out of fear that
he could fall down dead any minute. I’d stop touching my shoelaces, or the
rails on the side of public stairs in tube stations, because of dirt. If I
experience dizziness from light or temperature change, I self-diagnose myself
with leukaemia upon the moment. I
would quietly prepare to die in the next six months, and practise my last words
over and over like a transcript.
It may seem like these are just symptoms of being a
drama queen, or an idiot. But that’s not the case when you’re not just spouting
attention thriving sentences, but you’re having these thoughts in your head and
panicking every night as a result. I feel sorry for my mum more than myself. I
must be hard to have a child who questions every detail of the medicine they
need to take, or wants to know how to complete a job application at nine years
old out of fear that they might one day become homeless. It really does show
your child’s mental disability when they wake up crying because they’re
wondering if the protective seals on the deodorant you’ve just bought could
have been tampered with without their knowledge. I bet it’s even harder to pick
up your daughter from a sleepover before bedtime has even arrived, because
she’s far too uncomfortable sleeping in a room with so many people, and the
other little girls mock her extensive night time routine.
And life definitely becomes just a tiny bit sad
when your favourite part of the day is the blissful second when you wake up.
The second just before I’d look around my home and remember the daily terrors.
I’d try to force myself out of bed and attend my lectures. But it was as though
a huge, black devil told me the world wasn’t worth it, and tucked me back into
bed aggressively. “The world won’t like you,” he said. “You’re too weird. Stay
here, where no one can see you.” Sometimes I’d wonder if this is what It will
always be like and if there’s any point waiting to find out. At this point, I’d
usually call my boyfriend or my therapist and I’d, once again, get talked out
of suicide for what I’m sure will not be the only time that day. 
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