Message in a Bottle

I turned 35 a couple of weeks ago and a thought hit me, an uncomfortable truth that I had either failed to realise or purposefully tucked away.

I have struggled with my mental health for exactly 10 years.

It started with anxiety. Anxiety I can trace back to my 25th birthday, or more accurately, to events surrounding it. Disagreements between my partner at the time and my family. Incidents largely out of my control.

I don’t blame either party. Both had valid points. And if not this incident, perhaps something else would have unlatched the garden gate and let it in.

But this was the moment it arrived.

The background hum, as I’ve come to describe it. 

Quietly dictating how I acted from that point on.

Not loud enough to stop life.

Not quiet enough to ignore.

The birthday incident, as I’ll call it, led to a breakdown in the relationship between my then partner and my family, with me stuck in the middle. The bridge between them, if you will.

In the years that followed, that rift closed somewhat, but never enough to feel normal.

The anxiety brought waves of depression, which at the time I trivialised with the thought: other people have reasons to be depressed, not you.

I developed a habit of thinking 30 steps ahead in almost everything.

How will this affect that?

Could this upset someone?

What am I not seeing?

The thief of joy.

And don’t get me wrong — the last 10 years haven’t all been miserable. There has been laughter. Growth. Love. But the hum was always there, quietly influencing every step.

It became tiring.

For a few years I stumbled forward, still finding joy, but always overthinking.

Then came the pandemic. None of us need to be reminded of that, how could we forget.

People I’ve spoken to about those years seemed to go one of two ways: they thrived, or they fell. I was one of the latter.

We welcomed our child into the world at the very end of 2019. It was an incredible time. Sleepless nights, yes. The usual trials of a newborn. But we were happy.

Then a few months later came the first lockdown.

It was, in many ways, a gift. Working from home. Extra time with my new little family, something many people never get to experience. I was grateful for that.

But weeks turned into months.

Drink became frequent during those times. Not chaotic. Not all day. But as soon as 5pm hit. Never enough to derail me, but just enough to know a pattern was forming. A coping mechanism disguised as routine.

When restrictions finally lifted, the world reopened, but the cracks in my relationship were deeper.

A newborn. External pressure. Being together since we were teenagers. Various struggles on both sides. All of it slowly led to a collapse. A reconciliation. And eventually, a final collapse.

Amidst all of this, we also began to understand that we were raising a neurodiverse child, something that brought its own beautiful complexities and challenges.

Somewhere along the way, the hum shifted.

It stopped feeling like vigilance and started feeling like exhaustion.

When my relationship ended for good, I tried to understand what I could have done differently. I asked the questions. I looked inward. But sometimes things are already decided long before the final conversation.

And when it was over, something in me didn’t explode.

It didn’t collapse.

It just felt tired.

Not dramatic or destructive. Just tired.

There were moments where I caught myself thinking that if it all simply stopped, that might be easier. Not because I wanted to disappear. Not because I didn’t love my daughter. But because the pressure would stop. The constant scanning. The 30 steps ahead. The responsibility of holding everything together.

I confused exhaustion with indifference.

Turning 35 forced me to look at that more closely.

The hum hasn’t ruined my life. It hasn’t stopped me loving. It hasn’t stopped me building. But it has been there, shaping how tightly I hold things. How far ahead I think. How rarely I let myself simply sit in the moment without anticipating the next bad thing that might happen. 

The hum is still there some days.

Not as loud as it once felt. Not as frightening now that I can name it. But present.

It doesn’t dictate everything anymore and it doesn’t get to masquerade as fate. It’s just a pattern I learned in a moment of instability and carried for longer than I realised.

Ten years on, I can see it for what it is.

Something that started quietly and stayed.

And maybe knowing that is the first step to living alongside it without bracing.