“I hope you charge rent to all the people in your head…”

You’d make a fortune.

We just watched the finale of Only Murders in the Building. No spoilers - don’t worry! One of the characters tells another prominent character that they “hope you charge rent to all the people in your head…you’d make a fortune”.

I often feel like I have lots of people in my head. Or voices. Or different versions of me, all offering their what-ifs-worth. I don’t mean I, clinically, hear voices or anything like that. I just have a lot of noise in my mind. It’s like 10 radios are on at once and I’m trying to transcribe them all at the same time. It’s too loud. It’s too overwhelming. It’s too much.

I yearn for “peace of mind”.

Whilst away on holiday, the Catalonia song ‘Road Rage’ was playing and there’s a line in it that I’d never really taken much notice of before. “If all you’ve got to do today is find peace of mind, come round, you can take a piece of mine.” I think it might be the most comforting idea I’ve ever heard. I often wish I could take my brain out, place it on charge and have a few hours of quiet and vacuous non-thinking. I wish I could download some peace of mind. I wish that I could chip and pin some tranquil thought.

Everything in our modern, first-world lives is so instant. So easy. Want to find out something? Google it. Want to pay for something? Tap your phone. Want to eat something? Get it delivered. Whether you think those functions are a good or a bad thing, they are most definitely instant solutions at your fingertips.

Peace of mind isn’t like that. It takes practice and time and something I have very little of, patience. Waiting for things can physically hurt me. When I was younger I wanted the exam to be now, today, so the anticipation didn’t kill me. Not weeks and months of revision and agony. I remember, one night, lying in bed riddled with worry and doubt over whether or not I would pass my GCSE maths exam and then talked myself down after realising that it was TWO YEARS away and I could probably park that problem for now. They say that depression is living in the past and anxiety is living in the future. So how do you be present? Content? In the moment…?

I don’t know why my postnatal OCD episode is still kicking me in the arse. I don’t know why I continue to look for meaning in the content of my intrusive thoughts. I have absolutely no fucking idea why I can’t move on from this yet. What I do know is that I know the answer to all of those questions and it doesn’t make a blind bit of difference to the outcome. Maybe one day, it’ll just lift and I’ll have moved on. Maybe in another year’s time, it will still be living rent-free in my head. Maybe living in a modern world with everything just a click away, it’s not surprising that trauma and complex mental conditions can’t just be dragged to the ‘trash’ icon and forgotten about. It’s more of a novel than a billboard.

But having a neurological disorder isn’t brave or attention-seeking, it’s unbearable. There’s no better word. It feels unbearable. I know it isn’t, as I’ve born it but that’s that pesky logic trying to wheedle its way in again.

24/7 thoughts of harm and/or sexual violence, to someone who abhors the notion, is a cruel and unusual punishment. It’s like making a devout vegan only capable of thinking of blood, guts and the worst imaginable animal cruelty. I “know” these thoughts are ego-dystonic, meaning they are the opposite of my values. I “know” they only bother me because the very idea is hellish and the things my nightmares are made of. I “know” that I have never and will never act on these thoughts.

But I don’t believe it, yet.

I have to be sure.

I have to have confirmation.

I have to “know”.

I would like for these intrusive thought squatters to fuck right off now. Or start paying me Mayfair rates of rental. But it will take time and self-compassion and continual strength to see this through.

Which is fine, but for how much longer?

Kim x