On an Evening

On an evening, the anxiety would return. I was a different person. No longer the confident headteacher, just a man with anxiety. Thinking about what I had to do was more frightening than actually getting on and doing it. I would often say to myself, ‘How will I get through tomorrow feeling like this?’ Of course, I always managed because I was able to rise to the occasion and put the fear to one side. This took every fibre of my being but I was determined to succeed. At home I felt brain dead. It was almost impossible to concentrate, so at about seven o’clock I would use a relaxation tape, which quickly allowed me to sleep for an hour. I became quite good at these relaxation techniques and after a few weeks, when I woke up in the night I could use them to fall back to sleep. This was a massive help because at the beginning, I would fall asleep at midnight totally exhausted, only to wake up after an hour and then not sleep again for the remainder of the night. I became very good at pacing up and down in the bedroom waiting for the dawn. Some evenings when feeling at my worse I would tell my wife that I just couldn’t go on and, always supportive, she said that wasn’t a problem. The next day I would be putting on my suit and she would ask what I was doing. ‘I’m going to work was my short reply.’