The Tears Will Flow.

Is there a greater battle than that with mental illness? I've never been in combat. I'm never battled cancer or any other physical illness. But what I do know is that all who face the terrible tragedies of life also battle their mental demons.

This day marks the day where it all began. The Ball. The letter. The girl from Alabama. The girl. The descent. The devastation. The loss. Branded a narcissist at 24 leads to further demons. It feels self indulgent to mourn myself. Yet that was sound advice from the Buddhist healer I met in the 1990s. Yes that decade of desolation for me.

That my life was utterly flawed and build on foundations of sand is abundantly clear today three decades on. I was vain, I was arrogant, and I was foolish. But what young Cambridge student wasn't in those days or these? I only knew the world I knew.

On this day I was catapulted into the world that has been my life for these past 30 years. My own life. My working life. My friends' lives. And those of my students. Some say I'm good at it. Some say inspirational. Some say a wasted life.

The cataclysmic change that happened in 1990 has left me scarred, frightened, but wise. Many come for my wisdom for what it's worth. I only have to see the messages of those who reached out to me today to know that my tragedy has brought good to many people.

Waking late I abandoned my plans and decided that the solitude of silence was what I needed for a while. Since Friday I have contemplated what to do, what to say, or to stay silent. Passus et sepultus est. That was an epitaph for that old foolish life. Et resurrexit surely marks my life now. Died and was buried. And rose again.

I am certainly not divine. I have no pretension to greatness. I hurt, I scream, I cry but I survive. The scores of funerals I've attended in those 30 years bear witness to the devastation that is mental illness.

Tonight I will look, listen and read. And I will mourn. Yes I must burn the past but not until I'm ready to do so. Today I'm not. The tears will come as they have yet to do despite Dido's Lament and Kathy's Song. The memories haunt me to this day. But I will fight back and I will win.

For now I leave you. Tosca plays, the sun is shining and tomorrow is another day. Please take care in your vulnerability in a world that can sometimes be hostile. We are all human. And utterly flawed.

I Heard a Voice