I’ve swallowed a block of concrete. An impermeable lump is now sitting heavily in my chest.

I am motionless, corpse-like as I sit at the nondescript desk I’ve called home for the past 20 years. I’m grateful no one is close enough to see the tears building in my eyes, threatening to spill down my flaming cheeks at any moment.

Emotion is seeping out of me in a slow, unrelenting trickle. It will soon become a tsunami if I don’t interrupt the source.

My mind is racing, whirring, whizzing in an uncontrollable torrent of jumbled thoughts.

My entire body fizzes. Electricity runs through my veins where once there was free-flowing blood.

My heart thumps heavily, dangerously, in my chest. I think of dad and his high blood pressure, his angina.

I cannot fathom how my body has not exploded with all this pressure.

If I could only summon the strength to put my hands over my ears, close my eyes, block this out completely.

But that would only draw attention from colleagues, and the last thing I want right now is to be noticed.

Butterflies flutter wildly in my stomach, wings batting and crashing into one another, with no means of escape. Prisoners, just like me.

My skin prickles, as if I’ve spent too much time in the sun. It burns and pulsates.

Why is this invisible to everyone in this room? I don’t understand. I could burst into flames right here, surrounded by familiarity and thinly veiled contempt.

I am simmering in a casserole of invisible emotion.

This place is where I work. Where I spend most of my waking hours.

It’s so deeply familiar, yet somehow completely alien now.

I struggle to focus through the soupy sludge filling my head.

The office ceiling glowers above my head, oppressive and heavy. Claustrophobic.

This moment has been a long time coming. It has been building slowly, menacingly, over my 50 year existence. Drawing me into its silent violence.

I can feel its vice-like grip as I slide deeper into myself, helpless to stop it.

I know what’s coming – this familiar pattern.

There will be days spent in a vacuum of self-loathing.

There will be the lashing out at anyone and anything in my path.

There will be uncontrollable, wracking sobs that take my breath away.

The dark menacing cloud of depression swirls ominously above my head. I am steeped in a marinade of anxiety.

I yearn to run. To escape everything and everyone. Dissolve into the ether.

I can’t face this all over again. This exhausting, familiar pattern which has cast its long shadow ever since I can remember.

I am powerless in the face of an internal maelstrom that seeks to drag me downwards into the abyss.