For as long as I can remember, I’ve been described as ‘nervy’ – whatever that means. It’s a frivolous adjective, really, and I take a level of comfort in its silliness. My weak constitution renders me vulnerable to leg jitters and a swirling stomach, the consequence of nerves permanently frayed like well-loved ribbons or the hems of well-worn jeans. To feel nervy was homeostasis – I was hooked on Curly Wurlys from the corner shop at an early age, providing cortisol that made my nerves glow amber. The joys of childhood were abundant in my formative years, but so were worries.

My local CAMHS was, ironically, based in an old psychiatric hospital. A foreboding building somewhat reminiscent of a Cambridge college, my visits there are shrouded in a thick fog that never seems to clear, no matter how hard I squint. I remember so little that I question whether it even happened. Yet when the GP commented on my 11-year-old referral letters as she prescribed me sertraline, I knew that – however thin the thread between myself and my past became – it would never break. I was tethered to the memory of my childhood mental illness.

“I am empowered by the knowledge time and therapy has granted me”

In an attempt to demist my redbrick memory palace, I asked my mother about what she remembered of my time with CAMHS. As my immovable rock, she diligently drove me to every appointment, white-knuckling the steering wheel of the Ford Fiesta I am now privileged to call my own. When I think of that time in my life, guilt is all-consuming. The crying, the inability to sleep, the stubbornness, the school refusal – I must have been such a pain. It’s no longer tears but gratitude that flows for her unrelenting patience and faith – faith that I would get better, that I wouldn’t be like that forever.

I am reminded of coping mechanisms in the kitchen. Thoughts are like icing sugar going through a sieve. Most of them fall right through. Some small lumps can be pressed into the mesh, joining the happy thoughts in the snow drift. Finally, the big lumps of icing sugar, awkward and unbreakable, are removed from the sieve: they are of no use to the cake I am baking. Or, what if worries grew like tomatoes? If you stop tending to them, feeding them and nourishing them, they’ll shrivel up and die. That way, they will never ripen.

“Aside from making me peckish, my overriding memory of these coping mechanisms is undoubtedly one of conflict”

Aside from making me peckish, my overriding memory of these coping mechanisms is undoubtedly one of conflict. Growing up with anxiety was fighting a battle with a mind I didn’t yet understand. Sheltered from the realities of my situation, I sought to know why I felt the way I did and why I could not do the things my friends were able to. Navigating my twenties with mental illness brings its own challenges (prescription charges, mainly), but I am empowered by the knowledge time and therapy has granted me.

To be able to know myself feels so luxurious. My worries need not be thrown away because they are overripe or rotten: they serve a purpose, even if it is just to remind me that I’m a fully-fledged human being. I spent such a long time failing to reconcile the days I was happy and funny with those I spent inside, punishing myself for my feelings and wondering if my mind would allow me to achieve what I wanted to.

Well, as I scribble down these scattered thoughts, shivering in The Seeley Library, I can safely say that I’m where I want to be – or I’m on the way, at least. I thank my childhood self for keeping on reading, writing and asking annoying questions, even during the most difficult of times. Oh how she’d love it here.