On Madness

Ten years ago, I wrote a memoir.

It was gruelling, but also the best therapy I could’ve given myself.

I never published it and I have no desire to.

But hidden in those pages are fragments of alchemical gold stories forged in fire, raw with truth, not written for approval, but for survival.What follows is one of those stories.

Living in fear

takes its toll on the soul.

It does things to the mind.

Back in the early 2000s I went cuckoo, Bat shit, Psychotic.

Everything was hard back then like the school run

He used to threaten me:

“If those fucking eyes leave the pavement, Alexia you’ll be fucked, i’ll get you”

So I stared at the pavement.

Every. Single. Step.

Eyes down.

Don’t breathe too loud.

I was well behaved, rarely fought back.

Don’t let the polished mothers eyes pierce me at the gate

They hated me.

I was their deepest fear:

The broken woman.

I’d been living like that

violence, control, humiliation

for over a decade.

On average, five days out of seven were violent.

That was my normal.

Violence had sunk in the bones of daily life.

Bizarrely, I was still working in mental health.

Ironically, I was holding space for others

all the while ashamed of how tragic I’d become.

So I kept quiet.

Because suffering like mine

the messy, unshaven kind

isn’t often seen unless it’s validated by credentials,

or flagged by an acceptable authority.

Especially in liberal middle-class spaces,

where pain must wear the right badge to be believed,

and compassion is often delivered by orders from the BBC.

“We are this.” “We care for the minority.”

But only the right kind.

Only the kind that fits the narrative.

while my own reality was fracturing

under the weight of everything I couldn’t say out loud.

And then one morning,

the electrics in the house started talking to me.

Cruel.

Bitchy.

Sharp.

Horrible stuff.

It felt like he had taken up residence in the walls,

The lights would flicker on and off with twisted humour.

The electrics were old beyond my control

lead wiring, outdated circuits not fit for modern life.

So who’s to say what was madness,

what was psychic interference,

or just bad wiring?

But it felt personal.

Like this man

who had controlled my every move

had infiltrated the walls themselves.

Even when he wasn’t there,

I wasn’t free.

The electricity became a vehicle

for his presence.

For his malice.

I felt watched.

Hunted.

Stalked by an invisible force

that now lived in the house with me.

I used to switch off all the power during the day,

while the kids were at school,

just to get some peace.

There was nothing in the fridge or freezer that would suffer.

Just to breathe

without static in my skin.

Just to remember

what silence felt like.

The gas pipes, though

they were different.

They didn’t frighten me.

They sang to me.

They played music,

like a soft radio station

from another dimension.

It was comforting.

I looked forward to the evening show.

There was something tender in it

a thread of sanity inside the madness.

A reminder that not everything unseen was cruel.

What was happening to me wasn’t random.

It wasn’t just drugs.

Or stress.

Or psychosis.

It was years of abuse

creating a poetic externalisation

of my inner horror show.

Prolonged.

Unrelenting.

My mind, my body, my energy field

they were doing what they could to survive.

I was emotionally and physically depleted.

Using Class A drugs to numb the unbearable.

Still turning up to work.

Still raising children.

The fragile electrics in my house

mirrored the fragile wiring in me.

Everything overloaded.

Frayed.

Ready to burn.

And yet — somehow

I didn’t stay lost.

I came back.

Slowly.

Unsteadily.

But I came back.

And what’s beautiful now, years later, is this:

The music never fully left.

Sometimes the fireplace sings.

Sometimes I hear melodies

in the corners of rooms.

And when it happens,

I smile.

I don’t panic.

I no longer worry

that it means I’m mad.

Because I accept it now:

I am mad,

in my own way.

And I’m okay with that.

I don’t want to be normal

in a fear-based world.

Normal never saved me.

Nobody came to save us.

We saved ourselves.

And since then,

I’ve never hated or blamed the collective of men

for my suffering.

Nor have I wanted others to suffer

because of my pain.

I learnt from it.

Making peace with myself

was far simpler

than expecting others to treat me

with the respect

I wasn’t yet capable of giving myself.

I’ve faced many demons in this life and when you face them, really face them, they lose their power.

That’s what sets me apart.

I’m a woman who speaks from the fire, from the floors I lay on, from the walls that spoke back, from the silence I had to fight to reclaim.

The changes I’ve made weren’t polite or pretty.

And if I can come back — you can too.

Love Alexia X

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