Everyone will know the worst things that I can imagine. They will know all about me and everything that I imagined people saying will be true now." They keep on going around in my head. They're crap, and I know it. They're just voices, I tell myself, but why won't they go away ? A short time passed. More voices, different voices, "You know what to do, Mother always says so. What should I do now ? I don't know! But you know what to do, don't you ?" The vicious circle kept going `round. *** Time to get up from bed and ring Mum, after all she knows what to do. Scattered and shaking, I do this. I go to the phone, sit down, and phone ever-reliable Mum. She is my tower of strength. It's an STD call but I don't care. She tells me to ring the Crisis Team (aka the Mental Health Triage) but I can only fumble with my electronic organizer. I know exactly how it works, inside and out, but I could not operate it to save myself. I get a pen and Mum tells me the phone number of the crisis team and I write it down. She tells me that she can be on the next bus if I need her to be with me. I tell her "no thanks, I think I'll be OK". I hang up the phone and call the Crisis Team. I speak to a lady who knows me, although I cannot recall her. She talks me through it and tells me to watch a bit of TV or listen to some music and to occupy myself until later in the night. My mini-crisis passes as I follow this advice throughout the night. Was it because I did all of the "right things" or was it simply that my "medication" was taking effect ? *** The above episode was only a small tremor, but it still scared me a bit. I guess that I took it better than I otherwise might have because I have been there before and done it all before. But that doesn't make it any less scary at the time. It's only with the benefit of hindsight that I can see that I could cope with it. An Abecedarian Story