I am catastrophically fine, thanks for asking

I never thought I’d feel frustrated or ashamed at how ‘fine’ my life is. I hate being asked how I am at the moment, because then I listen to myself reel off about how ‘fine’, ‘great’, ‘stable’ everything is and it sounds smug.

My fear of sounding smug is leading me to feel discontented with my life. I feel a pull to make things more complicated so that I can have things to talk about beyond my walk to work, last press trip or podcast conversation. I am now boring – someone burning through hours of writing and talking to make a life for myself within a mile radius within south London. And yes it’s fun – yes I am having a lovely time.

But then there’s other people and how I seem to them. The ego awakening as I analyse how dull I sound. Is there really no complication or drama that I can excavate from my brain to spice up the encounter? But maybe when someone asks how we are, they don’t need instant stimulation from the excitement of our lives. Maybe to hear that things are very fine and quite predictable is no less than they were expecting.

Most of all, I wish people didn’t ask how I was. Which goes against the familiar mental heath awareness advice we are given. When someone asks that question, my mind feels blank and I start to panic – ‘shit, how am I?’ – I feel like I need flash cards to remind myself what I could bring up. Because there are cool things going on that I could try and mention – just like how I am making a lot of blancmange or how I am trying to plan a solo holiday to a private beach.

When I lament on all this, the bleak perspective afforded me by years of mental illness looks at me in anger. As if I went through all that fear, exhaustion and pain to complain about feeling blissfully fine. It is scary how quickly you can lose that perspective, and therefore appear to the world as someone who has never suffered.

Struggle and suffering are not spices to add to life so that we have more to talk about. My discontentment is a lot more boring than admitting to being really ok and peaceful for the first extended period, maybe, in my whole life.