Senza Vino. Veritas.

Words by Emilie Robson

Photography by Annie Spratt, via Unsplash 

There’s a mosquito in my room. I’m in Rome. In a beautiful apartment. On a one month hiatus from my life. I’m sleeping in. I’m eating gelato. I’m ‘getting inspired’ and I am developing strategies for a freelance artistic career. But there is a mosquito in my room. I’m unimpressed.

Two of his cousins have perished at my hands. It does not fill me with pride, but after three sleepless nights which I’d happily be sectioned for, even the Buddhist in me was ready to set the entire apartment ablaze. Presumably Roman mosquitoes have a Facebook event or are telepathic, for sure as hell, as soon as one of them died after noisily circling my face at 4am, several would show up for the funeral.  

My murderous dance would usually begin at 2am and last as late as 5:30am. I’d lie in the darkness, awaiting the high-pitched buzz like Luftwaffe descending. I’d spring up, bolt to the light, locate the tiny monster and then flail about until I swatted it dead. I shuddered as I smashed them into the white walls of my AirBnB. I winced as their blood splattered the wall. And then I realised, the blood was in fact my blood, that they’d stolen from me. Have I set up this metaphor well enough? Good. I don’t know how much longer I can make this mosquito shtick last.  

I’ve always considered myself fortunately afflicted in terms of mental health. While mild to moderate depression and I are very well acquainted, I am blessed to say I’ve only been through the anxiety wringer a handful of times. My trichotillomania (compulsive hair pulling) indicates I’m an anxious person always, yet I’m blessed to have never felt debilitated by it. And yet suddenly, in the same wee hours that I gracelessly danced about my room on my murderous mosquito rampage, I was visited by distantly familiar feelings of panic, self doubt, obsessive thinking and dread.

Where has this come from? How could I be anxious? My only responsibility was to wake up and eat cannoli. And yet those wee hours were fast becoming the breeding ground for every malignant thought in my mind. Was this a normal response to a period of transition or…have I (despite the outrageously cheap Monte Pulciano D’Abruzzo) simply been going to bed sober for the first time in two years?

After graduation and a small stint of travel, I fell into hospitality management in Edinburgh. The function of returning to this vibrant but expensive city was to pursue my ‘art’ and rekindle the creative relationships I’d forged at university.  But before I knew it, the unsociable hours, the physically exhaustive demands of the job as well as the emotional burden of ensuring everyone else was happy, began to take it toll.

My spare time was no longer spent in front of my laptop typing my magnum opus or on my guitar writing new songs. As soon as I clocked off I was knee deep in a glass of something which inevitably turned into two and then three. Throw some amitriptyline into the mix for chronic nerve pain and I began to sleep like a baby for the first time since, well, I was a baby.

No longer did anxious vapours swirl in my chest and travel up my spine to my thinkbox. My thinkbox was no longer a thinkbox. It was a box of wine and my ambitions were dead flies floating on the surface. How did they get in the box of wine? Don’t ask too many questions. This metaphor isn’t structurally sound.

To be clear, I am not an alcoholic. However I, like many people who struggle with their mental health, self-medicate without even realising. Confronting your dysfunction takes immense strength, strength we don’t always have. Drinking on the other hand, really only requires a bottle opener and a glass, if you’re fancy.

Alcohol had allowed me to time travel, through the haunted hours of my mind and awake feeling, admittedly sluggish, on the other side. Compulsion had allowed me to rinse, repeat and label this as ‘lifestyle’. Sleeping sober and mosquitoes, helped me realise you can only suppress your demons for so long.

I killed the last mosquito and then located the open window he and his pals had been using. I began to sleep a little better, but not much. Confronting my thoughts head on in those small hours was brutal but necessary. It’s almost a month on and I’m tackling all those anxieties without alcohol as a sedative. Sometimes I sleep. Sometimes I don’t. That’s just how it goes.

Now, to round up the clunky extended metaphor that will have me on PETA’s watch list. You can swat dead all the mosquitoes that are trying to bleed you dry, but in the end, if you don’t find the window and close it, it’s a futile exercise. Did that do it? Probably not.