Now for those of you who, like me, are fans of literature and the arts and indeed of Shakespeare the title of this post bares little reference to Shakespeare’s play The Tempest and more reference to the word’s meaning – although I do of course accept that there are similarities between the play’s circumstances and those of my own.

Indeed in terms of the tempestuousness of my current situation I (much like Prospero) find myself set adrift and indeed very much stranded by circumstance and my own mental health.

I am isolated and I know it. There are storms and I feel them. I cannot sleep despite all attempts to sleep. I am in this beautiful world so very much alone within the island prison of my mental health issues. Unlike Prospero I have no Miranda to keep me company and indeed am left with the thoughts and voices that haunt me and that, much like Caliban, are deformed and monsterous and unlike Prospero and Caliban’s relationship seemed to have saught out and adopted me not the other way around and which (again unlike the former) seek to destroy as opposed to teaching to survive.

I am taking my meds, I am eating healthily, I am doing what I can and yet the tempestuous times still haunt and surround and imprison me. I yearn for the final curtain. I grow weary. I tire, so very deeply tire of the voices which ask, “Canst thou remeber, A time before we came unto this cell?”