I am in my mid-thirties, and have achieved a certain degree of success in the world. However, the struggle against anxiety and psychic torment - the struggle for sanity - has not abated; in some ways it has intensified. Throughout my early twenties I underwent therapy and resisted the temptation to commit suicide. Recently I began seeing a therapist again. The idea of feeling ashamed of any of this remains quite alien to me. Life is painful, the world is frightening. We live in times of foreboding and chaos. Sanity seems to me a fragile and tentative construction. Still, there are sources of light, love, solace. Kindness is as real as cruelty. The effort to create art, like the effort to lessen the agony of others, is honourable, and redeems a painful existence. The challenge is to find a way to say ‘Yes’ to life, even in all its suffering. I’m working on it.

100 Voices was published in the Hot Press Mental Health Special in conjunction with Lyons Tea and Pieta House as part of the Now We're Talking Campaign. For more please visit hotpress.com/now-were-talking/