Today I received some news that was both surprising and shocking. I won’t go into detail, but this happened in the middle of a fairly busy restaurant just as my food touched down on the table. This meal, delicious though it was, turned out to be one that I finished quicker than I would have liked, thanks to the fact that I began shaking uncontrollably as soon as said news reached my ear.

No matter how hard I tried, I just could not get through a single mouthful of spaghetti carbonara without it sliding this way and that on my fork, and dangling helplessly before my waiting mouth. To say that I was also speechless would be the understatement of the century – I still can’t put into any real words what my thoughts and feelings were, because they were all in there somewhere. I told my friend that an apt visual representation of my mind at that moment would be the spaghetti left uneaten on my plate. I would have thought that, even by this early stage in my life, I’d experienced every emotion, negative thought or state of confusion. Maybe I have, but at that moment they were all packed together so tightly that I just couldn’t distinguish them from one another. The magnitude of the impact the news had on me taught me something.

I could be stating the obvious here, but it seems to me that even if you are the most learned human being on the face of this Earth, there’ll always be something hiding in the catacombs of life that could scare you in a way you never thought possible. Regardless of any effort, you could find yourself completely unable to explain what you are feeling because your brain is totally stumped. And that’s OK, because it goes without saying that sometimes you need to keep it all to yourself in order to process it. We should all know that. On other occasions, however, bottling it up most certainly isn’t the best option at all, and I’ve found that out myself. Had I found out this news alone, it would have knocked me for six and left me potentially very upset, but I’m thankful I had the “bubble” setting of the restaurant – alongside my friend – to make the blow softer. I just have to make sure I know how to deal with any future serious panic situations, because if a reasonably-priced Italian meal couldn’t help me, I’ll have to find something else that will – a personal safeguard from within to untangle the bacon-laced pasta of life.

Mason