I’d been okay last night, but this morning I woke up feeling very anxious about today’s dental appointment. Early-morning anxiety used to be a regular occurrence when I was first diagnosed with ME, and a more generalised social anxiety has followed me through my life — though I wasn’t always aware of it. I’ve always struggled with going to the dentist.

I’d hoped that my current morning routine of making tea followed by making a drawing would help to calm me today, as it did to some extent yesterday. I decided to keep it simple and just draw my teapot — something I’ve done hundreds of times. But today nothing felt right. I tried to draw slowly, beginning with the teapot’s spout, then gradually adding the top of the pot, its handle and hinge.

I’m not someone who worries much about perspective, but I do look for something that feels satisfying — something that works within its own small visual world. After three attempts, filling the page in ways I wouldn’t normally do, I found I was adding drawing anxiety to my dental anxiety. I drew one more version of the teapot and decided that it would have to do, no matter how it turned out.

I added some colour to distinguish it from the earlier attempts, then layered a heavy scribble of Silver Grey Neocolor II over the top to partly obscure them. At that point I began to enjoy myself, and the drawing anxiety (if not the dental) began to recede. There’s something satisfying about those semi-hidden lines under the grey — a quiet record of my anxious searching for calm.

Home now from my appointment and resting on the bed with a second pot of tea, the dental anxiety has passed. Perhaps it was an anxiety that no amount of drawing could dampen. But drawing could record it — and distract me for a while — and maybe that’s enough.

The full text reads:

Trying to draw my teapot to calm myself down (I’m going to the dentist today!), but I don’t seem to be able to draw today!