Muse - the cure for Black Holes and these unexpected Revelations - Resistance against depression

If I hadn't bought the Muse CD yesterday I would have pitched the tent in the back garden and moved into it, because no-one deserved to be around me.

Storming, sulking and wallowing were a quite extreme reaction to the KS2 briefing Staff Meeting. One moment I was adding all the new up-dates in organisation, expectation, innovations, performances on top of my 5 sets of books that needed to be marked in the school where some people eat supply teachers for their break time snack. Next moment I knew a storm was brewing. I slid down in the chair, folded my arms (impersonated the pupil in my class, who shall remain nameless here) and realised that my foot was already tapping. Surviving to the end of the meeting, I went into my work partner's room. I was now doing an impression of a different challenged pupil. I waited, until she asked what was up, and being too socially skilled and conditioned to complete my impersonation, by turning the tables over, I opted for crying.

My nice head of KS2 genuinely tried to offer help but I don't know how to not manage. I was so out of my depth in the-land-of-swamped-under, I didn't see what I needed help with. I just needed more hours in the day and I didn't think she could supply that. I threw up some fierce defensive walls and let the words flow somewhere over the top of my head and wound myself up tighter.

The, also, nice teacher who phoned to ask if I knew it was my day in charge of lunch, for the next day, was the final straw. Numbed panic was replaced by unimaginable rage. Now, I don't do not coping. I do geeky amounts over-enthusiastic work and laughing the face of adversity. Rage was followed, far too quickly, by a trip to a dark hole I haven't navigated since the day my boy was diagnosed with autism. It is no place to be.

Tescos had Muse. Now I'm a bit deafer. My cure for that insidious feeling of panic that drags you into places dark-and-deep involves headphones (ever thoughtful) and volume that makes you appreciate music at a physical level - vibrations in more than the middle ear.

This CD may not be my classic, favourite on-first-listening, perfect collection - the answer for Black Holes and Revelations being Absolution - but I sure know the tracks quite well now. What is with the classic-heavy bit Matt? Also, it's bad enough that my seventeen-year-old has made a bid for rebellion by obsessing over musicals without the 'Muse-does-Queen-in-Sinbad-production-number' shock! But the cure worked. I ran the Y6 teachers' Meet and Greet, meaning I didn't get out of school until 7:30, and I'm now sane enough to admit that yesterday I'd have rivaled the feral Were for ferocious, mindless, violence - they could have brought it, because I would have left with it.

Then I edited Near Edgware Chapter One - I felt right at home re-reading and picking on semi-colons.