WHEN I WAKE UP IN THE MORNING, there is this moment of terror. That is what I call it. Terror of another day that has to be lived, to be lived up to.

It is like molten lead is sprawling through my veins. The crisis of the in-between. The anxiety, the angst of the living creature. I am alive, hence I must stand up for myself, must act, I must – There is no way back into the sheltering womb.

This is how I have felt many times.

The feeling has no name. But it has a colour and a texture.

It is a thick foil of fog clinging around me, tight, suffocating. Sticky foggy grey, black-spotted hyenas howling from afar. Opaque.

Sometimes it is a crow with large wings and a terrible croak circling above me, its shadow noiseless but haunting. At other times there is an iron ring around my heart. I am stuck. I can't move. The brain is cramped, the heart yells for help.

Or it is a Kraken, threatening to strangle me. Like the hovering crow. I try to duck away but its tentacles are too large, I can't escape. Trapped. Forever. No fire escape. The trauma of my youth, my childhood – the boa constrictor of my father around my neck: Don't talk if it is not meaningful. Children are not yet human beings. They have to listen and only speak when they are asked.

He is long dead. But the ugly Kraken remains, crawling out of his grave. Grabbing me, crawling over my body, my soul. Creepily. Kraken – crow – Krähe. The kr-sound – clenching your teeth to go on, no rest, to soldier on, no matter what, unseeing, not minding the cold, the heat.