Marie Martin Hoyer, RIP

I don't know what made me open my eyes from my meditation in that moment and reach over for my phone.

An instant later, in a chat box:

"Irim."

No happy or easy conversation ever begins with my name. Ever. I knew my Baz Luhrmann moment had arrived - that I was about to be blindsided at 18.23 on some idle Saturday.

"I have something really terrible to tell you."

In that instant I knew. Because any of the other horrific possibilities I could imagine would have come from our mutual friend, that girl who had been my lab assistant and the baby sister I never had, herself...and I would have been able to hold the space, to hold her in love and comfort.

The internal screaming into the void began as I watched those three dots, desperate for them to form the words, yet willing them not to, bargaining with G-d to put me in a universe where this wasn't true, where I had another chance to drop her a message saying hi, kiddo, love you, drop me a line.

The dots morphed: Marie was killed in a car accident last night.

NO NO NO NO NO. But there is no getting away from the yes.

What happened? How's Ellie? How can I be here for you? Would you send me a programme from the funeral?

Getting everyone possible to pray for her and the family.

Now, to find pictures and stories for her girls. And the first story begins with my name.

Marie was introduced to me as someone who was going to help me with setting up labs for my classes. She looked older than her 15 years, so I put out my hand and said, "Call me Irim."

And indeed she did, from that day to my birthday, a month ago today, though while I taught, she called me 'Miss Sarwar' in public. I can hear her now - from getting my attention to amused to that head tilt when she was saying, 'Don't try to get that one past me.'

I met her as a young, confused, open-hearted teenager and saw her grow into the whip smart, funny, loving, generous, warm, take-no-crap woman that she became. Our conversations, no matter how far apart, never wasted time in the shallows, but headed straight for the depths - of our lives, of the world's situation, of our theology and spirituality. Who is G-d? What does it look like to love Him? How do we live our lives? She was one of the few people from whom I hid nothing.

Oh, except for one thing, which you now know, hon: that every time you asked me to pray for you and it was answered, I lit that candle to Our Lady. Catholic win. 😝

Just a couple of days ago, I saw she was on Messenger and meant to type: Hi, kiddo, love you, drop me a line. I got distracted and forgot, but didn't worry about it because I thought we had all the time in the world.

We didn't. You don't. Drop someone that line, tell them you love them, forgive them, hold them tight.

Because you never know when your 18.23 on some idle Saturday will come.

It's All Coming Back To Me Now

My current earworm, following a series of unexpected ones over the last several weeks (as you can see from my last blog post. The rest are even more embarrassing, so let's not go there).

But this, I think, is the big one - and not just because of the lush orchestration, huge fuck off vocals, and an opulent video that allow me to indulge a sensuous side I rarely let out. Yes, it's cheesy. Yes, it's Celine. Yes, it's easily mockable. 

So what? It's a song where Jim Steinman took a risk, committed to writing the biggest, most emotionally laden, romantic song he could, inspired by Wuthering Heights. No matter what you think of the result, there's something incredibly brave about pouring your entire self into a creation and then putting out there. Whatever its form, it's a precious gift.

And that gift gives so much more than the creator ever expected, often offering the chance for profound healing, because when they unreservedly pour themselves into their creation, they allow us to do the same from the other side - and it is only when we do so that real transformation can occur.

So it is with this. Jim Steinman wrote it as a song about the darker side of love: obsession as it moves back and forth between 'We're done!' and 'No, wait...' But as is often the case when we step into another's creation, how it resonates with us may be completely different from the stated intent, because all creations from the heart have layer upon layer of meaning. 

When I first told a friend that I couldn't stop listening to this (and listed the others from the last weeks) she said, Your romantic longings seem to be surging to the forefront.

There was an instantaneous, not defensive, NO to that, because even when I first fell in love with this song, it was about so much more to me. Now, if she meant Romantic - with a capital R - that nails it, because it is absolutely about my core quality of experiencing, processing, and creating through intense emotion. 

That is my true indulgence here - letting myself feel. This is one of the few songs that can get me to go on a crying jag I've needed to be on for months, even years. It wrenches to the forefront my lifelong terror that anyone I'd ever be truly, madly, deeply in love with will die and the desolation of having to live with unending grief.

But above all, it's about my family and letting myself feel everything I've held at bay about that most fundamental rupture in relationship. As most of you know, I walked out of the house with a few bin bags, leaving my parents a note on the fridge door. It was a long time coming: by 4, I stayed upstairs watching the Electric Company when my father got home, rather than running down to meet him. In fact, I clearly remember feeling distressed when he got  home, because a sense of oppression would settle over the house, as if the portcullis had come down, trapping us all inside. Leaving was the culmination of a lifetime of inner knowing that staying in that emotional desert would destroy me. Either way, I would always be going it alone.

And better to go it alone and free, whatever that may bring.

I made that choice, knowing many of the consequences: my family's rage and ensuing vindictiveness; the ripples through the wider family; the relief; the fear; the need to carry on fighting. What I didn't expect, didn't dare allow myself to fully know, was

There were nights when the wind was so cold

That my body froze in bed 

If I just listened to it 

Right outside the window 

There were days when the sun was so cruel 

That all the tears turned to dust 

And I just knew my eyes were 

Drying up forever

If I let myself feel - know, in the deepest sense - that tearing yourself away from even a deeply dysfunctional, soul-stealing place would leave you with wounds that bled so much more than you thought possible, I might have gone back. And I couldn't do that. Not for so much as a moment. Instead, defiance and resolve had to see me through:

I finished crying in the instant that (I) left

And I can't remember where or when or how 

And I banished every memory you and I had ever made

THAT. THAT was what was necessary to get out and stay out. If it meant chewing off my arm so I could get out of the bear trap, so be it. Anger and unforgiveness get a bad rap, but they can often be the only things that keep you moving away from a situation you should never return to. Without them, it's too easy to remember the brief moments where you could breathe, when you thought, Yes, this can become something good: moments watching The Muppets, a magical night in the Himalayas with uncles, aunts, cousins, the youngest uncle keeping everyone in stitches

There were moments of gold and there were flashes of light

Moments that, if you could stretch them into eternity, might have brought light from the darkness. But, as all moments do, they pass, and the reality is what you've always known it was...

There were those empty threats and hollow lies

And whenever you tried to hurt me 

I just hurt you even worse 

And so much deeper

...an unrelenting, grim, joyless landscape that just needed to be survived. Though the threats weren't empty, and you were the child, so your power to inflict deeper pain on those responsible for the cauldron you lived in is debatable.

Turn around. Walk away when you can. Don't look homeward, angel.

But you were history with the slamming of the door 

And I made myself so strong again somehow 

And I never wasted any of my time on you since then

But here's the rub: whilst anger and defiance can get you so far, they can't take you all the way. Because even as you think you've banished every memory you have ever made, they are the ghosts that haunt you, the demons that drive you. If you believe that you've never wasted any of your time on them since then, the truth is, you have: 

In not feeling what you really feel - so you don't go back. In living on defiance - so you never go back. In staying numb so you survive. In not leaning on anyone else because you knew from the beginning you could never lean on them. In not truly letting anyone in so you are never again torn apart like you were by them. In always having one foot out the door so you are never trapped. In living in the grey zone, numb, so you can keep putting one foot in front of the other, moving away from them, even when you no longer need to be a spore blowing on the wind, but can become a seed planted in rich soil, expecting the sun, rain, all you need to grow.

In these ways and so many others, you've carried them rather than banished them; wasted so much of your time on them. But is there a way to put them down after all this time?

If you forgive me all this 

If I forgive you all that

Can I? What does forgiveness mean? Where does it begin? All at once? In stages? Will I have to do it again? Does it mean what they did was okay? And what do I do without that weight? Without the anger that has driven me forward?

What do I do with the emptiness? And now what?

When you see me like this -

And when I see you like that:

(*my parents are on our right)

We see just what we want to see... 

...all coming back to me

I can barely recall but it's all coming back to me now

That's how we begin to heal, even from the deepest, earliest trauma: not by separating, but as the song does, by bringing all of it together: by letting ourselves fully feel the nights of cold wind and the days of cruel sun, even as we slam necessary doors, allowing anger, defiance, and even numbness to carry us to the places where we can stop surviving and start living, even if, at first, only by nearly dying. The way into the light is most often through the dark night of the soul - and through the songs that carry us there. 

It may all be coming back to you now, but that doesn't mean you have to go back to it. Welcome it, even when it feels like the tears will never end; hold it; be with it. Let it all find its place in you.

Remember, you made yourself so strong again somehow.

And then, as Gibran might note, your eve may be, in truth, your dawn.

The dawn that will, finally, bring you home. 

I grieve...

Since 4 May, I have been doing Desmond Tutu's Forgiveness Challenge. After Iyanla Vanzant's four weeks back in December, I thought this would be easy.

*Pauses to laugh hysterically*

The last fortnight has been among some of the toughest emotional work I've done, and that's on top of the last 6 months, which has been an emotional wringer on its own, kicking me out of my numbness into a perpetual ache in my solar plexus, where layer after layer of dark sticky fascia like material feels as if it is being ripped from my inside...sometimes it's just sore, sometimes it makes one want to bend over double - it's always there. 

But I finally feel alive - and am beginning to feel so much clearer. To quote John Cougar Mellencamp, 'Hurts so good.' And so does this challenge, even when it knocks me for six through a poem, meditation or making me write down what's going on for me.

Today was the latter when, on day 13, I was asked what I grieve. I thought I might write a couple of things that encompassed everything else, keeping it abstract and at a safe distance, my natural way of defending myself from the pain and the overwhelming grief and sense of loss that followed.

The first part of the challenge was listening to an interview with Alanis Morrisette, and then she said these words that struck home: 

As long as we hold on to the victim consciousness, the rage, and the blame, we don't have to feel grief. And the sensations somatically of grief in our body for a lot of us can be really uncomfortable. There are a few feelings. For some of us, anger is more tolerable than full-blown grief.

If I ever wondered why I was so angry, my answer was right there.

I started writing...and didn't stop. Couldn't stop. Everything I'd held in, pretended I didn't grieve, or pretended I'd gotten past, poured out into my diary. But I knew there was one more step. I had to speak it out loud. 

Remember, I'm naming it and feeling it. I know I probably don't need to say it, but this needs the space held for it, so please, nothing about moving on, thinking positively, 'you can do something about it' or anything that gets me away from sitting with this. I've spent my whole life defending, being capable, and holding the space for others - now it's time to be with and honour my own vulnerability.

So here goes:

I grieve... 

...that I never had ground under me 
...that I never had a childhood and the carefree joy and silliness that goes with it
...never knowing the freedom in just being, which I still have trouble with  
...never being safe in a pair of loving arms
...never holding my brother as a baby or bonding with him as he grew older
...never being able to rest in the certain knowledge of being safely held and unconditionally loved 
...the loss of that which so many other children took for granted: love, security, affirmation, rootedness 
...never being celebrated in the way this friend celebrates her daughter on graduation day: "Bittersweet today. I just can't believe how fast you grew into a beautiful young woman! I am so proud of you! And as I sit here with tears... I know you are destined for awesome things!!! I love you" 
...never being deeply and truly known from the moment of my birth
...never being close to those whose blood runs through my veins 
...the loss of that primal belonging to mother and family; for the sanctuary that belonging offers  
...never having the freedom to explore my heart, my talents, my gifts, my body, to work out my shape and way of being as I became a woman 
...the loss of the celebration of graduations, birthdays, days that were mine 
...never having sense of endless possibility of the late teens, early 20s, the wanton freedom and the ability to let go and experience - clubbing, travelling, what I wanted to do because I didn't know - still don't sometimes - how not to be a spore rather than a seed 
...the loss of being able to love with abandon, to give into lust, to explore what my body wanted and be with it. Why? Because with an uncle, I had learned that my body was for someone else's use. From my parents, I learned it was clumsy and something dirty, to be ashamed of
...not having that deep love and intimacy of a long-term relationship because of fear and because I can't believe that I could be loved like that
...feeling unloved for as long as I can remember
...the loss of the time spent fighting them for every precious second of freedom from their need to make me an extension of them, even as an adult


...I grieve. And in grieving, I heal...

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, "Joy is greater thar sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits, alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.

When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

--Kahlil Gibran

...and feel the shoots of joy spring up from the seeds of sorrow.

A letter to Lou on her anniversary

Dear Lou,

It’s been a long time.  So long, I’m not sure you’d recognise the girl - almost too young to be working a suicide hotline, but already so very weary - you took under your wing.

But then again, maybe you would – because in that short time our lives intersected, you played a huge part in the woman I became.

It’s hard to know where to start, you know? There’s so much I want to say, so much I understand now that I didn’t then, so many questions I want to ask that I didn’t then. But most of all, I want to give you the chance to shelter under my wings – the adult wings that can now hold as much space as you need – needed – for as long as it takes.

I can’t give you – nor do you need – the shelter I can offer now that I couldn’t then, because I had to grow into it. But I can sit with you, on this day of your anniversary - much as Will and Lyra did in their different worlds – and talk to you.  I hope that’s ok.

First of all, thank you. Thank you for being you – for being there. For being able to see past the rage and for daring to stick your arm through it to the hurting girl beneath. Thank you for listening, so often and so completely – and without judgment. Your faith in me, in my ability to face situations – both small and large – meant the world and made a universe of difference to my life.  Things got better in small ways: I remember hearing your Carolina drawl behind me on that December day, a little over a month after you died, after my biochem exam, saying, “Good job. I’m so proud of you.” I got the highest grade in the class.

And because you trusted me to handle the small things, you made it possible for me to go for the big ones: 3 months and 4 days after your death, I moved out of my parents’ house, leaving them a note on the fridge.

Despite the struggle; the immense pressure from my parents to move back home; the overwhelming depression that roared to the surface when I was no longer constantly fighting my family and led me to put my leg over the 8^th floor balcony railing one December night; my father ringing me on my birthday and asking, ‘So, how are you paying your rent? Are you sleeping with your male friends?’ – despite all that, it was the best decision I ever made. My life truly became my own that day.

There are no words to thank you for being one of the incredible, loving people who made it possible for me to make that choice.

But that’s not all there is to say – some things are darker, more painful. Yet they need to be spoken aloud.

Never will I forget that Saturday morning, having arrived on shift and hearing that one of the Child Protection line workers had committed suicide; looking up in horrified curiosity asking, ‘Who?’ and hearing your name.  Even now, I can feel the full physical agony, as if someone was ripping out the inside of my solar plexus, and I want to scream all over again.

Yes, even now, the memory feels like this morning's.

The fury was like a wildfire through a forest that hadn’t seen rain in years – rage at you for making the choice you did, then telling the police officers who knocked at your door that you were fine, only to die hours later; rage at myself for being someone who worked a suicide hotline but hadn’t seen it in you; rage at G-d for letting you do this.  I hated you so much. SO much.

I was absolutely functional within minutes:  I did a full hotline shift;  in the evening, it was off to  parental friends for dinner – my parents had no clue anything was wrong, and to this day they have no idea that I had a friend who committed suicide.  The price was dear, but there was no way I was going to become the paralysed, incapable of functioning, manipulative energy-sucker my mother became whenever a painful situation arose.

I did it by being angry, as I still do occasionally when I need emotional reserves I simply don’t have; I stoked my rage at you: I didn’t go to your memorial service; I refused to grieve you; I imagined shouting, ‘WHY???? WHY????????? HOW FUCKING DARE YOU???????? SCREW YOU, BITCH!’ at you so many times. Then I just wanted to pretend you never existed, had never found a way into my heart, had never been, for far too brief a time, the mother I needed. I wanted to gut your room in my heart and redecorate so I could pretend I’d never been touched. After all, YOU took yourself out of my life, so *I* would make it so you had never been in it.

But love wouldn’t have it: it was your voice I heard that December day…and so many days after.  Even now, sometimes.

Even now, echoes remain. I freak out during sustained arguments: what if something happens before we resolve this? ‘Are you ok?’ litters my vocabulary like kebabs on the pavement on a Saturday morning. Good friends *have* to say goodbye before extended absences, or the panic squeezes my heart till I can’t breathe, because I can’t forget the day I poked my head into your room across the hall and didn’t hug you because you had your back to me, cutting out a pattern – it didn’t matter because I was supposed to see you again. I didn’t.  My parents made me exquisitely aware of subtext and emotional resonances, you honed my edge for catching the leading edge of depression, of the slip into the suicidal. It was from you I learned that depressed to suddenly light of heart was not something to be relieved at; it was something to be terrified of, something to interrogate.

Every last one of these is a scar, but every last one of these is a gift: even if I'm absolutely certain I’m right, I’ll put my  hand out to reconcile; my friends know I want to know how they really are; the people I love know I love them; and that therapeutic awareness means I’ve asked the right questions more than once.

Out of darkness, light.

And what if you were here now, and we could just talk; or if you’d been here all these years? Would we have stayed in touch, or would there have been a natural letting go? Would we have become women who genuinely liked each other and shared confidences, rather than a surrogate mother sheltering a wayward chick?

I don’t know. But I know where I’ve been – and I can talk to you about that.

Thirteen months after you died, I was where you were – and made a different decision when the question ‘What right have you to take yourself out of other people’s lives?’ came to/was asked of me. In that moment, I remembered what it felt like when you took yourself out of mine, and knew I couldn’t do it to anyone else, and pulled my leg back over that railing. So, a second time, you made me own my life.

It wasn’t the only time – I’ve been there a number of times since, though not so often in recent years.  I’ve always made the same decision, though I don’t know if I always will, because sometimes bringing an end to that pain is so desperately tempting  – we never know, do we? The moment I realised that uncertainty about each time that – or any other – decision looms, I understood.

And I let go – the one time, perhaps, I’ve truly forgiven (both of us and G-d) but not forgotten.

The years since you’ve been gone haven’t always been easy, though there have been many blessings, much laughter and incredibly wonderful friends alongside the darker times spent struggling with inner demons that created outer heartache and pain. So many things I’d loved to have discussed with you: men, religion, life, some of my absolute clangers of decisions, growing up…but above all, your life. Your experience. I’d have wanted to get to know your heart, as you’d begun to know mine. And I think you’d have loved visiting Oxford…so much older than antebellum Carolina ;-).

Oh Lou, you’ve been gone so much longer than the length of time we knew each other, but I miss you so much. You taught me that 30 minutes or 30 years doesn’t matter – love does.

I love you.

And I hope I’ve done you proud. 

Fried chicken and pecan pie,

Me

On dealing with the death of a good friend - some thoughts

This morning, a good friend on facebook asked for thoughts on dealing with the death of a good friend/loved one. I didn't know what I was going to write, and I don't know if she'll use this in the article she was going to write, but once I started, it flowed. And it felt like it belonged here for anyone passing who might run across it. So here it is:

FIRST AND FOREMOST, THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO WRONG HERE. NO WAY YOU ‘SHOULD’ FEEL; NO WAY YOU ‘SHOULD’ BE.  Grief is a very unique, personal journey – and yours won’t go down the same path as another’s, no matter how close you are. And THAT’S OK.

Let yourself feel it.  ALL of it. Yes, it might feel like you will never, ever be able to climb out of that dark abyss, so you don’t want to go in, but trust me, it’s better to jump than fall – which is what you’ll eventually do if you don’t let yourself feel it – because it’ll jump you at the most unexpected times in ways you can’t control. Better to make the choice to feel it than have it made for you – and the sooner you go all the way into it, no matter how intense it feels, the sooner it will start to heal.

Talk about them.  Share the memories. Share your relationship. This is about how they changed their little corner of the world by being in it.

Do what you need to do, even if it seems silly. Need to go and have that milkshake you used to share with them every week on Wednesday at McD’s? Go to town. Need to not even darken the door of McD’s? That’s fine too.  Need to talk? Need to hide? Need to hold a conversation with them in your diary or in your head before you go to bed? That’s ok.  Need to wear that shirt they gave you at least once a week? Cool. Need to give it to charity so you never see it again? Ok.  (As long as what you’re doing hurts no one, including yourself, obviously.)

If you believe in G-d, keep talking to him: weep, rail, scream, ask, do all that you need to do. A relationship with G-d needs to be a full relationship, not just ‘G-d, thank you, you’re so amazing, may I have, you’re so powerful…’  Give it all over – the dark as well as the light. G-d wants all of you, not just your company manners – that’s what being in real relationship is all about: think of your closest relationships - you go through the good, the bad, and the ugly, right? He knows where you are and He WANTS it all - the pain, the anger, the doubt - just the way you want to be there when someone you love is hurting. Just the way you and your friend/loved one were there for each other.


[And a clerics 'heads up': if someone comes to you and says that they're furious with G-d, don't be horrified by it (or let on that you are in any way uncomfortable with it) - affirm that. A 'That's absolutely fine,' or 'That's normal,' is good. Find your way/style of acknowledging that. One of my favourites is 'He can take it and He wants to hear it. As long as you're still talking to Him, it's all good.']

LET YOURSELF BE ANGRY. THAT’S OK.  IT’S HUMAN. Even if the death was a natural one, an expected one, anger is absolutely normal – we feel abandoned by them, feel the unfairness of it all.  If it wasn’t?  Then anger is going to be an even bigger part of this, and probably more complicated.  The anger will be complicated if the relationship was.  It’s not betraying your friend, it’s being real – and that’s what they’d want you to be.  Talk, talk, talk – but to people who can handle it and won’t dismiss you – so talk to the friends who are as angry as you are.  Cleric. To good friends who can give you the space. If you need to, find a therapist. 

You may dream about them. You may think you see them on the street. That's normal. You'll feel like you were punched in the solar plexus/diaphragm and may not be able to breathe. Take a moment. Acknowledge it: close your eyes; cry; breathe deeply; say 'hi' in your head. Feel the pain, breathe into it, let it be. It's OK.

It’s worse after the funeral. TRUST ME. Up to the funeral, there’s so much to do, so many people are around, it’s actually EASIER. The emptiness after the funeral , when the realisation hits that they’re never EVER actually going to be there again – in all the little ways that you were used to having them there – the everyday things, the in jokes, the way they used to do that thing that embarrassed you in public, what you laughed at when you had that weekly dinner down at the pub – is like having someone crack open your chest, grab your heart and just twist it in the most torturous ways possible.  And everyone has dispersed – or expects you to get over it.  You’re allowed to think ‘Bite me.’ You’re allowed to say, ‘Thank you for your concern, but bite me I’m dealing with this in my way and my time.’ Then go talk to someone who knows how to listen and that grief takes time.

Watch a sad film that makes you cry. Read a book. Go to the gym. Cocoon. Basically, do whatever helps you get through and process, process, process in your way, not anyone else’s.  Grief isn’t linear, it’s cyclical. The year anniversary will be a killer. Then maybe it’s bad for a couple of years, or ok till the 5 year, which hits you like a tonne of bricks, b/c you want them to be at your wedding/40^th/whatever.

When it starts to heal a bit,  when you begin really living without them - don’t feel guilty about laughing at that joke with someone else; having that weekly lunch with someone else;  feeling better; moving on. They loved you – it’s what they’d want for you.

Remember: grief isn't a sign of weakness. Grief is a sign that you have loved deeply - which is the ultimate sign of strength.

Finally, don’t close your heart – stay wide open.  The best tribute you can give them is to live and love fully – the way you lived with and loved them. 

GC, Day 14 - Music

What to say? So much, yet there aren't words.

Music has always been the way into my feelings - especially when I didn't know what I was feeling: from Tallis to Victoria to Bach to Evanescence and Twisted Sister, music has been my salvation, my joy and my soul's voice; how I enter and explore my emotional and spiritual depths. With or without lyrics, it is the one place in which I lose - and find - myself.

Crikey, this isn't easy to explain, is it? Ok, I'm a teacher, so let's take a recent example.

Today, my friend, Marie, mentioned a couple of songs that had really moved her, and gave me a napster link that didn't work. So I googled both song titles and youtube. Only one popped up, and I took it as a sign that it was the one I needed to listen to.

I should have known - from the first line, I had to fight back tears as I worked, thinking, 'I'm at work, can't cry; I'm at work, can't cry.'

I grew up in what is probably best described as an emotionally dysfunctional family - by the time I was 4, I felt no attachment to my parents at all - and the feeling was mutual. My dirty little secret has always been this: 'How unlovable must I be that my parents couldn't love me and how horrible must I be that I didn't feel attached to them?'

I always felt that my only purpose was to be an extension of my parents; to be something that propped up their sense of worth, though I couldn't have phrased it that way then. Never was there a sense of being loved no matter what; 'love' - or rather, approval - was doled out sparingly when one got an 'A' or did something else that enhanced the parental image. Everything else was met by scorn or anger, even things beyond our control: my mother was furious with me when I got my period too early for her liking; my father once refused to speak to me for a week for something I didn't do - but he couldn't be bothered to find that out before cutting me off.

No, wait. The best summary of my father is actually the following: when I finally told him his brother had sexually abused me for 4 years, starting when I was 5, his response was, "It's not important; it doesn't matter."

So I grew up in a house never feeling safe in someone's love and protection; never believing there would be anyone there for me when I needed them; believing childhood was hell, marriage and family a trap; never believing that I would be worth anything to anyone simply for who I was rather than what I could do for them.

I've come a long way, baby, believe me.

So I grew into a girl - and then, a woman - who is a remarkable survivor, much like a spore, but didn't know how to revert to seed: I knew how to keep people out and I knew how to pursue love, but not how to be in it or with it. As recently as Sunday, I said to a friend about my being loved (specifically by a man in a romantic relationship), 'I'm not sure I believe in it.' It wasn't what I meant to say, but it was absolutely true.

Loved, adored, for me? Someone caring enough for ME to come after me because they treasure me, love me, want to be with me, care for me, because I'm me?

Are you on CRACK? I don't even believe that of God. I never went to God with things I couldn't handle until I was completely stuck because, of course, God would just yell at you, tell you what a fucking failure you were, and why couldn't you EVER get it right? He gave you free will after all.

And so, when Marie brought me this song, music finally found a way in where nothing else had:

I saw you as a little girl
When you were in this room all alone
And you wanted to be found
But no one came and found you
But this is your time now
This is your day
Cause that little girl inside of you
Is what makes my heart ache

You are my love
You are worth purusing
You are my love
You're worth pusuing

I am finding you right now
Right now I'm finding you in that room
And I am taking you by the hand
And I'm leading you out
Into a new place
Forever that place that kept you in
Forever that place that held you in
Forever that place
Forever that place will be shut off

You are my love
You are worth pursuing
You are my love
You're worth pursuing

And you're not going to have fear anymore
You're not going to fear being alone anymore
You're not going to fear
You're not going to fear
Becuase it's being swallowed up in my love for you
And my passion for you
I'm so taken by you
And I'm going to restore all your years
I'm going to restore every tear
You will know my joy
You will know my smile
And you will know dance
Because I am going to show you off
I am so proud of you
And it's time for you to know it
You're so beautiful to me
You're so beautiful to me

Wait. What?

Something that happened to me made someone's heart ache?

Me? Worth pursuing? You want to find me? To really know me, all of me? Not just what I can do for you or how I can make you feel or...? You're PROUD of me?

You'll always be there? I'm safe?

...you love me?

Okay. Something in the music tells me I can believe you, so I'm willing to give it a try.

Deo gratias.

Selfish much?

Every so often, I pick up a women's mag and indulge one of my little guilty pleasures.

Equally often, I remember why I don't do this more often. Today was one such day.

I made the mistake of reading the agony aunt column (which I can never resist). Most of the questions were *amused eyeroll* questions.

And then...there was the *WTF-my-blood-pressure-just-hit-the-roof* question:

I have two best friends and we've been very close for years - I've asked them to be my bridesmaids. Last year, one of them lost a baby and then her partner, and we were there for her. But now she's never there for us. She didn't turn up for my birthday party and if we arrange a night out, she either turns up for five minutes or not at all. I want her as a bridesmaid, but I'm not sure she'd even turn up...

And if THAT QUESTION wasn't WTFable enough, Irma Kurtz's response is even MORE of an epic fail:

She can't be depended on as she can't depend on herself. Misery overrides her best intentions. You could uninvite her as your bridesmaid, using the excuse that it's too much for her. That puts the ball in her court and you may or may not lose her as your friend. Or you could go ahead as planned, giving her time to cheer up or drop out - perhaps even at the last minute. But what difference does that make. All that matters is your loving marriage ahead.

Yes, of course, that's all that matters. Because Irma is feeding the idea, you selfish waste of carbon molecules, that all that matters is you.

Why don't I take the time to do you a favour and tell you like it really is?

Your 'best friend' - in inverted commas because you are clearly no friend of any kind - has just suffered two of the *most devastating losses anyone can suffer* (even if the partner left rather than died - the latter being what is implied). You and your friends were, of course, 'there' for the requisite - what? fortnight? - till the funerals and then expected her to buck up and be the person she was two years ago, before she lost her child (read that again, her CHILD) and the partner she loved.

And of course, equating her not being able to attend your little 'birthday party' and the odd social gathering with 'not being there for you' makes so much sense. Because you need her to be there for you and support you whilst you're eating, laughing and necking shots. She, of course, doesn't need YOU whilst she's grieving (oh, I'm sorry - you think she should be over it), trying to fathom a life without her baby and her beloved, whilst she's struggling to keep her head above water. She has to show up, happy, chirpy, thrilled for YOU. I mean, how DARE she continue grieving eight, ten, twelve months on? It's impinging on YOUR perfect little life. So what if your marriage reminds her, like a knife twisted in the heart, of what she's lost? Who cares about her? You've done your 'pat her on the back and hand her tissues' quota, now she should forget about it all and be there for you as you eat, drink and get merry.

Bite me and every woman who knows what being a real friend is about, c***.

Let me tell you what a real friend would know, so maybe you can be one someday.

Irma is wrong. Your friend is not going through 'misery', she is going through deep, intense grief that is complicated because of the depth of the ties, the fact that she is suffering more than one loss, and that the losses are unexpected, at least in terms of order. She can't 'cheer up or drop out' (WTF, Irma??? 'Empathetic' in your vocabulary at all?). Children don't die before their parents. Partners don't die young. She has lost her FAMILY.

Grief doesn't have a time scale. It's not 'a few months and it's over', or 'after the funeral, she'll be back to her normal, tequila shot drinking self'. It is a cycle that can take YEARS - her life is completely, utterly shattered. She has to accept the loss, go all the way into it and feel the pain, then begin to re-organise her life. That is going to take time.

And even when she re-organises, she will never again be the carefree friend you had two years ago: she'll be deeper, stronger, darker - she'll know a pain that most people will likely never know.

One of the things she'll need to get there is more than a little help from her friends: friends who will let her grieve; who will gently guide her to CRUSE or therapy if she gets really stuck; friends who will understand when she can barely stay for a night out; who will listen. No, it won't be all girly giggles and drinking; but then real friendship isn't, is it?

Sorry, what was I thinking? You don't know what real friendship is. Selfish much?

My agony aunt advice to you, which Irma - whom Cosmo needs to fire before she can do any more damage - apparently couldn't think of?

Listen to her. Love her. Be there. Yes, your wedding is coming up, but guess what? Even at a time like this, the world isn't all about you. Because what's your wedding really about?

Relationship - for better for worse, dark and light, laughter and tears. It would behoove you to learn how to do that.

Right now, you need to start with your best friend.