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. 

To the mother I passed on my way into work today

Dear Woman yelling at your daughter on the corner of Wentworth Rd & Banbury Rd today,

I just want you to know how close you came to being shaken and slapped in public in front of your children and everyone on their way to work/school today.

I get that it must have been deeply frustrating when your 5-6 yo daughter froze and threw a wobbly, crying in the street, making you late taking her and your son to school. I'm not sure what she'd forgotten or why she wanted to go home.

But standing in the street, yelling about how she was making you late and how you were going to cancel her playdates and not let her do anything nice this weekend in your OX2 'I went to Roehampton' accent didn't make you sound like a good, strong, in-charge mother.

It made you sound weak. It made you sound like a shrill, abusive c*** who finds her children a burden and who takes all her anger out on them. I'm not sure how close to the truth that was, but what was clear was that you thought answering a child's panic with your anger was the answer. You might have gotten her to move, but she'll never trust you.

Neither should anyone else.

I'm sure you reacted in a way that was familiar: maybe your mother; maybe your father. Maybe it was all you knew. Right now, I don't give a DAMN what YOUR issues are; the ones that make you treat your child like they're an extension of you and supposed to soothe YOUR feelings. YOU ARE THE ADULT. It's YOUR responsibility to BE emotionally aware, to choose how you respond and to contain the emotions that your daughter couldn't.

You've clearly been privileged. It's time you made good use of it and dealt with your shit, so your children don't have to - nor do the rest of the people who will be part of your children's lives, feeling the effects and trying to fix the damage you are unwittingly (one hopes) doing.

Because, quite frankly, it's parenting of the type you displayed this morning that is the core of an unhappy society: today, you taught your daughter that your time was more important than she was - that it was so important, in fact, that you would withdraw your love and her life - playdates, a weekend of fun, the ability to rest in the knowledge that you love her no matter what. 

It's mothers like the one I imagine you are - shrill; vomiting emotionally on everyone around you; seeing your children as an extension of yourself, there to prop up your self-esteem; brittle, taking up all the emotional space, no matter how 'dominant' you appear to be in the family; distant, suffocating or alternating between the two - incapable of allowing healthy separation; self-absorbed; stingy with your love - making your children earn it - that I see reflected in so many faces of my friends and my clients. You're the mother I see dragging her resistant, struggling son by the hand to serve at mass so YOU have bragging rights and can feel like a 'good Catholic mother'. You're the mother I've seen walk to her seat in countless ordinations, setting my teeth on edge and making me think, in just one glance, one interaction with those around you, 'Wow. Well, THAT explains a lot - I understand so very much now,' as my heart breaks for your son. You're the mother I feared I might become.

Am I projecting? You bet your Roehampton-educated ass I am.

I really hope it was a bad morning - that your daughter had been insufferably difficult (still your job to find out why), that it's been a bad week and you were at the end of your tether, that it was just that crap moment we all have. But something in your tone and the particular threats; in the note of hysteria in your daughter's crying; in your son's resigned posture on his bike told me that was probably not the case, though I suspect the truth is somewhere between my projection and the most positive possibility. It usually is.

So here's a thought. Next time, find out why your daughter - or son - is so upset. Spend the few minutes listening - trust me, they'll be fewer than the minutes you spend threatening her with the withdrawal of your love - and either going back to the house without rancour or suggesting an alternative solution. Not only will you be calmer, but your children will learn that you will be there and love them no matter what, and that stressful feelings aren't scary, because they can be resolved.

Next time, be a Mum, not a mother. 

Trust me, the payoff will be greater than you can even begin to imagine.

Sincerely,
The therapist who doesn't ever want to see your children in her consulting room