by Poorna Bell
When I return to Auckland, I begin winding down my days with everyone here. I spend time in bars by the waterfront, meet my friends David and Louise for lunch, go running along Narrow Neck beach.
I spend time in Orewa with Prue and David. We go for a long walk with Monty, who wants cuddles all the time and isn’t fussy about who he gets them from. There is sunlight and tea by the time we return with specks of sea salt around our ankles.
I go on my friend Wesley’s yacht and we drink beer in the sun while the Hauraki Gulf sloshes at our feet.
I see my friend Jools, whom I met two years ago while heavy in my grief on the Milford Track, and whose light-filled house I have found myself in at every available opportunity. She makes me coffee, I chat to her sister Margo who has also become my friend on this trip, and as we laugh, I marvel at the wonder and surprise of making new friends.
I buy one of my last ferry tickets from Devonport to the city and look as the sun catches the curve of the little sandbar by the dock.
This is home, this is home, this is home. I know everyone here is worried this may be the last time, but it’s not. I came to see if there was more than Rob, and there was; there is.
I am left with the feeling of immense peace after the South Island, and I carry it within my heart like a secret.
I tell people about the experiences I had, I post pictures on Facebook of me standing in front of squashed rocks and eerily blue waters. But I’m not yet able to articulate the profound impact inside me.
After a few days in Auckland, whether it is because it has the familiar grind and buzz of a city, I feel that frisson of anxiety returning. I feel as if I should’ve had some definitive answers before getting on that plane back home.
I know that it will not do to get on a plane for twenty-four hours and have a panic attack. So I set up a Skype call with my therapist Isobel, to try to get some answers around why my big panic episode happened in the first place.
My expectations are low: not because Isobel isn’t amazing at what she does, but because I have an Eeyorish outlook: maybe my brain has finally succumbed to madness. Maybe this is who I am now.
As we talk and I recount the panic attack, I have an epiphany. ‘Oh, God, I know what it is,’ I say.
Isobel says with infinite patience, ‘Tell me what you’re thinking about.’
I don’t want to. Because that will make it real, and I don’t have the energy for it. But it has emerged from the shadows and arrived in solid form, and there is no avoiding it.
When I was at the bottom of that metaphorical sea at the start of my grief, things were safe. Yes, I was in a state of extreme sadness, and yes, I probably thought about not existing about 70 per cent of the time. But I didn’t have to worry about being hurt by anything else, because the hurt in my world was so huge, it eclipsed everything.
When I started making forays back into the world – whether it was dating or deciding to quit my job – yes, I was moving forward. But I wasn’t really moving forward. All of those things were designed with a safety net in mind. I dated people I knew I wouldn’t get close to. Quitting work was a big and brave decision (by my standards anyway), but it enabled me to escape the pressures I felt, rather than genuinely examine and work through them.
When Rob died, the big part of subterranean me said, ‘We cannot ever be hurt again.’ And so we went about crafting a life where we reduced the risk of that happening in every interaction, every scenario. But you cannot compartmentalise life like that. Even if you will your emotions into a state of order, there is always going to be the wild you that is not having any of it.
The panic attack was the price I paid for saying to myself, We don’t need love, we don’t need kids and we’ll be fine and safe and life will be okay.
Just because things didn’t work out with Rob, it did not mean that I didn’t want love in my life, or that I wanted to rule out having children. But I also felt like there was a massive block and that I wasn’t capable of those things. Because by actively saying, ‘I think I am ready to be in a relationship’ or ‘I think I want to have kids’, I was opening myself up to variables I couldn’t control: my happiness in the hands of another.
The feeling that flooded through me was dread.
‘Okay,’ Isobel says, and I already know what she’s going to make me do, ‘so where is that feeling in your body, and what does it feel like?’
I don’t want to, I don’t want to, I think. And another part of me: Poorna, it’s time.
‘It feels like it’s in my torso, and it feels like cement,’ I whisper. And I realise exactly what the block is, and I close my eyes against the reality of it.
Isobel squints at me through my screen. ‘Tell me what’s going on,’ she says gently.
I take my time because this feeling is so vast. It has sat at the back of every thought, every action. Every article I have ever written about Rob’s death, every romantic interaction with anyone, every time I’ve actively done something to make myself happy. It hasn’t lurked or stalked me; it has been so closely fused to my bones, I didn’t even notice it was there.
I made it a part of me the moment I got that phone call from Prue at one in the morning three years ago.
‘I don’t think,’ I croak, and then clear my throat. ‘I have never, and I do not forgive myself for Rob’s death. No matter the logic, I should have been there. If anyone should’ve been there, it should have been me. I should have saved him and I didn’t. I should have known, and I didn’t. I should’ve gotten on a fucking plane to see him before it happened, and I didn’t.’
Isobel doesn’t tell me that I shouldn’t feel guilty. She doesn’t say it will be alright. She doesn’t say, ‘It’s not your fault’ as every single one of my friends and family would have done in that moment. She doesn’t say any of those things because she knows that she cannot be the person to offer me absolution.
Only one person can do that.
‘I want to tell him so much that I’m sorry. I want to tell him I’m sorry I wasn’t there, and I will never, ever be able to do that, Isobel, so I’m fucked. I don’t deserve to be happy. I don’t deserve to have another person fall in love with me because look at what happened to the last person I loved. He was mine to look after, and I failed him.’
I need Rob to tell me it is okay, and accept my apology, but that could never happen, which meant I would always push other men away and I wouldn’t ever be able to let anyone come close to me. Basically, I’m doomed, hence the sense of dread.
Isobel makes me do silly shit from time to time, and this time, she makes me lie on the floor. ‘Do you want to say sorry to Rob?’ she asks – now just a disembodied voice coming from my phone.
I nod. Then I realise she can’t see me. ‘Yes,’ I say half-heartedly.
I say I’m sorry. I say it over and over again and I’m crying, and the carpet feels damp from where the tears are trickling down the side of my face. But I realise the futility of it. I can say a thousand ‘I’m sorrys’ until the day I die, and I will never reach forgiveness. But that is because I am asking the wrong person for forgiveness. I tell Isobel this.
‘Do you feel ready?’ Isobel asks. I croak another yes.
I say my name in its entirety. Poorna means complete, and when I was a child, it was a running joke in my family that I was named that because I had all my fingers and toes.
But Poorna is the name given to the world by the god Brahma when he had finished creating everything. It is a name that invokes power. It appears in Sanskrit scripture over and over again to signify both the beginning, and an end.
My name is the umbrella under which our entire world sits. Long and lazy summers where love and lust and sleep intertwine, icy winters to freeze the hearts of little creatures, vast mountain ranges that line the earth’s back, oceans holding a thousand fishy secrets. Death, love, life, birth, forgiveness, sorrow, sadness, shame, joy, hope. Things are born, they grow, and always, they die.
I say my name – this nam
e – and I say, ‘Poorna, I’m sorry. I am so sorry, I am so sorry. Forgive me, please forgive me.’ By the end of it, I am crying so hard, the tears feel so hot, like they are bubbling from under the lid of a saucepan.
Afterwards I feel so empty – like a melon whose insides have been scooped out. I don’t think I am ‘fixed’, and I don’t think this is the end of it, but it’s the start of a road to forgiveness, and that’s something I didn’t dream was possible.
When I get off the phone to her, I feel better than I have in months. I feel like, for the first time in a long time, there is a glimmer of a future. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to the idea of being loved, and trying to force that was causing this massive internal earthquake. Whoever, or whatever, my future may hold, slowly, ever so slowly, in the tight bud that is me, a petal unfurls.
I go for a very long walk, and I turn that moment of forgiveness over and over in my mind. I hold onto it very tightly, like a piece of gold I have found at the bottom of that dark internal ocean.
When I talk to her again a week later, I mention children and how I’ve started thinking about adoption.
‘I think you have a lot of love to give,’ she says. ‘I think you are incredibly nurturing and good at relationships, and I think this other part of you is crying out for that to be fulfilled.’
The part of me that remains terrified is wondering how this will all work out.
But, I say to myself, you’re asking a thing that hasn’t been formed, that has no name. It either will, or it will not, but asking yourself if you’re ready is still not the right question. Your heart is open, and there are parts of you that are ready, and parts of you that are not. And the parts that are not can only be answered and healed by him, whoever he is. And if you never meet him, that’s okay too.
As for being on the same track as other people: no one is on the same track. We may unify and cluster around our sameness, but each person has a galaxy condensed in their own heads.
In this galaxy is a different, unique set of experiences and emotions, ranging from happiness to despair, sadness to joy, fulfilment to emptiness, loneliness to connectedness. We don’t know how big these galaxies are, which planet of emotion they are orbiting. We have no way of knowing if people are truly okay or are just pretending.
From the grains of golden sand in Karnataka to the crystal-clear waters of the Bay of Islands, from the pigeon-shit-spattered streets of London to the quiet snowy mountains of Nepal, each and every place has been daubed in the sadness and happiness of human hearts.
Although I realise I was on a physical journey to kick-start an internal journey, perhaps the reason I don’t feel like I have a neat stack of answers is because this isn’t the end of it.
The next year will bring change, and the year after that. All I can do is be guided by what I think feels right for me, and bend and flow towards that, knowing that my capacity for change is what strengthens me.
Perhaps it’s not the answer I wanted in the here and now, but it’s the answer that will prepare me for whatever there is to come.
I finish my trip with what I think I always knew, which is that we are incredibly rich and complex creatures, and when we release the bitterness of what should have been, and replace it with the broadest sense of love, we’re able to move on.
My time in New Zealand started with the sound of cicadas, and as is fitting before I am due to leave, the air is silent. Their time is over too, for now.
I go to Rob’s grave to say goodbye, to feel him there, but all I feel, when I look at the gravestone, is absence.
I walk to the bench nearby and look out over the estuary. I check my phone to see messages from Mum and Mal. Very soon, I am going to see my sister and let my niece cuddle me like a starfish while we watch Trolls. All these loves and more are carried with me every day. They have always been here. I have space in my heart for more, whoever or whatever that might be.
I look up at the sky. I feel the scattered particles of him somewhere out there, in the crest of a wave, in the breeze catching the underside of a bird’s wing sending it soaring upwards.
He is out there growing into something else, moving and surging with the world’s renewal. I feel the join of earth, sky and air, and I press my lips to where they meet, sending my love out to him.
I’ve survived the world, I think, but I’ve been scared by it. I pushed people away because I thought I couldn’t handle any more loss. I was so sure that if I could prove I was fine being away from them, it would validate my need for self-protection. But the silence didn’t indulge or lie to me, because it wasn’t the right thing for me to do. It didn’t let me pull away from the world because that isn’t what living is.
I hold within me, still, the fire that made me choose a life with Rob despite all of the mess that came with it. It is not satisfied flickering as a sedate little tealight. When I’m ready, it wants to burn and illuminate my world like a bonfire. I just have to not be so afraid.
I feel that love come back like a sonic boom. It doesn’t yet have words; it only has thought.
For a few moments, I sit in the silence left behind by the cicadas. It’s the sound of time waiting, watching, passing, growing. I close my eyes against the sun and hold myself still and calm in the tiny pleasure of it.
You survived me, the thought finally says, so you can survive anything. Now go out there, and be happy.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Mum and Dad, how do I say thank you for being there, for loving me not just when I am easy to love, but also when I am a prickly cactus? For believing I can do anything? For providing me with a place at home that is always mine, for always making me feel safe and loved? I love you to infinity and beyond. Priya, my funny, fierce, ridiculously clever sister, we have watched each other grow up in the most difficult times, yet we are still those protective kids who use their own weird little language, lurk outside the loo door, and make each other laugh until we cry.
My beloved Bell-Lynch clan. Prue and David, my other mum and dad. My brothers John and Alan. We met through Rob, and now we have chosen each other. It is a bond for life. Thank you for your endless waterfall of love, your wit, intellect and warmth. (And Monty.) Felicity, thank you for giving me your home to write in and your love and generosity, and for joining me in India on the maddest of capers. Gabrielle, for your cheerleading and mutual cackling and your heart, which is as big and as open as the New Zealand sky we stood under.
To my Shetty family, thank you. You clever, beautiful people. To my stupendous grandparents whose courage and bravery warms the darkest parts of my heart.
For my wonderful Mal, who remains one of the biggest loves of my life. To Shabby, my brother-in-law and friend who is an endless reservoir of patience, humour and love. For my incredible friends and family who have all supported me along this journey: Hasiba, Poonam, Niaz, Martin, Tania, Karen, Rashme, Aarti, Yumi, Sonia, Alice, Ahmed, Pavi, Shweta, Wesley, Jesse, George D, Louise, David M, Kumaran, Gun, Jools, Paul, Margo, Mel.
Thank you as always to my team at Furniss Lawton and Simon & Schuster – Rowan, Rachel, Nicki, Fritha and Melissa.
And to the beautiful, wonderful legion of people who I have met online, whose messages and words have created this little community for me, just thank you for your endless support and kindness.
Author photo © Amber Rose Photography
POORNA BELL is an award-winning journalist and author. A former executive editor for HuffPost, she writes about mental health, issues affecting women, wellbeing and diversity. A mental health activist, she has spoken at ministerial health summits, the NHS and GP conferences, and is a judge for Mind Media Awards. She writes freelance for the i paper, The Guardian, Red, Grazia and Stylist and was a frequent contributor to The Pool. Over the past decade, she has been a regular for BBC radio and has appeared on ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Sky News.
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2019
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Copyright © Poor
na Bell, 2019
The right of Poorna Bell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
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Hardback ISBN: 978-1-4711-6921-2
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4711-6922-9
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