You Left Early

by Louisa Young

  We did a questionnaire together: ‘What Is Co-Dependency?’ Now there’s togetherness. How domestic, how romantic. We gave the same response to almost all the questions:

  ‘My mental attention is focused on pleasing you’ (NO);

  ‘My self-esteem is bolstered by relieving your pain and solving your problems’ (NO);

  ‘I am not aware of how you feel I am aware of how I feel’ (NO);

  ‘My dreams for the future are linked to you’ (YES – and also, hurray).

  We differed on: ‘With my help you could reach your true potential’ (Robert: YES; Louisa: You’ll do it if you do it);

  ‘Your behaviour, clothing and personal appearance are dictated by my desires, as I feel you are a reflection of me’ (Robert: NO; Louisa: Fat chance.)

  Some of the questions suggested to me the titles of psychologically aware country-and-western songs, and I came away humming ‘When something is wrong with my baby, something is wrong with me’. Looking back, I see that I gave the answers that I wanted to be the case, not, as it seems to me now, true answers. My mental attention was very much focused on his well-being, whether it pleased him or not. Of course I felt good about myself when things went well with him and he did the things which I felt would help him.

  My own everyday feelings had rather dried up by then in the glare of his pain and sickness; or perhaps I had shut them down in a subconscious act of self-protection. In the chapel, which became a quiet place to sit on our own during a visit, Robert asked me if he had hurt me much. Of course every hurtful thing he had said to me hurt me, but what hurt most was how much he hurt himself. If anybody else had done to Robert the things he did to himself they would be in prison for attempted murder. Such are the dichotomies. You can’t punish or reject the Evil Twin – and believe me I would have killed him – because he lives in the same brain and the same body. But now, each visit, we snuck into the chapel and kissed like teenagers, like we were crazily in love, because he felt physically alive as he had not for years.

  *

  Here in his papers I could see the precise moments he was introduced to vital factors which he later taught me. The difference between a trigger and a reason, for example: ‘Robert was triggered to drink by an emotional response to realising what he had lost. The group considers that anything can be a trigger, but the reason we relapse is because we’re alcoholics. If we blame relapse on circumstances it leaves things wide open for future relapses.’ And that if an alcoholic drinks again after a long break, they are immediately back to where they were when they stopped.

  And I saw him recover his capacity to take the piss out of himself constructively: ‘I raised my issue with defensiveness – at one point I interrupted (to justify myself, obviously). This caused great laughter from some peers and my counsellor, who later tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘You just don’t get it, do you, Robert?’ One learns humility in these situations. Very useful.’

  *

  Lola expressed an interest in visiting him. She and I talked about it. It felt right. She’s intelligent, balanced and wise. But we were nervous, as we sat side by side in what had been a country gentleman’s grand study, now institutionalised with whiteboards and plastic chairs, listening to a lecture on the shame cycle.

  Robert explained it too: ‘You get drunk. You do stupid terrible things and hurt people. You wake up, and remember. You can’t bear it. You are completely ashamed. The only way to get away from the shame is to get drunk. You get drunk. You do stupid terrible things and hurt people. And so on.’

  I know perfectly well the friendly penumbra, the little trippy mist, that after a drink or two starts to obscure and blur your private list of discomforts and horrors, and how after the third you can’t really make the list out any more, and what a relief that can be.

  ‘It’s so simple,’ I said.

  ‘Simple, yes, but not easy.’

  ‘Is that a slogan?’

  ‘Yes. And you end up believing that you don’t deserve to be sober because you’re such a cunt, so you drink to punish yourself. You’re not a fucking idiot.’

  ‘And how do you get out of that cycle?’

  ‘You find the moment to jump off the carousel. You do something else about the shame, instead of drinking on it.’

  There was a diagram on a whiteboard during the lecture – a circle, with the entry and exit points marked on it. Lola took it all in, and I told myself that understanding is the crux of everything. On the way back in the car, we talked about one of the slogans we’d heard: ‘If someone calls you a horse, you can call them a fool. If ten people call you a horse, think about getting a saddle.’

  *

  Another exercise was a No-send Letter to his father. ‘A funny concept,’ Robert observed. ‘Half thinking you’re going to send it but knowing you won’t – hence more real big honesty (don’t over analyse, Robert).’

  3rd December

  Dear John,

  This is an extremely difficult letter to write. Don’t think for a moment that I want to appear critical or downright nasty but I have to get things off my chest. First of all I’d like to apologise for my lack of contact. The three reasons are my horrific descent into a pit of alcohol, my resentment towards your travel problems plus your affairs when I was young, and finally my dislike for Kath (your wife).

  As you know I have been alcoholic for many years now. Because you don’t understand the condition and because we don’t see each other very often it has been impossible to gauge whether you would have given me more support … I believe that you would have. Having said that, your post-Victorian Northern working-class ethics would probably have been ‘just fuckin sort it out’. All well and good, and I am, by being three weeks dry before coming into this rehab clinic a month and a bit ago. This is only the start of a very long process but at least I’ve started and have finally realised the enormity of the problem and have a lot of belief and self-confidence. I can hardly believe now that after the fourth doctor told me I had a maximum of three years to live, I went to the pub and got slaughtered. There are a myriad reasons for my alcoholism, all of which I am trying to explore, some of which I think may be connected to you. However please bear in mind that my lack of communication with you also applies to everyone else: Louisa who as you know I love to death, ditto your grandson, almost all my friends, and also those I don’t like: Customs + Excise, Inland Revenue, Council Tax, BT etc. Bailiffs have become regular visitors to my flat. I built a big round wall round me and became an ostrich in the sand. The only people I did see were local drunks hanging round me mainly because I would buy them drinks and meals. I see them now and with one exception they are repetitive bores, which doesn’t say much for me.

  When I went to university at 17, your travel phobia didn’t really concern me because I was engrossed in my new life. But gradually it began to affect me, usually triggered by me doing concerts. My graduation was particularly painful. All the proud parents and families and me on my own. I can’t remember whether I asked my mother or not.

  Having moved to London I started doing concerts at the Wigmore Hall, on the South Bank, and live on Radio Three. At least you could listen to that one … Never did you make any attempt to get help, to get medication, nothing. Only when I came home did you meet some of my friends and people I was amorously involved with. When I turned to writing music for TV and film it was easier for you I suppose because you could at least see my name on the credits. You never really opened up about it. Pivotal moments – my wedding, the birth of my son, his christening – where the fuck were you?

  Finally Kath – it must have been very difficult for her to deal with an arrogant, grandiose, self-centred and precocious sixteen-year-old. I think she tried hard, but to no avail. To me she had no real warmth and to this day is inflexible to the point of bigotry. I’m delighted that your marriage works but at the moment because my resentment of her has grown stronger due to my new-found mental clarity, I don’t really want anything to do with you both. I
really hope this will change. I want to forgive and be humble. I know that I’ve often been an awkward, difficult little shit. Give me time. After all that I love you a lot and always will.

  Your son Robert

  ‘Then the most extraordinary thing,’ he wrote. ‘I wrote a postcard to my father and stepmother some while ago, merely saying where I was. I got a letter today and would you believe he echoed certain sentiments of my no-send letter to him. He’s never written to me before.’

  Letter from John to Robert, blue biro, wobbly capitals.

  “The Poplars” [Their house wasn’t called The Poplars. It was a family joke.]

  24.1.06

  Dear Robert

  After your stinging reminder about only ever writing to you once I thought I would shock you and make it twice. I’ve been thinking about our recent telephone conversations and it seems you apparently have the need to have confirmed the love your father has for you. This is not in doubt and never has been and I don’t think will ever be. There are many other people who also have love for you here in the north. Kath and Christine Diane and Denise for example and others who seem to always be asking “how is Robert”. However there is a difference and it is called blood relationship. I have to love you because (as you often tell me) you are my son! At times in your life of major success and of troubled times your father has not been there, and that I know you must’ve felt pretty sad about, but life is far from perfect and I also have felt very sad about not being with you at these times. However it is totally unconnected, relevant to whether I love you or not. That is just not in question. It is just that your father is one of many thousands of people who have a totally irrational fear of something. Unfortunately mine is of travel. Your great-grandmother was frogs. Two people at Greenhalghs [the bakery at which John worked] I knew were afflicted one with spiders and one who was terrified of birds. To cope with these problems is not easy because other insensitive people cannot understand. It certainly inhibited my progress in the commercial world to an extent but the main drawback has been the inability to see you at important times in your life. However it hasn’t been life-threatening and has given me a greater understanding of other people’s problems and inner thoughts and feelings. I think it gave me a degree of humility and a much lower sense of self-importance. So I have no regrets.

  Enough of me. What about you! It has become apparent that you seem to possess a formidable memory and can recount little insignificant events of the past which many times surprise me. What bothers me a little is that they are of the past. The modern mode of speech for progress is that you have to move on. Many people use it today, “you have got to move on”. I don’t like it because Mr Blair has moved on and in the process has destroyed most of what England was about. Having said that I feel sometimes that shortly you should be thinking of moving on. Instead of a tendency to talk of the past I would like some conversations about what you are planning for the future. I am convinced there is lots of wonderful music to come from you yet and it’s getting time we heard some. I know it is not easy with the problems you’ve had but they can be overcome. It needs a degree of humility, a certain lowering of self-importance and an understanding that many thousands of people have far greater problems than you and me (I) have so far had to face. Even though one seldom feels like it, work is a great antidote to many ills, and if I may be allowed to talk of the past for a moment, you showed quite often the extraordinary ability to work hard.

  love Dad

  *

  As the time came for Robert to come out, we both got nervous. ‘It got quite distressing in the family meeting with Louisa,’ he wrote, ‘who revealed one or two things that were obviously upsetting her. Productive for both of us, but painful nevertheless.’ I had been grabbing at what might have been my last opportunity to speak in front of a sober third-party representative of consensual reality, in that magic place where Robert heard me. I was a bit panicky. I hadn’t yet realised how it upset him to hear, without the anaesthetic of alcohol, how much he had upset me. I didn’t want to let him down.

  ‘Art class produced my usual genius in pastels,’ he wrote. ‘My leg is killing me.’

  *

  On four sheets of lined A4, I see the walls around him come tumbling down. So much joy for me, from lines of blue biro, a series of answers to a set of questions which is lost.

  *

  Shame, a difficult assignment.

  I often compensate for feelings of shame – or not feeling good enough – by interrupting people when they may be just giving good advice (or not) and trying to justify myself. A subconscious fear of people finding me out.

  Isolating myself became virtually constant. Wallowing in drunken self-disgust. Alarmingly, there was a masochistic pleasure to this. A tooth fell out. Barred from four locals and a local tandoori (I’ve only been going there for fifteen years!) Saw nobody. People crossing the road to avoid me.

  Even when accusations are truthful – they mainly if not always are – I have used blame to deflect from myself in order not to be found out to be the evil disgusting person that I believe myself to be.

  I have almost always been unfaithful – the exceptions being my marriage (until it broke down) and with Louisa. Sometimes I felt guilty, sometimes I didn’t. I have felt incredible shame re my behaviour over the years. I think in some cases I may well have caused serious emotional damage.

  Because for many years I had the facades of being drunk and trying to be entertaining, I rarely allowed people to know who I really was. I’m not afraid about revealing my inner self. Quite the opposite. I look forward to it.

  I definitely used to avoid responsibility.

  I rarely felt special, except when I was very drunk and would think that boring sober people were on a lower emotional plane – especially when it came to listening to classical music and appreciating nature. That state of mind was totally self-delusory.

  I feel that a great weight has been lifted. Shame suppresses optimism.

  *

  All the way down in the car to fetch him home I was humming ‘Re-Hab’, by Stew and The Negro Problem, which was my earworm of that period. I loved this song for its gentleness, and its combination of tender affection and bitter realism as Stew sings of how very embarrassed and optimistic his friend is at getting out of rehab for the twenty-second time. And I hated it for the same reasons.

  Robert was wearing the blue flowery shirt. ‘It’s your favourite,’ he said. We kept smiling at each other, putting things in the car, saying goodbye. In his pocket he had a sheet of paper, which he gave me to read:

  CONTINUING CARE PLAN: Robert Lockhart

  Recommendations of the counselling team

  *Abstain totally from all mood-altering chemicals one day at a time

  *Attend AA at least five times a week – find a sponsor immediately

  *Explore further counselling options as discussed with your counsellor

  *Attend Clouds reunions

  Robert, you came to Clouds ravaged by your addiction. Others had expressed grave concern as to the severity of its consequences to all aspects of your life. You had been told by doctors that if you continued to drink your life was in danger.

  Despite this, you continued to question or minimise the severity of these consequences. You were open and honest about your underlying desire for the ‘pleasures’ you associated with drinking. You came to realise the reality of your alcoholism: that its impact had been devastating to you and to others important to you. Relationships in your life had been affected, as had your previously flourishing career and your sense of self-worth. You also discovered that this denial and minimisation of consequences was the very nature of the illness by which you were afflicted.

  During your time in treatment you have learned to listen to others. You have learnt to value and make sense of their feedback, challenges and suggestions. You have taken action to identify and change your behaviours that are ‘blocks’ to your recovery. You have started to become realistic about
the true effects of your drinking and to identify what you really care about. You have started to acknowledge and express your feelings and have taken risks to share these feelings. You have received identification, support and a sense of release. You are discovering a new sense of interest in yourself and in others. In letting go of justification, defensiveness and intellectualising your problems away, you are accessing a new sense of inner wisdom and serenity. You are using this to develop your understanding of recovery, yourself and others … We wish you ongoing success and happiness in your journey.

  Matters Requiring Further Attention:

  Taking responsibility/Asking for help/Connecting to the fellowship

  Robert, you cannot recover alone. When you take responsibility for yourself and access the help and support you need and deserve, you find a way out of the blame and negativity which is so familiar to addiction.

  Expressing your thoughts and feelings appropriately

  You have discovered how you easily avoid difficult feelings, especially sadness, pain and anger. Keep finding healthy ways to express yourself honestly.

  Family relationships

  You have accessed the support of family sessions to address the consequences of your addiction. You have highlighted important concerns and identified a need for you both to seek ongoing support.

  I have read and agree with the above recommendations