Me. You

by Dawn French

  I didn’t want to waste another single moment of my life sitting passively in a wrong situation, misguidedly waiting for it to right itself.

  I didn’t want to compromise so much that I lost sight of myself a bit.

  I didn’t want to ever ignore constant inner instincts, I want to be alert to them.

  I want to reassess who and what I deserve, and who and what deserves me.

  I want to somehow forgive the mistakes of the past, both mine and other sundry twots, so that the way ahead is lovely and clear:

  I want to be like Elsa, and ‘let it go’ (on the understanding that I DON’T want to be like Elsa and have a waist smaller than my neck, otherwise how do you eat doughnuts?).

  I want to live comfortably IN my authentic self, no apologies, no faking, live where I am, in what I am.

  I want to notice what I have denied myself and work out why, with little/no (all right, some) bitterness.

  I want my milkshake to bring all the boys to the yard. Damn right …

  I want to hurry up and be better at everything.

  I want to work out the right vitamins to take.

  I want to finally capitulate and admit that it’s all about the bass … no treble.

  I want to ALWAYS live by the sea, please.

  So, you see, whilst I was dealing with the difficult logistical surface stuff of a divorce, my heart was faithfully sorting out all of the above and gradually, the confusing haze of trauma lifted, and I had a brighter, happier place in my sights as my focus.

  ‘In a dark time, the eye begins to see …’

  T. Roethke

  During my reacquaintance with my newly single self, I had the rare opportunity to plug in properly to my friends,

  Ah. My friends.

  Thank you, God, or whoever, for all the right stuff they said and did.

  The one who MOVED IN WITH ME to be there to listen to every repeated bleating lament.

  The one who reminded me that kindness is like a torch; if you shine it into shadowy corners, it chases away the dark.

  The one who cooked hot Thai broth for me.

  The one who packed me off to the best gynaecologist in town, no ifs or buts. Just in time, as it happens.

  The one who lay next to me and whispered, ‘I’m here, I’ve got you, I’ll breathe with you ’til it’s easy.’

  The one who invited me to all of their family dinners.

  The one who made beetroot cake.

  The one who walked on the beach with me, in all weathers.

  The one who crawled into my bed to be there when I woke up.

  The one who drove 200 miles to say Happy Birthday.

  The one who reminded me to say ‘YES’ more often.

  The one who reorganized my food cupboards with military precision.

  The one who made me a bath with excess bubbles.

  The one who told me to butch up.

  The one who said we would love each other ’til our last breaths.

  The one who dragged me out to watch drag.

  The one who told me to treat my heart as if it had been stabbed and let it have time to heal.

  The one who bought tickets for Dolly Parton.

  The one who read to me.

  The one who was almost violent in her ferociously protective advocacy.

  The ones who quietly, subtly, became my tribe, and surrounded me with their patient understanding.

  All of these selfless souls took the time to support me in so many different, sometimes alarming (!) ways and I was reminded daily that I wasn’t alone, that I am part of a firmament of family and friends, all of us connected inextricably to each other under a big wide sky. They weren’t about to let me fall. Their love shored me up, and touched me very deeply. These people, my beloved friends, are my foundation. These are the relationships that will endure. These are the strong emotional bequests I will certainly try to pass on, on my climb towards the mountain.

  Oh yes, that mountain. Here at sixty years old I’m aware that my climb is well underway. In fact, if I stop occasionally to look, I can see that I’ve travelled much further up it and, believe me, the view is starting to be pretty spectacular, even though the ascent is puffing me out!

  From this place on the mountain in my life, a couple of things strike me as pretty much given.

  By now, I know it is all right to draw some conclusions and to have an opinion, yes, but the most useful lesson I have learnt is that it’s also all right to doubt it and also to change it.

  ‘Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd’

  Voltaire

  I also know that most of the stuff in my life thus far that has really pained me, has been because I’ve taken it personally when, on reflection, I really didn’t need to. Note to sixty-year-old self.

  I know that at this stage, I can pretty much say, ‘This is who I am.’ A lot of my personal ingredients have already been partially cooked, but I’m not ready quite yet, I’ve still got a slightly soggy bottom.

  Nevertheless, ‘This is who I am right now’. Yes.

  I know that life is composed of various delights and riches with the odd irksome tribulation thrown in. One of those tribulations needs to be highlighted. It is the curse that is Kummerspeck. Heard of it?

  Kummerspeck – the German for the excess weight gained from emotional overeating. Literally, it translates as ‘grief bacon’.

  Now let’s get one thing quite clear. I’ve been a big girl and woman my whole life. Sometimes bigger, sometimes less big. Typically, the differing bigness didn’t necessarily correlate to my emotional state. I’ve been bigger when at my happiest and similarly the converse is also true. I simply won’t have it that sadness and fat go neatly together, it’s much more complicated than that …

  BUT …

  After my mum died in my mid-fifties, I definitely found my comforts in certain kinds of eating I hadn’t hitherto been familiar with, like … the world of melted cheese (on everything including crisps and chicken) and the world of Magnum ice creams (sometimes with melted cheese). Oh lawd. Thanks, cheese and ice cream, for the genuine numbing of grief, but, frankly, that will be all. We’re done here. Move along, grief bacon. I’m going to have the grief without the side order of emotional gristle, ta.

  I know, too, that here in my coming sixties when I still have my health relatively intact, is my finest opportunity to kick up some Autumn leaves in my life, have a laugh, learn some new things from the young people around me, enjoy the loud beautiful colours, and be where I belong to be.

  Right here.

  Right now.

  1. Grandma French’s beautiful, kind old face.

  2. The taste and size of Wagon Wheels at playtime.

  3. Completely lying on top of Grandad’s dog, Carlo the Alsatian.

  4. My baby daughter’s eyes looking up at me during a 3 a.m. feed.

  5. My baby daughter’s face when I let her suck on a Mars Bar for the first time …

  6. The smell of newspaper ink and paperboys in the early morning at my grandparents’ newsagent shop.

  7. The excitement of Christmas Eve when I was seven years old.

  8. The smell of my mum’s chest.

  9. My dad’s haunted face the last time I saw him.

  10. Magnified sunlit skin pores on my hand through snorkel-goggles underwater in Cyprus, 1964.

  11. The terror of seeing The Exorcist.

  12. The rows of dolls in national dress in Grandma’s loft.

  13. Choosing an engagement ring in Tiffany's on Fifth Avenue in New York aged nineteen.

  14. The way five-year-old kids like to cling on to your neck if you are their teacher and you’re telling a story.

  15. My daughter’s voice when she sang a cappella at our wedding.

  16. Doing a radio interview in a small studio alongside an unknown Gregory Porter … who then sang. Two foot from my head. Realizing some people’s gift is sacred.

  Now, things you will always remember:

&nbs
p; 1. ____________________________________

  2. ____________________________________

  3. ____________________________________

  4. ____________________________________

  5. ____________________________________

  6. ____________________________________

  7. ____________________________________

  8. ____________________________________

  9. ____________________________________

  10. ____________________________________

  ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

  SEPTEMBER

  There was a man in my family who carried his shame in a knapsack on his back, a boulder so heavy it created his own personal grim gravity. He was exhausted from having to pretend there was no such weight there. He wanted folk to believe his knapsack contained sandwiches and a thermos and some feathers, rather than the misery monolith it truly was. One day, he decided it was too heavy to carry, so he took it off and emptied it out. Shame. All over the floor, but not on him any more. He put the knapsack back on, empty and light, and he walked forward. Determined never to fill it again …

  In my experience, shame is the most emotionally debilitating demon imaginable. It destroys our self-esteem and, all the time, we fake it. We grit our teeth and smile on through. Shame is invisible, but it is a fiercesome powerful ol’ presence. The shame in me recognizes the shame in you, instantly feels ashamed and scoots off to hide from both of us. We fear that our shame is obvious, that we will see it reflected back. We fear it so much that we let it burrow into our hearts like a vile worm. The only way out is to own up to it, confront it and cast it aside. So easily said and THE MOST DIFFICULT THING TO DO. It takes so much courage, in fact, that it’s often preferable to continue on, being eaten.

  I have no easy answer to this, but I do know something for sure … get it out of you, because it is toxic, keeps you separate and will hurt you and those you love.

  I’ve learnt that it’s possible to encapsulate the shame we store in as few as two sentences. Just as a start. Try it. Go on.

  Speak it aloud. Put it in the air.

  Then think about who you could speak it aloud TO. Someone safe, who will hear it right.

  Just consider it.

  Just consider it.

  Just do it …?

  Two sentences and it could, just might be, the start of a new different, less-shame-thank-you way of being. Contempt is a weighty ol’ burden, and it gets heavier the longer you harbour it. So often, the confusion and the feelings of inadequacy are bound up in one type of utterly damning thinking which has ‘I am bad’ at its core, when really ‘I think I have done something bad’ is more accurate. And infinitely more manageable.

  Feeling a sense of shame about yourself, to whatever degree, is pretty normal, I reckon, sadly. That’s hard enough to deal with. It’s a big life battle, a part of adulthood.

  The more worrying, and for me fairly unforgivable trait, is in those who, commonly as a reaction to their own shame-pain, decide to consciously assign shame to others. When shame is heaped upon you, when it makes no sense to you, when it’s somehow ascribed to you, THAT’S when it becomes a ruddy monster, that’s when it smashes you up. An inexplicable beast, which in your deepest, most difficult, vulnerable place, you somehow believe you DESERVE to be savaged by.

  Ummmmmm …? NO!

  What you DESERVE,

  What all of us DESERVE …

  Is to be treated with respect, as equals.

  I expect that of others towards me, so in my most serious and difficult moments, I try to remember that I need to treat myself just the same. To do that, I absolutely have to shun any unwarranted shame that’s being donated from dubious quarters. No thanks. Not available for that, got plenty of my own stuff to sort, don’t need extra.

  Blimey, it’s ruddy difficult knowing how to be a functioning human, isn’t it?

  How do you be a good person?

  How do you be a person?

  How do you be?

  How do you successfully be a wife, a mother, a sister, a friend, a daughter, all rolled into one?

  I don’t really know, but at least I know I don’t totally know, and I know not to pretend I know when I don’t. HA!

  I also know that not everything has a solution, so I shouldn’t always be looking to fix stuff if that is not possible. I can’t change how other people are, or the choices they make or the consequences of those choices: all I can do is witness those things and change the way I deal with them if needs be. I can also admit that I will sometimes get it monumentally wrong, I will doubt myself and I will worry, but, that’s all right.

  ‘Where doubt is, there truth is – it is her shadow’

  Ambrose Bierce

  I am the sort of person who likes to tackle things head-on, I like all the cards on the table so that I know exactly what I’m dealing with. This can lead me into trouble and has done before now. I can be a bit of a gun-jumper, a bit impatient with my need to get to the truth, often sooner than some people are prepared to. I know that. My best friend is supremely subtle and goes about her life carefully, sensitively. I admire it, I do … but I just can’t do it. Well, that’s a lie, I don’t WANT to do it, that’s the truth. I want to deal with the difficult stuff, right NOW. To prolong it is agony for me, however prudent it might be.

  I hope that I am honest, at least with myself. I don’t feel that I have to spill my guts about everything to everyone, but if I do spill ’em, I’ll be telling the truth. Whatever ‘the truth’ is. I realize it can be different for everyone. I am referring to my own truths, however unpalatable or shameful they may sometimes be.

  It’s different if you have blockages that somehow prevent you from getting on with life, especially if you can’t quite identify them. You know the kind of disquiet I mean – it’s there in the pit of your belly when you wake in the night but you’re not exactly sure what it is. A kind of anxiety indigestion. The ghost of an unsettled score you can’t quite grasp. You can’t fathom it: what is nibbling away at your calm?

  If you truly don’t know, as opposed to hiding away from it, then you have to get a helping hand to unpick it, from someone who knows what they’re up to.

  When I was in my forties, I sought out some help to deal with a nagging, dreadful sadness that was bugging me. After seeing a very clever psychologist for a few months, and talking through some of the inner turbulence I was experiencing, she suggested that I might try a therapy called EMDR. I thought at first she was suggesting drugs of some sort, and that’s not my bag, unless it’s totally unavoidable of course. She quickly explained that it was nothing to do with chemicals. The letters stand for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing.

  I know …

  WHAT …?!

  She went on to explain that this type of therapy was quite new, but that in her opinion, it was very effective in treating trauma. She said that if something shocking has happened to you, your brain tries to process the shock of it, usually with rapid eye movements while you’re asleep. All humans do this, actually even dogs do it. How phenomenal is that? Well, sometimes your brain fails to sort the shock into its correct drawer in your head, or maybe the shock is so powerful, it resists the unconscious processing, so, instead, you actively do the sorting while you are awake, mimicking the eye movements in your conscious state.

  WHAT …?!

  She went on to tell me that she suspected she knew from listening to me for weeks where my particular mental hurdles were, and so what would happen was this:

  She would sit in front of me, and by following her fingers rhythmically, waving from side to side, my eyes would move just as they needed to. During this, she would be talking me carefully through a particular memory that she knew was difficult for me. A moment that was emotionally charged and particularly disturbing. She would attempt to have me recall it in
detail and slowly, working together, she would guide me to a different type of thinking around it, to a better, more positive take on it.

  WHAT …?!

  She told me straight away that, knowing me, she imagined I might find it all a bit absurd. I might laugh, or scoff at it and even dismiss it completely, and that was natural and OK. It couldn’t hurt me. It was worth trying.

  So I did. For ninety minutes or so, I recounted the incident she wanted me to retell. She encouraged me to be brave and forensic with the details of it. All the while, she skilfully nudged me onwards, and she gently moved her fingers in front of me like a metronome. Left, right. Left, right. Once I got past the ridiculous feeling of being hypnotized in some Victorian freak show, I relaxed into it, and before too long my face was wet with tears as I told my upsetting story. Left, right, left, right. As I spoke, I knew the weight of it was gradually lifting, even in that very first session. I was spent at the end of it, completely wrung out. I went home and dreamt vivid dreams, and when I woke up, I swear the edges of that knobbly old sadness were definitely knocked off. I could remember it clearly as before but, unlike before, it didn’t hurt as much. It simply didn’t matter in the same awful way; the power of it was dampened.

  I had a couple more sessions of that same treatment, and within a month I was sleeping properly again and the whole damn difficult thing was nicely filed away where it should be. On the back burner, so to speak. Not the front burner, where it was burning me.

  I’m told that this type of therapy is most effective with people who have had huge hissing traumas. Folk who’ve been to war, who’ve been raped, who’ve been in car accidents, appalling stuff like that. I can believe it, because it worked so well for me, whose trauma was minor in comparison.

  How wonderful is the human mind? How elastic and interesting? Look how it rights itself, given half a chance. It’s miraculous. Whoever invented it should really have a jelly and a badge. Or two jellies, even.

  At the centre of the success of that type of treatment is, essentially, trust.

  I had to trust her.