Help Me!

by Marianne Power

  ‘How was that?’ asked Geoff.

  ‘Strange. I felt there was a black hole that I was going to fall down and I realized that, every moment of my life, that’s how I feel: like I’m going to fall down and that it’s my fault. But it’s not my fault. I’m not a bad person and I don’t know why I always feel like I am . . .’

  Geoff nodded like this was all totally normal.

  ‘I’m not a bad person, am I?’ I asked him. I had no idea how he’d know if I was a bad person or not but I wanted reassurance.

  ‘No, you’re not,’ he said, looking right at me. I bit my lip.

  Then it was Geoff’s turn to breathe and cry and my turn to hold him. I wanted to rock him gently, in the way he had done with me, but I felt scared and embarrassed. It felt too intimate. What if he didn’t want me holding him? What if my hands were too sweaty and gross?

  Pull yourself together, Marianne. For fuck’s sake.

  He lay waiting, expectant, peaceful with eyes closed, blond eyelashes fluttering slightly as he breathed. After a few minutes I put my two hands on his left arm and I rocked him ever so slightly, distracted by the sounds coming from around the room, the sounds of sobs and wailing. Middle managers, civil servants, music industry hipsters all crying like lost children. It was the sound of pain. The pain of being alive, as John put it.

  Then the music changed pace again and Geoff was smiling, beaming even. His face glowed and I glowed too. I felt connected to him, honoured that he was trusting me in this moment.

  Across the room a young woman was sobbing and her boyfriend was cradling her like a little bird. Her howls filled the room. He looked like he would sit there forever with her, just stroking and rocking until her pain was gone.

  When the exercise was over, Geoff looked over at them. ‘If I was a woman I’d want to go out with someone like that,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ I said. But his comment annoyed me. I wanted him to be thinking about the connection we’d shared, not about the couple across the room.

  ‘Thank you for asking me to share that exercise with you,’ he said. ‘I felt very paternal towards you. Very protective.’

  This made me furious! Paternal? I didn’t want him to feel paternal, I wanted him to fancy the pants off me. I looked over at the beautiful couple and I felt jealous. No man would ever love me like that. I was not delicate and pretty and vulnerable. I could never let go the way she was letting go because I knew there was no one there to catch me.

  ‘I have to go to the loo,’ I said to Geoff. I walked into the blue-tiled bathroom, looked in the mirror and cried. I looked at my sweaty puffy face. I didn’t look like a pre-Raphaelite, I looked like a wonky Picasso.

  Of course, he wouldn’t fancy me. Why would he?

  This was why I didn’t like feelings. They hurt and they made you look like an idiot.

  I walked into lunch late and Geoff had saved a seat for me. I shook my head and pointed that I was going to sit next to Janet. I didn’t eat anything. I felt like a gaping wound. That afternoon I lay on my bed and cried until I fell asleep. Outside my room a statue of an angel with wings outspread looked out into the hills.

  The next day our breathing exercise was relocated to a small indoor pool in the fancy spa area, where we were to float in warm water while another person supported us. Geoff found me by the entrance.

  ‘Do you want to partner up again?’ Geoff asked.

  ‘I said I’d go with Janet this time,’ I said.

  He looked surprised and I felt petty and victorious.

  The pool was surrounded by bronze tiles and the blinds had been drawn so it was dark. Amazonian music echoed across the hard surfaces. I floated while Janet’s fingers propped me up. It was meant to be like going back to the womb and it sort of was. Though I doubted Mum’s uterus had Amazonian music playing on an iPhone.

  We were told to breathe gently and with every breath to feel light coming into our body. There was no black hole this time – just white light flowing everywhere and surrounding my heart. I could feel Janet’s love and patience coming through her fingers and I felt connected to her and to everyone in the water. Like we were all one life force. To trust another person and lie there while they looked after me felt almost unbearably beautiful. I saw there, in that pool, that I never trusted people. Never relaxed with them or believed that they would be there for me. I was always braced for people to let me down, to laugh at me, hurt me and leave me.

  I cried like a baby again but this time it was not a release of pain it was just a release. Of love. Of emotion. Of the magic of being alive. My feelings were so intense they hurt but it was a good hurt.

  This is what it must be like to fall in love, I thought.

  Then I saw so clearly that of course I had never been in love before, because I had never let my guard down long enough to feel anything like that. I had never surrendered before – I always shut down or ran away just at the point where I could get hurt.

  But I surrendered in that pool. For a few minutes I could feel deep in my heart the beauty of life and people and the cosmos. I was part of something bigger that me, something magical.

  Something spiritual.

  On our final night, before dinner I shaved my legs and put on lotion. My hair, which had been up in a bun most of the week, was down and had gone good frizzy rather than wild woman frizzy. I put on a long black-and-white dress and my sandals with a chunky heel. I looked in the mirror. My eyes were bright and clear. My face was glowing and I was smiling. I felt pretty.

  When I walked into the dining room Janet squealed. ‘Look at you!’

  Geoff looked up and smiled. ‘You look nice,’ he said.

  ‘So do you,’ I replied and felt the heat rising in my cheeks. He was wearing a white linen shirt and had picked up a tan. He held my gaze.

  I looked back. His brown eyes steady. I was scared out of my mind.

  After dinner we went for a group walk through the vineyards and olive groves. Bare, tanned shoulders gleamed in the moonlight as we walked in pairs and threes, chatting about anything and everything. We were strangers six days ago but now we were old friends. At ease. Open. Teasing. Geoff and I were walking side by side at the back of the group.

  ‘I don’t want to go home,’ I said.

  ‘I’m ready,’ he said.

  ‘What time is your flight tomorrow?’

  ‘Ten past nine, so I’ll be gone early. What about you?’

  ‘It’s later, maybe 3pm. I need to check.’

  We kept walking, the sound of our feet crunching on gravel. My foot wobbled against a pothole and I stumbled, banging into him. I felt the warmth of his arms as he caught me.

  I wanted him to keep his hand on me, but he moved it away.

  We kept walking. The moon shining down on us, nature giving us about as romantic a setting as it’s possible to get.

  I willed him to kiss me. To just stop, turn to face me, and kiss me.

  And then he did. He did! He stopped and looked at me.

  This is it, this is it, this is it . . .

  ‘I nearly forgot!’ he said.

  ‘Forgot what?’

  ‘England’s playing France tonight,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The football. It’s England v. France.’

  Seriously? This is what is happening? I felt like I’d been slapped in the face.

  I walked ahead.

  ‘They might have it on in reception,’ he was saying, a couple of steps behind me.

  Back at the main house some of the group watched the football while a few of us drank by the pool.

  ‘So . . . ?’ asked Janet, eyes glinting.

  ‘No, nothing happened. He talked about the football.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m not imagining it, am I?’

  ‘I dinnae know, babe. These places are strange. We’re here telling each other everything, it’s like rehab. Has he mentioned meeting up when you’re back?’ asked Janet.

  ‘No,’ I ad
mitted.

  She shrugged and poured me a glass.

  ‘F**k It! It’s the last night, let’s have fun,’ she said, raising her glass.

  ‘F**k It!’ I said, banging mine against hers.

  Daisy appeared, panting: ‘I’ve been hugging trees! Come on, you have to do it, it’s so healing!’

  I looked at Janet, who jumped out of her seat. ‘F**k It! Let’s do it.’

  We took off our sandals and walked barefoot across the inky blue grass.

  ‘I’m not telling people at work about this – they already think I’m mad,’ said Janet.

  And maybe we’d all gone mad – but it didn’t feel like it.

  I opened my arms and wrapped them around the warm, smooth bark which glinted silver in the moonlight. I looked at Janet and Daisy doing the same a few steps away and we laughed at the ridiculousness of it all. I hadn’t laughed that much since GCSE history, when someone made a joke and giggles spread around the class like a virus, leaving everyone, including the teacher Mrs Fisher, doubled over in pain.

  But then as my arms stayed wrapped around the tree, the laughter stopped.

  For a second everything stopped. Nothing mattered. Geoff. The Greek. Sarah. The stillness of the tree became my stillness. I felt wisdom, peace and love emanating from its bark. I felt its roots pulling into the earth and I felt its depth. I felt my own depth. An energy hummed between us. Everything felt right. Things were exactly as they should be.

  That week had been nothing like I expected. I’d thought it would be sweary and boisterous but it had been much more profound and moving than anything I had experienced before. At certain moments, I felt a glimpse of something big. Was it God? Or energy? Or beauty? It didn’t matter. I just knew that everything would be OK. That I was OK. That the world was beautiful, that my worries were nonsense, not reality. This was reality, connecting with trees and sky and clouds and people.

  My eyes filled with tears at the perfection.

  7

  The F**k It Fallout

  ‘And that’s what F**k It does . . . some part of you just gives up caring. The thing that mattered so much, somehow doesn’t matter anymore. And the freedom that comes from that is a blast and a half.’

  The tears continued when I got home. Adverts for building societies, a YouTube video about a remote tribe meeting people for the first time, Bob Dylan’s ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ on Radio 2 . . . everything set me off.

  Having spent most of my life thinking that feelings were for weak, indulgent people, I was now feeling feelings all over the joint. In fact, feeling my feelings had become a fulltime job. I certainly wasn’t doing my other one. Instead I spent the rest of June walking around parks, taking in the exquisiteness of everything. One morning, walking through Hyde Park, I found myself crying at the beauty of squirrels. Seriously. Squirrels!

  Geoff had sent a couple of texts so as well as crying at squirrels, I was spending a lot of time thinking about him. He was in America for the summer but I felt sure we’d meet up when he got back.

  ‘What about The Greek?’ asked Rachel.

  I felt guilty. The Greek was still in Greece. He had been messaging about coming over in July to see me but I’d told him I was probably going to be away for most of the summer.

  ‘I thought you liked him,’ said Rachel.

  ‘I did. He’s lovely – I just don’t know if I fancy him, fancy him – not like Geoff. And it’s not a good time for him to come back to London – his dad is sick and he’s looking after him.’

  ‘That can’t be easy.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He sounds like a good man,’ said Rachel.

  ‘Yeah.’

  Rachel opened her mouth to say something then closed it again. Why did people keep doing that around me?

  ‘What?’ I demanded.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Just don’t mess him around. If you don’t like him then tell him.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And what’s happening with Sarah?’

  ‘Don’t ask.’

  In the days after coming home the Sarah situation had turned into, well, a situation. When I got back from F**k It I’d decided to F**k It and tell her the truth. I was fed up of trying to please everyone, of doing things I didn’t want to do! It was time to embrace an era of honesty and openness! She’d thank me for it. I was sure. Friendship needed truth.

  And so I sent an email:

  Hello,

  I’m sorry I haven’t been around and I am sorry that I haven’t been picking up your calls. This whole self-help stuff is taking up a lot of my head space – I can’t explain why but it is . . . I don’t really want to go to the pub and moan and rant anymore – which seems to be what we do when we’re together. I’m trying to be less negative and less drunk! But let’s have a coffee?

  Love

  Marianne.

  Turns out she wasn’t that thankful for my moment of honesty.

  Her reply:

  Well that was quite an email. I didn’t realize that all these years you thought we were ‘moaning and ranting’. I thought that we were listening to each other and helping each other. I’m pretty sure I’ve been there for you every time you’ve needed a shoulder to cry on. I didn’t know that all that time you thought I was such a negative bitch. It’s good to know where we finally stand.

  I replied:

  I don’t think you are a bitch! I wouldn’t be friends with you if I thought that – I love you! I was just trying to be honest about what I was thinking.

  Her reply:

  Well, if it’s honesty you want – here goes. Self-help is not making you better, it’s making you self-obsessed. You are not the only one going through changes, other people have things going on, too, not that you’d know that because you no longer pick up the phone. You’ve changed and I think it’s best we don’t talk to each other for a while.

  I felt sick to my stomach. I never argued with friends. It felt horrible to fight. Horrible to hurt someone. But then all the self-help books talk about the importance of ditching negative people from your life and maybe that’s what she was. A negative person.

  ‘Sarah’s one of the least negative people I’ve ever met,’ said Rachel, when I told her what happened. ‘She’s been cheering you on through all of this.’

  ‘We just don’t have much in common anymore,’ I replied. ‘I want to talk about proper stuff – deep things, important things – not complaining about some girl in the office.’

  ‘But, Marianne, that’s what we all talk about. It’s what you used to talk about. What you’re doing is –’

  ‘What?’ I snapped.

  Rachel took a breath before speaking: ‘What you’re doing is intense and you can’t expect everyone else to be on the same wavelength.’

  ‘All the books warn that when you change, some people won’t like it and there’s nothing you can do about that,’ I replied.

  ‘So you’re going to fall out with one of your best friends?’

  ‘I don’t know but right now we’re going different ways.’

  It was becoming clear I was now going in a different way to most people in my life.

  The whole point of this project was that I would change – but what I hadn’t expected was how much it would piss off other people.

  Mum’s main concern seemed to be focused on my decision to say F**k It to worrying about my appearance. The Saturday after I came back, we met for our monthly lunch and wander around the shops, where Mum looked at prices in Whistles and informed me how much something similar would cost in TK Maxx. It was always £16.

  ‘You’re looking very Bohemian,’ she commented when she met me by the station.

  She was waiting in slim-fitting grey trousers, a grey trench and a cream silk scarf. Her hair was tonged perfectly into place. You could put that woman in a war zone and she’d emerge from the trenches with perfect creases in her trousers and lipstick on.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘N
othing – it’s just your hair, it’s looking wild. And you’re a bit pale. Are you sick?’

  ‘No, I just didn’t put any make-up on today.’

  ‘Oh, you didn’t lose your toiletry bag, did you? Marianne, you’re always losing things . . .’

  ‘No, I just didn’t feel like putting make-up on.’

  ‘Oh.’ She moved on to looking me up and down, weighing me with her eyes.

  ‘Did you eat a lot of pasta?’ she continued.

  ‘Yes, Mum, I did. And I ate cake for breakfast,’ I said, daring her to say more.

  ‘Oh well, you’ll lose it when you get back to normal.’

  ‘Lose what, Mum? I’m hardly the size of a house.’

  ‘I didn’t say you were!’ she said, surprised at my reaction.

  ‘I’m fed up of always worrying about my weight and my appearance. There are more important things in life than being skinny and pretty, you know! Half the world is starving and here we are worrying about calories.’

  ‘OK,’ she said.

  ‘And anyway, the guy who held our retreat said that if we said F**k It to dieting and forcing ourselves to go to the gym, then we’d all be a lot healthier. We’d let our body get back into natural rhythms, instead of always trying to control it. Then we’d find that we want salad sometimes, or want to take a run . . .’

  ‘So do you want to get a salad for lunch?’ she asked.

  ‘No, I want pasta.’

  ‘More pasta?’

  ‘Yes!’

  We walked to an Italian deli near the square and I ordered spaghetti carbonara with red wine while Mum had a chicken ciabatta and coffee. As I shovelled pasta into my mouth I continued to articulate my hastily assembled views on patriarchy and body image.

  ‘Someone shared a study on Facebook the other day where researchers asked men and women to take an intelligence test. They performed exactly the same until they had to do the test in their swimwear. Then women couldn’t think straight because all their energy was going into worrying about what their bodies looked like. Think how much energy we waste worrying about our appearance! If I hadn’t spent my life worrying about my hips I could have been prime minister by now!’