Help Me!

by Marianne Power

  ‘No! A friend of a friend put a thing up on Facebook. She is organizing donations for Calais this weekend and is looking for helpers. It’s just a day.’

  ‘That sounds good. Can I come with you?’

  ‘Yeah, that would be great.’

  While I waited for the kettle to boil, to make another coffee, I summoned up the courage to ask Rachel the question that had been niggling away at me for months.

  The Big Question, really.

  All year I’d been waiting for people to comment on how wise I seemed, how calm and together. I wanted them to think, ‘I’ll have what she’s having’, you know, Meg Ryanstyle. It didn’t happen. Not at all.

  ‘Do you think any of this has helped?’ I asked Rachel, keeping my eyes focused on the coffee.

  ‘Do you think it’s helped?’ she asked. She was no better than the therapist.

  ‘I don’t know. In some ways yes, in some ways no. I think it will take a while to assimilate.’

  ‘Good use of the word assimilate.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘So what are you going to do now?’

  ‘Work, see people, be normal . . . but first I’m going to tidy up my room.’

  Rachel raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Maybe the books have helped.’

  I sat on my bed and looked at the technicolour volumes on my bookshelf. All with broken spines and folded pages. Each my companion through weeks of soul searching, agonizing and, more often than not, crying.

  I picked up my well-thumbed copy of Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway which had started my self-help mission, at the age of twenty-four and then again at thirty-six. Both felt like a lifetime ago. The stand-up comedy, the naked modelling, the karaoke – I still couldn’t believe I’d done all that. In one month. Susan was right: life really does start the minute you do something, do anything.

  Next to its battered red spine, the book that introduced me to my tragic money love story. What a month. How had I not known what a disaster I was with money until this book? I’d started the year hoping to somehow – magically – become filthy rich but that hadn’t happened. I was still in debt and nervous of the ATM, but at least I was checking my bank balances now. Well, sometimes.

  I moved my eyes along to The Secret and felt a familiar stab of irritation. That book still did my head in. Was it true? Was it not true? I still didn’t know.

  I knelt on the floor and looked at my Vision Board, which I’d hidden behind my desk. The pictures of green juice and yoga were now curled up and dusty. I looked at everything I’d wanted in March. The international travel had not yet come my way, neither had the lead singer of a band knocked on my door. I had, however, drunk a lot of green juices and done yoga, with and without clothes . . . So maybe there was something in it?

  Thrown behind the Vision Board was the box of angel cards. I pulled out one for old time’s sake: ‘Believe and Trust.’ During my angel month the vagueness of this would have enraged me – but now it felt quite nice. Just a little positive message to help you through the day. What was so wrong with that?

  I picked the box off the floor and put it on the shelf, next to my water-damaged copy of F**k It. Ah, F**k It – just saying it made me let out a sigh of relief. This book was deceptively profound and wise. The younger, sweary brother to The Power of Now, which was my favourite of them all.

  I flicked through the copy that sat on my bedside table. I turned to its underlined pages most days. With margins full of ‘YES!’ and exclamation marks, it looked like the bible of a mad woman, but every page contained some bit of wisdom.

  As did all the books I’d read. Even the ones I didn’t like had something to offer – a sentence of truth. Something to make you see the world differently.

  But what to do with them now?

  A part of me wanted to throw them away – maybe even burn them – to mark the end of an era but that didn’t feel right. We’d been through too much together.

  These books and their authors had been my constant companions for over a year. At times it had felt like there were twelve people living in my head commenting on everything I was doing. But, as much as I loved them all, it was getting quite crowded up there.

  I called Mum.

  ‘Where are you?’ I asked.

  ‘In TK Maxx buying pillowcases. Where are you?’

  ‘At home, having a clear-out. I’ve decided I’m going to stop the self-help stuff.’

  ‘Oh, good,’ she said, letting out a sigh.

  There was a silence on the line before she asked me the question that I’d asked Rachel: ‘Do you think it helped?’

  ‘Dunno, I’m still not fixed. I’m still broke and single . . .’ I said.

  She sounded surprised. ‘I didn’t think you were trying to fix yourself, Marianne. I thought you were trying to know yourself – and you must know yourself very well by now.’

  I took this as a criticism. ‘I know you think I’ve been self-obsessed and self-indulgent,’ I said.

  ‘Actually, Marianne, no I don’t –’ Her voice got all high and tight the way it did when she was lecturing us as kids. ‘Well, yes, OK, a bit but I also think what you’ve done is very brave. You have faced up to things that people spend their whole lives avoiding and that takes courage. I–I–I, I never thought about things or questioned life the way you have. I just accepted what was happening. I never had any ambitions. I wish I had done a bit more thinking like you have been doing. I am very proud of you. I could not be prouder.’

  My eyes pricked with tears. It might have been the nicest thing she’d ever said to me. ‘Thanks, Mum.’

  ‘You’re a good girl,’ she said.

  This was the highest praise we’d ever get from Mum growing up – all the more powerful for how rarely it was uttered. But I had mixed feelings about her saying it now. Was that part of my problem – always trying to be a good girl? Get everything right? To please everyone? As much as I knew Mum was saying it out of love, I felt it was time to stop trying to be a good girl. Stop trying, full stop. To just be whoever I was. For good and bad.

  I didn’t say this. Instead I said, ‘And you’re a good mum.’

  There was a silence on the line.

  ‘Well, I’m very lucky with the daughters I have. I love you.’

  ‘I love you, too.’

  There was another silence.

  ‘Right, I can’t stay on chatting. I need to get to Waitrose before it shuts.’

  I got off the phone, sat on the bed and had a cry. Again. If this year had done anything to me, it had made me into someone who cried constantly.

  So here I was. I’d done it. I’d come to the end of the road. It felt big. Momentous. Emotional. But it was also an anticlimax.

  There was no finish line. No prize. No cheque from the Universe for £100,000.

  Just me, sitting on the bed, surrounded by self-help books.

  I picked up my relatively untouched copy of You Can Heal Your Life.

  I felt bad that lovely Louise, the grand dame of self-help, was not getting the attention she deserved. But I think she would approve. My lack of desire to do more self-help was, in many ways, a sign that I had healed my life.

  I had faced my demons one by one and I was still standing. More than that – I was standing tall. I had found peace with myself and my place in the world.

  My journey of self-improvement had turned into a journey of self-acceptance and then, miracle of all miracles, self-love.

  I hadn’t changed myself in any of the ways I’d wanted to at the beginning, but I’d done something better. I hadn’t fixed myself – I had become myself.

  Now it was time to stop thinking about myself, to look out rather than in. To live life rather than analyse it.

  I looked out of the window. The London sky was pink and streaky. It would be summer soon. I could hear chatter from the two old women in the garden next door sitting in their rose garden. A dog was barking and a police siren was wailing in the distance. Life was happening in
every corner and I wanted to be part of it.

  Rachel shouted from downstairs. ‘I know you’re cutting down but do you want to celebrate with a drink? Shall we go out?’

  ‘Yes!’ I yelled back. ‘I’ll be down in a minute.’

  I put my Vision Board under my bed, along with my twelve self-help books.

  The phone rang. It was Sheila.

  ‘Hey, how are you?’ I asked.

  ‘Fine. Busy. I’m just going to the gym. What about you?’

  ‘I’m heading to the pub for a drink with Rachel. We’re celebrating. I’ve decided to call time on the self-help.’

  ‘So you finally think you’re OK now, do you?’ she asked.

  The thing was, for the first time ever, I really believed I was.

  So Does Self-Help, Well, Help?

  It’s exactly three months since I finished my self-help journey and I am in my best friend’s cottage in the West of Ireland. Gemma and her baby boy, James, are having a ‘cuddly wuddly’ on the sofa while I am writing this in the porch, at a desk that looks onto a country road.

  This morning half a dozen cows walked right by the house and yesterday four sheep sauntered past like they owned the place. Which they do – more than me, anyway.

  The sun is out and the sky is a massive sheet of blue. It seems to get bigger every day and I can’t understand how. It blows my mind. Tonight it will go pink and purple with the sunset and I’ll say, for the umpteenth time, ‘God, it’s so beautiful . . .’

  Before that, Gemma will make fish for dinner and I’ll help to feed James – although he is a big boy now and can do a pretty good job of feeding himself, first by spoon and then, when that seems like too much effort, by hand.

  When he’s had enough he’ll give us presents of his leftovers; delivered from his perfect little food-covered fingers into our grown-up hands. We’ll say, ‘Ta ta!’ and he’ll beam pure light and love and joy and his mummy will tell him he’s the bestest boy in the whole wide world.

  James and I will then go for a post-dinner walk around the garden and he will pretend to smell the flowers. He’ll lean in very close and make a sniffy sound and look at me for approval. Which he’ll get. He’ll then shout ‘Bee!’ and point to the buzzy bees that always seem to be in the purple flowers – which are called Nepeta, apparently.

  We’ll keep walking and smelling and bee spotting until it’s time for James to have his splashy splashy bath. There he’ll play with his rubber ducks and come out looking so shiny and clean and innocent in his fluffy white towel that I could burst with love. If I’m lucky I’ll get a kiss. It will be a perfect moment, coming at the end of a summer of many perfect moments.

  I am so happy.

  Last night, after an afternoon spent swimming in the Atlantic, squealing as the icy-cold waves crashed against us, Gemma and I watched a documentary that featured an interview with the British playwright Dennis Potter who was dying of cancer. Listening to it made me cry. This is what he said about life:

  We tend to forget that life can only be defined in the present tense . . . Below my window, for example . . . the blossom is out in full now . . . and instead of saying ‘Oh that’s nice blossom’ . . . I see it is the whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom that there ever could be . . . the fact is, if you see the present tense, boy do you see it! And boy can you celebrate it.

  That’s how I feel right now. I am living life in the present tense. Each moment seems full to bursting in its perfection. Even the banal stuff like hanging out laundry or washing dishes seems weighted with significance. I don’t know why. I guess I’ve just come to the end of a long journey only to realize there is nowhere else I’d rather be. Nobody else I’d rather be. I am here. I am happy.

  So does that mean the self-help, well, helped?

  In so many ways my year was a disaster.

  My debt grew, my productivity plummeted and I am now a stone heavier than when I began. I became irresponsible, selfish and deluded, watching inspirational videos on YouTube instead of doing actual work and spending money I didn’t have on the basis that the Universe would provide. Worst of all, I fell out with one of my best friends.

  And Sarah was right – I was self-obsessed. I cringe at how selfish I was, constantly analysing my every thought and action. I became a self-help junkie, disregarding my friends and family, always thinking the answer was in the next book, the next book . . .

  With every book my expectations of life increased. I didn’t just want a happy life, I wanted an outstanding one! The higher the bar was set, the more I felt like I was failing. The more I hunted down Perfect Me the more she eluded me. The more desperate I became to be happier, the less happy I became . . .

  But I see now that perfection does not exist and happiness comes not from getting what you think you want but from opening your eyes and recognizing that you have everything you could possibly need right now.

  In December, when I was cracking up on her sofa, Gemma told me that she hoped I would get to the end of the year and see that I was fine just the way I was, that I didn’t need to jump out of planes, chat up strangers or get naked in public to be loved. At the time I thought that was ridiculous. All I could see were my flaws and failings and I thought I needed to fix myself before anyone would love me.

  At Hoffman I learned that this was not the case.

  Standing up in front of strangers and sharing all the bits of myself that I kept hidden was one of the most terrifying and beautiful moments of my life. Far from being the end of the world, it marked the beginning of a new world, a world where I was accepted for all my flaws, a world where I was loved and belonged just as I was.

  During that week we also did an exercise where we had to write out all the horrible things that we say to ourselves on a giant piece of paper and then bash that piece of paper into smithereens using a shoe (it was a weird week) while yelling at the top of our lungs. After twenty minutes of ferocious screaming and bashing, I had the kind of blissful experience I’d had in F**k It and The Power of Now.

  For a full minute all the crap in my head was gone and I looked around the room and felt pure love for everyone in it, including myself. I realized then that you can’t love others when you’re busy hating yourself. It’s just not possible.

  Now, looking back on that moment, I realize something else: trying to find happiness might seem like a selfish endeavour but it really isn’t. When you are as unhappy as I was for years, your unhappiness leaches into the air and affects everyone around you. You are not patient, you are snappy. You are not truly kind, you are cut off from others, locked in your own prison of misery. You are also, quite often, a worry to those who love you.

  While it is not healthy to think about yourself as much as I had done over the last year, it had allowed me to clear out a lot of junk in my head so that I could finally see beyond my haze of self-loathing to the people around me.

  In this way the self-help did help – a lot. It, ironically, helped me get past myself. As I listen to Gemma and James sing ‘Old Macdonald Had a Farm’ in the room next door, I think about Brené Brown’s assertion that ‘connection is why we are here’.

  I think she is right. I have spent my life trying to go it alone, keeping the people who love me at a distance, but no more. As I think back on my year and a bit of self-improvement, the best bits were those moments of connection. It’s only with other people that magic happens – a magic that could be defined as love. Or God. Or beauty. Or spirit.

  And so for now at least, I am going out in the world with a heart open to love.

  Which brings me to men, or rather one man. When I started, some people suggested that if it didn’t end in me finding my Prince Charming, it would have been a failure and that made me angry. I did not – and still don’t – think that you need a romantic partner to make you complete or OK. I don’t think that happiness has to come in the form of marriage and kids. And yet I keep thinking about The Greek. Not because I think that he’s the man of my dreams, or because I
think that I am the girl of his – but because for whatever reason, out of all the men in London, I walked up to him that day. And for whatever reason, he let me. And even though we only spent a few hours together, a year later we were still talking.

  Gemma shouts to me to say she is going to start cooking.

  ‘Thanks,’ I call back.

  I look out of the window and look at the trees quivering with the summer breeze. I take a deep breath and pick up my phone.

  ‘How would you feel about a visitor? ☺’ I type and then press send before I can wimp out.

  The reply beeps instantly. ‘Yes!’ he says, followed by three smiley faces. And this time they blew kisses.

  I jump up and down in my seat and squeal. I can’t wait to tell Gemma and Sarah but first I just need to write something down . . .

  In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Stephen Covey recommends writing a mission statement that describes the kind of person you want to be. Unlike the funeral exercise, it doesn’t involve knowing the kind of person you want to be in the future, just the kind of person you want to be right now.

  At the time I couldn’t do it, but sitting in Gemma’s porch, this comes to me:

  Be honest. Be kind. See the funny side. Exercise. Laugh. Lighten up. Have the difficult conversations and do the difficult jobs. Don’t run away. Speak your mind quietly, clearly and respectfully. People are not mind-readers. Spit it out. Work hard and enjoy it. Take pride and satisfaction in your abilities, they are greater than you think. Have confidence. Go for the big things – why not? What’s the worst that can happen? Failure won’t kill you. Say no. Say yes. See the good in people, don’t judge. Listen, understand, forgive. Have fun. Be patient. Nothing is forever. Cherish the day and cherish the people in your life – you are so lucky to have them. Be humble: you’re no better than anyone else and no worse either. We’re all trying our best, we’re all the same, really. Love with all your heart and learn from everything. When things are hard, know that it will pass and none of it matters that much anyway. You’re just a little dot passing through, so make the most of it. Sing, dance, look at the sky and be grateful. If in doubt, tidy up and make a plan – sometimes it helps to get out of your head and get practical. Most importantly, though, have a cup of tea (or glass of wine) and remember this: You’re doing great. You really are.