by Sarah Mussi
The aphorisms continue.
‘Your worth comes from inside, not from outside.’
‘Willing to be open and open to be willing.’
‘O.O.P.S.,’ chooses Lee. He grins shamelessly. ‘Our Only Priority is Sobriety.’
‘To keep what you have, you must give it away,’ says Fletcher. His eyes are all flecked with light.
He passes the card to me. I’m trying to work out what he means.
I choose an aphorism at random. ‘This too shall pass,’ I say.
‘Let it begin with me,’ whispers Alice, the mousiest girl in the world.
‘Good, better, best. Never let it rest till your good is better and your better is best.’
‘Be brave enough to be scared.’
I’m still wondering what Fletcher was trying to tell me.
‘Recovery is a journey . . . not a destination.’
That’s it.
Life is a double bind because it’s too painful to bear but you don’t want to die.
I understand now.
My anger suddenly vanishes.
Carmen was just solving a dilemma.
10
‘This morning’s group session,’ says Judith, ‘is going to centre on Early Childhood Trauma.’
Early Childhood Trauma is a favourite of Judith’s. She comes from the school of psychodynamic counselling that believes in Dredging Up Old Nasty Things that happened a very long time ago, possibly and preferably even before you could remember anything.
She doesn’t share her theories with us, but simply explains that deep trauma received in early childhood leaves a scar on the psyche. The Child learns that the world is an untrustworthy place. If basic trust isn’t established (according to Judith), that leaves the Child with no other conclusion to come to than to believe she is unworthy.
Judith always refers to the Child as ‘she’. As if no baby boys are ever born in the psychodynamic analytical world.
As far as I understand it, if the Child cannot establish basic trust in the world, she will internalize that as Not Being Good Enough. This will then become a self-fulfilling prophecy. And she won’t be good enough at anything.
That’s when the fun begins.
Every subsequent failure or disappointment will confirm to the Child that she’s a waste of space. And so layer upon layer of hurt and trauma will be plastered over the original trauma. Until the Child is one horrible, screaming, internal mess.
It isn’t very nice to think of my inner child as a horrible, screaming, internal mess. But Judith is convinced that is the root of my problems. In fact, it’s the root of all our addictions. If we can get the inner child to stop screaming, and we can clear up the horrible mess, then we won’t want to starve ourselves or smoke crack cocaine.
‘I want you all to close your eyes,’ says Judith.
We all close our eyes. Except Lee. He has a vested interest in not recovering, plus someone has to see how well we’re doing.
‘We’re going to peel back the layers of the onion until we find the core,’ says Judith.
I don’t point out that apples have cores and onions only have centres and that educated psychodynamic counsellors should not mix their metaphors when dealing with vulnerable, inner-screaming children.
Today, I will be kind.
‘I want you to go back in time to when you were very little,’ says Judith. ‘I want you to remember your earliest possible memory. I’ll give you a few moments to find that memory.’
Judith gives us a few moments. It’s really just a silence in which you can hear your tummy rumbling and everyone else doing spooky breathing. But today I’m going to try her therapy. Today I’m going to do it properly. If I am to help Fletcher – Fletcher of the light eyes and the punch-throwing shoulders – then I have to be stronger.
So I apologize to the Thinness and tell it that I haven’t abandoned it. ‘You are still my best friend,’ I say. ‘At all times you have helped me survive bad things. I will never forget you,’ I promise. ‘I will only recover just enough to function and be useful, and then I am all yours.’
Now I have permission to access my earliest memory.
The Thinness will always be my first friend and best friend.
Behind my eyes is a weird, grainy black screen with white dotty interference all over it. It’s a bit like one of those analogue TV screens that won’t tune in. I try to look into the screen to see what my earliest memory might be.
‘Go back to your first day at school,’ says Judith.
I remember my first day at school. I sat on a bench with some other kids and played with some blocks. There was a sand tray at the side of the room. I would have liked to play with that, but I wasn’t sure I was allowed to. So I played with the blocks, which was a bit boring, because by the time you had balanced a few blocks on top of each other and they had fallen down a few times, you’d got the hang of it.
‘I want you to go to an earlier memory now,’ says Judith. ‘What happened before your first day at school?’
I can still see the analogue TV screen behind my eyes. I’m going to try.
I go back to the place where I was living before I went to school. It was a children’s home with a blue carpet in the playroom.
‘Perhaps your earliest memory might be when you hurt yourself,’ says Judith. ‘Perhaps you fell over and bruised your knee.’
That actually helps. I can remember when one of the bigger kids elbowed me in the nose and I got a nosebleed. I lay on my back and somebody brought a bowl of water. It was a yellow bowl and they pressed a damp flannel over my nose and made me sit up. I had my nose pinched and that hurt.
‘When you get to the earliest memory possible,’ says Judith, ‘I want you to stand up in your imagination. Please stand up. You don’t need to leave your seats.’
I mentally stand up.
‘I want you to imagine yourself in front of a door,’ says Judith. ‘It’s a big door. It’s made of heavy wood. Please reach out your hand and take hold of the door handle.’
I reach out my hand and take hold of the door handle.
‘Please turn the door handle,’ says Judith. ‘Please push the door open; it will open inwards and away from you.’
I push the door handle down. The door opens inwards and away from me.
‘Behind the door is a room,’ says Judith. ‘I want you to step through the doorway into the room. I want you to keep your eyes closed as you do this.’
I step through the doorway into the room. I keep my eyes closed. The room is very cold. It’s so cold. I start shivering almost immediately. It smells horrible, like meat rotting. I can hear a fly buzzing.
The door slams to behind me.
‘I want you to remember every single thing you see, hear, smell and feel. We’ll use this information later to help you map your inner subconscious world,’ says Judith. ‘So now, inside your special room, open your eyes and look around.’
I’m scared. I don’t want to be in this room. I don’t like being this side of the door. I promised Fletcher. I don’t want to open my eyes. I don’t want to see what’s here.
‘Look around your room.’
I must try.
I have a deal.
I open my eyes.
I’m looking straight at a barred window. It’s a window with four sections. In front of the grimy panes are three thick bars. The wall around it is painted cream. It’s dirty. In one corner, beside the window, is an old frayed armchair, covered in a bobbly, raggedy, red material. It smells terrible. I can hear something in the distance, something banging around. The screech of gates – large, metal, heavy, opening.
‘I want you to think very carefully now,’ says Judith. ‘I want you to ask yourself these questions: Are you alone in the room? Or is somebody else there with you?’
I’m shivering and shivering.
‘Please look around your room and tell me who you are with,’ says Judith.
I must try.
Fletcher.
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I take my eyes away from the filthy glass of the window, away from the stained chair. On the floor is a threadbare carpet. I turn around to see who is in the room with me.
The Alien screams from the edge of the universe. I hear him in torment, raw, screaming.
I’m trapped.
On the far side of the room, stretched across the doorway, is a long, adult shape.
Slumped, stinking, bloated.
11
I can’t get out.
Please help me.
I look at the body. My throat is dry. I stand in the room. I’ve screamed myself hoarse. I cross the floor. I’m very small. I think I’ve wet myself. I go nearer. I’m very hungry. My knees are shaking. My leg bones are all dissolved. My heart has gone. Not beating.
I catch hold of its shoulder. It’s putrid. Soft. Maybe it’s not dead.
I shake it.
Like a zombie, the arm falls limp.
I scuttle back. I don’t know what to do. There’s a pain in my stomach. I go to the farthest corner of the room, as far away as I can. I’m trembling. It’s dead. I sit down. My chest is leaking, draining out through big holes. I pull my knees up to my chin. My face is falling off in great chunks. I curl into a tiny ball. I can poke my fingers through my flesh down to the skull. I push my eyes down on to the tops of my knees. My teeth are chattering. I can’t stop shivering. I can’t think what to do. I try to hold my cheeks on, jam them into the spaces of my jaw. I try to unravel the past. I want to go back to being someone else.
I’m alone.
Oh, help me.
Let somebody help me.
I lift my head up. A shadow falls across the room. Bits of dust are caught in a beam of light. The light is coming from somewhere. The body casts a shadow against the door. An extraterrestrial being floats down through the light into the centre of the room. He shakes the dust off himself and grins.
I cannot smile because my lips have gone. I raise one hand to show him I know he’s there.
‘You called for help,’ he says.
My hand is all skeletal.
‘I’ll take care of you from now on,’ he says.
I nod. I need someone to take care of me.
‘I’ll never leave you,’ he says. ‘Aliens don’t die. So you can stop worrying about that.’
You might go back to your spaceship, I say. Except that I don’t really say it; I just think it.
‘True,’ he says, ‘but I can come back again whenever you want me. I can beam down straight into your mind.’
The Alien expands. He has tentacles. He has a large number of eyes, big like flying saucers. He looks a bit like a spider. And the tentacles have nasty-looking suckers on them. I don’t like spiders. I’m scared of spiders. I want the Alien to stop waving his tentacles up and down at me.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ he says.
But I am afraid.
‘I’m your friend,’ he says. ‘I’ve come to help you. Wherever there are lost little children locked in rooms with dead bodies, the Aliens will come to help them.’
I nod my head. I know this is true.
‘So please invite me to come in,’ says the Alien, ‘then I can live in your mind for ever.’
‘OK,’ I say. Except I don’t have a voice because my tongue has fallen out through the hole under my jawbone. But I nod my skull at him. I would like to be friends. I want to say that I’m afraid of spiders. I want to ask him if he could be a bit different, but I’m too scared he’ll go away and leave me alone with the body.
‘Well done.’ The Alien grins.
Then he pulls all his tentacles back in and blinks his eyes at me, and stands up very tall so that he looks huge. He bunches all his muscles up, until he looks like a great big jumping spider with no legs, and he takes a little scuffle across the floor and bounds straight at my face.
He slithers up the hole where my nose once was and slides into my brain.
12
I scream.
I scream and scream.
I jump to my feet. The chair falls over.
I have to get out. I have to get out of this room. I have to get out of all rooms. I just have to go.
You’re not supposed to scream in Circle Time. If you have a problem with the exercise, you’re supposed to hold up one hand, like you’re at the dentist, to show you’re in pain. Judith will then bring everybody back into the room, safely, and give you some time out.
I can’t wait for her to bring everybody back. I can’t wait for her to give me time out.
I race across the room. I yank the door open. I race down the corridor. I race past the pictures of distant mountains and woodland groves. I race past the yellow paint in the entrance to the refectory. I turn at the end of the corridor. I race down the stairs, past Carmen’s legs, across the next landing and down the next set of stairs, past the sash window with the beams of sunlight streaming in. And the dust is crowding into the bars of sunlight, swirling, as I race through it. Scarcely breathing, I race down the next set of stairs to the back door. I slam open the door and race down the steps into the garden.
I race across the patio. Jump down two stone steps. Past the stone with the trailing geraniums. Across the lawn. The dew on the grass soaks my shoes. Down past the pond. To the end of the garden, by the wall. I look up through the leaves of the honeysuckle and see the big blue sky. The infinite distance of space.
I’m shivering. I’m shaking. I’m breathing. I’m gasping. I can’t think.
‘Say the word and we can go up there right now,’ says the Alien. He wraps a tentacle around my shoulder. ‘We can be together.’ Its suckers hold firm to my Thinness.
I feel sick. I tried so hard this morning. I drank a cup of tea. I nibbled a piece of toast. And even though I laboured my mouth dry, until the top of my tongue felt sore, I couldn’t get enough saliva to work it properly. I managed to swallow the taste. Now my stomach is hurting. I feel ill. I start to vomit into the bushes where the azaleas grow. My stomach heaves and heaves, until it feels red and round and empty, like a bullet has passed straight through.
I pull the leaves off the trailing honeysuckle. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. I suck in air. I’m shaking. I try to understand what’s happened. My heart is going so fast, I’m dizzy.
I went back into a memory.
And found a body.
I don’t know why there should be a body.
But I’ve been in that room before. Everything was so familiar.
I’ll never go back there again.
Never.
Never.
Never.
I’ll shut it down. I’m not in that locked room any more.
I’m out.
I’m going to stay out.
I’ll never ever go back into my memories again.
Never.
Even if it means I’ll never recover.
‘But you found me there,’ whispers the Alien.
There was a body.
‘And you know I’ll never leave you.’
Why was there a body?
‘The only place they can force me to leave you is in that room.’
The Alien tightens his hold. The suckers on his tentacles sink through my Thinness.
Right to my bones.
‘So I’ll make sure nobody ever tricks you into going there again.’
Step Three
Our Wills and Our Lives
13
I can’t stay in the garden.
They’ll find me.
I text Fletcher.
Meet me in Carmen’s room. I need your help.
I think it’s OK to ask for help. I promised to be there for him. He promised to be there for me. If ever I needed someone to be there for me, it’s now.
I sit on Carmen’s bed and wait.
The bed has been stripped down to the mattress. A tower of clean sheets, pillowcases and new pillows is piled on one end. That means someone is moving in very soon. That means Fletcher and I will have to find somewhe
re else to meet.
My mind begins to spin. Where? We can’t meet in Fletcher’s room because of Lee. We can’t meet in my room because boys aren’t allowed in girls’ rooms. Sexual relationships aren’t allowed – one day at a time, none of you are ready for intimacy yet, Tony says. Anyway, we can’t meet in either of those rooms because Carmen won’t be there.
Carmen has to be there.
She started all this.
Only she knows the way out.
I sit on the bed and wait. I hold my knees up close to my chest and put my arms around them.
Oh, Carmen, please help. You understand.
Fletcher’s taking ages. I don’t mind. I just sit and rock myself forwards and backwards.
I don’t know what to think. I don’t know why I remembered that room. I’m not even sure it was my memory.
Was it somebody else’s?
Maybe I imagined it. But can you imagine smells?
By the time Fletcher comes, I’ve rocked and rocked. I feel dizzy.
‘What the hell’s up with you?’ asks Fletcher.
I want to tell him. I want to explain about going into that room and the smell and the body; how I was just trying because of him. And Carmen. How it’s really his fault. But when I try, my throat feels so thin I can’t even swallow. I can’t get any words out. I just open and close my mouth, like I’m drowning in air.
‘That serious?’ says Fletcher.
I nod.
‘Hell,’ he says.
Tears well up in my eyes. My throat closes up. I flap my hand.
He gets it. That’s one good thing about addicts. It’s a special kind of club. Other addicts understand. You don’t have to say much.
‘OK,’ says Fletcher. ‘Nod your head for yes or shake your head for no. Raise your palm if it’s too painful.’
I nod my head.
‘Did you have a bad trip?’ asks Fletcher.
I shake my head.
‘Did you bug out in Circle Time?’ He adds, ‘Was it because Judith is such a dickhead?’
I shake my head. I hold my hand up. The tears brim so full they spill over on to my cheeks. I sniff. I drag the back of my sleeve across my eyes.
‘So it’s worse?’ says Fletcher.
I nod. I wish I could tell him. My throat has fused shut.