Wednesday 14 June 2017

A letter to an 8 year old duck

This is an exercise I did with a psychotherapist;

Image result for baby duck
                                                        
                                               

Dear Baby Duck,

Do you remember that trip to the Coromandel in the summer of ’78?  Not quite a Bruce Springsteen soundtrack but certainly memorable! There are some things I’d like to tell you about that time, looking back as an adult.
It all started because your Mum and oldest sister were going to the UK.  You and your brother and sister were farmed out to families as Dad was deemed too busy with work to cope and it was summer time so no school.  You were sent to the Gilmores, a family we had known for a short time through your Dads work. Natalie was a similar age to you.  You should have been happy with the family you got but I know you really wanted to go to the Browns.  They were a family we had spent a lot of time with growing up.  They were, in a way, our ‘best’ family. You would feel relaxed around them and they had a swimming pool.  But your sister and brother already ‘assigned’ to them so to the Coromandel you went.
The Gilmores had posh brekkie cereals and a boat.  There were less kids, less chaos and lots of Americanised foods (they spent some time there).  You were in for a treat!
You’ve always been anxious about travelling haven’t you?  Having seen your brother and sister carsick on many occasion you then developed a deep-seated fear of travelling for this reason.  I remember you would stick your head out the window of the car as it travelled, like a dog getting air.  Your long, golden tresses would be a bird’s nest by the time you arrived but it didn’t matter.  No uh! You could deal with messy hair as long as you were not sick.  I wish I could have told you not to worry so much.  That you’ll be alright, it’s not the end of the world.  That in fact worrying about it was worse than the actuality.  But then you were only young and couldn’t see the bigger picture.  Instead you focussed all your energy on being OK, much like I do now.  You would go very quiet and inward. I wish you could have shared your fears with someone as putting them in the light makes them less scary.  So the trip up in the car was your first obstacle.  It was made more difficult by being with another family.  But you survived, you always did.  I wish you could have been reassured so that you could have enjoyed not endured the journey.

You spent happy days swimming and playing on the beach. Your hair would go white in the sun and your freckles would almost join there were so many.  Your tent was only a stone’s throw from the sand.  The main tent had the parents and living area.  You and Natalie were in a wee tent on your own.  I know you were scared of the dark.  You have been for as long as I can remember.  You would have bad dreams, call out and sometimes sleepwalk. You were worried about sleeping in a tent weren’t you?  But you thought you shouldn’t be because Natalie was OK with it.  Maybe she would protect you both from the ‘bogyman’? I feel very sad that you felt so scared and alone.  I wish I could have held your hand and stroked your head til you fell asleep.  I wish you’d told someone how scared you were.  Do you remember the night you went sleepwalking along the beach?  When you came to you were standing on the beach with a sea of tents in front of you.   But where was yours?  It was so dark with only the faint light of the moon.  You couldn’t tell tent from tent, you didn’t know how far along the beach you were.  Your heart rate quickened, you held back the tears and your throat went dry with pure fear.  You panicked and looked around desperately for your wee tent.  Lost, alone in the dark was so, so scary.  You would have given anything to be back in your tent.  And so the bargaining in your head began again. ‘I will be -insert (be good/go to church/do my maths etc) if only I could be back in my tent.  You walked further from your tent unwittingly tripping over guy ropes and stopping to find the wee blue tent.  The tears came, fell silently down your freckled checks, providing no comfort at all.  You’ve never felt so alone in your life.  Desperation is kicking in now and you want more than anything to be back in that tent.  With no torch and no sense of direction you stumble from tent to tent hoping to find a blue beacon.  You give up temporarily and go onto the sand and lie down.  The roar of the black sea frightens you to your feet.  You try and look from the beach to the camp strip to see where you are but you can make no sense of it in this dim moonlight.  Sheer terror fills your whole body and somehow ‘survival’ mode kicks in.  You keep checking tents, getting up close only to find it is the wrong one.  Pushing on through hopelessness you keep going until you come across the ‘parent’ tent.  You’re not sure but you go inside and see remnants of tomato sandwiches you had that day for lunch in the ‘living’ area. (Tomato in sandwiches was another thing you didn’t like but you swallowed them down anyway).  Still to this day raw tomato in a sarnie reminds you of that time doesn’t it?  It elicits such a strong visual.  Having confirmed you’re in the ‘parent’ tent you then navigate on hands and knees round the outside of the big tent until you come, at last, to the wee blue tent.  From the side canvas you feel your way round to the front, trembling you reach for the zip.  You unzip just enough to crawl in and fall back on your sleeping bag.  You are aware of how heavy you are breathing.  You are still scared even though you are back in the blue cocoon.  You remain on edge for the rest of the night having fitful sleep and feeling terrified until day breaks.  I wish I could have shone a light for you or reassured your small heart that you’d be OK, you were always OK in the end.  I wish you could have found comfort in the tent instead of more fear.  Most of all I wish you had told someone what happened and how you felt.  It may have made you feel better.  You were only so very young and deserved to be comforted and reassured.  You shouldn’t have had so much worry at such a young age. 

I want to take you in my adult arms and hold you, stroke and kiss your head and tell you everything will be OK.  You will be OK.


Love Mama Duck xxx

#anxiety #fear #summerholiday

Tuesday 6 June 2017

We're on the road....

                           A Long and Winding Road 

The bus lurched and leaned into the hillside, the weight of a hundred people, goats and more deciding its direction. I sat crammed into the cab (the front by the driver) with my colleague Shirley and ten or so other people. Shit, shit shhhhit, getting way too close to that edge.  Sheer drops plunging down into crystal canyons formed our emerging canvas on the right. Beads of sweat, from both heat and stress, slithered down my neck, pinning its weight in one soggy clump to my skin. Then brakes! Sudden, sharp and sliding until stopped! Shit, shit, shit, what the hell is going on? An imposing landslide lay on the road ahead.  I exited that bus faster than a rat up a drainpipe.  I looked sympathetically to the goats on the roof who had no such option.  “You’ll write about it one day” I told myself to try and supress the panic. “Yeah, shit yeah, one day this will be writing material.  One day…”

That day, early 2005, the place, Nepal.  Rural Nepal on route to deliver some training to a group of educators in the village of Nuwakot.  And write about it I did, among other tales of living and working in Nepal.  I would sit in an internet shop (loose term) and pound out my stories.  I found that with time/technology constraints the best way to reach the people at home was to send a (cringe) group email type update. These turned into elaborate and juicy recounts of the trials and tribulations of living in Nepal.  Anything from trying to master squat toilets (when you’ve gotta go…) to encountering natural disasters and a state at the height of political turmoil.  There was no shortage of material to weave into my stories.  So with some ease I committed my thoughts to compositions.

In response to my effusive correspondence one of my cousins endeared me with the nickname Indiana Thomson. This came with an unyielding encouragement to ‘take-up’ writing.  I stored my emails in a folder named ‘Nepal’ and got busy with life.

Many significant life events occurred after this time all leaving their indelible mark.  Buying of first home, birth of child, death of Father and on it goes.  But I had a niggling feeling all throughout this that I should be doing something about ‘it’.  ‘It’, my interior monologue grew to such large and gregarious proportions that I could have charged ‘it’ rent for taking up residence in my mind.  But largely I learned, or so I thought back then, to manage ‘it’.  ‘It’ would manifest in low level anxiety and mild depression.  I was regularly locked in a fight with ‘it’ and mostly I came off the winner and consequently dusted myself down and got on with business. 

After a fifteen year absence I returned to live in New Zealand. Unpacking my possessions when the shipping boxes arrived was like a second Christmas.  There, among my stuff, was an old Sony Dictaphone and three charming mini cassette tapes. A farewell gift from a company I worked for in London, again gifted with a firm encouragement to ‘take-up’ writing.  I shoved it in a cupboard to deal with later.  Still the niggling feeling remained.  It wasn’t over yet.

Over the years my anxiety seemed to be gaining momentum.  Every time I found myself perched at the precipice of the black hole I somehow managed to claw my way out of it. I’d brush myself off and congratulate myself that, once I again, I had come off victorious. My fights with the black dog/hole went largely unnoticed, which in its own way was another triumph for me.  I was ‘normal’ and could live my life as such.

I could feel ‘it’ getting more robust with each battle.  I decided to blog! Blog, blog, blog it out.  I had previously pooh-poohed the idea of blogging as cheesy and self-indulgent.  Now it served a mighty fine purpose and helped me maintain an even mood.  More than that it staved off the dog of doom……for a while anyway.  I found a lightness would envelop me after every blog.  Almost as if the act of putting ‘it’ in writing diminished its influence.

Armed with this newfound confidence I set about ‘taking-up’ writing and enrolled in the Magazine Journalism course through the Writers’ College online. A plan I had been contemplating for over a year. The results of my first assignment seemed to confirm I was on the right path at last, no longer on the road to nowhere.  ‘It’ not only seem to calm down but also became quite a useful tool with my writing.  As long as ‘it’ was contained. 

Boom, crash, bruises and shock! Car accident. Me. Car. Pole. Bruising. A heavy helping of shock. The re-emergence of ‘It’ in full splendour, standing over me with one foot on my back and a jubilant fist in the air. No longer able to be contained ‘it’ needed dealing with.  So began my road trip to recovery. I employed all manner of tools including writing to assist me on my journey.  I was learning the hard way that the old cliché ‘life is a journey not a destination’ was in fact true. 

I have a lot to thank ‘it’ for.  ‘It’ has opened my mind up in ways I thought unimaginable.  I have traversed the depths and sailed through the highs.  I have emerged with what I believe is my true voice.  A voice that needed these experiences and episodes in order to evolve. I have learned to accept and live with ‘it’. At times positively embracing ‘it.’ I have scars.  It hasn’t been an easy journey by any means. I have been to some places so dark that it has felt like being underwater without knowing which way was up.  But it continues to be a journey, one of vulnerability, fear, courage and strength.

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!” 
― Hunter S. Thompson

Kia Kaha

#writer #vulnerability #anxiety