Many moons ago, at a vastly different depressive point in my past, I read a book by Dorothy Rowe entitled Depression, and it changed my life, perhaps freeing part of me for the first time. Most of what I read escapes me, and if I re-read it now I'm sure something else would stick, or perhaps I would be critical now, as I am with her other book, which I have just skimmed through. What has stayed with me since first reading Dorothy, is the idea that a child desperately wants her parents to be right, good, able, decent etc etc all good things. To do so she will believe that even the bad things they do are good, are ok, even laudable. This dynamic is definitely a strong theme in my upbringing, and in the family dynamic now (both sides of the border, my out-laws are just as good at this, however sullenly they go about it as Iain's enthusiastic out-laws are). The other idea was a concept I still struggle with - that all the problems of said parents and indeed the problems of the world are not the responsibility of that child. To me, ineptitude makes all those problems that child's responsibility by default. Being able to see clearly surely means action is a duty, an imperative, when stumbling about with the blurry-eyed? Morons cannot be permitted to ugly up the whole world - or what will be left for the newer children, the others who come later who might be able to get away, break away from blurry-eyed prejudice, harsh abuse and imprisonment? Too late for this child but could be not-too-late for others, because just as I had no hand in being conceived and born, nor do the children who followed me, they will come and they will come, no one can stop that. What do I have to do to make the world less of a nightmare for them - every thing I can think of surely, whether I manage to do it or not. SO, I can't save the polar bear, or sponge up oil slicks with kitchen paper, that does not mean I can't make it clear to the world that polar bears matter, that I am not happy that oil slicks spill out on to seas, marine life and fish. Things like that, what is ok and what is not need to project out from every organ in my body, infuse my behaviour. I must be vigilant in using every opportunity I have to make that change. So when a young person asks me about someone's behaviour, seeking clues as to where to place it in his or her personal internal moral scale, I need to examine my own priorities, my own consciousness, and make a serious effort to communicate what I have learnt, providing routes within that so that the young person has an opportunity to go off and explore the issue further, either consciously, or the next time it comes up in her/his life. It would be fatal to the mission to preach, to give a definitive declaration, a judgement that is absolute. I only know what I know till now, I may always know that, or what I know could adapt, flex, change, who knows? That's all anyone can do, if they are paying attention and trying to engage with the world and those who are in it.
Fear can be a legacy, maybe it can even be genetic? Whatever, you know where we first get a handle on it from ... go on, take a guess ...
Dorothy's book on Fear is the one I got out of the library a couple of months ago. I am handing it back in today and so skimmed through it - skipping a lot of stuff about childhood and bad-parenting that I have dealt with in great depth over the last few years, and now need a bit of respite from. Yes my parents are very sweet, kind people who tried their very best for all 3 of us, and for every child they ever met, as a matter of fact. They aim to support, nurture, love and encourage. Of course, like most people, the end effect they achieve falls short of the ideal. Their faith system teaches them to prioritise intention over actual action & events. Principles behind action are inflexible and absolute - the 5 pillars of Islam for instance. In the same way, the 'facts' that they are supportive, nurturing, loving and encouraging are immovable, omnipresent and hugely imposing, by virtue of them being the principles by which they intend to live. That's pretty much the end of the line.
Dorothy would say that when my parents inevitably could not live up to their ideals of ALWAYS managing to have a positive impact, they and us kids, as a family should ideally have learnt to deal with the seismic-shift in the world-view that resulted. Acceptance, courage, perseverence, try try again, laugh it off, laugh together, remember you care etc should ideally be the cornerstones - not anger, violence, lies, cold silences, screaming matches, blame, abandonment etc .. and I am NOT saying that my parents and I engaged in ANY of this behaviour. According to Dorothy, the core problem is fear and the antidote to fear is courage, to look the seismic shifts that can happen in life in the eye and keep getting up every morning, no matter what and don't let the bad things win.
Fight Fear with Courage
Now I know I am courageous and brave to the extreme. Not spider-squashing brave, but pick-yourself-up and learn how to do this brave. It is painful to be brave, and humiliating when it does not make a blind bit of difference to my life when, for example, all the other human components of the situation are cement-footed cowards. Bravery, humiliation, flexibility and failure are probably the sum of my existence. Seismic shifts? I'll give you seismic shifts!!! Before Jaan, and when he came, twice - no, three times at least, my entire world view (apart from things like the earth is round, the sun rises, Iain loves me etc) turned out to be false, I had been completely deluded about almost everything, and certainly everyone. Turned out some people did not want me anywhere near special things in their lives, some people had no intention of rejoicing or commiserating with me, even in short bursts as changes happened in painful succession to me. Apparantly my horridness was so abhorrent and repulsive, that even small amounts of being with me, being there for me, being part of my life was too much. You can say what you like, but my vulnerability did not warrant gentleness and care, my bravery was irrelevant and at best justification for walking away (she doesn't need me), my flexibility was invisible, and in any case irrelevant as there were no other options presented by others (as there was a dearth of others) for me to flexibly try out and incorporate into my world view, to use as building blocks to repair the breach. Was I a failure at this time? I succeeded in making a decision about my PhD. Surely that is a success. Unfortunately that decision was made within the University context, and therefore was a failure to succeed in the programme. My supervisor's attitude to the whole thing, indeed the department's indifference indicated how worthless my contribution had been till that point, how not a part of it all I really have been. Slinking away, I could not look back, as there was no one to look at, all had become alien by then. To most people who knew I was studying, leaving is a failure too.
And then what about Jaan, clearly he was born, he is well, he is thriving and I have certainly done right by him. My efforts at home and through the mental health services have shown Iain how much my life with him and Jaan mean to me, and communicating that has been a success too. Our marriage is still strong, a definite success. Do I feel much of a success? I feel I should. I try and tick off my list of successes. I can acknowledge my successes in this sphere to myself, it is such a personal sphere, and I can ignore how my chronic depression looks to people judging me from the outside (why is she still doing this?). My courage and open-ness combined to let me pursue three really important friendships, maybe 4 really, and I continue to try and reach out to others, but I try and stick to people who think or behave like I do within the context of the part of life in which we meet. Going to 'Stitch & Bitch' at George's place is a good example - I like the women who were going to be there, they look, sound and speak nicely, I admire their mothering skills, I am interested in their children, the things they cook, the things they plan to buy, their ideas on life in general. That is a safe place to be, to spend time, to enjoy some of what is in life. All of life should be participated in with the same spirit of experience and enjoyability. Bootcamp, which I do twice a week at the break of dawn is physically challenging, even excruciating at times and has the potential to be humiliating. However it is a safe situation because we all work together to challenge ourselves, there is no need to fail because the others have won. There is no need to be bad at anything, that simply does no arise.
Is it the BPD?
This Borderline Personality Disorder I am rumored to have (how dare you! my personality is just peachy thank you)? Dorothy reckons BPD is newspeak for hysteria - as in oh look the lovely young lady with the expressive speech and wide eyes is neurotic and hysterical, quick Mr Psychiatrist, give her some drugs, let her talk till her tears overwhelm her, and when you have a moment, have a brief abusive affair with her too, nudge nudge wink wink, she has delusions and rubbish interpersonal skills don't you know, she's like that, you can't change how impulsive she is, or how rashly she judges how to behave, or who to sleep with. That's what DOROTHY thinks. She reckons most women who have the BPD diagnosis, indeed all personality disorder diagnoses are to do with the people who make such diagnoses, that they tell you nothing about the patient, everyone can be classed into some sort of personality disorder or other (perhaps the non-specified personality disorder if all else fails, yep, there is one to that effect).
I have to say, the thought that everyone could be classed as having a PD is not new to me. Of course I wondered. Dorothy complains that the whole PD thing, specifically BPD is all about classifying and diagnosing, meeting at least 5 of the 9 points that make up the diagnostic criteria - there is no indication within the 9 points she says, that show the P-Docs care about the person behind the label in the sense that concepts such as self-esteem are completely absent. It's not a person who gets the BPD label, rather it's a set of reactions and choices made by that person over a curse of time that gets her the label. These choices would have been made by a person under desperate emotional, mental and maybe physical strain, possibly extended strain, as the best choices available to her under possibly appalling circumstances. Dorothy argues that life is not fair, that we have ideas about the ideal outcome of every line of our lives - she's right there, for example, my parents hopes and ideals about parenthood and nurturing behaviour as described above. When shit happens and our reality turns out totally different from what the ideal was, the best thing to do is to be courageous and think 'This is'. Never dwell on the 'Why me, this is so unfair', rather, contemplate briefly 'That really hurts, that really makes me afraid, that really makes me sad and disappointed, oh well, that's life, that is what IS' ..... and then we prance off into that evening's sunset I guess, rearranging our building blocks of life, realigning what is ideal, what is hopefully coming next, any disappointments just an ephemeral part of the make-up of the daily grind.
What to do when variations of the apocalypse is the constant in life?
Ok Dorothy, point taken, and pretty much everyone from clod-hopping amateur psycho-babble-prone well wishers to the highly skilled Jenny Harker and Mark Westecott have been working hard to hammer just that through my thick skull for a long time. What to do though when the world-smashing apocalypse happens in BAM! BAM! BAM! quick succession - the total breakdown of family life, the future, childlessness, chronic devastating disease, pregnancy, the disastrous untimely end to over a decade of study, a traumatic birth, another total breakdown of family life, complete loss of self - the death of ones self, intense post-natal depression and PTSD, chronic post-natal depression, a desperate house-move, removal of all things unbearably painful, but also of everything that was good and supportive, exclusion from the lives of people who meant something once ....BAM! BAM!
At which point could the fear be faced? Every fear was actually justified. At that point, at all those points, what can courage do? Fear of abandonment, loss, death, poverty, lies, cruelty, humiliation, failure? Which one is missing ... I'll tell you, they are all there, they all happened, relentlessly, consecutively, repeatedly. The one that topped them all, so unexpected, so stark, so cruel, so sadistic, was the birth - from the first desperate 'gas & air' moment to the moment the spinal took effect and numbed my womb. Oh the pain and indignity did not end or start there of course, I won't bore you or hurt myself with the details now. It is private. My own hell, and it is not just this crowning glory of horror that has broken me, don't be silly, I am courageous, remember? One nightmare day does not destroy me, the Princess. The Samurai. Specially as I managed to make the best choices available for Jaan, and what I endured was done to leave no room at all ( AT ALL) for any possible predicable and probable harm to befall him (obviously not an exhaustive surety or guarantee, even I cannot take on God's role, or the roles of chance, fate and random ends). I knew what I was in for, what torments me is that it had to be that way at all, I would never, ever do those things that way to another living thing, or even to a dead thing. I cannot understand how or why so many instances of that kind of behaviour happened to me in such quick succession over such a long period - over two years in all.
Nor can I see how it can be such a mystery or so invisible to others, what happened to me, what keeps happening. I see it all around me every day, all day.
Oh I flex my mind, adjust what I can do with my body and try to move forward with life. Bootcamp, better diet, R&R ....... I am not stupid, I am trying to strengthen my body. I exercise my mind writing, wandering outside the perimiter of my comfort-zone, talking openly, letting people near me again, despite knowing the risks. Courage enables me to make these choices, choosing these acts over ripping my body to shreds, drowning or sinking completely under the shadows of the black dog. In one part of my life I am not a failure, I have succeeded. In work, in studying, in dealing with the world, in coping with the dynamics of family life, and in dealing with poverty I have demonstrably and completely failed. Failure is when there is no re-do, no next step. Otherwise it's not failure, it is just what happened that day (Jenny Harker taught me the distinction). There is no going back and sorting those things, there is just time now to say, this is how I can explain what happened here, and this is what is now, it's how it is, that's all. No re-do. The only thing to mull over and explore from now on is the future and the present - what am I doing for money now? Do I want to study anything at the moment? Should I look into something for when Jaan is 6? Lets listen to the Today Programme, oh it's bizarre what's happening in the Middle East, Gosh how interesting/sad/inspirational/deluded/crazed/pained/dull/stupid etc etc that person sounds, I agree/disagree/am not interested in that particular idea, or 'what an interesting thought', 'I must think on it' etc etc ... That's appropriate, and the way to deal with the wider world. So Hugh's Fish Fight is on, I read the Tweets. I don't have to lose sleep over the fish, and I don't, but I AM disgusted with the waste and have made my own personal choices with the new information. Doesn't matter what they are, what matters is that they are personal, Iain will make his and Jaan is an abstainer anyway, fish is no issue for him, aside from Nemo. I am interested in their choices when they make them because I am interested in everything about each of them and in a practical sense their choices need to be taken into account when I do the Ocado. No one else is my concern.
Now, whether the campaign succeeds or not IS of interest to me, not on a highly-personal I MUST MAKE IT SO! Aaaargghh IT'S MY RESPONSIBILITY! kind of way, but in an "I hope enough people care" kind of way, and a curiosity about what the outcome says about modern British society, about modern British media, about cooking as it is today. This is an appropriate interest, a healthy engagement with a contemporary serious issue of moralty, utility and behavioural norms.
I suppose, reluctant as I am to admit it, there is also scope for 'what sort of interaction do I want with so-and-so family member, and hmm is that realistic? What are they in to? Ok, that'll work then, we'll just do this and this and leave it at that' [SCARY painful stuff, better perhaps to just avoid family for ever and ever or at least this summer].
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