A few things happened. Started to get nervous about leaving this laneway, but that is natural. Have been to church almost everyday this week: twice yesterday and again today, praying for the usual things and reminding myself of others. Something I've never done so much of other Easters. Yesterday is a null day in churches, nothing happens. Christ has died and there is no Mass or nothing to celebrate, it was all very solemn. I went back in the evening for veneration and the Stations of the Cross, and at the end of it had such an awful sense of utter emptiness, of there being no God in the world at all — of the utter emptiness and terror and utter pointlessness of a world without him. The complete absence of anything at all, and it was terrifying! I've never considered myself to be that religious, though I've always had quite a firm, though quite private, faith — more spiritual than religious though I'd always have said — though not overtly either way. But it brought home to me how we take it for granted. Even now, here in this laneway. All the time here, I have somehow never quite come to despair. Because, despite what else is happening, there has always been an almost tangible prescence here sometimes, a sense that I am not alone, ever. And it keeps me from despair, won't allow me to get to it. Yesterday though, in the church at the end of the Stations it was there — just an utter, utter incomprehensible emptiness — something that must be close to despair, and it was a revelation. I left stunned — feeling completely forsaken. And it made me realise that all this time I've been homeless and living in my car, despite all the low points, all the depths that I'd gone to, I had never actually felt forsaken. I hadn't thought that at the time, I only realised it by the abscence of the feeling I had yesterday.
But something else happened close on teh heels of it so I haven't given it as much thought as I want to yet. The other thing that happened was that I bumped into someone who I used to know when I lived in this area, almost eight years ago. It was a strange, awkward meeting. One) because I was walking out of church and almost literally bumped into him — and two) because he was the person I came across before Christmas, too. Maybe he is the only person —however loose and vague the knowing once was — who is left here in London, who might once have even recognised me, for me to bump into.
Then — back before Christmas — it wasn't so long since I had been living in my car here in London, and I wasn't at such rockbottom - or possibly didor washed my hair for more than a fortnight. Standing there on the street that first time I almost died. But then I managed to quickly make excuses for how I looked, and for how untogether I was, even though I could tell by his reaction that that probably only made things seem more suspicious than they must anyway have looked. I hardly knew him those eight years ago — he was more an aquaintance of one of the flatmates I shared a house with at the time, just someone I mostly just recognised from some of the local places I once went to. He had hardly changed at all. But given all the changes in me over the years, all the corners turned without even knowing, and how I have ended up, here in my car, I would have known him less now — or, rather, been able to relate to him less — and we passed on abruptly, both of us obviously embarrassed by the meeting. Him probably just as much by the state of my clothes and appearance and my smell just as much as I was by them.
I've tried to put that meeting out of my mind since. Something I am good at. But today I saw him again. I had literally just come out of the church and was still blinking in teh bright light outside when I almost ran into him as he was struggling up the hill with about five carrier bags of grocery shopping, obviously in a hurry. Luckily, I hadn't yet reached teh car, otherwise he would have seen it loaded up with the sleeping bags still on teh passenger seat from the nap I'd had in the carpark in the afternoon. It was another awkward recognition though, that stopped both of us in our tracks and made us turn around, too embarrassed to just walk on now that we had both obviously been caught staring at the other (though both obviously wanting to) but again not knowing what to say. Both of us, after the embarrassed hello's and the uncalled for excuses I again made for my appearance: about how I was 'in between' moves and getting over a bad bout of flue — already walking away from each other, passing on again — until I stopped and blurted out 'do you want to go for a coffee, or something.' I wish I hadn't of said it. Well, especially not said 'or something' but I did. He looked very apologetic and flushed and then softened his voice and jsut said, 'Sorry, I really have to get back'. I stood there rooted to the spot, allowing what I had said to catch up with me. I couldn't believe that I, almost a bag lady, spending most of the day trying to be invisible, had asked an almost total stranger to go for a drink, and nearly told them then or there on teh street that I was living in my car. Because that is what I wanted to do, and almost did there on the street. Then I almost collapsed just at the thought of what I had nearly done. I felt my knees buckle and a muscle spasm in my chin, and when I looked back up at him I saw a dozen expressions pass across his face, all of them more sad and worried than the last. I willed my legs to work but they wouldn't, neither would my voice. Then I heard him say 'Yes, why not, I could do with a cup of coffee. '
For a minute I didn't know what he was saying 'alright' to. Then my head cleared. If I could have run off I would have, but I couldn't, I jsut stood there looking at him almost horrified. He took over and said we could probably get a coffee over there, and I found myself walking beside him to the pub across the road on the corner. Fortunately it wasn't one whose toilets I had used as a bathroom some mornings, or where I had sat trying to be invisible at a corner table in for hours without buying anything just to be out of the cold. It was hugely awkward, but he was a nice man and filled in the embarrassing silences with a few memories from that time, mostly about the flatmate I hardly knew at the time anyway, and the way the area had changed since then, all the new things and buildings, and, kindly, how awful he felt when he had even the slightest cold, let alone flu (like I made an excuse that i had, to help explain my dishelleved appearance - yet again). I said very little, still shocked that I was there and taking all my concentration just to breathe, and stop myself jumping up and running out of the place. But with every sip of my drink I nearly told him too. I don't think I realised how much I long to do that, still. Luckily I never did. He didn't ask too many questions either, I think my situation, or one very similar must have been obvious, and embarrassing to both of us. I felt so out of place being there. My whole body was dripping sweat just sitting there, and I felt like a security guard was goiing to come over any minute and tell me to leave. I daren't look around me in case it happened and I felt sweat dribble down my arms and hands and run down the glass onto the table, and he was obviously feeling awkward and drank his drink quicklly and when I (desperate to proove I could afford soemthing I clearly couldn't) asked if he wanted another drink he turned it down — almost too quickly — which was a mixture of hurt and releif, and collected his bags while I went bright red. He left quickly and luckily I didn't tell him anything about myself, or how I'm living. And although I am hugely embarrassed at how untogether I was and hwo he probably thought by the way I looked and acted that I was on drugs or something worse, I'm also pleased that I just managed to sit down with another human being and not completely go to pieces. It is one thing 'talking' about things here, leaving this screen often after reading all your comments etc thinking I have had a 'conversation' with you, but it is another world actually being with someone trying to talk and just be 'ordinary' in places you have spent so many months trying to be invisible in. Not sure if I'll ever be able to do that again. Worry about that. When he left I still half-wished I had told him, at least some things, but mostly I was glad that I didn't. I don't belong in that kind of world anymore and it left me sad, but realising that I have to find another way, whatever it is.
The other thing that happened was realising a thing or two about my reasons for being in the laneway. So I can now say, you're right, Lucy — about me needing to tell as much as you need to hear — right about the first bit anyway. Because I do have a story I want to tell. I have from the beginning of starting this blog — aswell as it being a safe place I could come to to admit my homelessness (the ultimate failure in my life) it was part of the reason for me starting the blog in the first place, I suppose. An unreal-real place where I could shout it out of me, hopefully forever. But I realised more things about that recently, and how much I do actually need to tell it — here or elsewhere.
It's a story I've told a million times to the trees — trees that stand there night after night absorbing it, vowing to protect me — and to myself too of course — in the dark uncertain hours of the night to the blank inside of my head — but it never goes away, the story just unreals and unreals and never ever ends. But saying it here — starting to say it, as I have...several times — with the real people,you've all become to me, listening, is so very different to saying it to the trees or to myself, and it has been so very, very scarey, too. Each time I've tried I feel like another layer of myself unfolds and almost suffocates me with the pain of it, until I literally can't breathe typing it, and have to write other things. I feel things I don't even know the names for.
Young, young feelings, trying to lead me back to the time when the feelings were there first, the time before words and the names of things, the time when there were just lumps of pain inside that noone told me the name of or what to do with - perhaps because nobody knew themselves — sometimes there isn't anyone to blame,there's just a chain of damaged, weak and frightened people, that it is left to you to be the one to step out of — to finally break the chain, before it breaks you.
Maybe that is why it is so scary telling it here, maybe I sense that it might finally end — and I want that more than anything, but I am only human and so inside there is a part of me — no matter how warped or wrong it might sound — that must get some comfort from holding on to something that you have held on to your whole life. It can be terrifying to let that go — who will you be then? Who knows what might happen if you don't have that pain to walk around with...who knows if there will ever be anything to replace it...to fill the hollow it leaves. There are huge risks, and I have lived a life steered clear of risks. a lonely, half-dead life.
The story I need to tell is of me, of how I ended up in this laneway. But the one older than that, too. The one further back, the story that got me on the — emotional — road — at least — to getting into the position in the first place of even ending up anywhere near the position that got me to this laneway. And the story that kept me here so long too — because what I've come to slowly realise is that, in a deep-down, not even known to myself most of the time way, is that I'm mostly here (or at least still here) because in a way I feel that I deserve to be here — that this is where I belong — on the outside of everything, kept away from it all, and apart from other people — away where I can't tell anyone secrets — not mine, or any of the people's who have wanted my whole life for me to be in a place like this — a place where I would be isolated and muzzled — and their secrets safe. And so here I have been, a whole winter, stabbing myself with the knife they gave me. Nothing's ever that clear-cut, no motivation always that visible, but I've come to think that that is part of the reason I have been here, waiting for the truth to surface, and for that penny to drop into it. That's the story I really need to tell — the one of that little girl sitting up on her pink bed shaking, hardly able to breathe, waiting for hours and hours for the police to come — and in a way, waiting her whole life since — still there trembling — for someone to come and put their arms around her, tell her that she is safe, and that it will all be alright.
That's where I've been, mostly, during this time in my car in the woods, and who I have been — that terrified little girl sitting up on that pink bed, waiting. Though of course I wasn't aware of that most of the time — things that I just had flashes of before only becoming obvious to me in the last few days.
In the last few days, in all this silence, that is what I have come to realise. I might not be right, or not totally right, but it feels something like that — a sudden realisation, as if the trees have breathed it into me.
So that is what I have been doing the last couple of days — I wasn't going to say it here, it felt too 'raw' and too 'new', so I intended to leave it sink in for a day or two — but I started typing here today and this is what came out so it must be ready to be said. So, in the last few days, I have been thinking and making at least one decision.
The decision is about therapy. Once, for several months one long, hot summer and into autumn several years ago when I'd just left college and all sorts of things were coming to an end, again, I went to see a therapist. I used to live near here, not a million miles from this laneway, and the therapist lived nearby too. I have almost passed her house, without even thinking of it, a thousand times or more while I have been in this laneway. But in the last few days I have passed her house and thought of her too, thought of one day going back and seeing her, of continuing the excavation that she started with me several years ago, when I left suddenly, and gaping open. I wasn't in desperate need of therapy then, I was relatively happy, in a good job and on the face of it doing well. I was mostly facing the sun, but I always knew I had 'things' lurking there, things that I would one day need to deal with, and so before the need came, once, when I heard someone else recommend a very good therapist, I found her number, made an appointment and went to see her. And she was good...very good, she made me see so many things. For months I sat there in her pale-orange garden room, in almost silence, saying not much more than that I didn't know why I was there because I had nothing to say really, and that's what I did: said mostly nothing. Until the last month or so when things started to bubble up quite urgently, coming out in dreams and half-thoughts and sharp unputbackinable memories. Then just as it was all coming out, I lost my job when the company went into sudden liquidation. Everything suddenly threatened to cave in and I couldn't afford the fees anymore. She reduced them for a while, and then I ran up a bill and in the end I just stopped going. Not sure if I even went back to explain to her why — though like all endings in my life it is all a bit of a blank, so maybe I did. Anyway, I have come to see that all the time I have been in this laneway — literally down a few roads from where she lives — my mind seems to be continuing the stuff I started with her then. Then out of the blue a few days ago I searched out an old address book, looked up her number and phoned it. I did it all on automatic pilot, literally didn't even think about it, just did it, following myself going through the motions — don't know if I intended speaking to her, but I never did. I think I would have expected an answerphone, I seem to remember the few times I ever had occasion to phone in the past there always was one. But this time there wasn't. She spoke. And I either couldn't or wouldn't speak. I just listended to her saying 'hello...hello...hello...is anyone there' over a few times, before the phone went dead.
I never phoned again. But it felt like that voice, that simple hello, the fact that someone from the past — someone who knew the 'old' me, as well as all the demons from my childhood that were trailing me into adulthood, someone who knew the me I was when I was still flourishing, the one before the failed loves and all the determined, running attempts at a life I didn't quite fit into, and the eventual caving in of everything in the end, the 'me' I was before I ended up a hair's breadth away from being a bag lady, living in my car here in this laneway — it felt like that —just hearing the voice of someone like that — brought on all the insights of the last few days. That comment from 'Anonymous' helped as well in then end (so thank you;-)) by telling me to get over myself, and telling me how depressing I was to listen to etc etc (even though the others were right too - it's my blog can say what I want ) I got really upset by it but then after I think, along with her voice on the phone, it did help me shunt myself into a different place.
So although I am not in a position to start up therapy with her again — she was almost too expensive to go to even then — I will — one day when I am working again and can make that commitment — go back and continue working through some of this stuff. She would be the perfect person to go to, because she is a link to my past, so I'd be conquering that fear, and she knows all the old stuff about me, who I was, and so I wouldn't have to explain it all again, and she can best help me understand this emotional and physical rut I am in and how to move on from it. I think that knowing me 'before' is the vital bit. I need that link with someone from my past, and since I can't have it with someone on a personal level, someone like her who knew me then and knew all those 'seeds' that were probably in me even then, and that maybe got me to this laneway, or at least staying in such a rut in it, would be ideal to go to. Don't know why I didn't think of that before, or maybe I did, maybe I just knew I couldn't afford to go now so that there was no point even tomenting myself with teh possibility of it. But I need aims, somthing to reach for and she would be an ideal one.
I think without that kind of help in understanding this I would be in and out of laneways all my life, either mentally, or physically. Because what I have realised so clearly is that pain and trauma this deep, all that long ago stuff, is probably the blueprint for how I ended up in this laneway — for why, on some level, I even seem to think that I deserve to be here. In a way I am punishing myself — punishing that little girl, sitting up there on her bed, waiting. Using the knife that others gave me years ago. One day I am determined to understand it fully, so that I can finally put an end to all this and stop it turning up every so often and biting me on the bum. Because all my life that is what it has been doing — sabotaging things, that little girl popping up saying, 'hey, what about me I am still here hurting,'. Some pain doesn't end it seems, you have to cut it out like a fungus and to do that permanently you have to get to the roots. I just wish I knew how to do that once and for all and be done with all this. I think that old therapist is part of that answer. That was part of the revealtion in the last few days anyway.
