Reflections.
The entire Covid journey was far from dull. For most of it I was in the depths of a magical, savage, heart-wrenching journey. My psychotherapist was guiding me through deep water, rocky trails, flowing rivers, pink skies, and forbidding mountains. The power of my mind and body as a union was being shown to me experientially.
I shared my life map, recollecting my childhood and adolescence, realising new perspectives about my parents, my siblings, and others who had passed in and out of my world. I poured out my soul and emptied my shame into the cocoon-like room in my therapist’s back-to-back terraced house in the depths of Birmingham, and I mind-travelled to places where my feet will never take me. I was cradled at the centre of this storm for well over a year.
Togetherness and tenderness.
I was living in an old characterful house that belonged to my 82-year-old father, and he was living in it too. Covid had shunted us together, abrupt and unwanted for both of us – we both wanted a temporary pit-stop. He was supposed to be shacked up in Bangkok with his girlfriend, and I was supposed to be on a trip to Koh Tao, Bali, and then Melbourne with plans to move north on my return. Yet there we were, in our new ‘home’, both working hard to get our needs met. We talked in the evenings at the kitchen table with a tom yum essence wafting through into the lounge and up the bare stairs.
We philosophised about psychology and Buddhism and learned about each other. Unbeknownst to us, we didn’t truly know each other until those long months in isolation. It was profound. He told me about his early childhood years, many of which were spent in a primitive hospital ward with only three walls. I listened wide-eared and -eyed as he recalled the time when his bed was covered in snow and he was so cold that when he woke up from a bitter sleep into a rainbow of bright lights, he thought he’d died. After coming to, he realised that the end-of-life rainbow in his vision was a heater that a nurse had propped up above his bed. He told me that her kindness was the only kindness that he’d experienced during three years in hospital. I sobbed as I wrote his story in my journal later that night.
The eye of the storm.
My world was full of wonder, compassion, confusion, anger, and betrayal, Realising the magnitude of my self-abandonment since my youth was heart-stopping. I’d never quite looked at it in that way before. As a result of the life map work and dark room work with my therapist, I had opened the lid of Pandora’s Box and the snakes were streaming out. My ugliest truths and experiences were making themselves known, and they were revolting. Doing inner work is hard but doing it whilst living in a home that’s not really home during a pandemic is even harder. There were times when I wanted to escape, but I couldn’t. I wanted to punch someone, but I didn’t. I wanted to run away and hide and stop it all, but I knew I had to tunnel through because I wanted to understand. Peace was within reach but only if I continued along the previously untrodden trail that I’d been clearing for months. There was no going back, ‘cos once you know, you know.
Relief.
It took 15 months to write the song, Revealer, starting from March 2020. It’s about the sun in the storm. I howled and wailed and vocalised. I healed and opened and closed and wrapped myself around the words and soaring melody. I finished the song as Covid restrictions lessened, the mornings brightened, and the reins loosened. I observed the rising sun and the shifting energy. My therapy sessions had softened, and Dad was on a flight to Thailand. I was left alone, healed and happy.
The stillness gave me rest and recuperation. No more threads for now. I could be a sort of solo human, experiencing much needed solitude, and protecting my newfound self: the me that had been gently revealed in the cocoon-like room. I made a promise to never abandon myself again. I bought a silver sapphire ring from Gardens of the Sun and threaded it onto my ring finger. It was a promise to always stay gentle, to create my own light, and to be a light for others. It was a reminder that the sun is always there no matter how ominous the storm.
Peace.
Things look different to how I expected they would at this stage in my life, but that’s not a bad thing. I’m turning 36 in 2 days and I’m more content than ever. The stars are aligned. I’m full of gratitude. I’m wide open as though I can taste every opportunity. As though I’ve been primed to live life to the full in slow motion – to breathe life into every pore of my being. Had I not suffered the discontent that led me to this point, I don’t think I could be as content as I am right now. To be at peace is to have known suffering, and to appreciate the sun is to have experienced the dark. Had I still been drinking alcohol, the wonder would have been lost, and I never would have realised that the sun was within me all along.