Companionship during a storm

Moving through Euston at rush hour, trapped within a herd of commuters, I saw the back of a woman who appeared to be trying to disappear into a wall. I later learnt that she loves contemporary art, and has a wicked sense of humour. She has high cheekbones, a face used to laughing, and a warm Irish accent.

But she caught my attention because she was utterly distraught. I extracted myself from the herd and circled back. I stood gently next to her and said hello. Asked her if she was ok (which was a ridiculous question).

She said she was ok, thank you (also ridiculous). She was wracked with misery so deep and thick I could feel it. She could barely stand. So I stayed put.

I asked if I could call anyone for her. She said no, and apologised for being in a bad state. I think she realized I wasn’t just going to take her word for it on the “I’m ok” front. She told me her name, and showed me a stack of letters addressed to her, as if to prove her existence. She said she was having a bad day. I smiled in recognition and said I had a day like that last week and had been all over the place. I explained I had a couple of hours to spare, and offered to take her for a coffee. She gracefully accepted with relief and a glimpse of joy. I had a feeling there was an inkling of “oh, that would be fun” in amongst the sadness.

As we ascended the escalator, she thanked me profusely for talking to her.

And she told me she’d been about to jump under a train.

I was surprised not to be shocked by this. I could somehow see that it might make perfect sense to commit suicide if we’re of the belief that our feelings (monumentally rubbish in this case) are caused by external circumstances (an illness in this woman’s case) which we feel we can’t change. It’s like jumping off a cliff to escape an evil monster, during a nightmare. Perfectly sensible.

When we feel rubbish, it feels like we’re going to feel rubbish for ever more. We seem to forget that we felt rubbish at least a few times before, and somehow that didn’t last and we felt pretty great at some points in between the rubbish episodes. We forget that our feelings change like the weather and it’s pretty hard to control them. The key is to not take it too seriously when the mental weather is torrential rain, and remember that we’ll soon dry out without any effort at all.

I don’t wish to be flippant. I know what it’s like to feel suicidal. I’ve never shared this before, but years ago I took a midnight walk on top of a tall building in my PJs. It seemed like a sensible course of action based on my feelings at the time. I got cold and scared and went back to bed. I think it’s useful to get past our thoughts of “Oh My Goodness This Woman Is Mentally Ill, I Might Damage Her In Some Way If I Stop And Help, Or She Might Be A Complete Lunatic And Try To Hurt Me. Call A Professional. Stat”. Once we stop paying attention to that internal noise, we are free to engage in whatever instinctive human response feels right.

So we sat in Café Ritazza, drinking very poor tea in companionable silence. We eventually spoke about Banksy, Jackson Pollock, her family, Manchester, Ireland, her home in London.

At one point I tried to share my understanding of feelings and thoughts, and how our feelings are a clue to take more or less notice of our thoughts in the moment (eg I think I should jump under a train now, but I’m feeling really rubbish, so perhaps I won’t take so much notice of myself at this point… I know my thoughts will change any minute and the new ones might be more reliable, and this reliability will be evidenced by my feeling better).

But this wasn’t really what she wanted in that moment, so I went back to listening, to taking an interest in her life. I was completely at ease with her internal weather of distress and tears, laughter and relief, anger and bitterness, calm and hope. I really appreciated her wit, her beauty, her openness and trust. And I could see her resilience (not because I have some kind of clever x-ray powers of observation, but because I know everyone is resilient).

We finished our tea and it was time for both of us to leave. We hugged awkwardly in the concourse, and she looked straight into my eyes and said “I’m really OK now”. And I knew she was telling the truth in that she was feeling calm again. The storm had passed. But she was also ok before, when she was feeling rubbish. She was simply believing the bad dream her thoughts had concocted, and she thought she wasn’t ok when really she was.

She may have suicidal thoughts again, and she may act on them, or she may not trust her thoughts and let them pass over like another squall.

For me, I had the joy of speaking with an intelligent, beautiful woman for a couple of hours. And the relief of really knowing more than I have ever known that there’s no need to save anyone, or fix anyone. Just  understanding where someone’s coming from and being with them is enough.

 

 

This is my personal blog. If you’d like information on my professional work, head to Impetus Coaching.

“She did not know she was not flying”

How do you imagine Elizabeth Gilbert would be in person? Well she is a hundred times more so. Today I went to her book launch.

The last three lines she read from her new book ‘The Signature of All Things’ (sublime, gold embossed, silk bookmark, coloured endpaper prints, just go and buy it now*) were:

“Nobody stopped her.

She was a comet.

She did not know that she was not flying.”

This struck me as a glorious description of someone entirely in their element, which is where Liz resides (I feel I can call her Liz – she drew a heart in my copy of Eat Pray Love – which means we’re on first names terms at the very least). She spoke with such ease, as if we were a bunch of A-grade high school students sitting round a campfire on spring break, sharing confidences and being amusingly indignant. She makes sophisticated points about the history of science and then drops in an Outkast lyric.

Here the bits that I remember most keenly.

The book is about a feisty intellectual, Alma Whittaker, and some of the key players in the development of modern science in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Liz shared snippets of what she’d learnt in the three years she spent researching the book. Back in the day it was of course mightily inappropriate for women who were curious about the world to concern themselves with anything other than botany (flowers are feminine and therefore ok). Apparently, when these women became too enthusiastic about said flowers (and moss) – and it emerged that classifying species was turning out to be fairly important in the bid to understand everything – women’s botany was re-named ‘Polite Botany’ aka ‘Botany for Gurlz’. The proper hardcore rude ‘Botany’, was left for proper big strong men to do.

Liz said that as an aspiring writer, a daily writing habit was crucial (no one’s going to come knocking on your door with a book deal so make your own deadlines, and write until it feels weird to go for a whole day without writing). As someone with a blockbusting cheque in the bank, she now has the luxury of writing in seasons – season of inspiration; season of research (she’s learnt not to rely on her poor imagination but feed it); season of writing (5.30am – 11am every day until it’s done), season of editing (painful) and season of celebration (yay – book tour); and then back to the season of inspiration. Liz is very grateful that Eat Pray Love entirely funded The Signature of All Things, so she could write exactly as she chose. (As for those who say that this historical novel is a bid to draw a line under Eat Pray Love she repeatedly stresses her pride in the book of her life).

On the intimate and explicit writing about Alma’s sexuality (I’ve not read it yet, but many critics as said to have shied away from commenting on the masturbation scenes), Liz said that it’s impossible to write a birth to death novel without exploring every facet of the protagonist. The woman was curious, an explorer, an empiricist – of course Alma would explore herself. Liz also wanted to write about a woman’s sexuality in a way that wasn’t pinned to physical characteristics. We all know that heaving bosoms, flashing eyes, a dangerous figure, and firey auburn hair do not necessarily flag inflamed carnal desires; and vice versa. But Liz did not want to shame her heroine.

Feeling stuck, she sought the advice of a respected academic who writes bodice-rippers by night. (Incidentally, Liz explained, it was professionally prudent for this academic to keep her nocturnal activities secret until her tenure party where she opened crates of her books to reveal her alter-ego to her colleagues). The academic advised Liz to ask her heroine what she wanted to do, how she wanted to reveal herself, and write that. The block dissolved. Liz says she often talks to her characters as she writes (just like Hilary Mantel, whom she admires for her unshakeable confidence. She quotes: “Am I worried about how to follow two Booker Prize winning books? Of course not – the third is going to be even better”).

It is this conversation between author and muse, which Liz credits as her source of creativity. She does not buy the Romantic German notion of creativity being a bloody battle with a muse. And neither does she like the abdication of responsibility that she feels comes with the idea that the muse flows through the writer who is merely a tool. Rather, it’s a collaborative dialogue.

And there was so much more – her decision to be childless; how she can only write fiction when she’s happy, memoirs when she’s battling with life (and so we can check in on how she’s doing by what she’s publishing); Darwin and dark matter; where the title “The Signature of All Things” comes from; her frugal father (“borrowing money is like peeing in a cold bed – it’s a warm and blessed relief initial, but…”).

Elizabeth Gilbert is so at ease with herself, and so full of love, she can’t but help influence those around her. And so I sat down to write.

PS Go see her if you can: http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/events/

*Mum – please ignore this instruction