In a quiet room, raging.

In space, so the movie trailer goes, no one can hear you scream. Yet another year has passed and my sessions with the lady my husband has affectionately nicknamed "La Doctora Melfi" (in tribute to our one-time Soprano's habit) are rapidly coming to an end. I will have to say goodbye to the little beige room and my talking cure. I will have to go it "alone". Being alone with the aftermath of my Dad's suicide seems to be a key theme for me. Which is why it has been so important for me to share a little of it.

Initially I was spurred to write this blog for myself and also for those who also found themselves with no one to talk to in their life as a "suicide survivor" - a term which, I hope, is understood to mean those surviving another's suicide, not those who didn't manage to go through with it. I was hoping that I might be able to reach out and at least take someone's metaphorical hand just to say "you're not alone". Quite simple really. Some of you have been kind enough to contact me to say that my words have helped you in some way.

However, I've found it hard to 'blog on suicide'. It takes too much effort and courage to dig into the raw shit of it and to try to represent the experience on a regular basis. I find I have occasional epiphanies which I want to share but on a day to day basis I think that my blogs would be something like "saw some daffodils and remembered planting them with Dad" or "getting the freezing, crushing feeling AGAIN". Pretty dull and/or depressing reading, really.

So, going back to screaming in space, or rather, raging and ranting in quiet rooms; the room was mainly my head and the screaming was almost entirely silent. I still battle with the inner/outer selves who seem to be so often at odds with one another. The image that comes to mind is as if Pandora's box were made by Apple (the iPan?) - trying to keep the smoothest, whitest, most perfect of surfaces, utterly concealing the twisting, roiling inner horrors. Except now I don't feel that the inner stuff is quite so horrific and I also realise that being a looking glass has it's drawbacks. And whilst I probably haven't let myself go enough to totally rage and rant in the presence of another, in our real quiet room I have cried me a river or two.

I find it such a wonderful revelation to watch my young daughter and see her inner life written so plainly across her face, the total transparency is a joy - like a clear yet incredibly deep well. I can't see to the bottom of it but I feel that it is crystal and pure and good, even the temper tantrums and the crying. Having grown up around someone so closed, so unknowable, not to mention critical and occasionally volatile, I learned to keep myself to myself quite early on, to present a mask and to shrink away from my own sides so as not to be discovered and invaded. But although that was a good way to get through back then as a kid in a an unhappy family, it's not so good for me now that I'm a woman with a family of my own. Applying my keep-a-lid-on-it tactics to the suicide was the final fatal blow.

So the lid-lifting is to continue in another form - photography, art, installations... I'm not quite sure yet but it's coming and there's not much anyone (even I) can do about it.

No more numbers. Taking it personally.

Enough numbers already! Ten years since I last tried therapy and it didn't go so well. Tip: don't have "therapy" with a non-accredited counsellor of the opposite sex. Really. Ever.

So (it's been ten years) since I last tried to unravel some knots and here I am again. Because I'm still hitting my head against the same walls. Still feeling like a failure. Still thinking there's something wrong with me. 

So, on Tuesdays it's an hour of just me and another woman in a cream room with a box of tissues to hand. Talking... mumbling, purging, admitting, dreaming, saying, stating, discovering, deciding, realising... Going over the same things and suddenly, unexpectedly taking what seem like complete tangents. 

In the midst of all this, realising one very stark fact. That I took my father's suicide personally. Which sounds ridiculous. Of course I did... He was my Dad and he chose to die (THEREFORE) I was not worth being here for. And at the same time, how could I? It was his life to take. It was nothing to do with me, it was all to do with him. That second argument still sounds so much less convincing.

I'm a mother now. I know what it means to have a child and how important I am for her. I don't want to pass this on. I know it's my responsibility to make sure it ends here. At the same time, feeling parental love makes it harder to understand. Maybe I have to accept that I will never understand.

 

12. A Near Miss

On my way to work this morning I was hit by a large, black 4x4. When I say hit, I mean I had a very lucky escape - the driver saw me and was braking so, whilst there was impact, I wasn't hurt. I was crossing the road and the land rover turned out of a side street onto the wrong side of the road - one moment I was looking left and crossing the road, the next I was turning to face a black charger, intent on running me down - I felt like a complete victim.

Two thoughts, almost concurrent, well actually, a thought and a feeling. While my mind was trying to work out whether I would go up and over the bonnet or under the wheels - thankfully it turned out to be neither, my heart sank like a lead plumb line. I felt incredibly, desperately sad. I didn't want to go and leave my family behind. I wanted to stay and not be rubbed out by a yummy mummy dropping her kids off to school. My first gut reaction when I realised that I was possibly not long for this world was how wrong that would be and how I didn't want to leave my husband behind. Once I opened my eyes and realised that I'd survived the impact unscathed, made it to the pavement and assured the red-lipsticked driver that I was alright, I felt a sob in my chest. By the time I'd made it back to my front door I was in full floods of tears.

I'm thankful really. After dad killed himself, I sometimes had what are generally termed as "dark thoughts about suicide". Lets face it, what that really means is - my parent killed him/herself and now I'm scared shitless that I'm going to do the same thing... Parents are supposed to lead the way into adult life. Ideally they would lead us to a happy, positive future. Not to the dark, soulless box of suicide. I don't know if we should quantify our lives by how much we have to live for because it seems to be more about a desire to live, full stop. It doesn't matter how many or how few things tie you to life, in the end, either you want to live life, or you don't. And I know for sure that I for one intend to keep on living for as long as I can.

9. Written 16th Feb 1997

Painting
Presently I am painting a house. Well, actually, not a house, more a building conversion - converted for the cause of lost souls and those in search of comfort, peace and reflection. I apply bright new almond scented paint over the old pastels whilst singing along tunelessly to the Rolling Stones and The Beatles.
Mostly I think. This activity of covering over the old, changing one set of ideas for another new, improved and more colourful version, seems to sink into and blend with my thoughts. The first layer goes on slow. Time is taken masking, edging and evenly applying. But the result is thin, the old colour shows through like badly applied make-up. I hate this stage, can't wait for it to be over. I reminisce about old love affairs turned sour, jealousies and unspoken regrets rise up to the surface and float there, old paint, old colours.
When a room is covered, still the old room, but covered, I turn up the stereo and start grooving to Helter Skelter. It's not conscious at the time but there is a sense of impending completion, of that smooth and total coverage that no longer looks like a covering but takes on itself the newness - IS the room. A new breath of life in less than a millimeter of pigment, latex and water.
I slap it on freely now, firmly rollering back and forth, feeling optimistic about my future, making plans. I sing, stop occasionally to admire the green-blue view and to visualise myself in a tender embrace amid cacti or tall cedars. When it's done I peel off the masking tape earlier than is probably wise - patience being a virtue I have never possessed, at least not in this kind of context - in order to get the full effect of the room. Familiar but different and radiant, the colour moving and changing in each corner, like the changing memory of my father's face.