Do What’s Right for You
Sometimes It’s Really That Simple
Dear Friend,
I’m not entirely sure what to do with yesterday’s incident. When I don’t know what to write, I sit here, watching my fingers. I’m not exactly waiting. It’s more like resting. You begin noticing external things as you rest in the moment. Not sleepy but wakeful resting.
The sky, for example. Yesterday’s rain soaked clouds have cleared. Today it is powder blue and the morning light is cutting diagonal shapes across my neighbours’ rooftops. The internal storm is passing too.
A memory comes.
I used to have a green roll neck jumper I wore under my motorcycle jacket. I wore my hair short and messy. Leather boots and trousers, smoked roll ups. I’m back once again outside the north London flat in which my first ever therapist used to see her clients. It’s cold and I’m pressing up against the heat of the bike’s engine. One of the short days of winter. A stranger to myself.
I’m not the only member of my family to have visited a therapist’s office. My Dad was forced to see a child psychologist when he was a boy in the 1940’s, but all he remembered about it was being told to stop being naughty. As I recall he was given the impression his mother would be taken away from him again, if didn’t toe the line. He was a school refuser.
Nana went into post natal depression after my Dad was born. She’d married grandad, but I always had the impression that wasn’t what she’d wanted for herself. She was committed to a sanatorium where they electrocuted her brain. Dad once told me about his five year old self, walking to the telephone box at the other end of their village, little hands clutching scavenged pennies. Up on his toes, how a five year old gets the number for the big house with the garden? Asking for his mum. She’s brought to the phone, stunned still, she doesn’t know a Ron. The line clicks dead, buzzes. A boy all alone in a red box. Poor old Dad. When Nana came home she knew who he was, but Dad wasn’t so keen on letting her out of his sight again, not until the session with the child psychologist.
He was a bright creative man my Dad. Made stupid decisions. We do though don’t we? When we’re living with trauma.
When you first visit your first therapy session, you’ve no idea what to expect.
My experience of it was thankfully more constructive than Nana’s and Dad’s.
The warmth of it.
Hearing yourself.
Saying things.
You know words have power. They carry energy. Vibration. In the beginning was the Word.
What happened in the dark of yesterday’s early morning? I forgot God.
‘I forget to pray for the angels
And then the angels forget to pray for us’(“So Long Marianne” - Leonard Cohen)
Don’t call it God, if the word freaks you out.
Call it something at the centre of you. The breath that moves your body. The beating of your heart. Dog’s tongue coming in for a lick. The cat’s head leaning in for an ear rub. A five year old’s charm. A song.
We may lose sight of it. Doesn’t mean to say it’s not there.
We have decisions to make.
“You know you’ve got to do what’s right for you.”
That’s Ben.
My second therapist.
The simplicity of the statement enters my skull like a ghost passes through a wall.
Therapists visit therapists. I became one as my mind healed and people came to me for help. I go to Ben. We never stop learning. We came here for it.
“Do what’s right for you.”
Of course you’ll carry on caring for and about others. There’s no way you’d be following this train of thought if you weren’t a kind soul at heart.
We have to decide what’s right for us.
Nobody else can tell us.
They’ll try.
But it’s not their place.
Another way of saying it. When we’re connected to love, miracles and wonders happen. To be connected to love is our natural state. To love and be loved.
Today I’m feeling a lot better.
I hope you are too.
The chat stream on the substack is still open if you want to drop by and say hello. I’m looking at it. You need the substack app to access it. Here’s the link:
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey