Does It Get Better?
A Conversation I Still Think About
Dear friend,
We were sitting in a short-lived café that smelled of mould. It was meant to be gentrified, but they hadn’t got that bit right and the place felt off. I was sitting opposite a friend we’d met in London, but his dad had been the vicar at my local church back home in Workington, when Mam used to drop me off there for playgroup.
I don’t remember the vicar except I knew he’d been kind when I’d messed my pants for fear of asking for the toilet. I cried every time Mam left me, and then somehow forgot she existed until she came back to get me from that sandstone hall. A portal to a world of light and warmth.
Mam was very peaceful to be around.
I was relatively new to coaching then,
but not new to therapy — mostly depression-free by that point.
Just the usual ups and downs you try to navigate when you’re making a place for yourself in the world.
Our friend, who I’d met through Chiara, removed his glasses and, squeezing the bridge of his nose, asked me a question I’ve never forgotten:
“Does it get better?”
If I could go back now, I think I’d have asked him something instead.
But I didn’t have that depth then. I was still surviving on positive psychology, not surrender. I didn’t yet know how to sit with someone without trying to find an answer.
So I said what I knew at the time:
“Yes — it can get really bad, but in my experience you hit the bottom and you come back.”
That was true for me.
But I didn’t see what he was carrying.
The medication.
Whatever he needed to get through the day.
We drank our overpriced, crappy coffees and walked home in opposite directions.
We hugged the way you do in London.
No eye contact.
It was at his memorial service that the penny dropped.
We were sat a few benches away from his ten-year-old son.
People had flown from all over the world to pay their respects.
I felt our friend watching.
Inside, I heard myself say:
“Look at all these people- you idiot!”
And the answer:
“I know.”
Cultured, talented, obstinate, bloody-minded and heartbroken.
I think of him often.
Our minds look for escape when we’re under pressure — trapped, despondent, frightened.
When life feels futile.
A writer on Substack shared something today about their own mental health, and it moved me. It reminded me of that café, and of the question across the table.
To that writer:
Opening up is never futile.
That’s all I wanted to say.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey