Out Your Head

Before you embark on a journey of self-discovery, uncovering the past traumas that have shaped the person you are, as opposed to the person you might have become, be careful not to unearth aspects of your life that could trigger emotional turmoil and anxiety in the present day. This journey has taken me more than twenty years to unravel, but it has been in the last two years that I have dug the deepest to find the keys to those dark rooms that hold the secrets of my past.

Gabor Maté describes this process in his book Scattered Minds in neurophysiological terms; my prefrontal cortex never allowed me to access this emotional history. The process of discovering what I have uncovered in the last year was always there. I look back now and think, “Why didn’t I explore this years ago?” My subconscious mind was protecting me from painful emotions I was not ready to re-experience on a conscious level.

I like the idea that this is also a form of spiritual protection from   guardian protectors, which some might call angels, ancestors from the past looking over me and guiding me on through this journey of self-discovery.

 In the grand scheme of things, it took someone like Gabor Maté until his fifties to delve into his dark past, even though he was a psychologist. For the rest of us, it can be a perilous journey to embark on. If you’re unsure how a journey like this may affect you, have a professional backup ready to help with any emotional trauma that may resurface.

This is something I should have had in past episodes of my life when I got into hot water that burnt my emotional state, but I have a history of not doing what is right. Many times, I have come out of situations where trauma has developed into PTSD, and I’ve always managed by myself. I don’t recommend this path of self-healing to others but if you decide this is the path to take, I hope my experience can help in some way. Always be careful when confronting past trauma.

 I relate my life as a jigsaw puzzle. The jigsaw puzzle represents the emotional complexity that comes with trauma. Each piece evokes different feelings and assembling them requires me to navigate through my various emotional landscapes.

 My mum left me with some interesting pieces that I have kept in the box, ready for the day when I feel brave enough to put the picture together. There are pieces that stand out: one has “nursery” on it, another has “court case,” and words like “whore” and “prostitute.” There’s also one with “daddy’s name,” and the most prominent one says, “We have to forget that dad; you have a new one now, so never talk about him again.” There is a picture on that piece of me sitting on her knee as she whispers in my ear.

These pieces of the jigsaw relate to three important links in my story. My mum told me she had to put me in a nursery at a very young age dropping me off at 7am in the morning and picking me up at 5pm when she finished work, but we had each other at the weekend. I’m talking about being months old, not years. The reason for this was that she took my alleged “father no name” to the National Assistance Board to try to gain some financial assistance. As a single mother, she had little or no chance of getting any help. In fact, the stigma from her daring to stand up and do what she did would have brought more financial devastation to her suffering. The gossip and shame in small communities back then spread like wildfire.

It was a devastating action she took, as it resulted in her being called a “whore” and “prostitute” by the overseeing panel. This ordeal was made more painful as she had to take me to the tribunal hearing, and “father no names” wife showed up with two more babies not much older than me. The same woman turned up at my nan’s door another day with those two babies screaming at my mum to stay away from her husband. It was a proper shit storm and I’m witnessing all of it.

His name is on one of those jigsaw pieces, this one a proper golden nugget “Luby” she went as far as telling me it was a special spelling of the name that I could find in the book Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt. And there is the piece that has a prison on it. I’ve found his name in articles in the Liverpool Echo (1960 – 1964) relating to his violent history, that he was prosecuted for and went to prison. By all accounts he was an angry man you didn’t mess with. And there is the very sad piece when she locks his memory away, the day she tells me I must forget that man as I’m getting a new dad and we should never talk about him or see him again. I have a vivid memory of that conversation sitting on her knee in my nan’s parlour, I can still feel the fabric of the settee; I was three and half years old.

As I get through this and find solace in what I’m accepting as the truth, there has to be a day when you just accept this is how it is, I’m becoming lighter and feeling freer to go forward and be the person I want to be.  I don’t want those dark dank memories to linger and fester more and more each year as I get older eating away at me, because you know why that is, because it wasn’t my fault; I had no control over those times that created the person I became. But I have control now to make a change for the better.