Happy Never After by Jill Stark

Author:Jill Stark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SEL016000, BIO026000, PSY013000, SEL044000, PSY036000, SEL036000
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 2018-07-29T16:00:00+00:00

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The Script

13

IT’S ALWAYS DARKEST BEFORE THE DAWN

When the ground beneath me crumbled, it was my dark night of the soul — a sort of spiritual reckoning in which everything I’d known to be true had collapsed. For so long I had chased the external fix to bring me happiness. I had always looked outside myself for reassurance. In my child’s mind I’d come to believe that being sick and helpless was how I would be noticed and loved.

Some of my most vivid childhood memories revolve around times when I was in need. When I was knocked off my bike during my early morning paper round and was scooped up off the road by a lovely couple in a passing car who had swerved to avoid running me over. They brought me home, and I tearfully showed Mum my buckled bike and bloodied knees, revelling in her attention. When I was home from school with a cold or a stomach-ache, and Mum would wrap me in her fluffy black-and-white sheepskin coat and lay me on the couch. We called it the ‘sick coat’, and wearing it was always a treat. Even now, when I return home, just running my hands across its soft down makes me feel safe.

As desperate as I felt in those days when I had lost all will to live, it was perhaps an unconscious attempt to go back to that familiar childhood state that brought the ones I loved rallying to my side, just as they had for my brother. But it was a narrative that no longer served me. I was not the problem child. It was time to stop viewing myself as broken. Veronica put it to me: ‘It’s a cocoon. It’s warm and cosy and you don’t want to leave, but you have to ask yourself, what is the cost of remaining here?’

My parents, 17,000 kilometres away and feeling helpless, were frantic. Mum’s instinct was to get on the first plane. But she was sick herself, struggling with a blood-pressure problem that left her exhausted, anaemic, and prone to passing out. Her doctor strongly advised her not to fly. We shared a distraught Skype conversation and she was adamant she was coming anyway. I wanted nothing more than to feel Mum’s arms wrapped around me. But I couldn’t let her risk her own health. And what would she do when she got here? The sick coat wasn’t going to fix me. I needed to start looking after myself. I told her to stay home and get better.

This was a turning point. I fought for myself harder than I’ve ever fought for anything in my life. I began to claw my way to the surface of a deep well, my nails cracked and bloodied with the effort of dragging myself up, inch by inch, to a place where I could finally snatch a few breaths of clean air.

A huge part of building my resilience came from journalling. It allowed me to wade through the murky soup of anxiety and shame that took up so much space in my head.

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