Chapter Twelve The Right Road
Chapter Twelve
The Right Road
‘I think that’s very wise,’ Monica says, her pen gently tapping on her notepad as she considers my words.
‘You do?’
I know this isn’t meant to be about saying the right thing, but I still feel good when I think Monica approves.
‘Yes, I think so. You’re acknowledging that the mindset is not a healthy one, and – without wanting to descend into too much cliché – acknowledging a problem is often the first step to overcoming it.’
I smile.
I am pleased.
. . . even though I probably shouldn’t be. Because none of this is meant to be about saying the right thing, only what needs to be said.
But I’m Charlie King, and I like to make people happy, don’t I?
‘Of course, that’s only the first step,’ Monica continues, as if she’s read my mind.
‘Yeah, I know,’ I agree, looking a little sheepish.
There are lots of things that need unpicking in my head, that’s for certain. This is my fifth session with Monica, and we’ve done a good job of realising together that there is quite a lot to unpick.
It’s amazing what two hours a week in a shed in someone’s garden will do for you.
Calling it a shed is doing Monica’s office space a deep disservice, of course. It’s actually a rather lovely summer house at the bottom of her garden. But any building in a garden made of wood is a shed to me.
I started this ‘adventure’ sat in someone’s garden shed, and it seems like I will be ending it in one too.
Only this shed isn’t in the shape of a wigwam, and I’m not at the end of a journey at all. I’m at the start of one.
Monica specialises in PTSD.
And I definitely have PTSD.
This should come as a surprise to absolutely no one who’s been paying attention.
The false memories, the amnesia, the panic attacks – all of them are symptoms of a brain trying its level best to get as far away from cruel hard reality as possible.
Like Monica says, acknowledging what’s wrong is the first step in getting over it.
Annie was 100 per cent correct to order to me to go and see a doctor.
But you knew that already. You’ve been screaming it at me this entire time.
And the doctor immediately put me in touch with Monica.
Officially, he put in a referral for a mental health assessment with the NHS, but knowing that would take until the heat death of the universe to get sorted out, he also advised me to seek the help from a professional therapist who specialises in trauma.
Which I did.
And while Monica is mainly helping me deal with the PTSD, she’s also working through some of my other issues, which include the obsessive need to people please.
Every ridiculous scheme I tried with Jack and Leo wasn’t just about their problems, it was about mine too – and my complete inability to accept that I can’t please everyone all of the time.
I can’t help everyone. I can’t make everything better.
‘You are a problem solver, Charlie,’ Monica said to me at the end of our first session.
‘But the real problem is that sometimes there are problems you just can’t solve.
Like the things your friends Jack and Leo have been through, for instance.
You avoided your own trauma by trying to fix theirs, but that only made things worse. ’
‘For all three of us,’ I say glumly.
Monica didn’t try to convince me otherwise. It’s not her job to make me feel better.
. . . well, it is, of course. But not by soft-pedalling some of the mad stuff I’ve done in the past few months.
‘You can’t help your friends in the way you’d like, no matter how hard it is to hear that,’ she told me. ‘You can’t solve their problems for them, Charlie.’
Which sounds so damned horrible, when it’s put in such a matter-of-fact way.
Every fibre of my being rails against it.
Things should be solvable!
I should be able to solve them!
Damn it!
. . . you see what I mean about it being the start of a journey, rather than the end of one?
‘What are you thinking about?’ Monica asks, noting the expression on my face, and bringing me back to the present.
I tell her.
It’s very easy to do that.
She nods. ‘Yes, that’s very true. You are at the start of this journey.
Nothing about the human mind is easy or simple, Charlie.
It is as complex, weird and wonderful as everything else in this world.
It always takes time to pick through what’s causing your trauma.
That begins with the inciting incident, and often goes back further than that, into the life of the person concerned. ’
My face clouds a little.
Monica puts up a hand. ‘I know that’s the kind of thing you don’t want to hear, but the very fact you don’t want to hear it is one of the reasons why we’re here.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ I reply, knowing that she’s right, but still not comfortable with it.
She then points a finger skyward. ‘But . . . the important thing is that you are on the right road now. These things take time, but with that time comes a better understanding of ourselves, and a measure of peace.’
Well, that sounds marvellous, doesn’t it?
A measure of peace.
‘I’m on the right road,’ I echo.
‘You are.’
‘Funny . . . when I think of roads, I don’t think of good things these days . . .’ I mumble.
I can still go back there. When I close my eyes at night, I can go back to that day as easy as if you handed me the keys to a time machine. And I still see Anthony gasping for his last breath. I’m afraid I may see that until the day I’m the one doing the gasping.
‘That will change, Charlie,’ Monica says, pulling me out of the memory again. ‘I promise that will change. The important thing is to keep moving forward, which you’re now doing.’
‘On the right road,’ I repeat.
‘Exactly.’
Annie picks me up from Monica’s house half an hour later. We’ve agreed it’s best I don’t drive myself there. Not for the time being, anyway.
‘How did it go?’ she asks, face full as much of anxiety as hope.
‘It went well,’ I then tell her – honestly. The days of me pretending to be fine in front of Annie are long gone. If things are going well, I’ll tell her that. And if they’re going badly, the same applies. Today feels like things went well.
‘That’s good.’
‘Monica says that it will get better.’ I tap the side of my head. ‘Up here.’
Annie smiles. ‘I’m sure it will.’
I look off into the middle distance. ‘There are problems I can’t solve,’ I say, almost to myself.
Annie’s eyes fill with sympathy. ‘No. You can’t,’ she says, one hand squeezing my shoulder gently.
‘But I’m on the right road,’ I say, this time in a stronger voice.
I think this may be one of those things that requires you to keep saying it until you believe it.
I sigh gently, and then look into Annie’s eyes. ‘Thank you,’ I tell her.
‘For what?’
‘For being here. For still being here, I mean.’
Annie gives my cheek a gentle stroke. ‘No problem at all, Charlie.’
My brain then does something it’s developed a disconcerting habit of doing over the past few months – it sends me on another flashback. Not to the crash this time, though, but instead to me, stood by another car.
In a dark car park, after a stand-up gig, not knowing what the hell to do. Being stuck. Being scared. Confused about everything.
I’m not confused anymore . . . but I think I’m still afraid right now, if I’m being honest with myself (which I’m trying to do as much as possible these days).
But I’m hoping that very soon I won’t be scared anymore.
Very soon, I will be brave again.
Because I’m on the right road . . . and Annie is still here, on it with me.
So . . . you’d like to think I’ve completely changed, wouldn’t you?
I know that’s meant to be the ending.
I know that’s where Charlie King’s epic story Totally Fine is meant to draw to a close.
But things are always . . . messier than that.
In the real world.
Beyond the stories we tell ourselves, and other people.
And I am still Charlie King. The people pleaser. The one who always wants to help. The one who doesn’t know how to stop.
And I have two friends who are still avoiding their own demons, while I finally face mine. I haven’t forgotten about them. I could never forget about them.
And I am on the right road, but I am still me.
So . . . fourth time’s a charm, eh?
I find Jack working on Gormley, on the hard standing where the mobile home has sat for so long now. Far too long, it has to be said. Gormley is very much a beige and dark-brown symbol of my friend’s struggles.
Jack is sanding down one of the side panels near the door, and for a moment I stand in the road and just watch him as he does this. There’s a firm gusto about the way he goes at the sanding which is Jack to a tee. He never does anything by halves.
In the past, I’ve always thought that energy came from a positive place, but now I’m not so sure.
Having your own insecurities and anxieties peeled back can certainly give you a better sense of other people’s.
There’s frustration in every scrape he makes alongside Gormley with that sandpaper.
Frustration and fear. I never did a good job of seeing these signs in the past. Too wrapped up in my own issues.
‘Morning,’ I eventually say as I walk up to him.
‘Blimey,’ Jack replies, genuinely surprised to see me. No wonder. It’s been a few weeks. I’ve been busy with therapy sessions, trying to rebuild my work, and training a parrot not to say wank.
The work rebuilding has been going slightly better than the parrot training, it has to be said.
I have two new contracts. One of them is with Eloise and Conrad again, if you can believe that.
It turns out the influencer world is even stranger than I gave it credit for.
Would you believe that the amount of viral attention my massive cock-up generated actually brought them more followers than anything else?
They made more cash off it than any of their travel videos.