Chapter 28 #2
I do so, awkwardly, and he rolls his eyes at me and crosses his arms. Let’s see where this gets us, jackass.
‘Is there anything else he wants to say?’
I knit my brows together as I focus. ‘He has his arms crossed. He’s not very happy. But… no, I don’t think so.’
‘That’s fine. He’s allowed to be unhappy, and he’s allowed to be sceptical. Can you see him clearly? Can you see what age he is?’
I focus inwardly again. To my surprise, he seems quite a lot younger than me. ‘Oh. That’s odd. Late twenties, maybe? Thirty?’
‘I see, and does he know who you are? Does he understand that there’s a forty-one-year-old version of you who’s older and wiser and who’s capable of managing challenges like this without him needing to overburden himself on your behalf?’
I frown. I can see him. But I don’t feel any connection to him. ‘No. Don’t think so.’
‘No problem. If he’s okay to sit there for now, let’s see who else has something to say. Is there anyone else we should hear from?’
I cast my mind away from that pissed-off version of me and draw a blank.
There’s only grey matter in my mind, nothing clear.
I feel a cold wave of panic wash over me at the prospect that I may not be able to deliver what Philip wants from me in this moment.
I excel at everything I do. I’m absolutely not going to fail at this, even though I have no idea what he wants to hear.
Maybe I can make something up—but my mind is still a giant grey cloud of nothingness.
I don’t like this. Philip is running the show here, and I can’t take the lead as I usually would.
‘No—nothing, I—’
‘Are you okay?’ he asks gently, and I open my eyes.
‘I don’t know what to tell you,’ I snap, my fingers twisting harder around my wrist. ‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.’
Honestly, I just want to get up and walk out of here. This is excruciating.
He glances down at my hands in my lap. ‘That’s more than okay.
This is very new, and you’re doing great.
Often, our parts won’t want to speak up.
They don’t want a light shone on them, because they don’t think it’s safe.
As we’ve just discerned, they don’t know who you are yet.
They don’t know that they have access to this amazing adult who can protect them, so it makes sense that they want to stay quiet.
None of this is a problem. As we get to know each other and your parts better, you’ll discover that sometimes they’ll be shouting over each other to have their say, but sometimes we’ll need to work backwards and access them through something that’s been bothering you in your daily life. ’
‘Okay.’ I nod and blow out a decidedly shuddery breath.
‘May I ask you something?’ His tone is even more gentle, and I nod again.
‘Is it fair to say that this inability to produce the answer you think I want is causing you a spot of anxiety or worry?’
God, he’s perceptive. It’s borderline freaky.
‘Possibly,’ I hedge.
He nods. ‘Well done for acknowledging that. I know it’s not easy. How would you feel about delving a little deeper into that part of you that feels worried about not delivering? Perhaps it has something it wants to share?’
I rub my wrist, back and forth. I’m practically giving myself a Chinese burn at this point. ‘I’m not sure.’
‘No worries. Go ahead and close your eyes again if that makes you feel more comfortable, and try to take a couple of slow breaths in and out. You’re safe here. It’s just you and me.’
From anyone else, I might find that sentence creepy, but Philip’s vibes border on the paternal, and I realise I do feel safe with him, or as safe as I could feel with any stranger who’s asking me to bare my innermost fears and vulnerabilities.
‘What can you tell me about this part?’ he asks, his voice slow and steady. ‘Can you ask him for more detail on why he feels anxious about not delivering?’
I squeeze my eyes and my wrist equally hard. ‘He—uh—is worried you might be… displeased.’ Actually, what I was about to say was he’s worried you might get cross with him, but that sounded incredibly babyish, so I paraphrased just in time.
‘I would never be displeased. I’m not here to judge you, Ethan. Not at all. But why does he think I’d be unhappy with him?’
‘It’s unimpressive that I can’t come up with the goods. Disgraceful. And—humiliating.’ I have the strangest feeling that I’m parroting the words.
‘Those are strong words. Is that part saying those words to you?’
I screw my face up in concentration. ‘I think… he’s remembering them? Or someone is saying them to him?’
‘Okay. Can he tell you who is saying them to him?’
The revelation is a bucket of freezing water to the face. ‘Oh. My dad.’
‘Ah. I see. And can you see this part? Can you see or feel how old he might be?’
Fuck. He’s little, I realise. A lot younger than Jamie. ‘Ten? Nine?’ I have the strangest sense of young energy inside me. A little boy. A little boy repeating words to himself like humiliating and disgraceful. Over and over.
‘Does he know why his father was saying those things to him? Can he tell you?’
I don’t speak for a moment. I can’t. I’m so paralysed with the shame of it all. I’m an ice block, totally isolated in my humiliation, frozen out by my father’s icy rage and powerless to thaw. Days and days and days of it. The pain is so fresh, so visceral, it’s as if it’s just happened.
‘Um, he took me to lunch to meet his friends, as a special treat, because he said I’d be running the company one day.
He’d given me extra pocket money to invest—he said it was going to be our investment club that we did together.
And at lunch he told me to tell him and his friends about the stocks I’d chosen.
But the companies I’d bought that month had done really badly, and I’d lost money. ’
I remember it so clearly. The smell of cigars at the golf club where we went for lunch.
My blue exercise book lying on the table, Kingsley Investment Club written in my best handwriting on the front.
The neat rows of the stocks I’d chosen, columns pencilled in with the share prices updated daily.
Every evening, Dad brought home the Financial Times from work and I copied the previous day’s closing share prices into my little model portfolio.
But clearest of all is Dad’s face when I told all his friends that I’d made the wrong calls that week, lost our little club fifteen percent. It was like thunder, like a black storm cloud. I didn’t know much, but I knew a fifteen percent loss in a week was humiliating. Disgraceful.
You’d be out on your ear if you were a real fund manager, was all he said in front of his friends. Someone laughed, Dad lit another cigar, and Charles Montague leaned over and spoke kindly to me.
Fuck, Montague was there. I’d forgotten that. They were still friendly enough, back then.
No one in the market saw that profit warning coming, he said, or something to that effect. Don’t be too hard on yourself. My boys wouldn’t know a stock portfolio if it hit them in the face.
‘Dad held off until we’d said our goodbyes,’ I continue, my voice scratchy, ‘but he laid into me when we were walking to the car. Said I was a disgrace, and that I’d humiliated him back there.
But’—I clear my throat—‘the worst bit was that he didn’t speak to me for two weeks afterwards.
Not at all. He completely ignored me at dinner every night.
It made Mum really sad, but he told her in front of me that I didn’t deserve his attention. I hadn’t earned it.’
I break off then and hang my head, screwing my eyes as tightly shut as I can and pressing my lips together, fighting for control. There’s a pause as I do. When Philip speaks, his tone is filled with compassion.
‘That is an incredibly painful memory to share, and I’m so sorry. Can you—can you feel that that little boy is separate from the adult version of yourself? Do you have a clear view of him?’
I nod. The pain of reliving the memory might be tearing me apart, but I can see him so clearly. Blonder hair. A skinny, anxious little thing. I hadn’t had my growth spurt by then. And so fucking eager to please.
‘How do you feel towards him?’
‘I just—I just feel so fucking sorry for him. I want to give him a hug.’
‘So do that. Take all those paternal feelings that you have for your own son, and give this very brave younger version of you a hug. You are absolutely allowed to parent these younger parts in a way that they’ve been lacking until now.’
It’s the weirdest thing, but I imagine myself doing just that. The compassion, the love, I feel for him is pouring out of me. In my mind, I hug him tightly.
‘Okay,’ I say, nodding.
‘When you can separate from your parts and find your Self, that’s when you can bring qualities like curiosity and compassion to them. There are eight of those Cs, in fact. Now, if you feel ready, I’d like you to try showing or telling him who you are.’
I stiffen. ‘How do you mean?’
‘Just that you’re him all grown up—a fully grown adult—and that you can handle your father perfectly well, and that that memory has passed.
It’s done, and he survived it. Your father can’t make you feel less than anymore, and you live an independent life now.
He doesn’t have to go back there again, and if he does, you’ll be with him.
‘What you’re trying to do here is divest him of this burden he’s been carrying around all this time, so that you gradually learn that when you’re in a situation where you feel you “can’t deliver” in the present day, that’s perfectly okay.
You won’t be punished or frozen out, because you’re an adult, and it’s safe to fail.
It’s human to fail. Does that make sense? ’
I nod and inhale deeply. The little nine-year-old guy is still hugging me.
I get the feeling he likes me being kind to him.
It’s okay, I tell him. It feels awkward as fuck, but the tightness in my heart is giving way to a warm glow.
It actually feels like my heart is expanding.
I persevere. You don’t need to deal with Dad anymore.
He can’t hurt your feelings. You’re a grown-up now, and you’re taller than him. You’re me.
He looks up at me, his skinny little arms still around my middle, and beams, and I find myself wishing my own son would look at me that way.
After a long silence, Philip speaks. ‘How did that go?’
‘Yeah. I think he kind of gets it. He seemed happier, anyway.’
‘Well done to him for sharing. That can’t have been easy. It might take time for him to grow to understand that fully, but perhaps you can hold him close this week, show him that you’re all grown up. Does he have anything else he’d like you to know?’
I think. The blankness is still there, but it feels lighter. Less ominous. ‘I don’t think so.’
I open my eyes.
‘You did very well.’ Philip cocks his head. ‘Very well indeed. Once your sceptical part agreed to take a seat, you really opened up. It seems like that little boy who was scared of failure very much needed to be heard.’
I nod, because I don’t have anything to add.
‘You know,’ he says, ‘if that instance of your father withholding love from you was in any way a regular occurrence, I suspect we’ll be hearing more from that part.’
I shift awkwardly in my armchair. I’ve been squeezing my wrist all this time. It’s sore, and the fingers gripping it are cramping. I realise it and give it a gentle rub instead.
‘Withholding love sounds… aggressive,’ I say.
He shrugs and taps his glasses on his knee. ‘What would you call it?’
‘I don’t know. Um, emotional punishment? Freezing out?’
‘All characteristics of emotionally immature parenting.’ He states it as a fact. ‘And all indicative of a parent who makes their love conditional.’
‘My father’s a complex man. He’s very… outwardly focused. He hates being shown up in public. And yeah, he definitely had his own brand of teaching me a lesson.’ Still does, in fact. ‘But he’s not violent, you know? He never hit me or anything.’
Philip arches an eyebrow at me. ‘From what you’ve told me, it sounds like he didn’t need to.’