It’s Wednesday, 13:55. Do I have time to quickly grab some coffee? Probably not. I go anyway. Otherwise I won’t survive today.
At the café: “Oh hey, how are you?” someone asks, whose face I can never put to the name. “Sorry, I’m in a hurry, dad is waiting outside and I’m off to therapy,” I say hastily. “I’ll see you later!” But I’m kind of hoping I don’t. I don’t like the question ‘how are you?’ I never know how to reply. I hate being insincere, just as I hate oversharing. But then again – who’s really interested in other people’s problems? Why ask about something you’re not interested in? Why reply to something I don’t want to discuss?
Then I almost run. I barely say goodbye to dad on the pavement. And I keep thinking about the background on his phone, which really took me by surprise.
13:59. Lift to the fourth floor. Quick mirror selfie. “Ugh, never mind.”
“Hello, how’s it going? I’d love some water, I have coffee, thanks. Let me just reply…ok and I’m all yours,” I babble to my therapist. She is looking at me intently. I think she likes seeing me. I’m obvious to her.
“How are you doing, Míša?” she asks.
“I just had lunch with my dad and my brother. He came unannounced again, like always. He just goes off and then sees what next. Maybe I get it from him. I tell him I’m going to Japan for a month. He says he’s going to Venezuela for a month. I was a bit surprised, but I’m happy for him. That he’s living his life. That he’s doing something so he doesn’t just rot in that lion’s den. Well, in any case…I was taken aback by something today, which I haven’t had time to process.”
“Let’s process it now then,” my therapist encourages me.
“Well…I was helping dad with an app on his phone when I suddenly noticed his background. He had a photo of the cover of my book, Melancholic Rodeo. It caught me off guard.”
T: “How do you feel about it?”
Me: “I guess he never really showed he was proud of me. Even if that wasn’t his intention.”
T: “You can’t know that.”
Me: “I don’t know. It still needs to sink in. It was actually quite nice, that’s why it’s so weird. It made me think of what he’s been unable to do his whole life. It threw me off. I’ve distanced myself from my parents a lot now. I don’t speak with them unless I have to. That’s the only way I can manage now. I have to submit an article tomorrow. The title should be ‘Getting Dad to Therapy.’ The deadline is five to twelve and I know it, but I just can’t bring myself to write it. Because if I sit down to write, it means I’ll have to re-enter those feelings, and I’ll get mad. I’ve always…”
The more I discover about myself, the more I need to know. Once you step onto that train, you can’t just jump off it again. Maybe while it’s moving, definitely not without injury. Self-analysis, therapy, examining life patterns anchored in places where life itself began, becoming aware of the self, educating oneself through specialised literature, connecting with your emotions, trying to understand them, being empathetic, being able to understand the patterns of others, being kind to oneself and taking mental health seriously, considering or using medication, trying to avoid projecting one’s traumas onto others, dissolving generational trauma. Doing everything so that we don’t one day subject our own children to what our parents subjected us to, like their parents did before.
In my bubble of friends and acquaintances it is almost a given that everyone has some experience with therapy. It’s a major theme. We don’t talk about the weather, or what Jiřka had for lunch. We go deep together, we want to understand one another and ourselves. We try to understand how to build a castle in our little sand pits. And then out of the blue and unannounced, someone creeps into your laboriously constructed house, tended to over thousands of hours, and asks, “so what exactly makes you depressed?” And it all collapses like a house of cards. That someone could be a family member, maybe just some acquaintance, the neighbour’s dog or even Postman Pat. Everyone bears the same cross – generational differences.
*Wisdom incoming*: If I’ve learnt something on the journey to understanding myself, it’s that you can’t find peace towards your surroundings without confrontation and boundaries. Whether it’s confronting a partner who leaves socks lying around the place (I apologise for an outdated example, I haven’t had a partner in over three years), asking your boss for a pay raise, or even your mum, who inadvertently gave you such a heavy load in life…it has to go out!
But I also know that it doesn’t have to involve flying plates and insults. It can also be resolved with love. Or rather, it has to be resolved with love. Love may not decrease the pain which we often feel when the truth comes out, but it holds light, and isn’t that the only thing we need to see at the end of the tunnel? Or so they say in the films…
Some of us are lucky enough to possess the courage to confront our parents, at whatever stage of life, and reveal our pain to them. If they are loving parents (and at least slightly healthy-minded), they will accept our pain. I have experienced this, as have many others in my generation. But what next? When you get it out?
A couple of years ago I had the most fundamental discussion of my life with my father, concerning an individual we both loved very much and lost; we had never spoken about them since. In a moment of the utmost fragility and vulnerability, I got an explanation from my dad. The level of understanding and openness that every girl with ‘daddy issues’ craves. I shared all my struggles with depression with him, and the role he plays in it. He told me about his sorrows, even those from childhood, and I could finally understand why the sky is blue, the grass green, and my father emotionally unavailable his whole life, a little better.
I was in awe of the sincerity and closeness which I was experiencing with him for the first time. I could see, live, with my own eyes, with other eyes, even borrowed eyes, how his heart was bleeding before me, straight into my palms, and in my pathos, I could only see the opportunity to help relieve his suffering. So I asked him the Question That Must Not Be Named (Harry Potter, 2001): if he would consider coming to therapy too.
“Us guys resolve these things differently…I’m too old for that.”
In all heaven’s love, I believe the innocence of the words that he pronounced with such humility before me. But, blimey.
If I had known then what I know now, and if I had the inner strength and the world were perfect, I would probably tell him this:
“Dad, you’re talking to your 27-year-old (then 24-year-old) ‘strong and independent’ daughter, who leads a feminist (reader, please note, not ‘extremist’) lifestyle, who prides herself in her independence, career, supports herself through her art, publishes collections of poetry and can’t find a partner, because she feels like none of them can keep up with her. Sorry, but the line “us guys resolve these things differently” is bullshit. In which rational corner of your soul do you believe that a daughter of today will comprehend such an opinion? There is nothing sexier than emotionally intelligent men who go to therapy. Full stop, exclamation mark, exclamation mark, full stop. Nothing more to add.
Secondly, old. Old for what? To feel good about yourself in life? Question mark, question mark, dot dot dot, question mark. It’s never too late. Maybe to change one’s life after thirty years living with one person (hi, mum). It’s not too late to pack your bags and move to the other ends of the earth, because the wind is beckoning you. It’s not too late to end a career and learn something completely new. Luck is lying on the ground somewhere, you just need to stop being afraid that you might actually find it.”
Well…that’s what I would tell dad today. And then I’d like to turn to mum.
We all know that there can’t be black without white. The second, but not least, protagonist of my therapy sessions is none other than Venus herself. We often return to one line with my therapist which I wrote in my book: ‘I was baptised in the grief of my mother.’
The bond between mother and daughter is something so otherworldly that it has to be incorporated completely. Daughters (not only today) have either extremely good and close or extremely bad relationships. Nothing in between. I have the feeling that all my life I have accepted my mother’s pain as my own. I feel it so intrinsically that I often can’t think about anything else. Someone once told me I can’t save my mum. Maybe, but how do I go about it? I know there is one path. Getting her to the point where she will want to save herself. Getting her to therapy.
I can inform the reader about the confrontation with mum, too, and her pain, and that compared to dad she was accepted with greater care and emotional experience. And yet unfortunately I have to add that the desired outcome hasn’t yet manifested itself. After the years of unpaid therapy sessions I gave mum, I encouraged her to start going to real ones. She was open to it, but that’s where it ended.
How to get her there? Tears didn’t help, nor did pleas, nor threats. At the end of the day, everyone has to want to change things themselves. The last time I asked her if there had been any progress with the plan to start attending therapy, she said she already has a contact. But she’s had it for a while now and the number still hasn’t been dialled (me, on the other hand…). When I urged her again, she replied, ‘there’s still time.’
That’s fine then. Of course, take all the time you need. In the meantime, I will keep extinguishing the fire in this space-time continuum with petrol for you.
Psychotherapy has become an integral part of my life. Outdated perceptions that only those with mental disorders go to therapy are truly a faux pas. When someone in my generation says they don’t need therapy, it’s more an inadvertent confession that they are still repressing their problems.
My generation already knows that therapy allows us to shine a light in the dark room of our consciousness. It allows us to see our shadows and learn how to live with them. The shadows are here to stay. Despite all the problems that today’s age brings in its wake, the developing sphere of personal growth gives hope for the future of the world. Hope that we will return to ourselves once more; not in heaven, but here on Earth.
I’m not trying to make my parents suffer more by writing this article than I’ve already made them suffer through my numerous confrontations with them to date. To clarify: I had a beautiful and joyful childhood. They gave me nothing but love. Except that’s where the problem often lies; an ostensibly happy childhood doesn’t mean the child won’t bear trauma that arose along the way, even if it was caused unconsciously. We have a friendly and open relationship, which people rarely have with their parents. They know I love them, and I know they love me. It is a relationship which permits me to understand the relationships of others, and myself.
To my dear readers who are the same age as my parents; I don’t have any advice for you, nor is it my place. Perhaps just a request: consider looking into the mirror. If you don’t do it for yourself, do it for your children. Believe me, they will see true heroism in such an action.
This article appeared in the seventh issue of the print magazine N&N – Noble Notes
