Fading stitches

I heard the words I heard his voice and I knew it wasn't mine. But how to know it's not just another excuse?

When I named the words that my ex, Jay (not his real name) used to control and stifle me, I was pretty sure it was real. That it was ‘something’.

The moment that I spoke those words out loud, I knew I’d dislodged something big. But, how to know it’s something real, and not another  … well, not another excuse for my failure to launch? How to say “But this time - THIS TIME - I know it’s different”. My friends and family are so used to hearing these same words, to encouraging me and listening but - but what if you’re 38, still earning a ‘modest’ wage and still … well, still floundering? How to say “I know that this time it’s different”? And to know it for yourself, deep in your bones?

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Like most people, I’ve got some choice childhood scars. The best is an inch & a half long, jaggery line surrounded by eight little dashes like a child’s bursts of sunlight. It’s the net result of thunderstorm + beach + fizzed glass lemonade bottle. The bottle exploded and a shard lodged itself in the crook of my little two-year old elbow. I don’t remember anything of the accident, I was too small.

The doctor told my parents that it would take longer to anaesthetise me than just stitch up my tiny arm, so they held me down, one adult to a limb, and cracked on.

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My post-uni working life started at the Institute of Psychiatry, working with world leading researchers. The team investigates how life’s experiences combine with the body and thoughts to affect each other; nature and nurture, and where’s the rub? So, what can happen to our body (e.g., smoking or living in a highly polluted neighbourhood) can affect our body (i.e., heightened risk of lung cancer/aggravated asthma).

Same too with our brains; if we are consistently bullied as children, for example, our stress response system becomes overstimulated. The stress hormones coursing through our systems can lead to inflammation - and, as I once asked, half way through a meeting, deep into a months long enquiry about inflammation, “Inflammation of what?!”.

“Inflammation” means inflammation of the red blood cells that move oxygen around our bodies. So, if they become inflamed, they can affect our organs as they move around our bodies. This can lead to life-long effects; a sad example can be seen in the lives of Dutch pensioners who were born during the Nazi-era famine. No-one knows why these changes occur but we do know that there are physical and/or mental health effects from what happens to the body.

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On returning from a dreaded symposium deep in the Alps with hard-core “How did your mother ruin your life” Freudians, a lecturer & expert on psychosis stirred her tea, her kohl rimmed eyes bugged out from under her fiercely straight fringe, “Ann, it got so bad that we had to say

‘Can we agree that the brain is in the body?!”.

Why did this conversation happen? Because old-school analysis can’t get its head around the fact that what happens to our bodies can affect our mental health. “They didn’t want to accept at all that anything that happened to the body could affect the brain!?!’” we laughed and rolled our eyes.

I have no PhDs. I worked at this world leading research institute for 11 years, communicating complex scientific models, proofreading manuscripts headed for the most important journals in the world and managing the delicate egos of careers academics and so I feel qualified to say: the brain is indeed in the body.

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So? I admit, this shit is circuitous. That’s what it’s like, living with an ADHD brain.

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When we can’t articulate, our bodies can give us clues about our needs. The evolution of feelings in your body is a survival mechanism; Notes from Your Therapist on Insta talks about them as feedback. If you’re consistently hungry, tired, sleepy or cold, this could be your body saying “HOLY SHIT DO SOMETHING”. If a GP or therapist is trying to find out if you’re, say, depressed, they don’t ask “Hey, are you depressed” because you probably don’t know (or if you do, it’s a way of benchmarking via symptoms such as insomnia, feelings of hopelessness or withdrawing from people consistently over a set period of time).

Why? Because - and this is the kicker - if the brain is in the body, they can affect each other.

So cardio exercise helps me to get the endorphins my ADHD brain lacks. My ADHD brain causes me to fidget my rings, play with my hair and make it physically painful to endure an hour and a half zoom call.

If you are consistently taught to ignore physical cues and boundaries you are learning to ignore something deep within you. As a child, the youngest of a few kids and only girl, I was told I was a drama queen, that when I said I had a headache I did not. That I asked too much. That I was difficult. As a mum now myself, I can see that ADHD kids can be challenging to parent. They can also be creative, inspiring and pure joy.

I learned that people telling me to shut up, go away and be quiet was normal. I learned to moderate and dull my voice because what I wanted was loud, unfeminine and sinful.

The whole time I was with Jay, I felt exhausted. Staring at the walls in army surplus & car shops, trying to parse Anglo-Saxon vocab in the VW garage where he worked, watching endless films that bored me to tears and ironing the front side only of his work teeshirts and all of his bedding, I felt dulled. But he was the entirety of my life and I didn't know how to make decisions so I just -

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This is why I knew this time was different, because my head felt clear like the day that my infected sinuses cleared and I could breath cold February air for the first time in three weeks. Like I was floating free of my body.

Like - and bear with me - it was like I pulled out the stone that was stopping a wound in my arm from healing and now, I know I’ll still have a scar - that’s fine. But the scar can heal - it won’t be infected or inflamed any more. I’ll remove the stone, disinfect the wound, cut off any tissue that’s rotten. I’ll stitch it together, I’ll treat it with bandages and keep it clean. Antibiotics might be needed, I’ll take them. The stitches and scars will be there. Like my scar that’s travelled an inch & a half up my arm as I grew, it can morph.

But I won’t feel the scar every day. I’ll just see it when I tan and the scar tissue shines white or when I smooth lotion over my skin or a new person runs their hands over my body and asks where these strange jagged sunburst lines come from. Then I’ll remember - but it won’t disable me every time I move my body. I can be free.

Photo by Paul Felberbauer on Unsplash