I’ve found myself back in therapy again. Not real therapy, obviously, because real therapy exists mainly for famous people like sports stars and those in the arts world, not working class riff-raff like me. My version of therapy is very much of the search the internet variety and to do on-line questionnaires to see what’s wrong with me today. ADHD? Yes, that’s been diagnosed, although far too late to do anything about it. Somewhere on the autistic spectrum? Maybe, says a GP in our practice, but you’re ancient so don’t worry about it. ARFID? More than likely but hey, I’ve managed to get this far without starving to death, what’s another year (or hopefully longer)?
My therapy of sorts comes from a book. You know the sort of thing. One of those things with a hard cover with a nice picture on the front and pages of paper with loads of words on them. Anyway, this one is a memoir called The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man by a man who appears to be my brother from the same mother: Paul Newman. (I wish.)
Almost unable to read fiction, I enjoy a decent memoir and Newman’s is more than a decent memoir, culled from hundreds, maybe thousands, of pages by his friend Stewart Stern following his death. My life is obviously nothing like his, yet sections leap out at me as if they were written about me.
For example, Newman had virtually no childhood memories. Neither do I. I remember nothing about my early years, nothing about my Primary School years, a few snippets from my Junior School years but until my teenage years there’s a big sheet of blank paper. I have some photographs of me from my childhood, but they evoke no memories and what I thought were memories of things that happened are more likely to be memories of seeing photographs. I long concluded that the reason why my memories were so patchy was because there are very few of them, that my life was a relentless routine of the same things happening day in and day out, week in and week out, year in year out. Nothing much happened. The memories are of nothing. But there is a passage from the book which could have been written by me, albeit with far less literary skill. These are Newman’s own words:
“Most people who have never experienced themselves fully have in common that they remember some person – a teacher, a religious figure, a parent, an uncle, grandfather – someone about whom they can say, “That was my mentor. That was my rock. That’s who pointed me in the direction I followed, who inspired me, who gave me the example to learn from and emanate”
I never had that.
I’ve always wondered that I was never able to find a mentor. I never had anyone in my childhood I can look back on as an adult and say, “Boy, I never realised what a foundation that was, how I leaned on that.” I did get little bits of morality from my father; I don’t know what I got from my mother. I don’t know that any teachers gave me anything or any understanding of myself. No scout leader or camp person. Nobody in a church. Nothing.
As far as I can tell, I got no emotional support from anyone.
Not all of this applies to me. I gained no “bits of morality” from anyone. I had one teacher at senior school, a Portuguese woman called Mrs Defonseca, who taught me the beauty of the English language and set me free with my writing, but otherwise no teacher gave me anything else. I did not last long in the Cub Scouts because there was a culture of bullying in our local group and I was one of the bullied. I am happy that no religious figure got hold of me at any stage to proselytise me because that, frankly, is what religious people do.
My latest ‘therapy’ comes at a time in my life when in terms of what I do with my life no longer matters. I’m at or near the end of everything, including life if the truth be known. I am not going to become a successful and indeed famous writer, as Newman became a brilliantly successful and famous actor. As I read his story, I marvel at what he achieved and I have seen his life through different points of view which are both his and people who knew and loved him and who were told at the outset that their role was to be completely honest about the man. And it’s clear they were. Christ alone knows what my family and friends would write in my memoir once I shuffle off my mortal coil. Perhaps it’s best that I never find out?
But there is one thing above that stands out to me: if you need help for your mental health, then more often than not it isn’t there. Sure, the NHS does have ‘crisis teams’ for people who it is feared may harm themselves, possibly fatally and there’s always the Samaritans, some say the fourth emergency service and one of the most important charities of them all, but what of those whose mental illness is somewhere between slight and severe? I was diagnosed with ‘severe clinical depression’ but deemed not to be a suicide risk, which was broadly right and fair. My ADHD is not minor, either, but my local health centre says there is nothing they can do. Mind how you go, is the message. Perhaps the line between severe and suicide risk is bigger than I first thought – I don’t honestly know – but every time I hear of a suicide I think: what brought that on? What changed?
I have no doubts that most if not all my issues are down to my upbringing, the lack of role models, failure to note that there was something more serious wrong with me than wild mood swings, an inability to concentrate, an obsessive need to stick to a stifling routine, a tendency to fidget all day. At least I was sent to a child psychiatrist when I was, surprisingly, a child and maybe that took a slight edge off my condition that was permanent. I have no idea how these things work. But like Paul Newman, as far as I can tell, I got no emotional support from anyone. I did it my way, hardly for better and definitely for worse.
It was quite a shock to read the story of one of the best actors of all time and find big traces of me in it. I wonder how life would have been different had I had that mentor. That rock. That person who pointed me in the direction I followed, who inspired me, who gave me the example to learn from and emanate. But the people who were around were none of these things and now my best teachers are my own children.
Paul Newman was my latest therapist where I found I had the same story as he did. The end might be somewhat different but it’s interesting that we don’t just share the same birthday – 26th January – we share the same sense of loss and regret, too. It made me think, though, and that’s more than the NHS has managed for me in 20 years.
