Page 15 of Not Moving Out
Chapter Seven
Joe
The first time I saw Karen was six months ago. I knew I needed help, but I didn’t want to tell anyone or go to Freya because I didn’t want her to worry, and so I kept it to myself. I still do. Karen O’Neill, my therapist, my secret, and the one person in the world who knows everything about the annoying fucking demons in my head. She was the only person I told about my panic attacks. It was when I knew I needed help because this thing in my head had become bigger than me, and I had no idea how to deal with it. At first I thought it was just me being stupid, weak, and that I needed to stop thinking about it, get my head down, work harder, and it would go away by itself. I needed to stuff it down, pretend everything was fine, but it didn’t work like that, and the panic attacks got worse. But with Karen’s help, I have managed to calm the voices in my head and understand myself better in the process, and yes, I know, I’m a massive fucking fraud and a piece of hypocritical shit because I refused to see a marriage counsellor with Freya, but this was different. I could just about deal with my own pain, my fears and deep-rooted anxieties, I didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to deal with Freya’s, too. I rationalised everything with the premise that if I could fix myself, then maybe I might be able to somehow fix my marriage, too.
Karen’s office was in a semi-detached house next to Wish Park in Hove that had a large children’s playground and a small cafe that served surprisingly good coffee. The house had been taken over with mental health professionals, and Karen’s office was in one of the old upstairs bedrooms. It was a simple room with just her desk and chair, and then two comfortable chairs in front of her desk. When I first saw her, I was disappointed she didn’t have a sofa like they always have on American television shows, and she said that wasn’t really her thing, but that if I was more comfortable lying down, she was happy for me to lie on the floor. I could even bring along a yoga mat if that was something I wanted to pursue. I said I would sit. She had prints of pretty landscape paintings on the wall, a tall, leafy plant in the corner, and it always smelled lovely. It was a beautiful, clean space with a comforting, peaceful vibe. I supposed that’s what she was going for.
‘So, Joe, how are you, today?’ said Karen with a relaxed, open smile, and I knew I would need to tell her that Freya and I had decided to separate. Karen was from Ireland, and somehow her accent always helped me open up. It was soft, smooth and mellifluous.
‘Fine, I suppose,’ I said before I paused. ‘Freya and I have decided to separate.’
‘Okay, Joe, that’s big news,’ said Karen, sitting up slightly taller, and jotting something down in the notepad she had in front of her. She always took notes during our sessions, which was slightly jarring at first, but I’d become used to it, and now I barely registered it. ‘We should definitely discuss that. How do you feel about it?’
‘Sad, obviously. We’ve been married for nearly nineteen years, and the fact it’s come to this feels a bit like a failure.’
‘What do you mean by failure, exactly?’
‘Exactly that, I suppose. We failed. We set out to be together for the rest of our lives, and now we’re not. It feels like we failed.’
‘But do you think of your marriage as a whole as a failure?’
‘No, of course not. We were really happy for most of it. We had Dolly, moved to Brighton, and created a wonderful life together.’
‘So if you’re saying that for the most part, your marriage was a success, why now do you deem it a failure? For most things in life, I think we can agree, that if it was a success for the majority of the time then we would call it a success, right? So, why in a marriage do we judge it differently? Why use the word failure?’
I looked out of the window for a moment. A warm ray of sunshine lent a soft glow across the room. Outside I could see a tree with a wonderfully eclectic array of branches, and then other suburban houses in the middle distance. I looked at one of the prints on the wall, a gorgeous English countryside scene, and I longed to be outside, perhaps walking on the South Downs. Despite living so close, I hadn’t been walking for quite some time. I think I had just forgotten about it. I could drive for twenty minutes out of Brighton, and then walk for days through the most idyllic countryside on earth, and yet I didn’t, and I had no idea why when it was all I craved at that moment.
‘I don’t know,’ I replied, looking rather uncertainly at Karen. ‘Maybe because marriage feels different. More personal. Freya and I were happy, and now we’re not. I wish we could be happy again, like we used to be, but I don’t know how we do that. Going backwards feels impossible and moving forwards even more so. Falling in love with her felt so easy, but maybe staying in love was the hard bit we just didn’t see coming.’
Karen looked at me across the table. I never quite knew what she was going to say or suggest. The truth was, I hated therapy. I despised the idea of sharing my deepest, darkest fears with a complete stranger. I only came to her because I felt like I had no choice. When it came down to it, I was more scared about what might happen if I didn’t get help than the help itself.
After years of professional failure, I was terrified I was done, that my career as a writer was over, and then what would I do? If I couldn’t provide an income for my family as a writer, what was I? Perhaps it was just a classic midlife crisis. A crisis of identity. Being a writer was all I had ever wanted to be, and if I wasn’t that, what was I? My heroes growing up weren’t athletes or world leaders, but comedy writers. I grew up inspired by the great sitcoms of the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties likeFawlty Towers,Only Fools and HorsesandBlackadder, and it was all I aspired to be, and then it happened. My own sitcom on the BBC was the holy grail. My dream had come true, and it felt like winning the lottery, but when it was gone, it felt like my heart had been ripped out. Some days I sat at my desk, and wrote nothing, because the pressure seemed too great, and others I would bash away for months at something, which would end up in the bin. I was anxious, couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, and then, of course, the panic attacks started, paralysing moments of intense self-loathing, and that’s when I came to see Karen.
‘I have a question for you,’ said Karen, putting her pen down on her desk, and then looking back across at me. ‘If I could give you one wish, what would it be?’
She had pulled that one out of the bag, and I had no idea what my answer might be. Actually that was a lie. I had two answers, and I was weighing up which one she wanted me to say. Sometimes therapy was just about playing the game.
‘Just one wish?’
‘Yes, Joe. If I could grant you one wish in the entire world, and before you answer, it can’t be for more wishes. You have one wish, what would it be?’
There were obviously two clear front runners for this question. One wish would be for Freya and me to be in love and as happy as we once were. The second wish would be to have a successful sitcom on television again. She knew this was my biggest hope for my life, and she was using it against me.
‘I have an answer, but it has a caveat.’
‘Go on.’
‘If I had one wish, it would be to have a successful television series again, but the caveat is that I genuinely think if my career hadn’t gone to shit then Freya and I wouldn’t have reached the point we have now. I think if I could be successful again, then maybe there would be a chance for my marriage, too.’
I looked at Karen with a smile, hoping I had given her the right answer or at least an answer she would agree with, but when she looked at me, it was clear I was wrong – although I’m sure she had once said to me that there weren’t any wrong answers in therapy.
‘Joe, why do you always associate your professional success with your personal happiness?’
‘Because that’s how I see it. I need to be happy and successful with my work to be happy and successful in life. Isn’t that how everyone thinks?’
‘So you believe that if you reached your professional goals then everything else in your life would just fall magically into place?’
Karen always had a way of looking at things that was different than mine. She liked to twist whatever I said into something else. It was quite a gift, which was why she was obviously a good therapist. I didn’t see the world in the same way with the same complicated narratives. Why couldn’t it be as simple as when I was happy at work I was happier with myself, and therefore a better husband and father? What was so wrong with that narrative?
