Awakening 3 - Family Visits, Massage, and My Worst Nightmare

Winter 2005

The winter had been challenging after a heady summer of parties and festivals, the first where I’d actually offered something at a festival, and it had felt good, inspiring and good.

A friend and I had started making clothes together and we were really happy sharing them on our own stall, and alongside, we chatted, laughed, played and danced with people who came and went throughout the day.

Later in the summer it turned into a tea tent alongside the clothes, and my love of hosting people and creating beautiful places was firmly planted in my heart.

We started sharing massages with people, and created chains of massaging people, all connecting and relaxing together. It was magical, and as I write, I realise the beauty of those days, for it my friend’s older brother who had taught me massage some 8 years earlier, and now a seed was planted:

I wanted to offer massages at festivals as a living!

I found a training course in Manchester, where I went to uni and that winter, though challenging like many winters had been, had bought the joy of rebirth. I had a direction for myself, and a way out of the financial trap I felt caught in through working a job I loved, but supplied barely enough money to live on.

I started training in January, and went off to Manchester, stayed in a hostel and enjoyed the learning environment, the expansion and a feeling of coming home and being with “my people”.         

I couldn’t wait to get started and set up my downstairs bedroom as a massage room. I bought green towels to match my mint green bed, prepared my oils and filled the room with candles, incense, and the other paraphernalia I needed to greet my new “clients”, the friends eager to support my new venture and receive their free massages.

And it felt wonderful.

Finally, something that felt like me.

Yet, it nearly didn’t feel like me…

Wearing an official black therapy tunic and smart trousers, I was doing what I love, but felt hemmed in by the formality.

Nevertheless I completed the course and was making headway with my required client sessions.

Here was the expansion.

Yet here was the challenge:

I was used to doing what I was told. I wasn’t used to making my own mind up. And I didn’t have any boundaries. I was working my day job every day, and every evening was devoted to my clients.

I’d listen for hours as they poured their heart out, and in the pattern I can still see now, I never said, “and that’s enough”… I stayed til they were done. I was in service and this was me living it finally. I just didn’t realised I needed a break, I didn’t realise how much energy I was taking on and not releasing.

But I was happy, and to me, it was all in God’s hands.

Energy rising…

Nearing Easter, I knew I’d have a few weeks off, and I wanted to enjoy myself after my hard work over the winter.

An idea hatched. A party!

And yet, I was terrified.

What if no-one came? What if no-one liked it? What might happen? Would it be ok?

I’m pretty sure I started sending out invites.

And then backtracked. I stalled. I worried. I panicked.

Family visit

I sidetracked and connected to my sister in law, and arranged to collect her and her son, my beloved nephew Alan, for a holiday.

I’d not long bought my friends van (a long held dream, with a view to convert it to a camper van), and off I trundled to Essex.

Now, I’d been to visit her before, and I knew the way, but this was before sat nav, and before google maps. I followed the way from the piece of paper I’d scrawled the directions on and all was fine until I hit some traffic on the M25, and I decided to cut through London.

Big mistake.

What could have been a 5 hour trip turned into an 8 hour trip, and of course, My sister in law was now worried. But I didn’t know it.

I arrived and it seemed fine, so we left for Wales, and the scene was set.

When we were back in Wales, I was still undecided about the party, so instead, invited a new friend over to hang out. He lives in a caravan on the estate where I live and I figured he’d be a friend for my nephew. But it wasn’t such a good move.

This guy was a teenager, but old for his years, whereas my nephew was just a little too young to be mixing with him. My innocence and expanded (ungrounded?) self hadn’t read the room, and the cracks were starting to appear between what I figured was ok, and what was ok with my sister in law.

I might just say here, we’d been close from the outset, being open minded thinkers, and despite the age gap, we felt like family. It’s just at this time in my life, I was expanding into new territory, and that felt dangerous. And I didn’t know how much I didn’t know, if you know what I mean.

We were getting on ok, but the next memories I have were of friends visiting and being worried. Perhaps they’d received my messages about the party and then hadn’t heard anything more, I don’t know. But whilst I remember being happy and elated, and like my life was finally changing for the better, apparently they were worried and I didn’t really see it at the time.

I was happy to see the light, beyond the job that was so fulfilling but offered no financial freedom - slave wages and it wouldn’t change any time soon.

I wanted to do something more aligned to my spiritual leanings and holistic living. I felt like I was arriving, and awakening to my true self and it felt good.

It felt exciting, but giddying, and I really didn’t know how to ground and integrate the energy I was feeling and sensing.

At times I was sat upstairs in my living room (it was an up-side down house) while my friends were in the kitchen and I was laughing while playing the piano.

Knowing about past lives all of my life, I was joking, wondering if I was John Lennon. Just imagine?! (And, I was playing “Imagine” at the time too). I loved the world, wanted to heal the world, I was a huge hippy and a musician, and could pick up nearly any instrument.

In my world, it wasn’t anything strange to ponder such potentials in our past lives, and yet, for those who looked on, it wasn’t normal or ok.

Right now, my inner world was bleeding into my outer world, my joy was overflowing, and my liberated self, was just a little too liberal for the friends and family around me..

A recipe for disaster, yet I still didn’t sense it.

I was just so happy to have Jainie and my nephew with me, and all the cares of my job and financial stress had melted away. I was happy to be studying massage, and happy to have the company, yet the joints, the happiness and the ungrounded energies meant I was moving farther away from them, and further into my altered state of being.

I started to receive reams of information, as I had in university, yet I hadn’t learnt then to write it down to use later on. I sat and “watched” it moving through with my inner eye, and felt alive and happy and grateful.

And from the outside, I’m sure it looked strange.

But for me it was bliss. More and more information, senses coming online, and knowing after knowing coming to me.

Before long, my brother arrived, being friends with Jainie and he called my Dad, the boss, and that was the beginning of the end. I believe he asked my friends to keep an eye on me, and later shared he was surprised at how lovely they were.

Yet they weren’t in the same place, and couldn’t reach me.

You could say, it was like I was tripping and they weren’t. And ironically, I’ve been around enough trippy people that I know how strange it is when you’re on completely different planes. Now I prefer to be sober; straight and clear headed, and the challenge to stay connected to people who are under the influence is very real.

But, I know so well that the altered consciousness is where we can receive wisdom: it’s where I go when I hold space so I can receive information for my clients, tune into my intuition and receive guidance from my spirit guides.

I just didn’t realise how it looked to the outside world.

I had no idea about opening and closing space, and therefore our chakras, to access these energies and shut them down when we need to “come back”.

Back then, I didn’t want to “come back”.

My life had been one long, stressful journey of seeking more, and then, I was receiving it, and didn’t want to make it go away.

But that wasn’t a choice, apparently.

The beginning of the end

Within a few short days, my Dad was back with a locum doctor and they evidently decided to get me to the local psychiatric hospital. I was guided to the back seat of the car and whilst I was enjoying the beautiful rays of the rising sun coming through the clouds, my dad and his wife were looking at each other thinking I couldn’t see their expressions in the rear-view mirror…

We entered the blandly decorated hospital wing together and found the near-empty communal room, with chairs and tables and the faint smell of bleach and urine, topped off with the buzzing of electric lights and a hot drinks machine serving caffeine the patient could probably do without.

I watched a woman walking round and round and chuckled to myself thinking “Can’t she see the way out?”, when in truth, there was no way out. Not at that time of the night. I had no idea it was locked for most of the day and all night. Round and round she went while I waited for Dad to talk to the on-duty nurse.

Eventually it was my time to go in, but not before I’d cleared the energy of the room using the table as an anchor point. Up to the ceiling and out, and down through the floor and out: my hands were on the table as I focused my intention to shift the haunting, stale energies of the stale ward.

And then I was in.

Comfy chair, yucky smell, bright strip light, intensive question and I’m talking as I usually do.

Openly, and honestly, with no thought to guard myself.

And of course, I backed myself right into their “crazy” corner.

My existential ramblings weren’t welcome at 5 in the morning, and it wasn’t long before I could sense her eyes rolling without rolling, and her mind was made up. But I didn’t know it.

I hadn’t clicked what might happen next.

We went back out into the ward, and some how, entered a corridor.

As I write, I realise by then, my parents had been sent away by then, knowing they’d keep me in. In direct conflict to my dad’s promise in the car: “Just a quick chat and we’ll come home”.  

As I chatted away like a lemon, sharing openly, a door shut behind us, and something didn’t feel right. I tensed up not sure what was happening, when a lovely looking man appeared at the window with a big smiling face!

Fuckers.

I fell for it, hook, line and sinker. Sucker punch.

He smiles and opens the doors.

Behind him are orderlies. Before I know it, I’m being wrestled to the ground as I struggle against their injection… and then I’m out….

Fuckers.

Am I here to stay?

I wake up stiff as a plank on a plastic-lined mattress in a cell-like room, painted breeze blocks for walls.

A nurse sits watching me without saying a word.

Urgh.

Urgh, urgh, urgh, urgh, urgh.

It hasn’t occurred to me until writing this, who knows what could have happened over night.

Who knows how long I was out. Who knows anything?

Mother Fuckers.

Now I know why it’s taken me so long to write that book.

Because that was a rape of my body whether it was a meat injection or a metal one.

How - the - fuck - dare they?

Mother fuckers!

I’m coming round but can barely talk or move. It’s all slowed down. I can’t think.

It sucks.

I shower in the prison like cubicle, and before long I’m taken to the ICU [intensive care unit], or solitary confinement, as it actually is.

A big room with windows all around it. They can see me, but I can’t get out.

I’m watched all day, and nurses change every hour.

A nice young one feels human and approachable, the rest are like matrons - a million miles away from my world.

Urgh.

It sucks.

The highlight of the day is hot chocolate in a plastic cup, the type you can barely hold until it’s too cold to enjoy.

But it breaks up the day.

I don’t know how long I’m in there.

Then I remember receiving flowers from a lovely man. He was the father of school friends, an intelligent and empathic man, and someone I was going to invite to my party.

But it never happened.

Two friends come in with more flowers.

But the world isn’t real any more. I don’t trust them. What can I ever say? What do they really know about me? Why the fuck am I here?

Yet I’m not here any more.

I’m numb and can’t think straight. I feel dead inside.

I’m alone and being punished for my joy.

The world doesn’t make sense any more.

Coming back from the bleak

I started sharing a room, being let out of the solitary place. That’s nice. Company. Some talk. Some gentleness from another “patient”, also there against her will.

They give you things, and help you get to find the breakfast and lunch. It’s like they’ve punched you in the stomach then offer to rub it for you.

“Really?” you think.

Yet in there, it’s the only comfort. No-one seems able to hear you, the nurses rushing around with forms to fill out, peering out from their office, surrounded by toughened glass, looking out to see what we’re doing.

A little love and a little healing

I meet a friend in the garden between the male and female wards, Dan.

He’s gentle and they say he “has schizophrenia”. I think he’s just sensitive and psychic. But who knows. He certainly doesn’t.

Like most of us, he smokes tiny “prison rollies” and drinks coffee after coffee from the machine.

It passes the time until you find something to do in the OT department that feels good.

I make pictures and try the pottery wheel. I make an ash tray and love it, listening to classical Fm, and trying to get the old woman who “helps” to stop wittering on to me.

Therapy isn’t therapy if you have to make small talk for someone else’s ego.

I’m not sure how, but I go home with a friend on the bus for a “day trip” to get things from home.

So I can be more comfortable. How fucking ironic.

After 2 months in total, I’m finally free and I load my things into a car, (probably mums, as she’s back from holiday).

I don’t want to see my Dad, ever again, at this point. Not that I could admit that to myself.

What could be something profound, is now something shameful. A problem. Like I was purposely hurting him. Purposely being a pain in the arse.

What the fuck just happened? I find’t see that coming in a million years…

Home

The summer is a drag. I’m in shock and eating their shitty pills as requested.

I eat and eat and eat, and smoke and smoke and smoke.

I invite Dan over and we get together. We drink decaf coffee with lots of milk and smoke our tiny rollies, and the days drag on and on.

Little by little, I start to come around, and he stays his quiet self.

Something isn’t clicking and the comfort we gave each other is wearing off.

But it’s nice to have company from those who know.

I don’t know who to trust any more.

I don't know what to do anymore.

I’m not allowed to be me anymore.

What the actual fuck?

An old friend invites me to a festival, and as we load my things, and they look at me as I step out of the door, I know I am forever changed.

I am different.

I am not like, them any more.

I am not there any more.

I don’t trust life any more.

The world is strange right now.

I’ve been inside a place that shouldn’t exist.

The festival was as it is. Lively and musical and full of people having fun.

Whilst I struggled with social dynamics before, it’s even worst now.

I’ve not found the humour in this situation yet. I feel only shame, for a crime I’m not even sure exists.

I smoke my beloved weed, my friend and safety, but of course, I withdraw inside again and have to lie down in my tent, alone.

I hear my old friends chatting away, and though I wasn’t always glued to them at festivals, now I’m really not with them.    

Where am I? Where is my place? What am I going to do?

Summer is over

I go back to work, and keep my head down. I smoke and dance when there’s something on I like, but I don’t know what to do with myself.

The massage room stands cold, no longer in use.

The house feels empty and I get a lodger.

It sucks despite him being kind.

I’m dead and alive, and nowhere in between and it feels weird.

Normality comes back, but I’m still not quite there.

A little bit of joy went away.

A little bit of innocence went away.   

Someone says to me, “You’ve put on weight, Caroline,” as only a scouser can do. And I take it from him as I respect him.

I stop the meds. I stop eating a Chelsea bun every day for comfort.

I spend time with my ex and his family as they are kind and seem to remember my old self.

They are kind and supportive and it feels like family, when I don’t feel safe with mine any more.

Life moves on again

I wonder to myself, did that really happen?

I'm back in the college job that barely paid me enough to live on, and wonder was I ever going to change my life….?

Things stay the same until an old friend moves in, I meet a soul mate, and my energy rises once again….and that, my friends is another story for another time and another blog…

If you‘ve been affected by any of the themes I’ve written about please reach out to your support network, your friends, family or the Samaritans. Don’t suffer alone!

And if you are alone, or you struggle (as I have done), then why not journal out your thoughts and feelings or find a workbook on my website to help you come to peace. You can also learn how to use EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), or another form of self soothing, so you can allow challenging emotions to move through your system.

You can always reach out to me for a chat, or to share you story, and at some point, see if we are a good fit to work together too.

Wishing you so much love and so many blessings on your journey,

Caroline Mary x