A complaint or protest, especially about something relatively unimportant.
[verb]
1. To make a fuss; make much ado about trifles.
Am I relatively unimportant?
Trifles?
“She has to learn to travel in a car and come in to London and see her family. She is just a child and we have to guide her,” my dad would state as I tried to squirm out of the seatbelt, which would be pressing into my little bones.
“Even if she doesn’t like it?” Mum would argue.
“Yes! I had to go on visits when I was a child. It’s training for life. Look at Toby. He’s not making a fuss.”
FUSS FUSS FUSS
“But Simon, she’s so distressed. Look at her!” And I’d see his eyes dart to me in his rear view mirror and I could see his eyes soften.
“I know… I know… Look, I guess it’s just a phase. Aren’t we doing the right thing taking her to see her nan? Isn’t this what normal families do on a Sunday? I’m just trying here!”
“I know… I know…” Mum would half agree, “but I’m not a snob, Simon.”
And then we’d stand at the bottom of the stairwell and I knew that terrible fate awaited me. It doesn’t get better. I never get used to things. Doing stressful things often and more doesn’t make it easier. I just know what’s going to happen, i.e. Anxiety will launch a full-blown assault on my little body. Entering the harsh world of my sharp orange nan never changed. I would envy Toby, as he stomped up the stairs with his ear phones still on and I’d stand by the first, cold, hard step listening to Mum and Dad’s usual argument.
“Maybe she had a bad experience on the stairs that we don’t know about,” my mum would say. “Maybe when your mum took her out.”
“Don’t blame my mum.”
“Maybe she met a nasty dog on the landing and it’s given her a scare and your mother never told us.” Dad would mumble at this theory and walk up the steps ahead of us.
But it wasn’t a nasty dog, it was anxiety attacking, and it was the dread and fear of being trapped in a flat with overwhelming smells and tensions. And The Beast shows no mercy to age – even as a little girl it would pull and jostle me about the stairwells and throw me, terrified, near the edge of the concrete steps, as I screamed inside, gasping for breath and for someone to understand! To believe me!
Mum would try and coax me up the stairs and sometimes she just lifted me screaming, saying,
“Sorry, sorry, sweet heart. We won’t stay long.”
But it always felt like a very, very long time when we visited The Oval, and the last three times we visited I would not get out of the car and I ate my dinner sitting in the back seat, in the car park. Mum and Nan agreed it wasn’t working and I stopped my visits.
So the truth is I wasn’t going to The Oval at the weekend. I don’t go to The Oval any more. I lied, a nasty, dirty lie eroding me.
Talking about my feelings helps me clear my head…so I can deal with a few more days…
The day I told the lie about going to visit Dad was a Tuesday. I wasn’t pleased that I had told a lie – at all – but I was pleased that I told the lie on a Tuesday, as it meant maybe I could sort it all out, with Fiona. I see Fiona every Tuesday at 4.00. The powder blue room with beige chairs and a picture of three pebbles by a calm lake and the word Tranquillity underneath. Every Tuesday I leave school at 3.30. Walk, quickly, to the Good Life Therapy and Counselling Centre.
And this is why I go every Tuesday because I want a good life and I do want to thrive and reach my full potential. I don’t want a life of standing in cold stairwells or lying to people, but I make sure no one sees me as I run out of English. Fiona, my counsellor, says talking to a professional is perfectly normal and is a really positive life choice but I’m not sure Nev or Lara would agree with that…so I move fast on Tuesdays. Along the marbled, speckled corridor and I glance towards Science Room 3, where Lynx has just had Physics before he goes to football practice.
I want a Good Life.
Up the three steps to the school reception, slowing my pace down, to avoid Debbie, the Head’s PA, who shouts,
“DON’T RUN!”
And I want to say back,
“Don’t shout!”
Past the Head’s office. The Head.
HEAD HEAD HEAD HEAD
Count the Roman Coins in the glass cabinets – 12.
Down to the cloak room. Through the staff car park and exit the clanging school gates.
Along Vale Drive to a Good Life.
I like to arrive 10 minutes early and sit in the waiting room and I think about what I will say to Fiona and how I can work towards a Good Life! Sometimes the school gates are repeatedly clanging shut in my head or Debbie’s “DON’T RUN!” bats about inside my skull, but today it’s the tape worm LIE I told Shaznia which I’ve brought with me. LIAR.
The lie twitches and wriggles in my tummy and it feels like it might wake up fully and travel all round my body and take me over, squirm up my throat and crawl out my mouth.
The waiting room clock ticks its way to 4.00 and then wonderfully, beautifully, soft, reassuringly honest Fiona opens the door to the safe powder blue space. At 4.00 exactly! And says,
“Hello M. Do come in.”
And I love this. I LOVE this. Every week 4.00.
TICK TICK TICK
4.00 door opens.
We sit. She smiles. I copy her and smile too.
COUNSELLOR SILENCE
And she says,
“Tell me about your week M.”
And even though my weeks are full of anxiety and confusion, with possible splashes of golden good times, I want to clap my hands in joy at this predictable, ordered series of events. Why, oh why can’t all of life be like this?
And the lie twitches and I break the COUNSELLOR SILENCE and tell her about what I said. I’m wondering if I get the LIE out here maybe I could leave it in the room. I finish telling Fiona about Shaznia and what happened and trail off… I feel so guilty, I look up at the framed black and
