Conversations with God - Part 8

In 2002, I was diagnosed with clinical depression, a condition not helped by the bottle or two of scotch whisky I consumed every day. Yes, I drank because I was depressed. And I was depressed, in part, because I drank so much. Alcohol, after all, is a significant depressant.

I was prescribed regular medication, first Ciprimil and later Lexapro, at a dosage high enough to keep this affliction under control, save the occasional but generally short-lived relapses. I take it to this day, with positive results and few side effects (that I am aware of, anyway).

Concerned about the long-term impact of taking this medication, in 2010 I decided it had gone on long enough, so I visited a psychiatrist to discuss the alternatives. Having reassured me that there would be no long-term side effects of Lexapro, this psychiatrist suggested that the best alternative might be long term psychotherapy – you know, sitting down with a shrink for an hour each week for as many years as it takes, taking about life, the universe and everything.

I decided to take his advice and made a series of weekly appointments with a Jungian psychotherapist. We started the process of having conversations, not dissimilar in many respects to the ones I am having with you, God. We discussed just about everything and, in time, I found myself disappointed when each of the sessions ended. There was something strangely comforting about these conversations, as intense as many of them were.

It seems I am a complicated person, with all too many contradictions. Certainly too many for my comfort. But we kept on talking and talking.

As you would expect, the topic of conversation inevitably got around my mother. I was surprised just how long it took to get around to this testing but clearly important subject. The conversation wandered around all over the place as such conversations so often seem to, until my Jungian friend asked me the first big question: ‘Did your mother love you?’

My immediate and unqualified response was YES!! Of course, my mother loved me, she was my mother.

He then said: "You seem sure. Do you know this intellectually, or did you feel it?" Again, I responded quickly that I both knew it and felt it. Silence ensued as he looked at me in anticipation and I pondered my response, largely because of the way he was looking at me. Slowly, I looked up and said with some hesitation: "I knew it intellectually!"

He continued to look at me, I sensed with a sense of inner smugness, and asked: "So, you did not feel it?" I responded that I didn't think so and he asked: "Could your mother show love?"

Aha! It was the first major revelation for a few weeks. But what did it mean and what were the implications?

I have pondered this lack of demonstrable love ever since and continue to do so. During this time I reflected on my relationship with my mother, her relationship with her mother and her mother’s relationship with her mother. I also reflected on my mother’s relationship with her daughter. I knew all four of these women well.

They all loved each other and I knew that. But on reflection, they rarely created an environment in which that love could be felt. They were all strong, stoic and hard women with many fabulous qualities, but each one criticised their mother for being just a little too strong, stoic and hard. Each mother had love in her heart, but struggled to demonstrate it in a way that made their offspring truly feel it.

I have been criticised for many years by the mother of my son, for not conveying love to others, despite the fact that she knew that love existed. She cited this as a feature of my family. It was not a feature of my family, but it was a feature of my mother and me. It remains a feature of me, my mother having died three years ago.

The fact is, I am not very good at all at demonstrating love, even when I feel it profoundly.

I am not suggesting this is a good or bad thing, but I am suggesting it is, at least in part, the result of my mother’s role in my socialisation. Socialisation makes us who we are - and this is part of who I am.

Freud wrote often about the power of the relationship that a boy has with his mother. I will write more about my relationship with my mother and the impact it has had on shaping me in part two of this conversation.

For now, I loved my mother and I ‘know’ she loved me.