Unscrewing the back of your heart

 Is something that you should never do. Any ten-year-old (and not just boys) will tell you that the clock will never run properly again after you have had its guts on the kitchen table. "I just wanted to see how it worked. I never meant no harm" And a clock is just a clock but a heart is a heart. 

And I would also add to the top-line rule that you should never follow Facebook links to people who claim to be able to help you by diagnosing the one feature of your heart that is causing all the problems. I am sure that is not how it works, and one way or another they are more interested in your money than your heart. And hearts are more valuable. 

Well, I am going to have to blame therapy for this post, but only chemotherapy, and only part of it, because part of my chemo involves a regular blast of steroids which has you up at 4am if you are lucky (2am if unlucky) and bouncing around from thought to thought like a 1980s speed-experimenter (and I'm not talking cars). So for the last couple of hours I have been thinking about why I feel and react in the ways that I do, and whether there could be things that explain some of them in more detail than I have previously known. I have to say that, rather boringly, I am not talking usually about feelings and reactions that are harmful to me or that threaten my relationships, but more about ones that are usually good and don't seem to piss other people off (OK, the 'penny-in-the-slot-fact-machine' can annoy some). But my actions and reactions sometimes piss people off and it behoves me to do that less, and even the good feelings deserve my understanding, so I can shepherd them and feed them if they look a bit paler. So I am willing, without using a screwdriver, to think a bit more about what makes me tick. 

But the other person I am going to blame for this post is Alain De Botton, as I am part way through his very enjoyable novel 'The Course of Love', in which he intersperses the story of a marriage with his italicised comments on 'why he/she felt that way and did what they did'. It is sympathetic and often emotionally insightful, which of course doesn't make it all true, but I very much appreciated the way that he praises the way that we stay together rather than just get together. As he says 'Why do we so often ask 'how did you meet?' and not ask 'how have you stayed in love enough together these 20/30/40 years?'

He knows the answer to his 'Why do we ask..' though. The second question, though much more interesting and which could reflect much more glory on the answerers, does raise all kinds of possibilities for failure and un-love, so we leave the question hanging, perhaps until we all get really drunk one evening. And at the heart of what happens in a long relationship there are two hearts. Two ways of seeing the world and seeing oneself that come from all the life we have had, before and after the other heart arrived. And two ways of seeing another person as well as seeing yourself. 

To be less vague for a moment, De Botton gives an example of when the man, Rabih has to be living away from home for a few days for work, and is not enjoying it in his Travel Lodge Hotel, but when he phones up to try to find comforting words from Kirsten, he gets no words of comfort or love, and instead what is obviously the tail end of someone who has been crying. And the next time, the same things happen. And the author characterises it as one of those moments, and I can identify these in my own life, when something else is happening. And the person you love has fallen victim to some temporary madness. Don't worry though, the next time you might be the temporarily mad one. And it seems that the reaction that the (sane) person sees is 'not about what has just happened', but about something else, and something that goes to the heart of the person reacting. I do loathe the word 'triggered' but this might be the one place where I am going to use it. Something in the 'now' event has just put your loved one back into another time and another set of feelings which are so part of them that they are impossible to resist and may be impossible to explain to you. 

But you have married (or promised your undying love) to this person and that includes all of them, if you really meant it. And you may have to just suck this up, or you may eventually get to see a bit more about how their heart works. And mutatis mutandis, your loved one may end up doing the same with regard to your own madnesses. And if you really love them, as the Romantic promise tells us, you don't just love the sane bits. 

So, covers off, what do I discover when I try to prod around in my own heart? I feel very lucky to have been gifted with love of family and friends, and support there whether I needed it or not (having something there when you don't need it is just as lovely) but at the same time have felt guilty that I just lapped it up and didn't tell people how much I loved it. And in a Catholic family guilt is a very easy currency, even just from the catechism. But guilt is a cramp on your feelings too, and makes you keep your head down and say less rather than, as in this case, saying more and telling people 'I love you'. And if you second-guess your own feelings you end up doing silly things like practising what you are going to say when you walk into the room with your family member/friend. Or you say nothing for fear of saying the wrong thing. Life can be so much more enjoyable without guilty feelings, and at periods in my life I have had the luxury of not feeling that way at all. And the older I get the better it gets. But you regret the earlier loss of communication and joy, and I blame myself for that (PS, that was a joke, natch).

Another thing I notice when I look at what I have done and how I have felt, is that I can prevaricate and wait for things to happen rather than make them change (and I'm only talking about things that were within my power to change, not dumb fate like cancer or being 5 foot 6).  Grasping nettles is meant to sting less rather than tentatively touching them. So why? Why prevaricate? Well, you can never be wrong if you prevaricate, because you haven't made a decision. You can be stupid, late, or dumped, but you can never be wrong. And if being wrong is the thing that you fear more than other things, maybe prevarication makes sense to your heart. So perhaps I have to accept that sometimes I will be wrong, and do it anyway. 

Getting bored yet? Well the last thing I noticed when I peeked through the panels on the back of my heart was that I can avoid conflict with a very assertive person when conflict is the very thing that they need and that will work. Cro would always say that if you tried to meet an unreasonable person half way, you end up starting off on the edge of your own penalty area (well she wouldn't have used that metaphor at all, but that was what she meant). And Cro may well have been one of life's badgers, but she was also right. When you meet an unreasonable person, push right back. Then work it out, mano a mano. Male or female, of course. 

So why do I have this way of feeling/behaving? The English primary school education system and the dynamics of Irish families of course. Being a 'good boy' in both arenas did not sit well with conflict. So you keep more of your credits and get no demerits if you avoid conflict. You can be a swot, or snarky, or equally un-nice things, but avoid direct conflict. The only person I have had a punch-up with in my entire life is my own brother (that was allowed when you were ten or eleven). I am now secretly assembling my own personal list of 'People I should have punched'.

So now? If I understand my reactions a bit better, how does that help? Well, I can look back at something I have just done and think "Ah, that explains it. Now go and fix it. Tell them the thing you should have said, and not what you did say.". Or, even better, when I can see a situation coming up when my childhood reactions will push me one way, I can push myself back to a different course. Say 'I love you' or 'thank you', or 'fuck off', or whatever is the grown-up thing to say in that situation. Yes.