I doubt I will ever know what it feels like to complete a marathon, but this was my equivalent. In this moment, when I looked at my body, all leaking and floppy and freshly stitched up, I felt nothing but absolute awe. This was the day I knew for sure what my body, my glorious piano accordion of a body, was truly capable of—it had made, and given birth to, an actual human being.
I had almost forgotten about my dream all those years ago, that one I had shortly after meeting Marty, when a baby girl came to me and told me her name was Asha, a word meaning hope and life. But Marty remembered. He was the one who said it first, ‘Shall we call her Asha?’
And that is the day our old life ended, and our new life began.
Three months after Asha was born, feeding her early one morning with the radio on, I heard it for the first time, our song, ‘Human Being’, playing on Melbourne’s most popular community radio station, Triple R FM.
All I could think to do was block Asha’s ears and once again yell, this time in pure excitement, ‘Marty! It’s happening!’
I sat still as I listened to our new song on the radio, feeling the joy of progress, the joy of knowing that dreams do actually come true. Even though the song ended, and might never be played again (said Frank), it was out there now. My work in the world had begun.
Later in the day, humming the song to myself, a thought came to me: I used to wonder if there was a name for whatever it was that was wrong with my brain. Yes, actually, there is. And it’s exactly the same name one could use to describe whatever it is that is right, and good, about my brain.
I’m a human being.
These storms make me ever more so.
Epilogue
Our brains are storytelling beasts, and that can work both against us, but also for us. Happiness, although fleeting, is real, and much closer than we think. It comes to us in moments, and seems to leave far too quickly, but there is always more good stuff to come. And if it’s taking too long, well, we have the power to choose to retell our brains the story of that happiness any time we like. If I’m making that sound simple and easy—forgive me—it’s neither of those things. It takes a good deal of dedication to develop the discipline to remember about this power. I still forget it all the time. I still need all the reminders I can get.
Twenty years on, Frank hasn’t fucked off. He’s still here, still banging away. For a long time I took this as a sign that I wasn’t ‘recovered enough’. I thought he was supposed to go away; his silence would be my signal that I was ‘all good’. But as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to understand much more about Frank, and why he came and why he stays.
In the heady waters of a disrupted childhood, it was his voice that kept me company, his voice that gave me a story I could use—the one about how, if I was a good girl and stuck to the rules, I would one day be rid of all these bad feelings inside me. I would one day know the safety of what it felt like to fit in.
Even in Oxford, where he went too far in the wrong direction, the whole thing now makes much more sense. The voice of Frank was loud because I needed help. My breakdown was horrible, but it was also the moment that I became willing to stop lying—to be honest about what I was feeling, to be honest about what I really wanted to do with this life of mine.
We are quite polite to each other these days, Frank and I … I don’t swear at him quite as much—a gentle ‘No thanks, Frank, not today’ generally seems to do the trick. But, in an emergency, Frank is the one I want on my team. He is the voice of my survival brain. He gets things happening, and quick. And he is also the one who forced me to learn how to accept life on life’s terms.
We don’t get to choose the circumstances into which we are born. We don’t get to choose our genetics, the weather, not even what time the train is going to arrive. We don’t get to control space, or time. Try as we might, the only person we get to choose to save is ourselves.
I know now that the nexus of my power lies in my higher brain’s ability to choose which stories I’m going to listen to, which stories I’m going to believe, going to support, and going to act upon. Which stories I’m going to allow to be true.
Additional resources
One of the best things I can tell you about anxiety is this—that no matter how far up the garden path your anxiety has dragged you, recovery is absolutely and completely possible.
One of the most important tools I used in my recovery (besides FAFL and FOF) was the tool of telling the truth to someone who cared.
Telling your story to a psychologist or GP can seem (before you do it) like one of the most frightening things. It was for me, which is one of the reasons it took so long to find Ron, but I am so glad I found him.
I also want you to find that person who cares, which is why I asked my friend and colleague Dr Charlotte Keating to help me put together this letter, explaining where you can start.
My general advice is to just start here. Even if you can’t quite articulate what you’re feeling, or why
