Message in a bottle.

Seems Im not alone at being alone. Self Acceptance. Loss. Friendship.

Arh I feel tired, tired around the eyes, that’s one way of looking at this, another is an old friend died this week, someone I was estranged from but someone who entered and exited my life with the same profound impact on my life that perhaps my tired eyes mean I am grieving and reflecting.

I want to honour her memory and how she touched my soul and changed me. I want to write this as part of my grieving process to say goodbye to her.

This feels like a very vulnerable piece to write but I am processing this and with the theme within this piece about accepting myself I am going to honour the acceptance I have of myself now, mistakes and all, as I know we are all more alike than we are different and with acceptance of ourselves we find acceptance of others. So here goes.

As I started writing this piece I heard a childhood song on the radio that I thought perfectly described how she came into my life. Message in a Bottle by The Police. I did send out an SOS to the universe, I was so lonely and my message was received and this special friend entered my life when I needed a best friend the most. I am forever grateful to her and to the universe. She is a part of my life journey, a part of my history, a part of me and she always will be.

People travel along our life path for specific periods, for specific reasons, not everyone is meant to be with us throughout our lives. I am thankful for this person, this soul that supported me and I her and all the fun and tears we shared together.

ENTER

The first day she entered my life I was in a strange city, having just moved a few days earlier. I was starting my A’levels, a few weeks late to the course. I was 17. To make my way home from the college I recall my Mums friend saying ‘stay on the bus for 40minutes until you see the Tudor black and white houses, then get off and walk to the flat’ No phones, no internet, no friends, just a few simple directions, how brave and strong little me really was.

After registering with the college on my first day I remember so clearly walking into my English class, it was just before lunch, the head teacher brought me in and we stood at the front. Silence descended and she said ‘this is Fiona, she is new to the school and the area, who would like to take her for lunch ?’

Oh god I thought this is so embarrassing, but I’d already done this the year before when I moved from Manchester, England to New Jersey, USA and started an American high school, so these familiar uncomfortable feelings were often coming to visit me. My fractured family couldn’t find their footing, their grounding, so we moved around quite a bit for a few years.  Now I was in the north of England in Newcastle. I knew absolutely no one. ‘Here we go again’, I thought, ‘I don’t even want to be here’.

Looking round the classroom at the students I started scanning for who could take me for lunch as I actually did need someone as I didn’t know where the lunch hall was. There were lots of children just staring at me with equal measures of curiosity and boredom. There were a few groups of kids with their hands up, there were 2 girls at the front of the class with arms stretched vertically up to the sky in perfect silhouette - ‘we would love to Miss.’ ‘O’h no you don’t’, I thought, I don’t want to hang out with the squares.

Then I caught sight of a boy and a girl at the back of the class. The boy was pulling the girls arm up into the air and she was laughing and pull it down and saying ‘stop man’ in a slight geordie accent, they looked fun. They were laughing.

The teacher looked at me and asked ‘ who would you like to choose’ and I said ‘those 2 at the back’.

And just like the Robert Frost poem, ‘that made all the difference’.

They both became my best friends, the girl and I were inseparable, we had such fun. We were an unlikely pair. I discovered a few weeks later when I visited her home, she was uber rich and I was pretty poor. my mum and I were renting a dead man’s flat that my mum had been offered on the cheap from one of her old friends who had moved to their area to care for this relative, all his furniture still in situ in the flat when we moved in.

Me age 17, few weeks after meeting my childhood friend. Sitting outside my flat showing off my new ‘Lisa Stansfield’ haircut, we had both gone and got statement haircuts that day. Im smiling looking at her as she takes this.

I had such a strong Manchester accent, it was 1989. My elder brother was dj’ing at the hacienda night club in Manchester at the time so for this girls parents I was a walking, talking druggy raver, think of the scene from the movie Weird Science ‘ crisps, dips, chains and whips’, the horror on the parents faces as they tried to engage with their daughters new friend. But me and my new bestie were as rebellious as each other (there were no chains or wipes by the way) but o’h what dancing and fun we had. 

Now as a 51 year old psychotherapist, I look back on my adolescent self and I am filled with compassion, affection and sympathy. I was really struggling with life events, things were hard and in the mists of all this I discovered someone else who I connected to who related to me, who was also experiencing adverse life experiences and this I see clearly was trauma bonding. We found each other when we needed someone and we supported each other through our struggles and our pains.

How powerful our energy aura must have been that I could sense she was like me way back in that English classroom. The moment I set eyes on her I knew on a cellular level that she was like me. We had both sent out a message in a bottle and this was our response. For many years we were struggling along trying to understand what life was asking of us, making mistakes together and then apart.

EXIT

She exited my life just as dramatically as she had entered. One of the mistakes I made in my early years impacted her and she cut me out of her life after I broke her trust and snogged her boyfriend one drunken night. Because of this my life took another turn on the Robert Frost path and again it made all the difference. I am here now after years of healing, self development and becoming a qualified psychotherapist partly or mainly because of her (alongside my adverse lived experiences of course). Thats a pretty huge statement to make and I am pausing to reflect if that is accurate…yes it is.

Just before she cut me out of her life I had started my healing journey and I had been to the Scottish Borders to play an old Scottish spiritual board game called “The Transformational Game’. You have to bring a question to the game before playing and I will always remember mine ‘How can I love myself fully and unconditionally?’

I spent the day playing the board game, its quite a magical and moving experience. When I left at the end of that day, the facilitator said to me,

‘ Happy Transforming, now pay attention and watch what happens in the coming days and weeks.’

Honestly that is what the facilitator said and the very next day, in fact the very next morning my childhood best friend came knocking on my door and said, completely out of the blue ‘I have discovered something that Im not happy about that you did 12 years ago and I don’t think we can be friends any more.’ How was that even possible ? but it was.

I felt quite devastated and feelings of shame and guilt emerged. A journey commenced into exactly what I had asked the transformational game ‘ How can I love myself fully and unconditionally?’ Now, with this situation, can I love myself, now, even with this shame and guilt ? As I said at the start it feels quite vulnerable sharing this, it was a dark night of the soul moment for me as I had blocked out the incident as I felt so bad about it and had pushed it into my unconscious, my shadow.

I feel its important to reflect on this and I want to honour this pivotal point in my life and how this childhood friend played a part in it. She played such a large part in me accepting myself, even without knowledge or willingness, but she did for me.

She did ask a mutual friend about me just a few years ago and that mutual friend explained how I was thriving and my life was good and my childhood friend said in her jokey manner ‘well that’s good to hear, Im pleased and I suppose I did her a favour then really didn’t I’.

That was the journey I went on and I can honestly answer now almost 20 years later, yes I do love myself and accept myself. Yes I have made mistakes and yes I regret things I have done but that does not impact the love I have for myself. I know that as a human being we all make mistakes and we often hide them in shame and guilt. Mine were brought out in the open and I was brave and felt the feelings and let them move through me. So even though this childhood friend hasn’t been in my life for a long time, I always loved her from afar and I will always honour her and continue my healing journey and share the importance of accepting ourselves fully for who we are. By including our shadow and starting our journey to individuation that, as Robert Frost says ‘makes all the difference.’

I always held and will always hold you dear to my heart.

Message in a bottle - song by The Police

Just a castaway, an island lost at sea, oh
Another lonely day with no one here but me, oh
More loneliness than any man could bear
Rescue me before I fall into despair, oh

I'll send an S.O.S to the world
I'll send an S.O.S to the world
I hope that someone gets my
I hope that someone gets my
I hope that someone gets my message in a bottle, yeah
Message in a bottle, yeah

A year has passed since I wrote my note
I should have known this right from the start
Only hope can keep me together
Love can mend your life or love can break your heart

I'll send an S.O.S to the world
I'll send an S.O.S to the world
I hope that someone gets my
I hope that someone gets my
I hope that someone gets my message in a bottle, yeah
Message in a bottle, yeah
Oh, message in a bottle, yeah
Message in a bottle, yeah

Walked out this morning, I don't believe what I saw
Hundred billion bottles washed up on the shore
Seems I'm not alone at being alone
Hundred billion castaways, looking for a home

2 books that helped me to accept my self and work through my feelings at the time that I read often were:

There is nothing wrong with you by Cheri Huber.

Below I have just discovered with great joy that there is an audio recording of the book on YouTube read by the wonderful author herself Cheri Huber.

I hope you find it helpful. I think everyone would benefit from this book at any point in their life.

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

I read and reread the chapter on Suffering and it was a life line during my self acceptance journey.