On the back cover of
Alan Cumming's family memoir is a comment by Stephen Fry. He
describes the book as “a shattering, compelling and extraordinary
story”. It is that and much more. Anyone who has been on the
receiving end of physical or emotional abuse, be it in childhood or
in later life, will be able to relate to what happened to Alan
growing up in the Angus countryside and the effect it has had on him
during his adult life. There will undoubtedly be many glowing reviews
of this book, and quite rightly so, but this piece of writing is, for
me, a form of therapy in my own on-going battle with depression
and anxiety.
In his book Alan
mentions the therapy he has had over the years. His mental health
problems started around the time that his marriage was on the rocks
and he realised that some of his wife's behaviour reminded him of how
his father had mistreated him in childhood. I could relate to one
particular incident. Alan had been doing some gardening and became
very uneasy when he became aware of his wife watching him, though
from her point of view she was merely standing at a window looking
out at him in the garden. This innocent act brought back memories of how his father would stand and watch him doing some task or other. This would usually result in Alan being criticised by his father for not doing the job
properly and would be followed by some physical punishment. I thought
this was a very good example of how memories from our childhood can
come back to haunt us in later life.
I should say at this
point that unlike Alan's father, my dad was never violent towards me. I can remember him
losing his temper with me on the odd occasion but I don't think he
ever hit me. But Alan's recollection did remind me of something that
happened one evening when I was doing my school homework. Usually
when dad got home from work he would open my bedroom door and say
hello to me before going to his bedroom to get changed. But on this
occasion he came into my room, stood silently behind me and watched
what I was doing.
I was copying some text
from a book onto a sheet of paper and became very nervous about dad
watching me, so I took extra care and made sure I didn't make any
mistakes. After what seemed like several minutes, but was probably
less than one minute, he said to me, “Can't you copy more than just
one word at a time?” Of course I could, I thought to myself, if you
weren't standing there making me feel so nervous. He then left the
room and I heaved a sigh of relief.
This may seem like a
fairly insignificant incident but for a quiet, introverted sort of a
kid like myself, it had an effect on me. It must have done as I can
still remember it to this day, some thirty-five years later. Even now
I cannot concentrate on doing something if someone is standing behind
me, looking over my shoulder. I tense up and am convinced they are
going to criticise me.
One sentence in Alan's
memoir really jumped out at me: “But the
thing about boxes full of denial and unresolved pain and hurt is that
eventually... they explode.”
Since my initial
breakdown in 2002 I have, on occasion, exploded. My therapist once
described me as being like a jack-in-the-box. I have all this pent-up
emotion inside me. This isn't just childhood memories but all the bad
stuff that has happened to me in my adult life as well. If you don't have an
outlet to get rid of these feelings, they just keep building up.
Depression is sometimes described as being suppressed anger and there
are times I feel so angry about life that it all comes flooding out.
Admittedly, alcohol is sometimes the catalyst. It can be the key
that opens the jack-in-the-box. And when this happens it is not just
me who is affected by it but also those around me, especially my wife
who has been through some moments of hell when I do my volcano act
and erupt.
Therapy can help, as
can medication, but at the end of the day these are just short-term
solutions and you have to try and work through your problems
yourself. Often this is easier said than done, especially when the
cause of your pain is those who you feel should be
there to help and support you. I'm not blaming anyone as that doesn't
achieve anything. Sometimes people can be unaware that they are
hurting you because they are so wrapped up in their own lives and
have their own problems to deal with.
I imagine Alan Cumming
found it very therapeutic to write his memoir. As he says in his
book, there are times when you need to write stuff down. It makes it
more real. If you let all the bad memories go round and round in your
head or try locking them away in a box inside your head, you just end up feeding the black dog of depression and storing up trouble for
the future.
But I did not have the
sort of traumatic and violent childhood Alan describes in his book.
Without wanting to give too much away about how his story unfolds,
Alan and his brother did confront their father later on about the
pain and suffering they went through at his hands and it must have
been satisfying to have accomplished that as it brought a sense of
closure to the events of their miserable childhood.
The title of Alan's
book, 'Not My Father's Son',
reminded me of something that made my therapist laugh during one of
our sessions. We were talking about my relationship with my father
and I mentioned a scene in the film 'Frankenstein' which starred
Kenneth Branagh as Victor Frankenstein and Robert De Niro as the
Creation. Frankenstein had been lured to an icy cave by his creation
but he meant him no harm, he merely had a question for him -
The Creation asked him,
“Who am I?”
And Frankenstein could
only reply, “I don't know!”
