I like this time of year. Not just because of the pumpkin-flavored everything, but because it’s spooky season when it’s not only fine, but celebrated, to be scared shitless. The rest of the time, being scared is generally considered a mindset for softies, and we’re all instructed to put on our big girl/boy pants and face our demons. But in Halloween season it’s perfectly acceptable to be shitting a brick - which is incredibly convenient considering the current political climate.
A friend looked at me weirdly this week when I said that I thought the stories we should be afraid of are not those which lie in our future, but instead the ones we carry from the past. And I do really believe that.
Because, personally, the scary stories that lie in front of me are all what-ifs: What if I lose my job? Or what if I lose my house? What if I spend all my money and have to live on the street with a shopping cart? What if the doctor says….? Blah blah blah. Really, my ‘fear of the future’ stories haven’t evolved much in structure since the original “What if there’s a monster hiding under my bed?” that I was so fond of as a very small kid. Change the nouns and they’re all the same story.
But my stories from the past. Jeez, those are much more terrifying. Because those are definitions of who I think I am, or how I expect I will be treated, what to look out for, and what not to miss, and those suckers can sway the direction of a whole life.
Like there’s a woman called Mrs Dunbar (though creature might be a better description) who made me stand in front of the class when I was 6 and instructed me to say why I thought I was better than everybody. (Note: I didn’t think I was better than everybody, and hadn’t ever suggested so. But Mrs Dunbar had had an argument with my Mum and so had thought this would be the best way at getting back at her.) Anyway, I was terrified and speechless and standing trembling in front of my whole class, I honored the ancient Greek God Poseidon by bursting into tears and peeing myself at the same time.
Now that there is a story I would love to forget. But that fucker has hung around my whole life like a bad smell. Has it ever stopped me from being a jerk? Of course not. I’m a person, and people are, from time to time, jerks. But it has definitely stopped me taking opportunities I could have, and that’s the part that’s scary.
Because even now, I still have an absolute terror of appearing arrogant or self-aggrandizing. Whenever I’m put on the spot to talk about an achievement, I mentally go right back to the dampest version of myself at age 6. “So, Lynn, why don’t you tell everyone why you think you’re special?” and I find myself dumbstruck.
Now obviously, like everyone, my past isn’t all sunshine and roses. I’m pretty sure I have sagas I could tell which could provoke the odd shriek of horror. But if I was trying to scare you, I’d need to take a moment to really try and consider what those tales would be. Whereas when I’m scaring myself, the Mrs Dunbar story is right there in my head, front and center. Because the most frightening stories of all are the ones we tell ourselves about ourselves.
We kind of went through that with Fergus this week. Having finally settled on what interests him in life, Ferg decided he wanted to transfer to a different college in the Spring and major in English Literature (to the absolute surprise of nobody, by the way).
Counselors at the college he’s at, reckoned he’s a shoo-in because he’s worked hard and his grades are great. For our own part, Mark and I are just thrilled that he has grown into himself, and knows what direction he wants to go in.
On Monday night though, he came into the living room to talk with Mark and I, and his face was ashen. He’d just received a generic email from his college of choice saying that he’d been rejected.
He was broken. Not just from that email, but from all the different rejections throughout his short life. For an uncomfortably smart kid riddled with ADHD who has navigated the endless paperwork of the educational system, Ferg has faced more than his fair share of obstacles. And on Monday night, he looked stricken. Haunted. He saw himself caught in a story where he’s failed again in his continual battle with a life that is always stacked against him.
And there it was. The scary story.
We asked him if there was a way he could appeal the decision. He said there was, but he couldn’t see the point. His own internal scary story had taken hold.
So, trying to work out how to break through his old narrative, I told him a tale I have had to pull out and tell myself from time to time.
My Dad worked at the post office his whole life. With four kids to support, he worked hard, and he rose in ranks. After a while though, he came to a point where he didn’t have the right ‘caliber’ to get promoted - by that I mean that he refused to join the Masons as he thought it was idiotic. Throughout my childhood, he would periodically go up for promotion, hoping that this time surely, the right thing would be done. Too often, I remember him coming home crushed, and he’d go to his bed not wanting to talk about it.
But the next day he’d get up and go into work again, and the new story would begin - the one where he was a guy who worked hard, and one day would get promoted and, most of all, that nobody decided who he was but him. He knew he wasn’t perfect, and that he definitely wasn’t going to be a Mason, but he would be relentless. And relentless he was. In the end, he was promoted, promoted quite a lot actually, and retired as the Postmaster of the swanky new sorting office in Edinburgh.
“In life,” I told Ferg, “It’s unrealistic to think that bad things won’t happen to you. They happen to everyone. But you do not have to be haunted by what happened then. Be relentless. Tomorrow morning, start the new story. The one where there’s this great guy called Fergus, and he has his eye on studying English literature. As the story begins, he’s hit a bit of a hiccup, but it’s nothing he can’t handle.”
And he did just that. He got up the next morning and went to the college to find out what the problem was. And it turned out the college hadn’t even received his transcript because they’d requested it under a different name. They said that it was a big mistake, and it had happened to a couple of people, and apologized profusely.
By Thursday, he’d been accepted, and he starts his heart’s desire in the Spring. I am thrilled for him, and proud he battled “The monster that lives rent-free in my head” story with an impressive wee display of relentlessness.
If there is an Afterlife, I hope somehow my Dad knows that those mornings of going into work again and restarting his story, even though inside he felt broken, brought his family much more than just the monthly salary.
I started writing Notes From The Valley originally because I missed the ritual of being able to call my Mum on a Sunday. So, I sent out a letter to the Universe instead. But over these past couple of years, I’ve noticed that some of my Notes are stories I’d would love to tell my Mum, and thus accordingly my Dad, and others are stories that I know I want to leave behind.
This year I’ve written Notes about scary doctors, and broken limbs, and wildfires and political lunacy. A couple of Notes I have written have felt almost too painful to write. And each week when I finish a Note, I promise myself that the following week I’ll be much more polished and prepared. But of course I never am. Yet each new week feels like I get to begin again, and that has been really helpful on this of all years.
Anyway, as it is the spooky season, I’d like to just say, it’s totally fine to periodically be scared. Fear is the thing that stops you from being an asshole, or falling off the side of a cliff, or getting into a fistfight with a rabid dog. But it’s really not a mantra for living.
Although, bravery is frankly overrated - as are fucking big girl pants. Who needs to see life as a set of desperate obstacles that need to be bravely conquered? How about life being just a vehicle in which you can celebrate how magnificently relentless you can be?
And OK, yes, some things from the past may have been truly horrendous. But they have, by their very nature, passed. And as intense as fear may sometimes feel, when you take the time to look at it up close, it’s as small and flimsy as Dollar Store Halloween decorations.
You see the thing is, there’s not really a monster under your bed, and even if there was, you’re totally capable of taking it on.
And as if by magic - and also convenient allegorical coincidence - this Note marks the end of Notes From The Valley Volume 3. I really can’t believe it. I honestly promised myself this volume of the book was definitely, absolutely definitely, going to be so much better than the last. Jeez. Sorry about that.
Still. Next Sunday a new story will begin…
XO
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P. P. S: If you enjoy talking/listening/stories/ random facts, come and join me and Mr Tweddle at Fish and Bear. This Thursday we have a one off test event at the Lawless brewery. For details and booking go to Fishandbear.net
Book 3 will be available soon. Here’s a sneak peak at the cover
Meanwhile if you’ve been lucky enough to avoid the first two books, they’re available here.
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First of all, way to go Fergus (btw, as I typed his name, my brain said "Fair-gus" so I've become a Scot)! English Lit was my favourite in school and my love continues to this day.
I also have one of those kinds of brain that remembers details from all things past, good and not so good. It's so true about fears. Some we can't escape, but we can learn from them going forward. As a Scottish colleague used to always say, "Onward."