After an easy day at work I got home and had the desire to do nothing. I had this conflict between my tired body and restless mind. My body just wanted to do nothing the rest of the day and my mind couldn’t accept the idea of wasting such a sunny day inside. How often do we not have these conflicting needs? I have learned through meditation to recognize such inner conflicts and try to find a way into something in the middle, to satisfy both body and mind. So I decided to rest more and then to cycle to the seeshore and watch the sunset. And so I did.
I was watching the sun disappear behind the clouds before I saw it melt into the sea. I started thinking of how these thin white clouds can be capable of concealing the sun; that majestic burning planet made of light. The tired part of me was saying, ok, now sunset, let’s go home.
Literally at this moment I heard a bang from behind. Me and some other people turned back and there was a woman who had just fallen to the ground, and a little girl next to her shouting anxiously in horror: “Mummy, mummy!”. I remember her eyes full of fear. Not knowing if she should run to her mother. Or call for people to help. Or collect all the stuff that had fallen to the ground from her mother’s bag.
As other people ran to the mother, I thought I should go to the little girl, so that she can learn that the world sees her pain and cares for her too, and not only for her fallen mother. The girl was busy collecting all the stuff that fell from her mother’s bag with fear of missing them and at the same time having one eye on her mother laying on the ground. I told her that her mom seemed ok, and asked het to come and sit next to her mother. But her body told me to go away. The mother gets help of others to get up and she repeats: “Bianka fix everything”, “Bianka fix everything”. And the little girl, while keeping herself calm and not letting herself cry , is fully focused on managing the situation.
I noticed this since I have often talked to adult clients about their childhood wounds, and asked if there was space for them to feel and express their feelings. Or if they had to hold a facade. Bianka was definitely playing the role of the fixer very well -just like her mother expected her to do. And for that she had to bury her own feelings deep. So deep that my response to her feelings of anxiety became a threat in that moment. I asked the mother if she needed help, but she answered; “No, Bianka fix everything”.
I was observing this and I could feel my anger towards this adult who was playing a child, while the child was playing the adult. Many of us could definitely make the conclusion that the mother was high on some kind of drugs. I tried to be empathic to the mother’s situation. I tried to tell myself that she had also suffered and therefore she had to numb herself from her own pain. What a vicious circle. I sat down and looked into the mother’s wounds and asked the girl to sit down with us again reassuring her that her mother was ok. Now the the girl was calmer as she put everything back into the bag. I told the mother that I saw her minutes before she fell, that she seemed dizzy and I asked her: “Are you ok?”.
Her eyes which were wondering in all direction wanting to close and disappear in the sweetness of numbness, in the freedom of escape, of disconnection- but she was fighting this feeling and trying to act awake repeating “Bianka fix everything”. Angry she shouted at me: “Are you a police?Mind your business!“. Her voice was as shaky as her eyes. I sensed my anger towards her filling my whole being, and wanted to shout: “You are annoyed with my question, but this child is more important than you”.But I didn’t say anything. And I took a mindful breath and attended to her actual fear and suffering that wanted her to push me away, as I thought that was valid too. I was only a passing stranger who wouldn’t do more than to throw a judging eye.
I tried to see things from her perspective and I thought of her being judged like this over and over and never been treated with respect as a trustworthy being and how that must be another vicious circle. She is stuck in repeating the belief of not being worth of dignity, nor happiness, in relation to other people – only the dignity and happiness the drugs offer her. I opened my heart and said now to her: “I am sorry I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable or to upset you, I want to help, I can walk you to where you want if you are dizzy”. The women refused but I could sense how calm she became, but still she continued to repeat: “Bianka fix everything”.
