‘If you’re feeling stressed about something, say “Fuck It” and you will feel instantly better.’
Sarah’s text landed when I was at the Wetherspoon’s in Gatwick Airport. ‘Are you OK? What’s going on? We haven’t seen each other in weeks and any time I suggest meeting you don’t seem to want to. Have I done something wrong? Sx’
It’s true. I hadn’t set out to distance myself, but it had just kind of happened . . .
We were in different worlds. She was in the real world of work and broken boilers and I was . . . well, chatting up men in coffee shops and repeating affirmations. Even though nobody had said anything to this effect, I had started to get paranoid that my friends were secretly mocking me. Before January, I had been able to laugh at my extra-curricular Oprah-endorsed reading habits but now, by the beginning of June, six months into my self-improvement mission, I didn’t want to hear anything even vaguely critical of it or me. Self-help no longer felt like a laughing matter; it felt very serious.
It was no longer a hobby – it was my life.
Pushing myself out of my comfort zone was taking up my every waking thought – and quite a few sleeping ones too. And it was changing me. I didn’t want to talk about work dramas the way I used to. I didn’t want to bitch about people and talk about stupid, unimportant stuff. I was trying to stay positive, trying to be a better person!
I looked around. Next to me was a sixty-odd-year-old man with long hair and a Hell’s Angels t-shirt. He was wearing sunglasses indoors and downing his pint like it was last orders. On the other side of me, a young couple, so perfectly tanned and buff they looked as if they were made of plastic, drank rosé. It was just gone midday.
F**k it. I ordered a glass of Chardonnay. Large.
As I drank the wine my guilt hardened into something new: defiance.
The old me would have said anything to make it OK with Sarah, apologizing profusely for everything I’d ever done or not done, but F**k It. I was so fed up of apologizing. I took another drink.
My phone beeped. It was a message from The Greek.
‘Have fun! ☺’
I hated smiley faces. Do PhD students really use smiley faces?
I texted back: ‘I will!’
I overuse exclamation marks instead of smileys. It’s not something I like in myself.
I looked at the information board. Ryanair flight to Ancona BOARDING.
I downed the last of my wine, put my phone in my bag and made my way to the gate. I’d reply to Sarah when I got back.
On the plane I looked out of the window and opened my book. As we climbed higher into the air, home life vanished. It was just me. Nobody to think about but me. F**k It all.
A few years earlier, another stressed-out Brit had run away from his life. John Parkin was a London advertising executive when he had a life crisis. In his book, F**k It: The Ultimate Spiritual Way, he writes: ‘For the first time in my life I lost all sense of meaning. Every single moment I felt in pain . . . it was simply the pain of being alive.’
Things got so bad that one day he found himself lying in the gutter. Literally. ‘I lay in the gutter and curled up like a little boy and starting moaning. And that was the high of the week,’ he writes.
Who doesn’t love a dramatic rock-bottom moment?
After that John read every kind of spiritual book known to man, in order to find the source of his misery. He gave up his job and got into yoga, t’ai chi and shamanism before packing up all his belongings into a camper van and moving, along with his wife and two young sons, to Italy, where they set up retreats for other burnt-out executives.
It was at one of these retreats that an off-the-cuff comment ended up spawning a self-help movement. John was working with a thirty-year-old woman who was stubbornly refusing to relax despite a week of breathing exercises, yoga and visualization. Just as she was leaving to go home, with as much mental baggage as she had started with, John suggested that she just say fuck it to everything she was worrying about.
She wrote back a few weeks later to say that she had indeed said ‘fuck it’ and this simple profanity had changed everything. She no longer gave a fuck and life was much better as a result.
John recognized he was on to something. He wrote a book declaring that ‘F**k It’ is the perfect Western expression of the Eastern spiritual ideas of letting go, giving up and relaxing our hold on things’. He realized that the moment we say ‘F**k It’ we stop obsessing about things which are not important.
‘F**k It’ is an expression that says that – ultimately – nothing matters that much. Which, of course, it doesn’t. I knew this, intellectually, but in my day-to-day life everything mattered a lot. What people thought of me, how I was doing at work, how fat I was, how bad my hair was, my overdrafts and credit cards, my future, my love life, or lack of . . . it all swam around in my head in a giant soup of self-created misery.
F**k It was going to be the antidote to that – my way out.
I’d read the book years ago and liked it. But I am Irish, so anything with swearing works for me. It’s spiritual without being smug, new agey but full of common sense.
It’s self-help for people who don’t like self-help.
But the main reason I had decided to pick this book up again was because it came with a holiday attached. Week-long F**k It retreats take place in Italy. Soul searching in the sun . . . now that was something I could get on board with.
Mum had an issue with it, though.
‘Can you afford to go away?’ she asked.
‘Not really, but I need a holiday.’
‘Marianne, we all need a holiday. Last week you were crying at your credit card bills.’
‘That wasn’t last week, that was months ago – and I’ve been working a lot recently. I should be OK.’
I lied. I hadn’t been working a lot. And the reason I hadn’t been crying over my bank statements recently was because I hadn’t been looking at them – not even to draw on extra zeros.
I tried to ignore the uncomfortable feeling that everything I was doing was self-indulgent nonsense. My sixty-eight-year-old mum worked full time as a teacher and her only holiday was two weeks in rainy Ireland every summer. When life was falling down around her, she just lay in bed and gave herself a good talking to. I was about to pay hundreds of pounds to fly to Italy to do it by a swimming pool.
I put it on the credit card. Obviously.
I fell asleep on the plane and woke up with dried dribble on the side of my mouth, as Ryanair’s tannoy system boasted about how many flights landed on time. The midday wine had knocked me out and so did the wall of heat that greeted us as we stepped off the plane. My jeans and cotton sweater, which had felt daringly summery in London, now felt like ski gear.
A couple in their sixties were standing in silence next to me, waiting for their luggage. She looked miserable. He looked red-faced and resigned. I hoped they weren’t on the retreat.
Across the carousel a tall, tanned blond man was picking up a North Face bag while a woman with dark curly hair stood next to him, pointing at a silver wheelie case. He picked it up for her and they walked out. They were a good-looking couple, clean, shining skin, with slim, fit bodies . . . off, presumably, for a romantic mini-break. I felt fat and sweaty and began the usual stream of thought about not having a boyfriend . . . but then I remembered The Greek and smiled. Maybe we would end up being one of those good-looking, mini-breaking couples? I could visit him in Greece and we could holiday on the islands . . . after I’d gone on a diet.
At the taxi rank I showed the address to a man with dark hair in a ponytail and a shirt that was a bit too open. It was as if the Italian tourist board had sent him especially from central casting. We climbed away from the coast and the white plastic rosary beads hanging from the rear-view mirror swayed as the roads got windier. Twenty minutes later we pulled onto a dirt track which cut through vineyards and olive groves before arriving at our destination.
‘Eez here!’ said the driver, pointing to the old stone building in front of us.
I got out of the car and stood for a minute, taking in the long terrace and a turquoise pool whose water seemed to spill into the green hills surrounding it. It was so much more beautiful than anything I’d been expecting.
I was taken to my room, which was in a stone cottage in the gardens, overlooking a small church. I jumped up and down and squealed in delight at the huge bed, flat-screen television and marble wet room . . .
I thought of Sarah and of Mum. I felt a pang of guilt that I did not deserve to be here in paradise when I had a neglected friend and an ageing mother slaving away at work but then I heard a splash of water and shrieks from the pool and I quickly got over it.
F**k It. F**k It all . . .
I took off my clothes and lay on the crisp white sheets in my underwear. I closed my eyes . . .
When I woke up the Italian sun was casting a deep orange glow though the shutters. It was 7.10pm. I’d slept for two hours and was due to meet the others. I threw on a blue jersey dress, scraped my hair up into a bun and walked to the terrace where a dozen or so people were sipping drinks.
I spotted the good-looking couple from the airport.
‘Are you a fellow Fuckiteer?’ asked a smiley woman with a brown bob.
‘I suppose I am!’ I said.
‘Join us.’
There was one seat free, next to Mr Airport, who was wearing shorts and a blue t-shirt that both looked box-fresh. His girlfriend was at the other table.
‘I’m Geoff,’ he said, with a Northern Irish accent and brown eyes. He stood up as he held out his hand. He was so tall. Up close he looked like something out of a Gillette ad. My tummy flipped. I took his hand and worried that I’d gone too hard on the handshake and that my hands were sweaty.
‘God, this is stunning,’ I said, looking at the pool.
‘It is. I was expecting shared dorms and mung beans,’ joked Geoff.
‘Me too, that’s exactly what I was thinking!’ I said, too loudly.
‘So you haven’t been here before?’ he asked.
‘No, but I’ve read the book . . .’
I always know when I like a guy because one of two things happens. I either go mute or I start to talk much more loudly than I usually would, aware of every sentence and the need for it to be funny or impressive. And so I put on a show.
He looked a bit worried for me as I did my one-woman self-help act and I felt disloyal for transferring my affections so quickly after meeting The Greek.
Before I could dig my hole any deeper a man in trendy dark-rimmed specs, floral shirt and Birkenstocks walked out onto the terrace. I recognized his face from his book cover. It was John, our guru for the week. Except he didn’t look like a guru. There were no flowing robes or wooden beads. Not even a sarong. Instead he looked exactly like a middle-aged man who used to work in advertising.
Behind him a tall, stern woman cast her gaze over the group as if she was scanning our souls. She looked like a fierce German yoga teacher.
Once John had said hello, he introduced this woman as his wife, Gaia. She smiled and, as she did, her eyes crinkled shut and her whole face lit up. She was no longer a fierce yoga teacher, she was a beautiful wise lady!
‘We don’t have a set plan, each week we do is different, depending on what feels right for the group,’ said John. ‘There’ll be no 5am chanting or meditation. We believe everything is spiritual – drinking, laughing, scoffing chocolate cake . . . we meet around 10 most mornings, although Gaia is always late, and then we go through till about 1pm, when we break for lunch, and then you can lie around by the pool or do whatever you want.’
Over dinner we drank wine and began to swap stories.
The next morning the stories continued in earnest, when we sat on cushions arranged in a circle on the floor of a sunlit room. John asked us to share our names and why we’d come. My nerves started to build as I listened to the others.
There was a combination of divorces, deaths in the family, illness and a lot of work stress. People were disarmingly honest.
As my turn approached, my heart pounded. I felt like an imposter. My parents hadn’t died. I wasn’t getting a divorce. I didn’t want to tell everyone about my self-help challenge in case they thought I was a bit nuts, and so I said: ‘I spent all of my twenties working like a crazy person and I always thought that my problem was work stress. I thought if I could just work less I’d be OK but then I quit to go freelance and I realized that it wasn’t work that’s the problem, it’s me . . .’
I looked at the floor while the person next to me started talking.
‘Every time we do a retreat, a different theme emerges,’ said John. ‘This week it seems that we have a lot of burnout – you are like good soldiers, you keep going no matter what and this is a positive thing in a lot of ways but it can end up in exhaustion and unhappiness. This week we can look at what it would be like if you let go and stopped trying so hard.’
There was a collective release of breath.
At lunch I sat next to Geoff.
‘That was intense,’ he said.
‘Yeah, it’s like AA or something,’ I said. I looked around for the girl with curly hair but could not see her.
‘Where’s your girlfriend?’
‘Huh?’
‘Aren’t you with the girl with curly hair? I saw you together at the airport.’
‘Oh yeah – no, we just got talking on the flight. I’d never met her before.’
I tried to suppress the grin breaking out on my face.
Play it cool, Marianne.
That afternoon we all lay on loungers by the pool. I had the F**k It book with me, but it lay unopened next to my sunscreen. I fell asleep the minute I lay down.
The next morning we learned how to say F**k It, with the help of a Werther’s Original.
We were told to get into pairs and hold one arm out while our partner grabbed hold of it. We then had to try our hardest to get our hand in our pockets (to grab an imaginary sweet) while our partner tried to pull our arm in the opposite direction.
I partnered up with Janet, a Glaswegian nurse. She was about five foot with a childlike nervous energy and a huge smile. Turned out she was a reformed party girl who was now addicted to the spiritual stuff. ‘I see them all,’ she said, ‘healers, psychics, shamans, channellers . . . I do chi gong, meditation, Buddhism. I’m exhausting myself trying them all! I need to chill out from trying to chill out!’
She was surprisingly strong. The harder I tried to get to my pocket, the harder she gripped against me. After several minutes of wrangling, I got nowhere near my imaginary sweet. Then we were told to take a different approach. The sweet was still in our pocket and we still wanted it but we weren’t that bothered if we did or didn’t get to it. We were told not to force the issue, just relax our arms and see what happened. I wiggled and twisted my arm, as if I was just shaking it out for fun and it got to my pocket straight away. Janet, who was trying to stop me, looked confused. ‘I was really trying,’ she said.
John explained that F**k It doesn’t mean doing nothing – it just means not caring so much about the outcome. You can go for the sweet (or the job, or the man, or the house) but you do it with a relaxed attitude and accept that what will be will be. And in fact, if you’re too tired to go for the sweet (or the job, or the man, or the house), then sod it – don’t. Have a nap. Take a year off. Take your life off.
All easier said than done, of course. Most of us have been brought up with the message that we have to work hard, push ourselves and never give up. No pain, no gain. We wear the exhaustion of our twelve-hour days in the office like a badge of honour. But why does life have to be so hard? Really, why? Should life be punishing? Or should it be enjoyed? And why did the thought of enjoying life feel so naughty? So bold?
John believes, ‘If we find the courage to loosen up our hold on things . . . to stop wanting so much . . . to stop working and striving so much . . . something magical happens . . . we naturally start getting what we originally wanted but without the effort . . .’
He admits that it’s confusing to get your head around the fact that to get what you want you must give up wanting it, but he describes it like this: ‘Any form of desire and striving involves some form of tension. When you let go of the desire, the tension goes. And the relaxation that replaces it tends to attract good things to your life.’
I have no idea why that is true – but it is, isn’t it? It’s why the guys you don’t like like you – because you are relaxed and being yourself. It’s why people fall pregnant after years of trying just when they give up. It’s why when you decide to quit your job you actually start enjoying it. You just take the tension out of everything and it goes much better.
John reckons that ‘When you say F**k It, you carry out a spiritual act . . . because you give up, let go, stop resisting and relax back into the natural flow of life itself . . .’
After the sweet exercise we went for lunch and settled in for another afternoon of spiritual pool lolling. I fell asleep again. I seemed to slip into a mild coma every time I was horizontal. Back in the room, I saw that The Greek had texted. ‘Just saying hello,’ he wrote. ‘Hope you are having a nice time in the sun ☺☺☺.’ His keenness was putting me off. I replied quickly, ‘Having great time!’ before running to dinner.
I was late and the only seat left was next to a woman who I’d so far managed to avoid. She had a conspicuously good posture. Look at me good. I-got-up-at-6am-to-do-yoga good. And she talked too loudly, as if everyone in the room was her audience. She flaunted her happiness. And she was wearing her hair in plaits. I mean, please. Who does that over thirty?
I sat down with a fake smile – and she mega-watted me back.
‘I’m Daisy,’ she said. Loudly.
‘I’m Marianne.’
‘I know! I overheard you talking on the first night about your project and I’ve really wanted to talk to you!’ she said. ‘I’ve read a lot of self-help . . . Have you read Women who Love Too Much? Or what about I’m OK, You’re OK?’
‘No, but I’ve heard of them,’ I said.
‘What about Esther and Jerry Hicks and The Law of Attraction?’
‘No, but I did read The Secret and it did my head in.’
‘You really want to read Hicks – that’s the real thing. Then you’ll get it. I have manifested so many things into my life!’
‘Like what?’ I asked.
‘Oh, so many things!’ She swept her arms like she didn’t have the time to go into details.
Then she smiled at me. One of those smug and enlightened ‘you don’t understand the higher powers of this universe in the way that I do’ smiles. I couldn’t tell if I wanted to punch her or be her.
On the third day we learned how pretending to like things you don’t makes you feel sick and tired.
We were told to hold out our arms and say out loud something we really liked. So I held out my arm and said, ‘I like pasta, I like pasta, I like pasta . . .’ Janet tried to push my arm down with all her strength while I tried to keep it up. She pushed for a couple of minutes but got nowhere. Conclusion: ‘Aye, you really like pasta.’
Then we had to hold our arms out and tell a lie. I held mine out and said, ‘I like mushrooms, I like mushrooms, I like mushrooms.’ I really don’t. When I was younger I was given a mushroom vol-au-vent at a friend’s house. I’d never seen a vol-au-vent in my life and I didn’t yet know that I hated mushrooms. The second the small puff of pastry hit my mouth I started to gag. I coughed up the brown mush into my hand, which then went in my pocket, where it sat, getting wetter and colder as the day went on . . .
While I declared my love of mushrooms, Janet easily pushed down my hand. ‘Aye, you really dinnae like mushrooms,’ she concluded.
The idea was that when we’re telling the truth – in a broad sense, being true to ourselves – we are strong. When we’re pretending to be something we’re not, to like things we don’t – we become weaker. Physically weaker.
Along the same theme we did another exercise. We were each led to a random spot in the room by our partner, who then had to try to move one of our legs off the ground. Janet had me face a wall and was able to pick up my leg easily, even though I was trying very hard to keep it on the ground.
Then I was to choose my own spot. I moved to a place in front of the big glass doors facing the garden. I stood still. I looked out of the window at the trees and soft hills which rolled into a deep blue sky. A tractor tootled around a field. A bird danced in the sky. Swooping, dipping, rising. Janet could not budge me. I felt like I was being pulled down by roots. I wasn’t trying. I wasn’t doing anything. The world wanted me to be in just that spot and it was keeping me there.
Conclusion: if you’re in the right place, doing the right thing, you have amazing strength. If you’re somewhere you don’t want to be, somewhere that someone else has chosen for you (a job, a relationship, etc.) it will make you sick and tired and weak. This is how most of us spend our lives.
And so the days went on with funny revelations about life, love and everything – based on fictional sweets and where we were standing in a room. I continued to sleep and to eat everything in sight, including the cake on offer at breakfast – not cake pretending to be muffins, or croissants but actual cake. We were living in Eden, cut off from the rest of the world, cut off from the bullshit.
With each day that passed we started to look lighter and softer. We settled into a soothing routine: group work in the morning and sleeping by the pool in the afternoon, while evenings were spent eating prawn linguine, cheesy gnocchi and pizza washed down with wine . . . On the third night I found myself sitting next to Geoff, who it turned out was a film director.
‘What kind of thing?’ I asked.
‘Oh, you know, a few shorts, nothing big – but I’m hoping to get my first feature off the ground in the autumn.’
‘Sounds cool.’
‘I have to do some corporate stuff I don’t like to pay the bills but yeah, it’s cool.’
I listened to him talk about a job he was doing that summer, following an Indie band around the States. He might have talked about ‘creativity’ a bit too much – and used the phrase ‘seminal artist’ more than is ideal – but I liked him.
After dinner we sat on the veranda under fairy lights and stars and shared our life stories.
The Greek was fading into a distant memory.
On the fourth day we were told to lie on the floor and breathe for an hour. We would each pick a partner who would sit next to us and watch us as we breathed, holding us if we felt we needed it. It sounded boring but there was something in John’s voice that made me nervous: ‘This can bring up a lot of emotions for people,’ he warned. ‘But that’s OK. Just surrender and go with it.’
The air became heavy with nerves. We all sensed something big was about to occur. I started to panic. I didn’t want to surrender! And I didn’t want to bring up emotions!
I was sitting between Janet and Geoff. So far I had done all my exercises with Janet, but maybe it would be good to Feel the Fear, embrace the potential rejection and ask this handsome man with immaculately ironed shorts if he would watch me breathe for an hour?
‘Shall we?’ I asked.
‘Sure, OK,’ he said.
‘I’m scared,’ I said.
‘Why?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘You’ll be OK,’ he said.
I lay down. I closed my eyes and tried to look beautiful and peaceful, as if I had deep thoughts flowing through my mind, deep thoughts that he would desperately want to understand . . . I was pleased that I’d left my hair down that morning and hoped that it was creating a flattering fan around my head. The effect I was going for was Ophelia, but, you know, less dead.
The music started – it was loud and tribal. John told us to breathe deeply so that our tummies went up and down; we were to feel the oxygen and energy travelling around our body . . . then he was telling us to breathe faster and faster with no pause between the inhale and the exhale. . . it wasn’t long before my hands, feet and legs started to tingle. The music got louder. I kept breathing – faster and deeper. I felt like my whole body was being pressed into the ground.
I knew I had to just go with it – to let go – but I didn’t want to. I was scared of falling down a black hole – that was the image I had, that if I let go I’d fall down a black hole. I realized, as I lay on the floor doing nothing more than breathing, that this was a feeling I had through all of my life – that if I just relaxed for half a second I’d fall into a black hole and . . . then what? I didn’t know but I just knew the black hole was bad. And it was always there. But why did I feel like this? Why did I always feel something bad was going to happen – that I would be punished if I relaxed in any way and maybe let myself feel happy for a moment?
The tears came thick and fast. They ran down my cheeks and then down my neck. Geoff put his hands on my arm and shook me gently. This made me cry more. I was not used to a man being nice to me and I was not used to letting my guard down in front of one. Why did I spend my life terrified of men? Terrified of everything?
The music changed from deep and pounding to something higher. It felt like light was being showered down on me, each note a warm, golden drop.
But I was still standing by the black hole. I was scared of falling into it but I was also scared of leaving it. It was familiar.
You have a choice, you have a choice. It’s not your black hole. You don’t have to go down it. Move away. Move away, said a voice from deep within me – the same voice that came at me at 3am, asking me what I was doing with my life.
Then another voice joined in. This one was real. It was Gaia, whispering into my ear.
‘You are powerful,’ she hissed with urgency, her hot breath on my skin. ‘More powerful than you know. You are an animal . . . Be in your body, feel your body, enjoy your body . . . you spend all your time in the mind but you have a body too, a body of sensations . . . you are an animal, a tigress. Feel it, feel the power.’
My cheeks burnt. I felt embarrassed at this discussion of my dormant animal nature while Geoff was in earshot. Gaia moved away and then it was over. The weird trip into my self had ended. I felt like I’d just taken a load of drugs but all I’d done was lie down and breathe.
‘How was that?’ asked Geoff.
‘Strange. I felt there was a black hole that I was going to fall down and I realized that, every moment of my life, that’s how I feel: like I’m going to fall down and that it’s my fault. But it’s not my fault. I’m not a bad person and I don’t know why I always feel like I am . . .’
Geoff nodded like this was all totally normal.
‘I’m not a bad person, am I?’ I asked him. I had no idea how he’d know if I was a bad person or not but I wanted reassurance.
‘No, you’re not,’ he said, looking right at me. I bit my lip.
Then it was Geoff’s turn to breathe and cry and my turn to hold him. I wanted to rock him gently, in the way he had done with me, but I felt scared and embarrassed. It felt too intimate. What if he didn’t want me holding him? What if my hands were too sweaty and gross?
Pull yourself together, Marianne. For fuck’s sake.
He lay waiting, expectant, peaceful with eyes closed, blond eyelashes fluttering slightly as he breathed. After a few minutes I put my two hands on his left arm and I rocked him ever so slightly, distracted by the sounds coming from around the room, the sounds of sobs and wailing. Middle managers, civil servants, music industry hipsters all crying like lost children. It was the sound of pain. The pain of being alive, as John put it.
Then the music changed pace again and Geoff was smiling, beaming even. His face glowed and I glowed too. I felt connected to him, honoured that he was trusting me in this moment.
Across the room a young woman was sobbing and her boyfriend was cradling her like a little bird. Her howls filled the room. He looked like he would sit there forever with her, just stroking and rocking until her pain was gone.
When the exercise was over, Geoff looked over at them. ‘If I was a woman I’d want to go out with someone like that,’ he said.
‘I know,’ I said. But his comment annoyed me. I wanted him to be thinking about the connection we’d shared, not about the couple across the room.
‘Thank you for asking me to share that exercise with you,’ he said. ‘I felt very paternal towards you. Very protective.’
This made me furious! Paternal? I didn’t want him to feel paternal, I wanted him to fancy the pants off me. I looked over at the beautiful couple and I felt jealous. No man would ever love me like that. I was not delicate and pretty and vulnerable. I could never let go the way she was letting go because I knew there was no one there to catch me.
‘I have to go to the loo,’ I said to Geoff. I walked into the blue-tiled bathroom, looked in the mirror and cried. I looked at my sweaty puffy face. I didn’t look like a pre-Raphaelite, I looked like a wonky Picasso.
Of course, he wouldn’t fancy me. Why would he?
This was why I didn’t like feelings. They hurt and they made you look like an idiot.
I walked into lunch late and Geoff had saved a seat for me. I shook my head and pointed that I was going to sit next to Janet. I didn’t eat anything. I felt like a gaping wound. That afternoon I lay on my bed and cried until I fell asleep. Outside my room a statue of an angel with wings outspread looked out into the hills.
The next day our breathing exercise was relocated to a small indoor pool in the fancy spa area, where we were to float in warm water while another person supported us. Geoff found me by the entrance.
‘Do you want to partner up again?’ Geoff asked.
‘I said I’d go with Janet this time,’ I said.
He looked surprised and I felt petty and victorious.
The pool was surrounded by bronze tiles and the blinds had been drawn so it was dark. Amazonian music echoed across the hard surfaces. I floated while Janet’s fingers propped me up. It was meant to be like going back to the womb and it sort of was. Though I doubted Mum’s uterus had Amazonian music playing on an iPhone.
We were told to breathe gently and with every breath to feel light coming into our body. There was no black hole this time – just white light flowing everywhere and surrounding my heart. I could feel Janet’s love and patience coming through her fingers and I felt connected to her and to everyone in the water. Like we were all one life force. To trust another person and lie there while they looked after me felt almost unbearably beautiful. I saw there, in that pool, that I never trusted people. Never relaxed with them or believed that they would be there for me. I was always braced for people to let me down, to laugh at me, hurt me and leave me.
I cried like a baby again but this time it was not a release of pain it was just a release. Of love. Of emotion. Of the magic of being alive. My feelings were so intense they hurt but it was a good hurt.
This is what it must be like to fall in love, I thought.
Then I saw so clearly that of course I had never been in love before, because I had never let my guard down long enough to feel anything like that. I had never surrendered before – I always shut down or ran away just at the point where I could get hurt.
But I surrendered in that pool. For a few minutes I could feel deep in my heart the beauty of life and people and the cosmos. I was part of something bigger that me, something magical.
Something spiritual.
On our final night, before dinner I shaved my legs and put on lotion. My hair, which had been up in a bun most of the week, was down and had gone good frizzy rather than wild woman frizzy. I put on a long black-and-white dress and my sandals with a chunky heel. I looked in the mirror. My eyes were bright and clear. My face was glowing and I was smiling. I felt pretty.
When I walked into the dining room Janet squealed. ‘Look at you!’
Geoff looked up and smiled. ‘You look nice,’ he said.
‘So do you,’ I replied and felt the heat rising in my cheeks. He was wearing a white linen shirt and had picked up a tan. He held my gaze.
I looked back. His brown eyes steady. I was scared out of my mind.
After dinner we went for a group walk through the vineyards and olive groves. Bare, tanned shoulders gleamed in the moonlight as we walked in pairs and threes, chatting about anything and everything. We were strangers six days ago but now we were old friends. At ease. Open. Teasing. Geoff and I were walking side by side at the back of the group.
‘I don’t want to go home,’ I said.
‘I’m ready,’ he said.
‘What time is your flight tomorrow?’
‘Ten past nine, so I’ll be gone early. What about you?’
‘It’s later, maybe 3pm. I need to check.’
We kept walking, the sound of our feet crunching on gravel. My foot wobbled against a pothole and I stumbled, banging into him. I felt the warmth of his arms as he caught me.
I wanted him to keep his hand on me, but he moved it away.
We kept walking. The moon shining down on us, nature giving us about as romantic a setting as it’s possible to get.
I willed him to kiss me. To just stop, turn to face me, and kiss me.
And then he did. He did! He stopped and looked at me.
This is it, this is it, this is it . . .
‘I nearly forgot!’ he said.
‘Forgot what?’
‘England’s playing France tonight,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘The football. It’s England v. France.’
Seriously? This is what is happening? I felt like I’d been slapped in the face.
I walked ahead.
‘They might have it on in reception,’ he was saying, a couple of steps behind me.
Back at the main house some of the group watched the football while a few of us drank by the pool.
‘So . . . ?’ asked Janet, eyes glinting.
‘No, nothing happened. He talked about the football.’
‘What?’
‘I’m not imagining it, am I?’
‘I dinnae know, babe. These places are strange. We’re here telling each other everything, it’s like rehab. Has he mentioned meeting up when you’re back?’ asked Janet.
‘No,’ I admitted.
She shrugged and poured me a glass.
‘F**k It! It’s the last night, let’s have fun,’ she said, raising her glass.
‘F**k It!’ I said, banging mine against hers.
Daisy appeared, panting: ‘I’ve been hugging trees! Come on, you have to do it, it’s so healing!’
I looked at Janet, who jumped out of her seat. ‘F**k It! Let’s do it.’
We took off our sandals and walked barefoot across the inky blue grass.
‘I’m not telling people at work about this – they already think I’m mad,’ said Janet.
And maybe we’d all gone mad – but it didn’t feel like it.
I opened my arms and wrapped them around the warm, smooth bark which glinted silver in the moonlight. I looked at Janet and Daisy doing the same a few steps away and we laughed at the ridiculousness of it all. I hadn’t laughed that much since GCSE history, when someone made a joke and giggles spread around the class like a virus, leaving everyone, including the teacher Mrs Fisher, doubled over in pain.
But then as my arms stayed wrapped around the tree, the laughter stopped.
For a second everything stopped. Nothing mattered. Geoff. The Greek. Sarah. The stillness of the tree became my stillness. I felt wisdom, peace and love emanating from its bark. I felt its roots pulling into the earth and I felt its depth. I felt my own depth. An energy hummed between us. Everything felt right. Things were exactly as they should be.
That week had been nothing like I expected. I’d thought it would be sweary and boisterous but it had been much more profound and moving than anything I had experienced before. At certain moments, I felt a glimpse of something big. Was it God? Or energy? Or beauty? It didn’t matter. I just knew that everything would be OK. That I was OK. That the world was beautiful, that my worries were nonsense, not reality. This was reality, connecting with trees and sky and clouds and people.
My eyes filled with tears at the perfection.