mammoth

Once I get to know my mammoth, I find I like her. She presents as a threat, or so I perceive, but she is a big softy inside. I know about this presenting thingy, I do it myself, always upbeat, the cheerful one, the clown to smile away another’s sadness whilst my own nudges against my outer limits like there’s a whole me in there, longing to be seen, heard and acknowledged. It thinks me. However, thinking is not an action unless I I give it full attention, unless I sort the melodrama and sentimental tiddleypom from the core truth of my thinks. Hiding who I really am is often required and even appropriate at times, out there in the world. Was I to moan out my inner angst at, say, a birthday celebration for a friend, everyone would be stultified, embarrassed and at a loss for words. A meltdown on the 10 am ferry crossing would spoil the day for many folk, leaving them feeling emotionally confused and full of questions as to how I feel, at our next encounter. So, like you, I present as if my exterior is a perfect match for my core truth.

However, and there is always one of those, this can become an unhealthy way to live, this cover up choice, until even I, and in private, do not acknowledge how I really feel inside, desperate to fit in to the shape I ‘appear’ to have, and for all my life. My mammoth, who is fast becoming a good friend, has literally softened as I sit before her hugeness, her tusks, not to mention that, unless she budges, I will never see my sitting room again. We talk. She teaches me about her as I teach her about me. Our languages are not the same and we both need to learn. Sometimes we say more to each other by saying nothing at all, just watching, using eye contact, body language and smiles. It is hard for a mammoth to smile, yes, but, as you know, a true smile is really seen in the eyes, a true one, that is, for we can all turn up our mouths, in rictus, in grimace, and it means nothing if it doesn’t reach our eyes. Eventually, we communicate through thought in sentences that wind, like ribbons, into a flow.

Over days and evenings, we grow closer. She reminds me of my inner self and I suggest to her that she doesn’t need to roar quite so much, and at everything, because listening is key in this world. Sometimes we listen for so long that one of us needs to check the other hasn’t died in the process. She tells me that to feel broken and beaten down is okay. But to feel unheard and unseen as the true person I am, even if my presenting as the world expects me to present has dulled my wits somewhat means I must take action. I bristle, a little, at that, even as I know she is right. So what is the answer, I ask her. She watches me watching her, our eyes locked. Ah, she says, we need to be friends. We are friends! She nods that gigantic head and suddenly I laugh at the ridiculous scene, me on the floor, she taking up the whole sofa, a mammoth in my home, a huge and hairy mammoth! She, sort of, laughs too, but its more of a forest shaking roar that blows my short hair into spikes, knocks over the candles and rattles the window. We must be friends for ever, she says, once we all calm down and I have checked the window for damage and righted the candles. Any time you are not paying attention to whom you really are, being open and honest about it, mostly to yourself, I will block your doorway, I will be your stop-and-check checker. Ok, I say. And as I say this, I see her grow smaller, just a bit. She doesn’t seem to mind, so nor do I. After saying goodnight, watching her lie down to rest, I cover her considerably smaller body, with a big blanket against the chill of the dark hours. See you in the morning, I whisper, stroking her long soft coat.

Maybe, she says, her eyes closing.

In the morning, she is gone.

For three wonderful nights, I have slept well, nightmare free. I have no flipping idea why they come, the nightmares, although I do know that they only come in tough times, when my equilibrium decides to unequilibriate itself, tipping me into a sort of confusion, as if I had forgot who I am and which way is up. To be honest, I don’t spend much time a-wondering about this because ‘this’ just comes like that visitor you really hope never appears at your door, and we all have at least one of those. I just know it will pass like everything does, as long as my antenna are vigilant, strengthened, aware for what I may have missed heretofore because there will have been warning signs. For starters, it is no way possible that a mammoth can travel silently, even on tiptoe. Although I wasn’t around in those days when mammoths pounded over the earth, I am guessing that everyone heard them coming, even just the one. Must have been earth shaking. All that bulk and belly and weight could never just slip into a situation. Even an ‘it’ might have been heard a whole country away, thus giving plenty of warning. Oh, hear that? There’s a mammoth in Cumbria and heading our way so take cover! Simple.

So, I must listen for those big earth-gouging hooves, the pounding of them indicating both body density and danger. Ok, I’ve got that now. But once the damn thing is in the doorway, there is another thing for me to learn. First off, it can’t come through. Why not, You might ask. Because the doorway is human sized and a mammoth, weighing about 10 tons and 11 foot to shoulder height, never mind the body width and bulk plus hair and stuff picked up on the way all entangled and thoroughly woven in, is never getting through. It’s legs are four square and there’s a gap between the drop of its belly and my lino. An easy crawl if I can get past those tusks, which I can, easily, because there is no opportunity for a free swing of those great pointy things, not least because the door frame prevents any such free pointy swingery. I can see where I want to go, if I crouch down, the light coming in the picture window beyond the arse of this rufous beast, well, the swinging tail really, as the arse is massive. I just have to crawl beyond the tail of it, the tail of the nightmare-inducing eejit. How hard can that be? As long, and this is important, I do not clock eyes with the threat, pay no attention, nor give any level of import, to the growling (or whatever mammoths say when being their best at threatening) of the face, the teeth, the horns, I can find myself. I am more than a match for a stuck mammoth. It is only my mind playing tricks, that mind, well, bless it and all that, that only works on what it has already experienced. It has no way of thinking for itself. It might tell me I am no match for such a threat, that this threat is real, that I may as well submit, and I have done so many times over the years, hearing pre-recorded voices telling me I will never succeed, that I am not good enough, that I Told You So is all you’re going to hear today. But, the minute I employ my own intelligence and trust it, trust it, I see the stuck-ness of the mammoth. I see the light beyond its rufous arse, no, tail, I see who has the power here for I am in my right time, my right era, the Holocene era, not the Pleistocene epoch, and it’s Spring (apparently) and the mammoth is not. Perhaps that’s how it got stuck in my doorway. I push under and out and up, moving into the light of right now, of right Me.

When anyone mentions anything at all about anything mental, such as demon wrestling, nightmares, times when life appears as a mammoth in all doorways, folk don’t know what to say. There’s a stigma around anything of the mind. It is all in your mind, I’ve heard ever since I was 13. Well, yes, you’re right, although the way you say it sounds like a judgement instead of what it is, something to be cherished and nurtured and recognised, for it is real and the more you pretend to yourself that we, who do swingle t’ween your reality and the vast empires of our minds, are somehow in need of fixing, the more minds will become lost forever.

There are mammoths in a gazillion doorways but who will stop this rush of humanity towards gain and power, to even stop and notice we with supposed mental health issues? Perhaps just one (and one is more than enough) like my sister, a tiny bird of a woman with a huge personality, ditto heart and with the tenacity and courage of a terrier. She said ” I’ll shoo off the mammoth.” and, I believe she did.