Saturday 3 January 2015

'Not My Father's Son' by Alan Cumming

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!”



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