The Storage Unit Of My Mind
I am sure it has been used a thousand times. It might even be that my therapist has used it many times himself. One day he described my brain as a storage unit. I imagined one of those ones you hire like a room with a roller shutter. You throw up the shutter and there is a gloomy, dark room with shadows, shelving, and endless boxes.
Mine was big with endless rows of shelves and ordered rows of boxes all labelled. I can’t see the labels from the door. In the gloom. So we switch on a light and in stark, bright white, we see it all laid out before us.
He seems to have a map and knows where he is going, so I trot along behind him and crane my neck to see the boxes on the high shelves above my head.
They’re full of memories and emotions — thoughts I have buried, feelings I don’t want to touch. I suddenly realise we are going to open some of these and I start to feel tense. I have no idea which ones he is going to pick, but he seems determined and as if he knows what he is doing.
He grabs a huge box and lifts it down and places it on a big table in the middle of the room. He blows off the dust, rubs his hands with glee. He’s enjoying this. Me? Less so. I have spotted that the label has just the one word on it and the apprehension rises in my throat, and as he lifts off the lid I start to wonder if maybe this was such a good idea after all.
He passes me the lid and I place it on the floor out of the way and my eyes flicker on the label. The word ‘father’ stares back at me and I peer into the box. It is crammed full with photos and the ooze of years of emotions and fear and I am not sure it is a good idea to go digging around in there. But there is no stopping him now and he starts to sort through and put things into piles on the table.
I feel helpless and recoil from some of the contents. There are things here I haven’t seen for years. I approach one of the piles nervously and tentatively and realise that I am looking at all my questions. Why did he hate me so much? What did I ever do to evoke so much violence from him? Was I really that bad as a five-year-old?
There are old photographs of him as a younger man and I wonder if he was always angry and full of hatred or if that was only when I came along.
There are pictures of me and I am smiling and clearly have yet to develop a dress sense. Either that or someone else was picking out my clothes, in which case I can blame the stylist.
Everything has a surreal feeling as if I am looking at things for the first time. As if things I had always thought were slightly wrong are now being held up and he is asking me if that is what I truly think. What I really see. How about if this was true instead?
I don’t understand how he can know my father when he has never met him; then again, he seems to think he is a type, a type he has heard about before.
He called him a coward and I question the choice of words, he challenges me as to how he could be anything else. What word do you use for a grown man who beats a small child? He has a point.
I lean forward and peer into the box and he steps back slightly to let me move in closer. He tells me to have a rummage and find something I want to look at, but I hesitate and just hold the edges of the box and breathe slowly as I try to summon the courage to delve into this messy, over-full container of hell.
I see a small toy car. A model of a gunmetal grey Aston Martin, James Bond car. Without the little missiles that fire. They were lost many years ago in a back garden that probably has its own box somewhere on these shelves. Full of lost toys and memories of playing cowboys and Indians and sunshine and fun.
I hold the car in my hand and flick the rotating number plate with my finger as I remember how much I loved this little car. It was mine and it is scratched and battered from hours of battling with Spectre and getting away from endless baddies. Rather like myself.
I place the car down on the table and roll it back and forth, I am pleased to see that an Aston Martin still works after all these years. Also rather like myself. Battered but still functioning. The bodywork isn’t what it was, and there are some miles on the engine, but all things considered, still working and still here.
There are a lot of boxes in this room. We have a lot to look at. My therapist smiles at me and puts his arm around my shoulder and asks me if I am okay. He suggests we go and find a cup of tea. After all, this isn’t going anywhere. We can look at them any time we want. There is loads of time.
As we leave and plunge the room back into darkness, I feel the sigh of decades and prompt myself to return and do some sorting and reorganising. Best to keep things tidy. Who knows what I might find.
Maybe in there somewhere I might find myself.