PARTS OF MICHAEL

It was dark when Michael left the building of the bank where he worked. A huge Xmas tree in the lobby was glowing, competing with many other seasonal decorations in shops and institutions along the Brussels Inner Ring. It was mid-November, a day after his birthday and an evening of his therapy session. 

‘Now, who would voluntarily come to the world in the middle of a war winter 1944?’ The therapist did not answer the question, she knew it was a rhetoric, and the best was to let Michael keep talking. He was half lying in a comfortable chair, his eyes moving behind closed lids.

‘I came early, premature, literally slid out of my mother. Nobody expected I would survive. Barely two kilos, not that anybody weighed me or any doctor saw me. The doctors were a scarcity, serving war, tending to the wounded and getting killed. They put me in a shoe box and prayed for my soul. A few days later, there was a bomb alarm in Dresden, and everybody hurried to the basement. Mum hesitated if to take me with, but, mother’s instinct, she grabbed the shoe box and ran. All people in the apartment building were running down the stairs, toppling over each other. In the turmoil, I slipped from the box. You see, sliding and slipping is my specialty.’  Michael smiled wryly without being conscious of it… ‘A neighbour noticed me lying there, not even crying, and took me in the arms and with him. Down in the cellar, he handed me to my mum, who wrapped me and looked me in the eye as if seeing me for the first time. And I guess it was really the first time she saw me and took me seriously: a family acquisition, a new member on board, one that would not easily let go.’ Michael was pausing, breathing slowly.

‘Thank you for this sharing, what a start full of courage and determination to stay on, at all costs.” Alina paused. “We will come back to this moment later on, but I invite you, Michael, to turn yourself once again to this witnessing part and embrace it with warmth and love and everything it would have needed at that early time in life and perhaps also later on. Would that be okay for you?” Michael nodded from far away. 

She was observing her patient attentively, with loving care. Alina sensed she was a mother figure for her clients who would never guess she also still carried vulnerabilities, her own wounded child parts, and it was okay so. Healing is a continuous process, never ending. We carry so many parts within us, consciously and unconsciously, playing so many different roles in different moments of our lives, and so it be.

‘Thank you, Michael. Take the time you need and when you’re ready I invite you to go deeper again. Anything else showing up?’ Alina asked.

After a pause Michael spoke up. ‘I know I lost a part of myself there and then. I know it, I lost my fear. I was fearless for the rest of my life. After the war, even the big boys at school treated me with respect. No messing around with that tiny devil, that was my auric body talk. I could beat anybody when I sensed my life or that of others were in danger.’

‘Yeah, thank you, Michael. ” She paused a bit. „The fearless child is still there?

‘She is gone.’

Alina gently touched his shoulder, ‘I invite you to come back, at your own rhythm. Count with me: 10,9…’ Michael slowly opened his eyes. ‘Stay there, just wiggle the fingers and toes and take a good inhale. You are coming from faraway.’

Michael looked around the dimly lit room reminiscent of a cozy alcove with a fireplace. There was no fireplace here, a few candles were burning, placed on the windowsill. Otherwise, the room was rather sober, a few pieces of furniture, a few books, a flipchart, a picture with a meditating Buddhist. 

‘You don’t do Xmas decorations, Alina?

‘A bit, I do not exaggerate though. And I will only do a few decorations around 6^th December, not sooner.’

Michael nodded. ‘I hate this holiday and the time around it. Everybody exaggerates, emotions, feelings, decorations, all is blown into impossible measures. The tree in the bank is huge, artificial, with blue spheres and ribbons, a hallucination. Blue packages of fake presents scattered around it; not even children would believe they are worth opening.’

‘I can understand, Michael. Your first Xmas was spent in the cold cellar, on the thin milk of your underfed mum.’

‘Wait, Alina, it was my mum you are talking about. I was born in 1970. By that time, my mum made my father to build the biggest tree ever in the tiny apartment block in the socialist East Germany. Every year we had the biggest tree of all.’

A wave of consternation came over her. For a moment, it was she who was a bit lost in her own feelings and thoughts and had forgotten that Michael was telling his mother’s story. She shook her head a little and stretched her upper back. ‘Yeah, of course, Michael. It’ s only, we often carry our ancestor’s unhealed wounds (as parts) in us, and we are also the ones who can bring them to light and let them heal’. She was almost going to tell him that the story of the dark winter war nights triggered hidden parts of hers as well but thought better of it. A therapist role now. Her client doesn’t need to know how entangled, floating, moving around our stories are.

‘Well, now you have gotten acquainted with an important part of yourself, a part of your past. With a view to survive, it banished all sensations of fear there, in those dark winter nights. I mean, this happened to your mum. A survivor. Your mum could never understand your anxiety, as she was cut from her own. And this fighter of hers wants you to be as dauntless as well, not allowing for fear or any other vulnerability. But then, we need a healthy dose of fear too. It protects us. And you are not a struggling new born in cold wartimes, where being tough and closed up may be the answer. To the contrary… We will look at that further next time. You have worked well today. Take your time to take it all in. Be gentle with yourself.’

Michael was tired. Glad the session was over. ‘I still hate the blue tree in the bank lobby,’ Michael said with a grim expression.

‘Fine. Hate it. Love it, it will be there till January. And we see each other again in January. Are you going home, I mean, to Dresden for holiday?’

‘Yes, to my mum. Believe it or not, she is still around and decorating.’

‘Well enough. Wish you peace and happiness,’ Alina said when wishing him well at the door.

‘We are all survivors, she murmured to herself when walking upstairs to fix herself a cup of tea. Outside the window, bare branches of trees connected to their deep roots in cold winter ground, were whispering their own stories.