Save Her

‘Fix it!’

‘Fix what?’

‘You can’t just leave her there. Save her.’

‘The mountain story?’

‘Yes. I hate it.’

‘Mum says you’re not to hate anything.’

‘She’ll hate it too.’

‘It’s not real. She’s not real. There’s no person stuck on top of a mountain. It’s makey-uppy.’ Lightning bolt thought… ‘Unless, like Diarmuid says, she’s me. Unless it’s my psyche telling me that I feel lost/abandoned/helpless/forsaken. Please don’t let it be me. Is it me?’

‘It’s you. Fix it. Fix yourself. Gotta go. Picking the boys up.’

And on that bombshell, she hangs up, leaving me to brood my outcast state whilst seated at the kitchen table. Or am I alone on top of a fog-bound mountain with no navigable means down? Or am I both?

I turn to the only thing I know that can help in such instances: ironing pillowcases. It is an undemanding yet profoundly contemplative practice that brings me serenity. The hiss of the iron, the smell of clean, hot cotton, the smoothness of the fabric as I run my fingertip along the even folds, the satisfaction of stacking them into an ordered pile: all is calm, all is white. But am I calm? How can I be so apparently centred while my unconscious imagination is painting images of someone (me?) so perilously lost? Why have I not given myself a way down? Why have I given up on myself?

I decide to examine it through Jung’s lens of archetypal psychology (the archetype being symbolic of an individual’s collective life experiences and determining what choices, both conscious and unconscious, a person makes). This story has been an act of deliberate self-sabotage. I, and no one else, has dealt me this unwinnable hand. I have placed myself in danger, decided my lot is unsalvageable, slammed the door on being rescued, and it is down to me alone to reverse my self-sacrificial ways.

Three more pillowcases to go. The symbolism of eliminating creases is not lost on me.

Hold on there, Jung. That’s not it. It is not my unconscious telling me I am lost and needing rescued. It is about the unfinished, the incomplete, the unknowable. What I may have thought to be my slap-dash laziness in not coming to a sense of an ending is a nod to the groundlessness of life. It is about approaching the end of the year and feeling – no, knowing that I cannot end things tidily. One never can. It is an acknowledgement of my ignorance as to what’s coming next. It is about rapidly changing forecasts and fortunes. It is about the futility of believing in the infallibility of plans, buying into their patina of control. It is about reaching the summit of the year’s end and peering off the mountain into thick cloud, unable to see what next year might bring. It is about the best laid plans of mice and men. It is about taking a leap, walking on air.