1996 and 1997 were two years I wouldn't wish on anyone. Professionally, things were getting going again, but personally, it wasn't good and I spent these two years reading Jung, RD Laing, having therapy and generally disappearing up my own arse via my navel.
I'd never considered therapy before, believing, as most people do, that I had this life "thing" sussed, and that you would have to be actually deranged, wandering the streets shouting at strangers, before considering making the decision to be wheeled in front of a therapist.
I suppose what made me take this upholstered route to mental nirvana was having a girlfriend at the time who'd been in therapy herself for years and felt that anyone who hadn't been on the sofa of dreams an emotional pigmy - that, and having more money than sense, of course.
I was in a weird place where I had more money than ever before yet nothing to spend it on. I was living in a friend's spare room for very little rent. There was no point in saving the money I was earning as it would be used against me in any future child support case, or taken from me in tax (fathers were bloody throwing themselves off bridges, for Christ's sake! And I was already voluntarily paying the mortgage and bills and looking after my boys almost daily in the house we all used to share. Having the CSA hanging over your head too was no laughing matter - they refuse to recognise any money voluntarily paid and are inordinately fond of back-dating... "End of rant... Ed") So any spare cash had to be got rid of. I spent hundreds of pounds in restaurants, bought my ridiculous car, and drank expensive wine. My mobile was my only phone - a situation that is far more unsettling than you would at first think: a land line number roots you in a way you'd never guess until you don't have one. Everything I'd saved for and spent money on - my home, my car (not the ridiculous one, the sensible, family one) - was now going to be enjoyed somewhere I wasn't going to be anymore. Even presents that I bought for my children were enjoyed after I'd gone out the front door... I think you get the picture. So it was I made the trip one afternoon to my first therapy session in the hope it would help me find out just how and why I found myself in this disparate and desperate position.
To say I was cynical would be a little of an understatement. Sure, secretly, I was hoping that six or seven power sessions of theraputic head banging was going to transform me from the weak jellyfish I felt myself to be, into a man at peace with himself and his universe, but, like the American Indians, I had huge reservations.
As I said, my girlfriend at the time was a therapy devotee. She had been thrashing things out with her therapist for a good four or five years and, as far as I could see, seemed as far from mental clarity as was humanly possible. Sure, she could analyse the hind legs off a bloody donkey, but that didn't seem to stop her having two glasses of Chardonnay and losing it big time in public. This was, of course, part of her charm and a source of many fun-filled evenings, but didn't really sell therapy to me as an effective treatment for people who'd lost their way.
Also, I never quite got the idea, widely accepted in the therapy world, that in order to create continuity in your theraputic process, the day or days of your weekly appointment(s) are never changed, even if you can't keep them because of your holiday, job-interview, death etc.. You are, of course, charged for these unattended sessions with the idea that, even if you're not actually there, you still own that hour and, by extension, your therapist is still there for you, staring at the empty chair in your absence and twiddling his thumbs, nodding sagely.
This concept became very difficult for me to accept when I experienced it first/second-hand as it were. For the first time as a 'couple', we both found ourselves out of London working for three months on the same series (serial? - sorry...). At the beginning of each of these months, she was having to sit down and write cheques you could buy a small second-hand car with, for, what I could see, was absolutely F-all! For sessions she had known for weeks she had absolutely no chance of attending! This rankled with me. As she licked the envelope containing another cheque for four or five hundred quid, I felt I had to stop this blatent abuse of the vulnerable... so I resorted to sarcasm.
As she sent off each cheque, she would assure me that, even though she could not attend these sessions, her therapist was there, available for her, and that she knew she could pick up the phone at any time during her "hour" and speak to him.
So I, of course, suggested to her that her therapist wasn't sitting staring at the space left by her absence at all, but was, in fact, down the road at his local green grocers in his sandals buying avocados!
Instead of my hilarious version of events jolting her out of her blatent 'madness', she saw this as yet another example of my small mindedness and intense need for the very thing I mocked: therapy. I played my trump card. I told her to pick up the bloody phone then and prove me wrong.
Of course she didn't, because if Mr Therapist was indeed shopping for Mexican fruits in open-toed footwear, her entire belief system would fall about her ears.
Despite my cynicism, though, I still felt curious about the whole thing and, I admit, bloody excited at the prospect of being 'examined' by a professional who may be able to 'fix' me and show me the way to balanced bliss, so, as soon as we returned to London, I made a few calls and, throwing caution - and my wallet - to the wind, found myself a mental mechanic of my own.
When making enquiries, you're given the choice of sex - you're asked whether you'd like to be seen by a male or female, I mean, not whether you'd fancy a threesome during the first session as some sort of ice-breaker. Wishing to avoid sandal-wearing, bearded bores in corduroy, I chose a female.
All thoughts of rarified squares and porticoed entrances fell away as, armed with the AZ, I finally arrived at my therapist's clinic, a little, three-bed, terraced house in East Finchley.
Threesomes or anything else of that ilk fell rapidly away as the door opened and a very small, roundish, submissive yet assertive lady ushered me upstairs into her back bedroom.
This first "theraputic hour" (actually 50 minutes - gives the therapist time to write notes and prepare for his or her next customer) was, of course, ridiculously confessional. I was so unnerved by my therapist's serenity and ability to hold a silence for ever, I resorted to admitting all sorts, short of the murder of a close relative, just to fill the unbearable gaps in the conversation!
I say 'conversation' but that would be a little inaccurate. Therapists very cleverly exploit our innate social need to make the afternoon go with a swing. What's the alternative? I'm sure if my therapist had had her own way, we would have sat there staring at each other saying nothing at all for the entire fifty minutes! But they know that that would never happen. For a start, the therapee is actually paying good money for the privilege, and has made the effort to physically get there, so why on earth would they prefer to sit there and say nothing at all just to win some sort of expensive staring competition? No, they wouldn't, so you start talking. And you start saying things to this total stranger you wouldn't tell - well - your mother (but then I suppose that is the point after all...) And, before you know it, opinions and feelings are coming out of our mouth that you didn't realise you thought or felt at all.
I remained "in therapy" for about a year or so, during which time I became in turn exhilarated, self-obsessed, depressed, frustrated, over-confident and, in the main, very very angry. It seemed to give me carte blanche to express any feelings whatsoever and this, in conjunction with having a partner who seemed to revel in public displays of aggression, gave rise to some very interesting evenings indeed around the West End.
There also seemed to be one very important problem for me with all this therapy stuff. I began to feel like a punter who'd paid for sex, only I was paying for someone to listen. And everything I was saying began to seem wasted on the person I was saying it to. The very people who'd played significant parts in my life and its state, weren't there in this little back-bedroom to hear me and understand me. I was pouring my heart out to someone I hardly knew and didn't trust had my best interests at heart - you could say that this very lack of trust in people was the ingredient that got me in that bedroom in the first place, but, hey... let's not go there.
My theraputic relationship came to an abrupt end when, one afternoon, I was in the middle of some train of thought about my first doggie or some such and I looked over to see my therapist nodding off like a dribbling train passenger. I immediately stopped speaking and, after a few seconds, saw her brain somewhere come to and notice the silence. Pathetically, she opened her tired eyes and Aha'd, nodding as though she'd been gripped the entire time. I made my decision there and then and wrote to her explaining exactly why I wouldn't be coming back.
My girlfriend took her side, of course, and told me that her falling asleep was an agressive act to show how I was refusing to communicate effectively with her.
Oh, yeah...