Witness
I remember sitting at their kitchen table, I was eighteen, perhaps nineteen. I told them how bad it was at home, I told them everything. They felt like a safe space, they were.
They couldn't do anything about it. I needed them to bear witness and to tell me that it wasn't right.
I had lived my whole childhood in fear, fear of the next thing happening, it didnt just happen to me, it was the disruption, the potential eruption that living in a house fuelled with drink and drugs does...
I was determined not to be as they were, they seemed pathetic, I witnessed them and at that moment sitting across the safe country pine table, they witnessed me.
A kitchen table I have sat at many many times since, with a cup of tea, a bowl of soup and a friendly chat.
I often wonder if the deepest trauma is in the fact that there is no one to pour out to, keeping it to ourselves evokes more pain and misery.
I remember all those years later when I was desperately searching for some sort of help, my son deep in the throes of his upset, I sat across another kitchen table confiding in a friend, no solution, just witness, a gentle 'I am so sorry'.
No judgement, nothing else.
I needed that moment of witness too.