The Final Elegant Loop

By the time I put my hand on the old beech tree, I had shouted myself empty.

The bark was warm under my palm, mossy, hiding splits in the old wood. I was past the hunters by then, far enough into the wood that no one could hear me, except the trees, and they are used to me by now. Bindweed was working hard at the edge of the path, curling itself around whatever would let it climb.

I had been ignoring the calls all day. When I answered, grace failed me.

I shouted. I raved. I let the anger surface the truth along with the poison I had been swallowing, like my own tail.

Afterwards I stood with my hand on the beech tree, out of breath and realised I could not keep calling it grace if it required me to disappear.

I wish I had something different to write to you today. But as you know, writing is my saviour, so here is another miserable overshare.

Oh, how I have wanted my saviour to be other than myself, but that is all anyone really has, isn’t it? How I wanted someone kind, to give me inspiration, to take the weight. To kiss me warmly under a golden sky.

But maybe that time of my life has passed.

I do watch for synchronicities. My dad used to say, ‘Life only gives you the lessons you’re ready to learn.’ He believed there was no such thing as coincidence. I listen too, but with a little more grounding, because sometimes it really is just coincidence, or something in the shared cultural air.

But this week, there were three separate references to Jekyll and Hyde with different people. Infinity signs cropped up everywhere.

Bear with me, there is a segue here somewhere, I promise.

A few days before the wood, I went to visit a ninety-six-year-old family member, by marriage not blood, but family all the same. No one else really cares to go. He is lonely and not always that cheerful and everyone else seems to see the visits as a job they should not really have to perform.

But me, I think, well whose job should it be? To give compassion to a human who needs it.

It is everyone’s job. It is yours. It is mine.

So I go, even though it is a longish drive to and fro. Even though he is not always polite. Even though, after around fifteen minutes, he is looking at his watch saying, ‘Well, thank you for coming.’

I usually take some biscuits, or some flowers from the garden, or a can of mushroom soup.

He is not mobile anymore, but still in possession of all his faculties, he thinks sideways, like I do.

This week he said:

‘Before I forget, remind me, which one is the evil one? Is it Jekyll or is it Hyde?’

‘How strange, Grampy, I was just talking about this book with my stepmother. So I can tell you it’s Hyde. You can remember it with hide. You have to keep that side of you hidden.’

‘That’s who she is. She has a completely different performance when the carers are here.’

‘I’m sorry, Grampy.’

We talked some more about the family who came to visit.

‘They don’t even sit down,’ he said.

I reached forward from the little stool at the foot of his recliner and put my hand on his. It did not feel like gossip. It felt like a key turning in an old lock, so I held onto it for a while.

‘Well, thank you for coming.’

I smiled.

‘You’ll come next week when she’s away, won’t you? Otherwise I don’t see anyone.’

‘Of course.’

I will go, because I know how differently time moves when you are alone. When you are lonely.

Over the weekend, I kept hearing about Jekyll and Hyde and seeing the infinity sign, in bindweed, on vans, in the looping shape of things. The pattern kept arriving until I could not unsee it.

Jekyll and Hyde got me thinking about the split self. Infinity is a repeating loop, but it was not just infinity. I was seeing ouroboros.

A system that survives by consuming itself.

The snake, and I hope you like my drawing, is not just endlessness. It is self-feeding. A closed circuit that keeps itself alive using the life force of the people inside it.

My life force.

Here the looping stops. The final penny dropped. The pattern ends with me.

And that is why I visit a grumpy old man. Because I find it hard not to give compassion where it is needed, because it is always needed. But also because he is only now seeing a pattern that seems to have travelled from his daughter, to her son, and then into the life I have been trying to survive.

Compassion is strength.

This whole separation has been handled gracefully. Up until this weekend, but perhaps grace did not fail me. Perhaps something true finally interrupted it.

After the phone call in the wood, when I let myself be human in all this, I realised: he performs, but I have been performing too. I have swallowed my feelings so that I could walk in the back door as the chipper mum asking about everyone’s day, be reasonable, be a capable friend, a calm co-parent.

I wipe my tears. I change my voice. I make dinner. I remember who needs picking up, who has homework, who likes which bowl, which dog has had dinner, which child is pretending not to need me.

I perform okayness.

And because I perform it well, the system survives.

What I began to see was how easily a person can become the version required in the room: dutiful, wounded, reasonable, helpful, misunderstood. Each version contains just enough truth to pass.

One performance protects image, avoids accountability and adapts to whoever is watching. It conceals harm.

One performance protects children, the household and the possibility of getting through the day. It conceals suffering.

But it costs you.

Because we all perform to survive inside systems that punish the truth. There is a little Jekyll and Hyde in all of us. But performance can hide damage even from yourself.

The snake was not only him. That was the part I did not want to see. It was the whole arrangement. Hurt comes in one door and goes out of another wearing lipstick, carrying packed lunches and asking brightly if anyone wants tea.

Here is the ouroboros: hurt enters the house, gets absorbed, and comes out looking like ordinary family life. The system carries on. The wound stays open because no one has had to reckon with it. Because if you function well enough, no one can see you bleeding.

I had learned to perform ease so convincingly that even I forgot it was costing me blood.

This is my reckoning.

After I left the rage in the wood, with my hand on the moss of an old beech, sliding down into bindweed with the realisation that maybe I had been walking around with an invisible brand on my forehead that read ‘Damaged’, one I have most definitely replaced with ‘Queen’, I realised that the reckoning must quiet into containing truth in a different way.

Not exposure, not revenge. Not one more perfect explanation.

Truth can be contained differently. I can keep things steady and graceful for the children, but that does not mean I am fine with what happened.

I can be compassionate without being consumed. I can visit the lonely. I can make the tea. I can love what needs loving.

But I do not have to feed the loop with my own aliveness anymore.

The last elegant loop has been untangled.