Jason

Recently I’ve got back into meditation. I used to pay lip service to this rather fabulous bit of mental defragging but most days missed it completely and on the days that I did it, it would be about 5 minutes.

After about a month of forcing myself to meditate every day, for at least 10 minutes per session, I’ve disciplined myself to two sessions, just after I wake up (after a glass of water and a stretch) and one just before I go to sleep at night.

The great thing about meditation is that it gives lots of answers to the riddles of life.

Problem is, dealing with those answers can be emotionally draining and I’ve been given insights that have left me in tears.

Two days ago I had a breakthrough that has solved a lifelong problem. It involved an ingrained inability to trust other people and why, for most of my life, I’ve been lonely and unable to have anyone I could call a close, or best friend.

It all came down to an incident that happened 44 years ago.

When I was 4 years old in 1975 I went to the playschool in the village of Bishop’s Itchington, Warwickshire, UK in the local memorial hall. I remember the playgroup and one or two of the teachers at it, including the boss Mrs Mann. We played games, had toys and learned the nuances and etiquette of sharing, being kind, manners and above all, making friends. Every time we went out for a walk in the village we were obliged to hold onto a long blue rope wrapped in blue plastic tubing, and woe betide anyone who let go of it. One of our earliest excursions was to go to a house around the corner and watch a tree being chopped down in someone’s back garden.

My memories of this time were vivid, joyous and fun. I loved the playschool and looked forward to each day there. The main reason was that I had a best friend, and his name was Jason.

Jason lived down the road from me and every day me and my mother would stop and call for him on the way to the playschool. My mother would wait at the top of the path as I walked up to knock on the door. Jason would always open it and I’d excitedly shout “Jasooon!” and hold my arms out for a quick hug before we walked together to playschool, with our mothers a few steps behind.

We were best friends. Friends for life. We talked about how we’d always be friends, no matter how old we got and that we’d be friends even after we got married, whenever that might be. We were inseparable and spent all our time together at playschool. We played together after playschool too and I remember just how happy I was having a true friend. A best friend. Someone that would always be there for me and I’d always be there for him. Till the end of time there would be me and Jason. We were Batman & Robin.

Outside of the love I felt for my own family this was the strongest feeling I had for anyone else. Jason was my friend, and nothing was ever going to change that.

And then one day, we weren’t friends any more.

Me and my mother walked to Jason’s house one morning, like we always did and he opened the door. “Jasooon!” I shouted excitedly, holding my arms out for a hug.

He wasn’t pleased to see me. I can’t remember the words he said but he looked upset and grumpy, telling me off for something. Behind him stood his mother, with an “Oh dear!” look of disapproval on her face. We walked to playschool together and he chatted and was polite but something had changed. When we got to playschool he played with toys on his own and played with other children but not me. I was confused and hurt. Later, around lunchtime when our mothers collected us, he walked home with his mother and I went home with mine, separately. I was so upset. He didn’t want to play that day, he went straight home.

“Why doesn’t Jason want to play with me?” I asked my mother.

“He says you pushed him over at playschool yesterday and hurt him”, she replied.

I shook my head in disbelief. “I didn’t! I wouldn’t do that to Jason, he’s my friend!”

My mother clearly didn’t believe me. Later that day my father came home from work and I told him at the dinner table what had happened and how my best friend in the whole, wide world didn’t want to play with me any more. Before my father could respond my mother said “Well, you shouldn’t have pushed him over at playschool”. I started to cry and shouted back “I DIDN’T!” and my mother simply smirked.

Over the next few days me and Jason didn’t walk to playschool together any more. I was hurt and confused. I hadn’t hurt him. I would never do that. Why would my best friend say that I’d done such a horrid thing? My mother said to “leave it” for a week and then go to his house and ask if he wanted to play.

A week? That was an eternity in my eyes.

I waited and waited, feeling more and more miserable each day. On the sixth day my mother suggested that it might be time to go and see if Jason wanted to play. I was still very upset, I missed my best friend so much and wanted these horrible last few days to just go away and be forgotten. When I got to Jason’s house I was nervous and when his mother answered the door she politely said that Jason was busy and couldn’t come out and play. I went home crushed, crestfallen and still confused. I hadn’t done anything, why was I being made to suffer like this? I hadn’t hurt my best friend and now he wasn’t my friend any more. When I got home my mother was in the kitchen.

“Jason couldn’t come out and play” I said, hoping she’d give me a cuddle and say that she understood how I felt.

After a pause she said “Well, you shouldn’t have pushed him over at playschool”.

“I DIDN’T” I screamed at her, tears running down my face.

She smirked and went “Oh”.

Jason found other friends. I watched my best friend become friends with other people and I was beyond miserable. Every day I had spent with Jason had been joyful. I’d felt at peace and that my world was perfect. I’d lived each day happy and confident, wanting to learn new things and be with my best friend all the time. Even my own mother believed that I had hurt Jason, something I know even now, 44 years on, that I never did.

Two years later I saw Jason walking down the road. He was with another boy who lived a few doors down from me. Jason was bigger now, taller. When I saw him again I felt that pain once more and realised how much I’d missed him. I told my mother I’d like to be friends with him again and she asked Jason’s mother if he’d like to come round and play. The reply came back that she didn’t like him to play on a school night. My mother told me that and then after a pause, said “Well, you shouldn’t have pushed him over at playschool.”

“I DIDN’T!!!”

As the months and years passed I forgot about Jason and moved on but that situation, which was the first bond I’d ever felt for someone, broke my heart and any ability I had to form friendships. It was another 4 years before I had another best friend but the intensity and trust wasn’t there, nothing and no one could ever replace Jason. That friendship too, ended when my family moved house and after that I spent my childhood and adolescence lonely and isolated, afraid of getting close to anybody in case I got hurt once again. Only problem was that I didn’t know why I was virtually friendless. Having been so young when I lost Jason, the intensity of emotion imprinted on my childish brain as a first experience, I was scarred in a way that I couldn’t articulate or even fully comprehend.

And one day aged 48 while meditating in Rome, I finally realised the reasons behind my loneliness andI also saw that I had never grieved for the loss of my best friend. The despair, frustration and misery of this, I had been unable to deal with due to being only 4 years old. I began to cry, nearly half a century later, finally able to fully process what had happened.

Someone recently described me as having an “edge”. It wasn’t a compliment and even though she didn’t articulate exactly what she meant I think it was that part of me that always remained slightly cynical, aloof and obnoxious. Never willing to get too close to anyone, always keeping people away just enough to be unable to fully feel anything for them that would cripple me a second time, like being falsely accused of hurting Jason had.

The anxiety I have felt for decades around people seems to be a little lighter this week. I think this realisation was the one I most needed to have.

Charles Bukowski once said “Being alone never felt right, sometimes it felt good but it never felt right”.

It also never felt good.