My Little Viking

My Husband is 10 years younger than me. We’ve been together nearly 30 years and I still refer to him as my’ toy boy’. The Boyfriend-What-I-Married is lovely. Patient. Smart. Nice to look at. His only problem, and it’s not much of a problem, but it does feature a lot in our lives, is that he has no ability to discern the difference between hot emotions — frustration, angst, fear, irritation, rage, that thing Sun Tse describes as ‘Rent them with anger’ when you simply don’t have the energy to clean the house but the house must be cleaned — they’re all the same to him. This shortfall in his character causes him to repeatedly ask me, “Why are you so angry all the time?” Those familiar with the question can imagine my response.

Not that I’m blasé about it. Anger’s been a problem in my life. My father was violently angry. Mum, on the other hand was so passive-aggressive she actually made you long for something aggressive-aggressive so you didn’t have to weed the undergrowth to discover what was eating her. I’ve done years of therapy about my rage. After inflicting three stitches into a boyfriend’s lip and hitting my boss in the head with my briefcase, I learned to put my anger with the people and in the places where it belongs.” Frequently, that’s a pillow, with me screaming into it.

Not that it’s always a problem either. My comfort with strong and hot emotions has its benefits. When the Husband first immigrated to Australia, I was his sponsor — and part of that sponsorship involved me paying $10,000 to Sydney University for one year’s tuition for him to complete the Philosophy degree he had previously been studying in London. I swear. Everything was above board. Everything, except his dyslexic sweetheart (me, for those up the back), had misread the instructions and thought I was supposed to pay the tuition in cash.

It was the week before Christmas and blisteringly hot in Sydney, Australia. The traffic was putrid, and, having rung ahead to check the office closing time (2pm because they were having their Yuletide office party), I ploughed my furrow through the festive traffic to get to the bank, withdrew the foreign student ransom in cash, drove through the CBD, and arrived with 15 minutes to spare … only to discover that they did NOT accept cash.

There were four of us in the musty old office — a young man and a woman behind the counter, one other student doing admin and fusty old me — watching all my efforts go down the gurgler.

“But he’s already been accepted,” I said, still calmly. “All I need is a receipt for him to show the Embassy in London…”

“Sorry, Lady, we don’t accept cash.” He pointed to a 40-point sign that screamed, Cash Not Accepted.

“What can I do?” I asked, fear rising that I was about to fuck up irrevocably.

“Come back in the new year? We’re closing at two for Christmas.”

“There must be something? I have the money. He needs proof of payment to get on the plane.” The woman shook her head. Two implacable teenagers ready to party. — the third watching with mild interest.

There was no way I could rectify this problem with reason, so I dug deep into my method and sank to the floor, wailing, “That poor dumb bastard!” I raised my arms as I went down on my knees, letting go of the cash that shot into the air and fluttered around us like a bank heist. “God knows why, but he loves me — enough to quit his job and travel halfway around the world just to be with me…”

The man escaped the counter and began picking up the notes, then shoving them into my clenched fists, which I beat on the floor to emphasise, “Now. It. Won’t. Happen. Because I’m a fuckup, and you don’t accept currency.”

“There’s a student credit union on campus,” the young man said urgently, “If you run, you can get there before they close for lunch.”

I slowed my sobbing, snakey as hell, “You’re just saying that to get rid of me.”

He shrugged, a bit, “No, they can issue you a bank cheque for the money.”

“But you’re closing for your party.”

“The party’s in here. Knock on the window. I’ll let you in.”

“Promise?”

Yes. He promised. “But run, they also close at two.”

Run I did. And good to his word, the young man took the cheque and issued the receipt under the paper bunting and surrounded by cheese plates and plastic cups of cheap white wine.

When Scott eventually made it to Orientation Day, the Bursar accepted his paperwork and then took off her reading glasses to get a better look at him. “So you’re Scott David.” At home, he asked what I had done that made them receive him with such warmth.

Warmth? I’m still surprised they didn’t arrange an intervention.

Recently, I was introduced to a therapy method called IFS — Internal Family Systems. It’s not, as the name suggests, about the dynamics within families, but the dynamics of different parts of your own personality within yourself. My friend suggested I listen to The Tim Ferris Show episode #492 in which he interviewed Richard Schwartz — who is on the faculty of the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. It’s good. Listen to it sometime.

The Husband and I listened to the podcast on a long car trip, pausing occasionally to talk about aspects of it. The core idea is that our personality makes up parts of ourselves. Often, parts of ourselves are hidden, traumatised or locked away. And other aspects of our personality protect those ‘Parts’. Schwartz describes them as Firefighters and Protectors.

At the centre of all these Parts is the Self. The calm, indestructible, wise Self. The Higher Self. The Best Self. I did the Hoffman Process a few years back, which has a similar view of the Parts and the Self. So, I was already primed for this concept.

What was new for me was the revelation of the Part of my personality I think of as ‘My Viking Self’. It was my Viking Self who stormed across town to pay the university fees. It was my Viking Self who fell to their knees in a living performance. She’s always been with me. My Little Viking was a source of much mirth to my siblings, who used to enjoy winding me up and setting me off in a torrent of fury — a spitting kitten wielding a wooden sword.

But that Viking has kept me safe. My Viking has saved me from sexual assault, gave me courage in dangerous situations. She is mighty in the face of any emergency and valiant when defending loved ones. I fucking love my Viking.

In fact, I love her so much that I was swaggering for a couple of days after listening to the podcast. My Viking sword attached to my Viking Scabbard slaying all those non-Vikings in my way. The Husband was not so enamoured. He is not so sure the Viking is entirely necessary for making tea.

No sooner was my Viking outed than a friend unwittingly killed her. We were talking about family, and I mentioned my Viking. Without warning, my friend flicked off a scale on my armour and drove her through with the words, “It’s nothing more than a tantrum, though, is it?”

I don’t know why those particular words drove into me so hard, but I couldn’t breathe. All the times I’d been wound up, all the times my passion and point of view were dismissed as emotional, all the times I’d entered the fray with my heart in my throat. This wasn’t one of those times. I thought I was safe, but I wasn’t. I was all alone — and worse — disarmed.

“Who will defend me now?”

When I got home, I couldn’t talk about it. The loss of my Viking was too visceral, too raw. The last remains of my energy bled out of me. I went to bed, and in the night, I did one of the Hoffman meditations. One where you invoke your Higher Self — and when I saw her, my magnificent perfect Self, she was holding my Viking’s sword. She was calmly standing guard with the blade pointing into the ground, both hands on the scabbard — a symbol of peace and resilience.

“But where is my Viking?” I asked her. She was a stone in my chest. A barely alive, spent force. Exhausted. Tears sprang to my eyes to see the mighty laid so low.

In the podcast, Schwartz gave some techniques for talking your Protectors. “Who do you protect?” I asked her.

“Everyone.” She whispered. Everyone I love, including me.

“The old feminists had a saying back in the 70s,” I told her, “When you’re tired, rest. Don’t give up.”

I thanked my Viking for all her work. I told her it was 2024, and that she no longer needed to be on guard all the time. I told her that I could look after myself and that we were keeping her sword safe for her. She could rest for now and be ready when she was needed, not for tea, not for housework, but for the meaningful gift of survival.

It’s important to remember that the Vikings were farmers looking for land. They came from the cold, seeking warmth and soil. They wanted to come home. They were brave and fierce and proud. They still are. I fucking love my Viking.