Put your hand up if you’ve ever been in a controlling relationship. Put your hand up if you’re in a controlling relationship now. Put your hand up if you had to ask the person that you’re with if you’re allowed to put your hand up.
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Those were the first lines I wrote of what, years later, I would go on to pitch as a book, live show, TV series, and more. I crossed them out, rewrote them, then got rid of them again. You see, I’d tumbled out of, what I hoped was my final toxic relationship. I was penniless, hopeless and soulless. My entire dating life - a full decade, was a litany of controlling relationships; a cycle that I just didn’t seem to be able to end. I was miserable, pissed off and hella bitter that everybody kept sharing photos of their perfectly manicured, engagement-ring-emblazoned fingers on Instagram.
When I first penned those lines, as you may be able to tell, I reverted to humour as therapy. I didn’t go to a ‘real’ therapist until I hit 30. That’s when I realised that ‘rock bottom’ wasn’t just a phrase wailed on Intervention (great show). Holy fuck, I was shattered into a million, tiny pieces and I’d tried everything to break the cycle of control and pull myself out of the clawing darkness:
Binge eating/drinking/exercising
True Crime marathons
Deleting social media
Doing all the Buzzfeed quizzes (I’m Gryffindor, getting married at 34 and a panda is my spirit animal)
Making crunchy peanut butter and Salted Caramel Haagen Dazs ‘sandwiches’
Going vegan (I lasted a day until I was told I couldn’t eat cheese)
Yoga. Nb. don’t go straight for a headstand when you wake up from a nap with a crook in your neck that takes you three days to recover from
A-date-a-day (more on those later)
Finally, one shitty, dull day in January 2016, I succumbed and, without a penny to my name, I called Lambeth Talking Therapies to see if they ‘maybe, if it was ok, could please fit me in’. Turns out I needed crisis counselling. Who woulda thought? It was at that point my archangel counsellor whispered some words that would change the way I viewed the entire world (not an overstatement)… narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, codependency and empaths. After 6 weeks, I was ravenous for information and I poured myself into as many research papers, books, videos and interviews with psychologists as I could. Everything started falling into place, in the words of learned philosopher, Bojack Horseman:
"You know, it's funny; when you look at someone through rose-colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags."
But still I was not ready to give my experiences of coercive control a voice. The years went on and my appetite to research my way out of the cycle of controlling relationships continued.
When Lockdown pt. I came on 16th March 2020 in the UK, I re-lived my hedonistic student life within four walls for a few weeks until my Irish Catholic Guilt got the better of me. Then I bullied myself into actually doing something to either a) heal or b) create.
Well the healing thing was sort of underway: after my 6 weeks of crisis counselling I started going to group therapy which I thought sounded quite fun. You know like group sex, but tears instead of semen. Both salty. So I’d hastily and pre-emptively ticked ‘self-love + healing’ off my to-do list. That meant I was left with ‘create’. But what?
I hacked my way into some scripts. One was the story of a refugee who’d fallen in love with an ice-cream delivery driver. Their wedding march was the sound of the ice cream float. Poetic or shit? I don’t need to know. I think that was in my Haagen Dazs phase. But nothing I created gave me that beautiful feeling of F L O W.
‘What would I like to read once this ends in a few weeks?’ I naively asked myself? Hmm… what about a post-lockdown survival guide? So that’s what I started writing. I’d never written a book before and consequently I hadn’t got a rats arse clue what I was doing. Arcs - something to do with Noah? Truthful dialogue - I like talking. Find your hook - Captain Hook scared the shit out of me when I was 9.
I did my usual manic work vibe which meant I only paused for breath and the ‘what the hell actually is this?’ after I’d written 30k words in a matter of weeks. ‘I guess that’s enough for a book pitch’, I thought. ‘Cool,’ I said out loud, slamming my laptop cover down with glee, ‘now, how do I get this made?’
What followed was one of the happiest ‘coincidences’* of my life. Under the blissful veil of ignorance I whacked myself onto Canva and made, what I thought, was some kind of a proposal document. Again, no idea what I was doing. I then packaged my 30k words that I couldn’t be bothered to/ didn't think I needed to re-read into a PDF, along with the really sexy looking Canva pitch and shipped it off to five big literary agents.
Then I popped a bottle and waited for it to rain, baby.
A few days later, along came a rejection, then another, then another.
It most certainly didn’t rain, in either sense of the word. It was Spring, we were in the middle of a global Pandemic and my ‘book’ was not a book at all but a rather mad set of scribblings I’d written soaring between slightly tipsy and massively depressed.
A few weeks’ later when, not-so-surprisingly we were still in Lockdown pt. 1, a good friend of mine - brilliant presenter, broadcaster, all-round-creative-guru, Sam Delaney invited me on his podcast. I nearly said no because by this point Imposter Syndrome and I had become proper tight pals, but I grudgingly agreed.
Boy am I glad I did.
At the very end of the podcast he and his co-host, another good friend and super-creative, Mark Machado, asked me what I’d been up to career-wise, if anything. I pottered around the subject because the truth of me not washing my hair and walking max 200 steps a day wasn’t that conducive to any future work/ lies to myself I was doing ok. Eventually I mumbled something about the book:
“Oh… yeah… I’m writing a book. I don’t know what I’m doing. Probably won’t do anything with it. Anyway, everyone’s writing a book, aren’t they?”
But Sam didn’t let me off the hook. I’d gotten into the crappy habit of apologising for myself. He said it sounded interesting and, once the podcast was over, asked me to send it through. Well, dear reader, I decided I certainly wouldn’t be doing this. I respect Sam, after all.
He Whatsapped me and reminded me to send the proposal. By this point I’d had a potential offer from a literary agent. I was delighted, they were a wonderful outfit but it didn’t feel like they were the right fit. I don’t know why, I just had to trust what was left of my whispering gut instinct. I left it a few days then figured I may as well send it to Sam and see what happened.
He replied:
His wife, it turns out, is the monumentally brilliant literary agent and publicist, Anna Pallai of AMP Literary. Hello, happy ‘coincidence’. Of course I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to be put in front of Anna if I hadn’t done the podcast. I wouldn’t have had the book to speak about on the podcast if I hadn’t attempted it. And I wouldn’t have attempted it if I hadn’t at least heard out the ice cream van love story. To cut what’s turning into a long story, short… Anna and I had a chat. I was total in awe of her client list, her experience and her ability to serve up what was needed quickly and honestly.
We both decided we could work together (thank God), and I realised the post-Lockdown survival guide was not to be but… and this is a big BUT… ‘was there anything else’, she said and I spoke about the live show I’d started working on pre-lockdown:
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR PSYCHOPATH. My story of how I finally understood, then broke my cycle of controlling relationships. I had only just begun to get my confidence up about these chapters of my life. Deep down, I knew they needed to be told. In fact, I would argue it was pretty critical. But turn it into a book?
A: Is there a pitch doc?
M: No. Not yet.
A: What’s the story?
M: Um. Not sure.
A: Have you got anything you can send me?
M: Erm. Not at the moment.
Needless to say, the next few weeks I spent intensively writing and rewriting and rewriting, keen to ignore that voice in my head that said I couldn’t and I shouldn’t. That was five months’ ago and today, 3rd November, 2020 my book proposal was pitched to publishers. With those words leading the charge:
Put your hand up if you’ve ever been in a controlling relationship. Put your hand up if you’re in a controlling relationship now. Put your hand up if you had to ask the person that you’re with if you’re allowed to put your hand up.
Who knows what will happen, if we’ll get a deal, but one thing is for sure - when you decide to ignore that wanker in your head that tells you that your ideas are crap, your voice doesn’t need to be heard and that the story of the refugee falling in love with the ice-cream delivery driver shouldn’t be explored, you gain a chance. A chance that wonderful ‘coincidences’ will start happening. They won’t all be brilliant but they will lead you to where you need to be. It was the first time in ten years’ I felt like I'd really found, and trusted my voice and, more importantly, that what I had to say really mattered.
So, what have you got to say?
Here’s an interview I did for The Stage about finding my voice
*I don’t believe in coincidences, but let’s not get into all the spiritual shit just yet.
By the way… thanks for being here for my first Substack newsletter. I’d love it if you could share and subscribe so I’m not totally screaming into the void. If you don’t want to be here, I understand. We’re all in the dark abyss at the minute, let’s communicate.
Each week I’ll be writing on all sorts of things to do with narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, safe dating, red flags, codependency and how I broke the cycle of controlling relationships. There will be insights on the world of comedy, books, writing, business, acting, and sometimes, just sometimes I may feel like going off the beaten track to argue why smooth peanut butter is totally pointless. Don’t @ me.