Get Me Out of Here (11 page)

“I can't stop anyone, Rachel,” he answered. “Only you can. You say you want to stop, but a part of you doesn't want to stop. There is no ‘her.’ There's only you. And you are the only one who can control what you're doing. I can't help you. You have to help yourself.”

“Fine, then, fine!” I roared at him, as if someone had flipped a switch and I had been transformed into a completely different being than the one who'd pleaded and begged for help just a moment ago. “You sonofabitch! I don't need your help. I want to take that goddamned inner child and strangle the bitch!”

I was trembling by now. I'd maintained my composure with Dr. Padgett for dozens of sessions. Yet here I was, telling him off, the rage reappearing with a vengeance. I was blowing it once again.

“You can't strangle that inner child,” he pointed out calmly. “That child is you. And the only way to destroy her is to destroy yourself.”

“Well, she's destroying me,” I retorted angrily. “Manipulative little piece of shit. Why can't she just snap out of it and deal with things like a …” I stopped short, not wanting to give Dr. Padgett an opening.

“Like a man?
That's what you were about to say, wasn't it? You want her to snap out of it and show some guts like a man?”

I didn't reply, just sat there, clenching and unclenching my fists, tapping my foot on the floor, glaring at him.

“That's what your father would have said, isn't it? Right down to the last word. To a scared little girl, afraid to stand up for herself. He'd want that little girl, whom he saw as weak and manipulative, to snap out of it and act like a man.”

“Fuck you, asshole.”

“Ah, another thing your father would have said.”

“You don't know your ass from a hole in the ground. You wouldn't know what it's like to be a man if it came up and bit you on the ass. You're a shrink, goddamnit, a fairy profession.”

“It's your father talking again.”

“What are you trying to do, Padgett? Piss me off enough so that I'll strangle you? You think I couldn't kill your sorry little ass? Think again, you pathetic little faggot. I could probably kill you with my own bare hands. I know exactly where you live. I looked you up in the county tax records. Surprised? You think you'd fool me with an unlisted number? Well, the county's got your name and number, and now I do. I could come to your house in the middle of the night and murder you in cold blood—your wife and kids too. You have no idea who you're fucking with here, absolutely no idea.”

My eyes were burning into his, but I could not detect the slightest reaction of fear, intimidation, or even anger. All I could see was sadness.

“I'm not your father, Rachel. What you just said is what you wished you could have done to him when he was abusing you. You wished you could have attacked him back or killed him to stop him.”

“I could kill him, you, or anyone else I want to, you fool. I could go out and buy a gun and blow all of you to pieces in a single afternoon.”

“You could do that now, maybe. But you couldn't do that then. You were mad enough, perhaps, but you were too vulnerable, too young, too weak to overpower him.”

“Don't you
dare
call me weak, Padgett! You wanna fight right now, you asshole? You wanna see who would win? I'd kick you in the balls and have your guts ripped right out of your throat before you'd even feel the pain.”

Still no sign of fear or anger from the man.

“You were a child. A child at the mercy of her parents. He could overpower you if he chose to. You weren't the one who could kill with your bare hands. Your father could. And you feared that more than anything. Totally vulnerable. So angry but so unable to do anything about it. And so afraid.”

I remained silent.

“If I had been your father, you wouldn't have had to be afraid like that. I wouldn't have laid a finger on you to harm you. Most good parents, most good fathers would never dream of harming their children. Your father was physically strong, maybe, but as a man, he was terribly weak. He couldn't control his emotions, so, instead, he took it out on a little girl like you: too small and too young to defend herself.”

The grip of the raging tyrant left me, as if it had been exorcised, the pleading, helpless little girl left in its place.

“Please help me,” I said, in a tiny voice. “Dr. Padgett, I'm so scared. I don't know what took over me. I didn't want to say all of those terrible things. I didn't want to hurt you or scare you away. I need you, Dr. Padgett. Please help me. What's wrong with me? Am I really crazy? She's taking over.”

“Who is taking over?” he asked gently, as if to a child.

“The other one. The mean one. The one that always says the terrible things and gets me in trouble. That part of me. She's the one trying to starve me to death. And she's blaming it on me. It isn't fair.”

I listened to myself speaking, stunned. Truly, I thought, I must be losing it.

“There's only one you, Rachel. Just one. You're fragmenting here. Dissociating.”

“What does that mean?”

Dr. Padgett went on to explain the terms. Fragmenting, or dissociating, occurred when a person did not have a fully integrated personality. Different aspects of the personality would emerge, depending upon the situation. It was a patchwork means of coping.

When gripped by fear, the abusive tough-acting persona would come to fend off the threat and reduce the feelings of helplessness and vulnerability. When she was overwhelmed by the need to be close to someone, the pleading, begging little girl emerged. In many situations, the adult sensibilities and rationality were present, and thus the personalities would be somewhat integrated and subdued. But in times of intense feelings, one of the other two personas would step in, overwhelming me.

It wasn't a multiple personality disorder type of dissociation, he explained, because I was always conscious, at least on some level, of what I was doing and saying. A person with multiple personality disorder, like Sybil, would not have the conscious awareness I did.

But the dissociation set the stage for a fierce internal conflict as the two inner-child personae, like oil and water, battled each other. One clearly female; one clearly male. It was the legacy of abuse, of trying to please both a father and a mother who despised femininity.

Not all of me was a child, however. Some aspects of my character had managed to grow to a more advanced stage of development than others. I was capable, at many times, of interacting quite functionally in adult situations. It was important to explore the childhood personae in order to better understand and one day integrate them, Dr. Padgett told me, but even more important to remember that I was an adult too. As long as I could retain that adult aspect as I explored the others, I could handle the introspection and ultimately work to become whole. If I lost the adult in me, however, and let either of the child personae completely take over, the results could be disastrous.

Handling the two children within me was far more exhausting than handling the two real children I had. But I could not escape the ongoing battle between the two fragmented creatures inside me. Exploring their natures in sessions had brought new life and energy to them; they never seemed to tire. The adult me, however, was exhausted.

Sessions were almost like séances to me. The words and expressions came out of my own mouth, the body language from my own body. But still I felt inhabited by intruders. I wanted calm. I wanted peace. I didn't want to kill these inner children, but I did fervently wish they'd go away for a while and stop tormenting me.

Meanwhile, the needle on the scale kept leaning left until I had only 103 pounds on my five-foot, six-inch frame. My bedroom mirror was like the fun house variety. At times the weary “adult” would look into it and be shocked at the sight of my ribs, which were grotesquely protruding. My calves were no larger than my ankles, which made my size-ten feet look abnormally huge. My bony knees nearly as large in circumference as my thighs, two huge knobs connecting brittle sticks. When I would raise my arms, I could see every tendon twitch, the clear outlines of bone. My shoulder blades stuck out so sharply it appeared they were on the verge of severing the skin like a knife. My face was hollow, and my eyes were underlined by dark circles. I was a vision of death.

Until suddenly, that same vision would transform. Those same calves and thighs would expand before my very eyes into cellulite-ridden obesity. My face blew up as if inflated, and I could see a second chin appearing. The knobby knees looked fat. Before I knew it, I would be downstairs in the living room again, jumping and twisting to the instructions of Jane Fonda, the exhaustion of an hour ago replaced by hyperactivity.

Then the evening would come. Tim couldn't even stand to hold me in his arms anymore, much less make love. I'd lost my appetite for sex long ago anyway. He couldn't bear to feel the sharpness of my bones. He'd tried to be supportive by nagging, coaxing, or getting angry with me. But nothing worked. His wife was wasting away, and he couldn't do anything about it.

Finally I made the decision. The adult was too tired to handle this anymore. It was time for more serious action. Now that I was in physical danger, I knew it was time to go back into the hospital for the third time in less than a year. It was a decision not made by a child seeking a place to hide, but by an adult seeking a place that could help me live. This time Dr. Padgett agreed readily. Tim, of course, thought the decision was long overdue.

I told a lot of my friends at the church of my decision. Having seen the visible effects of my illness, they supported me fully, offering to help Tim out with meals and child care, as they had during the first two stays, and to visit me. I notified Jeffrey's preschool teacher and Melissa's part-time baby-sitter that I'd be going in the hospital. I asked that they let Tim know if the kids seemed to be having difficulties, although I didn't explain the true nature of the illness.

Then, finally, it was time to explain it to the kids. The first two hospitalizations had been rather spontaneous, an escape. This time, however, I realized that whatever happened on the psych floor could be harder than handling the responsibilities of home. It was an adult choice, and I was aware of just how painful this separation would be for the kids. Telling them was one of the hardest things I've ever done.

Melissa, only two, seemed to handle it well, most likely because she could not quite grasp exactly what I'd be doing or how long I would be gone.

Jeffrey, however, at four,
did
understand. He remembered my two prior stays quite vividly. His big blue eyes welled with tears as I sat him on my knee and told him.

“Mommy's going to have to go away for a while, Jeffrey.”

“Where, Mommy? To work?”

“No, sweetheart. Mommy's going back to the hospital.”

He began to cry and shake his head vigorously, shredding my heart at the realization of how much all of this was hurting him.

“No! No! I don't want you to go!”

By now, I was crying too.

“Jeffrey, I don't want to be away from you either. I love you and Melissa more than anyone else in the world.”

“Then don't go.”

“I have to go, Jeffrey. Mommy is sick. Not the kind of sick where your throat hurts or your tummy hurts or you throw up. A different kind of sick. The kind of sick that makes Mommy really sad sometimes and really mad sometimes—so sick sometimes she can't even eat because she's too upset. In the hospital my doctor will be there and nurses and other people that can help me get better so I won't be so sad anymore.”

“I already know that. Daddy told me that the other times you went away, but you didn't get any better.”

It was the uncanny ability of a child to cut straight to the truth.

“This is going to be different, Jeffrey. This time I am going to get better.”

Jeffrey looked at me for a moment and then asked, “Mommy, are you going to die?”

How could I do this to my children? What kind of a mother was I?

“No, sweetheart. I'm not going to die. I'm going to get stronger and come back and play with you and read to you and even take you to the zoo.”

“Will you let us see you? Will you want us to come there? We won't make you cry or get mad, I promise.”

Oh, my God
. My heart sank.
The poor little boy has been thinking this is his fault
.

“I want you to come and see me every day. You kids aren't the ones who make me sad or mad. It's the sickness that does that. You kids make me happy. And when I'm in the hospital, I'm going to take a great big picture of you and Melissa with me and put it right on the nightstand where I can always see it. And when I feel really sad, I'll look at that picture. Seeing you helps make me get better.”

There we were. Mommy clutching her child, both of us hugging as tight as we could, both of us in tears. He still didn't want me to go, but I think he at least was able to understand that I wasn't going just to leave him. I was going to get better. Yes, I was going to get better. I had two children who depended on me and a husband who loved me very much. And I was going to do anything it might take to be able to be reunited with them and be the kind of wife and mother they all deserved.