Get Me Out of Here (15 page)

He listened to the apology. But as it turns out, it wasn't as necessary as I thought. When he'd seen the note on the windshield, he had removed it and had figured it was from me. But he hadn't opened it.

Among Dr. Padgett's therapy boundaries was the rule that a patient's emotions, particularly those of the turbulent inner child, should be confined to sessions. So he had decided not to read the note. He did, however, invite me to read the note to him right there, in session.

I declined, telling him that it was basically a repackage of the same insults I'd hurled the day before.

He accepted my apology nonetheless. Instead of the lecture or the terse warnings that were warranted, he changed the topic away from the letter and toward the feelings that had prompted it.

Immediately I was filled with love for him. This was a man who truly meant what he said about unconditional love. This was a man fully committed to keeping his promises.

“Therapy is a lot like parenting,” he told me. “A child needs the parent in ways that the parent simply doesn't need the child. The parent may love the child and not be able to imagine life without the child, but it is a different kind of love. The child is wholly dependent on the parent, but it doesn't work the other way around. Healthy and loving parents wouldn't dream of exploiting the child's vulnerability. But abusive parents do. Your parents did. You couldn't help that you needed them so much. But that need brought you pain. You had no other choice but to rely on them. There was no one else to take care of you. But now you have someone else.

“Every child needs to feel safe, to love completely, and not to have that love exploited. You cannot relive your childhood. But you can get what you need here. And you can become whole.”

I loved him so much at that moment I couldn't believe how I could have harbored the hateful thoughts that had prompted the note. At times like this I could not imagine how I could have hated him—ever. In times of hatred I sometimes wished I could summon these warm feelings of love. But they always seemed to elude me. Intellectually I knew the goal of therapy was to fuse these conflicting emotions into a whole. But for now I simply clung to these tender moments of intensity, savoring them for as long as they lasted. They were enough to get by, enough to keep me coming back.

A pattern was emerging here, I noticed, an ironic twist on an old biblical saying: “Ask and ye shall receive.” With Dr. Padgett the phrase was transposed: “Ask and ye shall not receive; do not ask and ye shall.”

When I came in hungering for his tonic words of love and comfort, yearning so much it burned within me, Dr. Padgett was often distant. He repeated his same line,
“If you can't believe I care about you based on all that's happened here, what I say or don't say isn't going to matter.”

It was the times when I least expected it, felt I least deserved it, that he would open up with his warming words of love and comfort. As he would often say,
“Love isn't something to be earned. It's something to be given.”

In the previous session I had accused him of trying to pull my puppet strings. Projection again. I was the one who was trying to control him, and he was not going to let that happen. But slowly I was learning that I wasn't always going to hear exactly what I wanted to hear. Maybe it was truly because, as he said, what I wanted wasn't always what I needed.

Anger and fear temporarily lifted. I went home and spent a peaceful evening playing with the kids and watching mindless sitcoms with Tim. For once I slept well with no nightmares to rouse me from a restful sleep.

I'd gotten into the habit of arriving to the hospital an hour early to take long walks and reflect on what was most pressing in my mind. Strolling through the meticulously kept gardens of the hospital grounds, I rarely had harsh thoughts toward Dr. Padgett. Yet once I entered the office, there was no predicting how I would behave.

Sometimes I walked for an hour or two, thinking kind thoughts. But once I crossed his threshold, I was besieged by rage, and the gentle eloquence I had planned would turn to bombshells of insults.

Outside the walls of the office, I was getting better at emotional self-control. Inside them, however, was another matter entirely. In my moments of loving and feeling loved, I would feel remorse for the bitter attacks of a session or two before. I'd be filled with regret as I looked into the eyes of a man I couldn't imagine wanting to hurt. Yet I knew I had often done everything in my power, not only to hurt him, but also to destroy him. I didn't understand why I could not control myself despite my best intentions. It made even less sense why he continued to put up with me.

At these times his chair became a slowly rising pedestal, and I looked into the eyes of more than a therapist—a saint. I tried to put words to this consuming love that I felt, to let him know just how remarkable and kind I thought he was. To let him know how I felt right then, before the moment passed. In this session I tried once more.

“I've treated you like shit, Dr. Padgett. I've told you off, threatened you, and maliciously insulted you. But you stay here anyway. You keep being kind to me. I don't deserve you.”

“You
do
deserve me,” he replied. “That's the whole point. Every child deserves parents who give love unconditionally, who don't exploit vulnerability but nurture it with kindness. Not because of anything a child does or says, but because the infant simply
is
. A child shouldn't have to earn this love. It's a birthright.

“I'm not by any means perfect. I don't have to be. All I have to be is good enough. You think this kind of love is rare. But it isn't. It happens all the time for most children. Most parents are good enough parents. And, quite frankly, it's really not that difficult to love you. There is a lot in you to love.”

It still didn't make sense. I had been downright hateful to him so many times. What could he possibly see in me to love? I wasn't a child. I was almost thirty years old. His kindness, in ways, was only deepening my remorse.

“Come on, Dr. Padgett. Let's be serious. I've cussed you out so many times I couldn't even begin to count them. I've insulted everything: your profession, your motives, your integrity, your competence, even your masculinity. I've threatened you and your family. How could anybody but a masochist or a martyr put up with this?”

“Have your kids ever thrown a temper tantrum?” he asked. “Do they ever want something that seems insignificant, and yet, to them, it's like the holy grail? And when you don't let them have it, they pitch a fit with everything in their being?”

I thought of Melissa, who a few days before had desperately wanted to use a crystal vase as a teapot for her dolls. My little girl, usually so good-natured, had rolled around on the floor, pummeling her tiny fists, writhing like a possessed creature.

I described the incident to Dr. Padgett.

“What did you do? Did you get angry? Did you scream at her or spank her?”

“No. I might have been a little irritated, but she's just a little kid, and she was awfully tired. I didn't give her the vase, but I pretty much let it pass.”

“Have your kids ever told you that they hated you?”

I had to smile at this one. It was the running joke of the preschool mom set. All of us, at one time or another, vied for the title of “meanest mommy in the world.”

“Sure,” I answered him.

“But you're smiling. Didn't you take it personally? Didn't it hurt you?”

“No, of course not. They don't really mean it.”

“Ah, that's where you're wrong,” he responded. “For the moment, when they are right in the middle of an emotion, they mean it with all of their being. When they say they hate Mommy, they absolutely mean it—the same black-and-white thinking you do sometimes. That same inability to feel intense anger and intense love at the same time. That cookie or crystal vase is as important to them at the moment as anything—a job, a home, a marriage—could ever be to an adult.

“But the parent can handle this because he or she knows this is simply the way two-year-olds can be. The hate is tempered with the intense and pure love that prompts them to tell you an hour later that you're the best mommy in the world.”

I smiled again. Tim and I had long ago agreed that God had made toddlers so sweet at times to make sure their parents didn't strangle them when they acted like little monsters. Survival. Although, really, toddlers were a joy far more than they were a headache. It wasn't hard to love them at all.

“Another question for you. Let's say Jeffrey or Melissa were ten or twelve years old and still dropping to the floor, kicking and screaming every time they didn't get their way. What would you think then?”

“I'd be really worried. I'd think something was seriously wrong.”

“Would you hate them then?”

“No, of course I could never hate them. They're my kids.”

“So you'd be very worried because you'd know that continuing to act in such a way at those ages could be very harmful for them. But you'd still love them. And you'd be worried precisely because you loved them.”

“Yes,” I was beginning to see where this was leading. This was a time I preferred to listen rather than speak.

“When you were a little girl, you were afraid to express these strong emotions. You were afraid to leave your bedroom at night or cry out of fear, much less throw a tantrum. In your world it wasn't safe. If you dared to express your anger, your fears, that would not be accepted. You were afraid that if you told your parents that you hated them, they would, in turn, hate you. And you needed them, as all children need their parents. You couldn't risk that.

“So you buried those feelings. You had to out of sheer survival. And, in the meantime, a part of you never grew out of that phase—a part buried out of fear and self-preservation that has never left you.

“What I feel when you lash out as you do, lose control as you do, isn't hatred, Rachel. How could I hate a child? Yes, I worry about you. Because you've grown up in many ways, you have a much greater command of language than you had back then. So the words you say can be quite hurtful to people who don't understand that they come from the child within and not from the adult. This can destroy relationships.

“And, as an adult, you have the freedom and the access to indulge in much greater forms of self-destruction than a two-year-old could ever have. You can drink and use drugs. You can smoke. You can be promiscuous. You can kill yourself if you want to, run into the streets at night, choose to eat everything in sight, or starve yourself. It's dangerous when the raw black-and-white emotions of a child are harbored in an adult's mind and body.

“Your rages might irritate me sometimes. But they don't make me angry. They don't make me want to leave you any more than my own toddlers' tantrums made me want to desert them. This isn't a normal adult relationship with adult expectations. It's a unique one where you're safe to express your childlike emotions and not be judged or reprimanded. It's safe here for you.”

I found consolation in his words. And yet I still had difficulty accepting the notion that I was in any way a child. I'd earned a degree from a prestigious university. I had an emerging career. Perhaps it was offtrack right now, but I did have one. I was in a marriage and had two children. At times I had taken his childhood analogies as being rather patronizing. Now they were more embarrassing. Shameful.

“Those are kind words, Dr. Padgett. And I don't doubt for a minute that you mean them. You do have a role, and you are great at that role, a lot better than I would ever have expected. Better than I deserve. But look at me. I'm an adult sitting here. A skinny one, maybe, but still an adult. Sitting in here crying like a baby sometimes. Acting like a child. Don't you think it's kind of pathetic? How could you possibly respect me?”

“Sad, maybe, but not pathetic. In fact, quite courageous in that you're willing to look inside yourself and face what's there. Anything you've managed to do in your life has been like climbing a mountain with a two-hundred-pound weight on your back. How could I not respect that?

“One of the saddest facts isn't that there is still a child within you but that you're so ashamed of that child. What's even sadder is that you have
always
been ashamed of that child, even when you were one. You can accept the childlike nature of your own children, but you can't accept it in yourself. Someday you will, Rachel. Someday you will.”

A warm glow filled me on the way home, that of a child loved by her patient father. One who believed me to be not only lovable, but also courageous. Was I courageous? It was still hard to believe, and yet he wasn't the type to say things he didn't mean.

I'd verbally torn him to shreds more times than I could count. Yet I hadn't quit going to sessions. I hadn't given up. No matter how much I humiliated myself, he was there waiting for me.

Therapy was a bittersweet addiction. There were moments of catharsis, moments when I felt as if Dr. Padgett found a part of my soul that always ached for love and understanding. My need for him was vast, opened wide like the tiny beak of a baby bird awaiting a worm from its mother. I was in the nest alone.

How had I come to need him so much?

The constant transitions were painful—opening up, baring my soul, only to face the abrupt ending ritual:
“That's about it for today.”
From that point on, I had to bear the emptiness, the pain of missing him. Everything I did in between sessions was filler. A way to kill time. I silently marked the days until our next session. I went through the motions of being a wife, mother, accountant, church member. But I was living these days for therapy. It had become not only my lifeline, but my life.

My desperate need for him was limitless and almost embarrassing. Was it really worth those brief moments of feeling loved?

As much as I tried to savor the moments of warmth, they often left me as quickly as they came. By the next session the walls had been erected again. It was simply too exhausting and painful to keep needing Dr. Padgett as much as I did. I had stepped onto a high-speed train powered by my torrent of emotions on an endless journey with no destination. My only option was to jump from the moving train. Death seemed preferable to a life like this.

The session began in silence. There were plenty of thoughts running through my mind. But I chose not to share them. Instead I sat back, silently staring at the books on his shelves.

Go ahead, Dr. Padgett. Make my day! You take the lead for once. I'm not saying anything. I can be a blank screen too
.

After ten minutes or so had passed this way, Dr. Padgett finally did say something.

“So what's on your mind?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“That's right. Absolutely nothing.”

More time passed.

“You're burying your feelings, Rachel. They are there, but we can't work on them unless you open up.”

“You're the damned expert,” I snapped back at him. “You seem to know everything that's on my mind. You seem to know all there is that makes me tick. Why don't you figure it out?”

“I'm not a mind reader.”

“Oh, really? You certainly seem to be able to put all kinds of words in my mouth and thoughts in my head that I've never said.”

“This isn't therapy,” he said firmly. “This is acting out. You aren't apathetic, and you aren't numb. You are deliberately withholding your feelings. You know how the process works.”

My tough chick persona was sitting back and calling the shots. She was making Dr. Padgett pursue me rather than the other way around. It was a powerful feeling of omnipotence that fed upon itself.
Come on, Dr. Padgett. Beg for it. Get on your knees
.

Dr. Padgett did not beg. For the next twenty minutes neither he nor I spoke a word. I glanced at my watch. Only fifteen minutes remained in the session. Fifteen more minutes before the dreaded words:
“That's it for today.”
I was squandering a session, and I could feel the self-recrimination for wasting our time together welling within me. Panic filled me, along with the anticipated resentment of the enforced end of session.
The sonofabitch was going to let me do this to myself, sit back there and outlast me!

Suddenly it was his fault. I was determined not to let him get the better of me. I was determined to have the last word. He'd pay for this.

“You're right, Dr. Padgett,” I said coolly. “There are things on my mind. But I have no intention of sharing them with you. You know why? Because you're a manipulative bastard, that's why. A control freak. You want me to get down on my hands and knees, to strip my soul naked so you can exploit it. You want to see me grovel for your attention. Fuck you. I'm not doing it. You can have your rules, but I don't have to follow them. You can't make me talk, you bastard!”

It was projection plain as day. But he didn't point it out, and I didn't choose to see it.

“You're hurting yourself, Rachel. Not me. You need to release your feelings during sessions not afterward. And you've wasted a good amount of that opportunity today.”

“I don't need you, asshole,” I laughed haughtily. “Don't you see that? I don't need anybody. I'll feel whatever in the hell I want to feel whenever I want to feel it. And I'll say what I damned well please whenever I damned well want to say it. Are you worried I'll call you in between sessions? Infringe on your precious leisure time? Well, don't worry. I wouldn't call you if you were the last fucking person alive and I had a loaded gun pointed down my throat. I'd squeeze the trigger and lay there bloody on the floor with my brains blown out before I'd ever pick up the phone and call an asshole like you!”

Dr. Padgett was looking at the clock that faced him.
Sonofabitch. He can't wait to get me out of here. He can't wait to toss me out of his office and onto the street
.

“I don't need you, you asshole!” I was screaming desperately now, as aware as he was that only two minutes remained. “I don't fucking need you or anybody else! I may as well be dead! You'd like that, wouldn't you? Because then you wouldn't have to fuck with me anymore. I'd be out of your hair. I'd quit trying to suck you dry. You think I'm some kind of loser, some dependent, worthless little psycho. But I don't need you. I don't need a fucking soul.”

Dr. Padgett sat expressionless for a moment. Then he said the closing words.

“That's it for today.”

Before he had finished the sentence, I had jumped out of my chair, fumbled with my purse and car keys, cursing under my breath, and stalked out of his office without another word.

Sometimes the twenty-minute drive home was a calming transition, a time to collect my thoughts and prepare to reenter reality. Like an infant in a car seat, I could be soothed by the gentle vibrations and humming engine of a car ride.

Today was not one of those days.

The other drivers on the road exacerbated my anger as I pushed the speedometer needle to fifty-five miles per hour in the thirty-five zone, darting in and out of traffic, returning the angry honks and upturned middle fingers of those I'd tailgated or cut off. My emotions were spinning out of control, and I was riding them until I was in a frenzy.

I managed to get home without incident. Tim wasn't there yet, and I still had a half hour before I had to gather Jeffrey and Melissa from the sitter.
The hell with it
, I thought.
Let Tim pick them up. Let Tim deal with them
. I did, at least, call the babysitter and lie to her, telling her I was running late with a client and that Tim would pick up the kids. I then went immediately to the attic and locked myself in, ready to have it out with anyone who came near me.

I sat there, chain-smoking, steaming with rage. I was waiting to hear the front door open, the boisterous sounds of the kids, the sound of Tim's footsteps below. But I heard nothing. No one was home. Which made me even angrier.

How dare Tim just leave me up here alone? He doesn't give a shit either, the sonofabitch! No one cares how I feel
.

I went into Jeffrey's room, grabbing a marker and some wide-lined tablet paper, and began to scrawl out terse notes that I taped throughout the house.

The note on the front door read:
Tim. You need to pick up the kids. I'm upstairs in the attic. Don't even think of going up there if you know what's good for you!

At the bottom of the stairs I taped another note:
Stay away! Don't mess with me! You don't know what I might have up here!

The sign on the locked door to the attic said:
I might die anyway, but if you dare come in here, you might all be dead! You don't know what I have up here!

The implication, of course, was that I had a loaded gun—which I didn't. I knew it was being manipulative when I wrote the notes, but I justified it because I hadn't actually lied. Besides, if there had been a gun around the house, I would have brought it up there. I could get a gun quite easily, and I just might do so.

Once I had taped up all the notes and locked myself back in the attic, I waited quietly for Tim to arrive. As I heard the front door slam, I could envision him reading these notes, the fear and panic in his eyes, tearing them down even though neither of the kids could read yet. The door slammed again twice, the second time accompanied by the sounds of Jeffrey and Melissa, who were busy bickering over something that had happened at the sitter's.

I was beginning to get bored. I was itching for confrontation, and yet Tim had heeded my words. I'd gotten what I'd claimed to want. To be left alone. But now I found myself resenting it.
Doesn't he care?

A few minutes later I heard pounding on the attic door.

“Rachel!” Tim bellowed, fiddling with the door, trying to pop the lock.

“I told you to leave me the fuck alone!” I screamed back.

“Dr. Padgett is on the phone,” he insisted. “He wants to talk to you right now.”

“Tell the bastard I don't want to talk to him. I didn't call him.”

“Damnit, Rachel!” Tim was exasperated.

“I told you, tell the asshole I didn't call him, and I don't want to talk to him.” Even through the door, I could hear Tim sigh.

“Whatever,” he said.

That'll show Padgett!
I thought. I'd kept my word, I hadn't called him. Either Tim had called Padgett, or Padgett had called me, but I hadn't made the call.
I'll show that bastard that I don't need him
.

Soon Tim was knocking at the door again.

“Please let me in, Rachel,” he pleaded gently.

“Did you tell Padgett I didn't want to talk to him?”

“Yes.”

“Is he still on the line?”

“No.”

Satisfied, I went down the steps and unlocked the door.

Tim's face was white and blotchy, his eyes watery, swollen, and red.

He had been crying. Clearly I had hurt him. However, I was still convinced that it was Padgett who had caused this all, not me.

“You don't have a gun up here, do you?” he asked weakly.

“Maybe I do, maybe I don't.”

“Please don't play games with me, all right, Rachel?” Tim sounded too exhausted to be angry.

“Why do you care, Tim? Why would it matter if I have a gun?”

Finally Tim had reached the breaking point and lost his patience.

“Damnit!” he exploded. “I haven't done a goddamned thing to you, and neither has Dr. Padgett! We've got two kids downstairs crying because they want to see you, and they can't understand why you won't let them up here. They've been upset and scared to death since you didn't pick them up at the babysitter's—”

“Why would they be scared? I called her and told her I was with a client. And how the hell did Padgett end up calling here. Did you call him?”

“Hell, yes, I called him! And he wants you to call him back within the next ten minutes, or he's sending the goddamned police.”

“Yeah, sure,” I rolled my eyes. “The police bullshit. The commitment crap. I've heard it all before. He won't really do it. I will not call that asshole back.”

“He will do it, Rachel. And let me tell you something: if the police show up at the front door, I'll let them know exactly where you are.”

“You backstabbing sonofabitch! You'd turn me in, wouldn't you? You're in on this with him, aren't you?”

“I don't know what the hell else to do. Look. I've tried to be patient with you. I really have. But you know what? Nothing I can say or do is right. I can't win with you. You think the whole world is out to get you.”

“You really hate me, don't you, Tim? You wish I were dead. You wish you could just get me out of your hair.”