Get Me Out of Here (16 page)

“I don't hate you,” Tim's eyes were welling up with tears, “but let me tell
you
something. I know therapy's been hard for you, but it hasn't been a picnic for me either. You're not the only person in the world who has problems, Rachel. Everybody's got problems. And I tell you what, there's only so much of this I can take. Sometimes I wonder if
I'm
losing it. Sometimes I wonder if maybe
I
might not be better off dead.”

The last statement shocked me into reality. Had I really pushed Tim that far?

“Okay, I'll call Dr. Padgett. All right?”

“Thank you,” he said, crying hard by now and turning to go back down the steps.

He stopped midway. “Can you do something else for me? Would you please say hi to the kids? They're really upset.”

“Okay.”

Before I had the chance to make it downstairs to the telephone, Jeffrey and Melissa had bounded up the steps.

“Mommy!” Melissa shrieked happily, throwing her pudgy little toddler arms around me, squeezing me tight.

Jeffrey stood back for a moment, looking into my eyes.

“Mommy,” he said with great concern, “please don't cry, okay? Please don't cry. Everything's going to be okay, right? Everything's going to be okay. You don't have to cry.”

Four going on twenty-four. A child who needed comfort was instead comforting his mother.

What had I done?

Armed with a fresh glass of ice water and a full pack of cigarettes, I called Dr. Padgett's emergency number. I reminded myself that, technically, I wasn't calling him. I was simply returning his call. I knew the answering service routine well by now and wondered if the people at the service were beginning to recognize who I was.

“Dr. Padgett's service.”

“Uh, yes. I'm a patient of Dr. Padgett's. I need to talk to him.”

“Is this an emergency?”

Always that question. Why did it always have to be an emergency for me to be able to talk to the doctor after hours?

“Yes.”

I gave the woman my name and phone number and sat, waiting for the phone to ring. Five minutes passed. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. Twenty minutes.
Is this another power play? He demands that I call him within ten minutes and then makes me sit here and wait for twenty minutes for him to call me back!
Any inclination to be apologetic had passed.

Finally the phone rang. Although my hand rested on the receiver, I deliberately let it ring five times before I picked it up. I'd be damned if I was going to let him know that I was sitting and waiting by the phone for him.

“This is Dr. Padgett.”

A moment of cold silence.

“This is Rachel.”

Volleyed back into his court. Silence on the other end of the line.

“Tim said you wanted me to call you, so I'm calling you.”

“Tim was very upset. So were your kids. You hurt them when you do these things, you know.”

No, Dr. Padgett. You are the one who hurts them. You are the one who makes me do these things
. “Well, everything's okay now, Dr. Padgett.”

“Do you have a gun?”

“Maybe I do, maybe I don't,” I answered with deliberate vagueness. “Maybe I could get one if I didn't.”

“No games, Rachel,” he said firmly. “You played games all session; you won't play them now. Either you tell me the truth about the gun, or I'll call the police.”

A tempting proposition. But then I remembered Melissa's desperate hug of relief and the fear in Jeffrey's eyes. I'd already put them through enough.

“No, I don't have a gun.”

I braced myself for a lecture on my shameful manipulation, on having panicked everyone with the threat of a gun that didn't exist. No such lecture ensued.

“Are you in control?”

“Yes. I'm … in control.”

“Then I'll see you at tomorrow's session.”

Another pending good-bye. I couldn't take it. The need washed over me again. I couldn't let him go.

“I'm sorry, Dr. Padgett,” I sobbed into the receiver. “I'm so sorry. I'm such an asshole. I'm blowing it. I tried to scare you. I'm such a fuck-up.”

“I think you should be making your apologies to your husband and kids. We'll talk about this tomorrow.”

“But what if something happens?” I cried desperately. “What if I lose control again? I can't help it. The child just takes over. I'm scared. Please, can't we talk about this now?”

“You can control yourself when you chose to. No one can do it for you. You can ride these feelings out. We'll talk about them tomorrow in session.”

“But Dr. Padgett!”

“Tomorrow in session. Good-bye, Rachel.”

“Good-bye.”

I hung up the phone and sat numbly. Tim tapped at the door.

“Can I come in?”

Wordlessly, I unlocked it.

“Did you talk to the doctor?” he asked gently. “Are you feeling better?”

“I talked to him. I don't know if I feel any better, but I'll be okay. And I'm sorry for putting you and the kids through all of this. I really am.”

“You don't have to apologize for anything, Rachel.” His eyes were still swollen and red, dark circles forming beneath them. Worry lines had aged his face. “All of us just want you to get better.”

The tough chick threatened to emerge again at the next day's session. It was tempting to repeat the events of the day before. To say nothing, play the game. My pride made it difficult to admit that I had manipulated my family and Dr. Padgett as well. Thus I did not apologize, nor did I revert into the helpless little girl mode. I did, however, force myself to say what was on my mind.

“It isn't that I don't need you,” I began. “It's that I
can't
need you. It hurts too much to need you. It's dangerous to need you. I fall apart. I lose control. I turn into some kind of a madwoman, some kind of a crazed child. I managed for thirty years without you, and now look at me.

“This isn't the kind of person I am, Dr. Padgett. I've never done these kinds of things before. I'm worse than I ever was. It isn't you. I need you too much when I let my guard down. It was better when I didn't need anybody.”

“It wasn't better,” he pointed out. “You needed someone then. You've always needed someone. The need isn't going to go away until you are satisfied. You came to therapy thinking that life wasn't worth living. You came wanting to die. You came because the tough denial of need was more than you could tolerate.”

“It was a fluke. Sure I wanted to die. But it wasn't the first time I wanted to die. I wouldn't have done anything. I don't have the guts to kill myself, Dr. Padgett, and you know it as well as I do. I listened to the priest, and he talked me into coming to the hospital. It wasn't something I sought out. And I honestly believe that if I hadn't come to the emergency room, if I hadn't started therapy, it would have passed. I would have been tough enough to withstand it and keep going.”

“Maybe you would have lived. Maybe you'd live to be eighty years old. But what kind of quality of life would you have? You'd just be enduring life instead of enjoying it.”

“Life sucks. Don't you understand that? Life sucks for everyone, not just me. It's just that some people are deluded enough to think that it doesn't. The world is a lousy place, Dr. Padgett, filled with rotten parents who abuse their kids and con artists and assholes who will screw you in a minute if you let them. Backstabbers, hypocrites, and rapists. The bad guys are always winning, and the good guys are getting screwed.”

“The triumph of evil?”

“You bet, the triumph of evil.”

“What about love?”

“Love is weak. Love is delusional optimism. It's a fairy tale. Hate always wins.”

“So you think that hate is stronger than love?”

I was astonished that he could even ask such a foolish question.

“Of course. Hate is not only stronger than love, it kicks love in the ass every single day. Cheaters aren't supposed to prosper, but they do.”

“So, then, how is it that you think you've survived so far in this world filled with hate? How is it that you've managed, with the two-hundred-pound weight of these emotions on your back, to somehow survive? You're in a strong marriage, you're a good mother by your own admission, and you've managed to succeed in many ways. How do you think that happened?”

Another foolish question with an obvious answer, I thought.

“Because, once upon a time, I was really tough—before I came in here. I knew not to be dumb enough to trust anyone else so I wasn't crushed by disappointment. Then I come in here and start trusting, and look what happens. I'm a basket case. A crying, weak manipulator. I hate myself this way. I want to be tough again. I wish I'd never come here.”

“So you were tough at twenty?”

“Yes.”

“At thirteen?”

“Yes.”

“At ten?”

“Yes.”

“At
two
?”

Pride forced me to lie on this one.

“Yes….”

“There's no such thing as a tough two-year-old, and you know it. Once upon a time you trusted your parents with all your heart. You were completely vulnerable to them because you had no other choice. Once upon a time you believed in love so much so that you rescripted your entire past to put love in where it didn't always exist. A two-year-old can't fight fire with fire. A two-year-old is completely at the mercy of the adults around her.”

The tough chick facade had broken down, and I was sobbing.

“But they screwed me! Can't you see where that got me? I learned the lesson everybody learns in the long run. I just learned it earlier.”

“Love is infinitely more powerful than hate,” he said gently.

“That might be your opinion.”

“No, that is fact. You want to know how you really got by, really survived this far?”

I nodded.

“You survived by seizing every tiny drop of love you could find anywhere and milking it, relishing it, for all it was worth. Your parents weren't all hate or all abuse. There were tender moments, whether or not you choose to remember them now. There were those moments, however brief, when you felt safe. You felt loved, and you savored every minute of it and held it closest to your heart. And as you grew up, you sought love anywhere you could find it, whether it was a teacher or a coach or a friend or a friend's parents. You sought those tiny droplets of love, basking in them when you found them. They are what sustained you.”

These were completely new concepts to me. My sobs abated as I simply listened.

“For all these years, you've lived under the illusion that, somehow, you made it because you were tough enough to overpower the abuse, the hatred, the hard knocks of life. But really you made it because love is so powerful that tiny little doses of it are enough to overcome the pain of the worst things life can dish out. Toughness was a faulty coping mechanism you devised to get by. But, in reality, it has been your ability to never give up, to keep seeking love, and your resourcefulness to make that love last long enough to sustain you. That's what has gotten you by.

“Therapy isn't easy, Rachel. I never claimed that it would be. I never said it was going to be less painful than it is or that it wasn't an arduous process. But what waits for you on the other side of the rainbow is a life so different than you could ever imagine, so much more satisfying, that when you get there, you'll see that all of this has been worth it.”

Tiny drops of love. At that moment I wished that I could simply open up completely and soak in that love like a sponge.

But no words, no simple solution would suddenly bring the walls crashing down and allow me to become instantly trusting and open. One more stone, however, had been cleared away, letting in one more tiny glimmer of light to sustain me and keep me on the journey.

It was an unseasonably cool June day as I sat on the porch swing with a mug of hot coffee. I was reflecting on the year that had just passed, one year to the day since my first fateful trip to the emergency room. My first anniversary of losing it.

At this time last year I'd never heard of a psychiatrist named John Padgett. I'd never dreamed I'd be embarking on a journey that would involve three sessions a week for twelve months.

As I watched Jeffrey and Melissa furiously pedaling their Big Wheels on the sidewalk, my heart ached. Again. It was Friday, which meant I had to wait four days until I could see the man to whom I felt pathologically addicted. During these empty times, sometimes it was all I could do to go through the motions of being a wife and mother.

Granted, I'd always known I was different, not in a positive way, but in a shamefully twisted one. If only I could believe Dr. Padgett, that this past year of hell was the price I had to pay to free myself from a lifetime of anguish. Somehow the three-page summary of the psychoanalytic process did not capture what had transpired over that year. It had referred to confronting buried, fearful issues in therapy as “temporary anxiety.”
Temporary anxiety? More like a living nightmare
.

I recalled the way Tim and I had scoffed at the notion that anyone would need three to five years of therapy to get better. Such assessments, we'd thought, were for the Woody Allens of the world: the hopelessly neurotic, the deranged psychos, the horribly abused. Certainly not me. Yet here I was, in therapy for a full year already, barely able to manage a long weekend without Dr. Padgett. I couldn't imagine ever reaching a point where I could handle life on my own.

Is this how I was going to spend the rest of my life? Was I just a classic borderline personality disorder case, forever dependent on her therapist and psychiatric drugs? Was I going to become the crazy lady in the attic?

I imagined myself as the hollow shell of an elderly woman, incarcerated for years in an institution, dutifully visited by her children. Jeffrey and Melissa would vaguely recall the vibrant young woman they knew when they were toddlers.

What a year it had been. Sixty-one days in a psychiatric hospital, one out of every six days since last June.

But that wasn't the worst of it. I'd spent twice as many days when I accomplished absolutely nothing. Running in the streets after dark; taking the car on rambling, reckless drives; screaming into a pillow while locked in the attic or my bedroom; threatening myself, Dr. Padgett, or Tim. There were also the days when I could only drag myself to therapy or spend hours confined in my room with pen and paper.

A minipharmacy of little brown plastic bottles decorated my dresser—the anti-anxiety pills I swallowed six times a day, the nightly doses of antidepressants, and all the half-empty vials of medications my physiology could not tolerate. The prescriptions were so expensive I couldn't bring myself to throw them away. Yet I could not remember the last time I had awakened happy, the last time I had genuinely laughed, or the last time I had truly enjoyed myself.

Former pleasures meant nothing to me anymore. Life was a series of tasks to be endured, and even the simplest ones were painfully arduous. It took everything I could muster to cook a meal, wash the dishes, or do the laundry. My income was virtually nonexistent. My occupation was therapy.

I did not want my children to be cheated anymore than they had been by the sixty-one days I was hospitalized, the hours spent locked in my room feverishly writing, and the times I was physically present but emotionally absent. So I dedicated any energy I could summon to them. I hugged them, cuddled them, read to them, and took them to the park or zoo. Perhaps my life was a living hell. But I was determined not to let it make their childhood the hell that mine had been. While my love for them was real, I sometimes wondered if they could see that my loving smiles were an act, barely masking the despair I felt within.

Nonetheless, it was the best I could do. It had to suffice.

Jeffrey and Melissa were now racing down the sidewalk, squealing in joyful exuberance, giggling as they repeated the ritual of “ready, set, go!” Their tiny legs pedaled as fast as they could to the imaginary finish line. They seemed carefree, now three and five, just enjoying a breezy summer's morning. Could they somehow manage in spite of all that had gone on?

Certainly the turbulent events of the past year had to have affected them in ways that might not show itself fully until years later. Dr. Padgett, never one to airbrush reality just to appease me, acknowledged a possible effect and that the long separations were hard on the kids.

To him, it was a relative phenomenon, a lesser of two evils. Whatever pain my absences and emotionally turbulent therapy had inflicted on them, it paled in comparison to the longer-term damage that would be inevitable if I did not do whatever was necessary to get better. A mentally ill mother going through the hell of therapy was not easy on Jeffrey and Melissa. But a mentally ill mother who refused to get help and remained ill indefinitely would be far more damaging. And, he told me emphatically and unequivocally, the greatest devastation of all would be if their mother were to commit suicide. That, he maintained, would condemn them to an inner hell worse than even I had endured.

I sometimes believed that Tim and the kids would be better off without me. But I could never take the chance in case Dr. Padgett was right about suicide. Often I wished I had never met Tim—not because I didn't love him, but because now, with two young children and a husband depending on me, I could not bring myself to make the final exit.

I'd recently turned thirty, an age I vowed I'd never live to see. I had hoped that somehow I'd have crashed before then. The accidental pregnancy and subsequent marriage and family, however, had forever denied me certain choices.

At times I resented this ultimate punishment—being sentenced not to death, but to life. At other times it seemed too fateful to be a mere coincidence. The pregnancy could have easily been the result of a one-night stand, a drunken evening with a man whose name I couldn't remember, or one of my many abusive relationships.

But it hadn't been. Instead it had been Tim: strong, sensitive, and loyal, who was there when the Russian roulette game of unprotected sex reached its inevitable conclusion. So I didn't have an abortion. I had a family of my own. Perhaps it was part of a master plan to keep me alive.

Now I no longer had the option of running or taking my own life. All I could do was to keep going to therapy, keep enduring the pain, hang on, and survive.

Jeffrey and Melissa pulled their Big Wheels onto the grass and started begging for Popsicles. They seemed content, although worry sometimes clouded Jeffrey's eyes. In many ways he was perceptive beyond his years. Had I caused him to be wiser than he needed to be?

Melissa selected a cherry Popsicle and bounced back out into the yard, picking a bouquet of dandelions. Jeffrey, however, continued to stand on the porch, looking at me, as he licked a grape one.
What was he thinking?

I remembered Tim telling me what Jeffrey had said on the way home from a hospital visit a few months before:
“Daddy, Mommy isn't really going to get any better, is she?”
The same thought I'd had frequently. The same thought that Tim had left unspoken between us. But did a preschooler have to be tormented by it too?

God, if you exist, please spare these kids. I promise I'll keep going to therapy. I'll do whatever it takes, but please help me. These kids deserve to be happy, not worried about me. I know I haven't prayed in year. But if you will, please give me a sign that there's a purpose to all of this suffering
.

Jeffrey finished the Popsicle, neatly placed the sticks in the gooey wrapper, and set them down on the porch. He sat next to me on the swing and wrapped his arms around me.

“You know what, Mommy?” he asked.

“What, sweetheart?”

“You're the best mommy in the whole world.”

Eyes glazed with tears, I looked up to the sky. I would make it through this. I would live. I
had
to live. Perhaps my prayer had been answered. Perhaps this little five-year-old clutching me tightly was the sign I'd been asking for.

At Tuesday's session, I spoke about all the thoughts I'd had on the front porch.

“The only thing that keeps me going,” I concluded, “is the kids. I love those kids, Dr. Padgett. If nothing else, I'd like to think I'm a good mother.”

“How about you?” Dr. Padgett asked.

“What about me?”

“How about staying alive, getting better for yourself?”

“I'm not the concern here, Dr. Padgett. Jeffrey and Melissa are. They're kids. They're innocent. They need to be protected.”

“You were a kid too, Rachel. An innocent one. In a lot of ways you didn't have anything to do with this either.
You
weren't protected.”

“My time is up, don't you see? I had my chance to be a child, and it's over now. If nothing else, maybe the next generation can live happily ever after. If I can help these kids do that, maybe my life will have a purpose.”

“You're afraid to admit the truth of your feelings, aren't you?”

“What truth?” I answered, irritated once again that he was trying to put thoughts in my head. “I've just told you everything I feel.”

“Not everything,” he shook his head.

“What else am I supposed to be feeling?”

“You're afraid to admit that you resent your kids just as much as you love them. That, in a lot of ways, you wish they weren't around.”

“How can you say that?” I replied, astonished. “I love those kids!”

“I didn't say that you don't love them. I didn't say you aren't a good mother. What I said is that you aren't seeing the whole picture. You also resent those kids, and sometimes, deep within you, you wish you could react as violently to them as you do to me. You're afraid of those feelings. Very much afraid.”

Can't he ever just take what I say and leave it at that? Can't he just take my word for it instead of dissecting every syllable and interjecting his own version of my vile motives and thoughts?

Okay, so I beat Jeffrey once. Is this man going to use it against me forever? Maybe I'm crazy, maybe I'm an asshole, maybe I'm immature and manipulative and all of those other wretched traits on the psychological profile and in the borderline personality disorder books. But I'm a good mother. Does he have to take that away from me too?

“What's on your mind, Rachel? Tell me what you're thinking.”

“I'm thinking that you're very wrong about me. I'm a good mom.”

“I don't always think I'm right,” he replied calmly. “But on this one I do.”

“Well, guess what, Dr. Freud?” I retorted. “On this one you are wrong. Dead wrong.”

“You're very defensive about this. You won't even consider it. Once again you're seeing the world as black and white. You're afraid that if you have such feelings, you can't have them and still love your kids. But just because you disavow the emotions, they aren't going away. And if you hide from them out of fear, you only make the inner conflict worse.”

“Psychobabble bullshit!” I cried. “You're accusing me of wanting to hurt these kids. I did it once, so you think that you can hold it over my head for the rest of my life. As if it isn't hard enough to look back on a childhood, something I never had a problem with until I started working with you, by the way, and see all kinds of abuse I didn't think about back then. Now you want to accuse me of doing the same horrible things to my own kids. And then you sit there, poker-faced, stoic as hell, and act like it's no big deal!”

Dr. Padgett sat silently for a moment then replied.

“No,” he said gently, “
you
are the one who won't let the abuse incident go away. You are the one who won't forgive yourself for it. Not me. That's why you can't even bear to get in touch with the very real feelings, deep within you, of resentment toward your kids.”

“You're convinced I'm an asshole, aren't you?” I spit the words back at him. “Rotten right down to the core. So rotten I'd even hate my own kids. But you don't have any idea what it's like. I'm good to those kids, Dr. Padgett, no matter what kind of a crazy borderline asshole you think I am. Sometimes I wake up wishing I were dead so bad I can taste it, but I don't take it out on those kids. I hug them, and I cuddle them, and I treat them fairly. I listen to them and play with them, and I'm as goddamned good a mother to them as any normal mother around. It's the hardest fucking thing in the world to keep being a good mom despite this hell inside, but I'm doing it, goddamnit. And then you tell me I'm some kind of Mommie Dearest. Well, you're wrong. I'm a goddamned good mother, and I'll continue to be—even if it kills me!”

“That's precisely my point,” he replied. “It
is
practically killing you. There's no doubt in my mind that you're a good mother. But you're doing it out of fear and buried guilt. You take those violent feelings—the resentment you refuse to face—and you twist them around and turn them toward yourself. You treat your children well at your own expense. In ways they literally drain the life right out of you.”