Get Me Out of Here (18 page)

I was mortified as I peeled off the soaked silk pajamas, rinsing them in the bathtub to get rid of the stench. Changing the sheets would mean waking Tim, so I spread a thick towel over the wetness instead. Embarrassed as I was, the feelings of dizziness and nausea from the Desyrel made this cleanup an arduous task.

I could not recall this ever happening before. I had never been a bed wetter, although I could remember nights as a child lying in bed, scared to death that I might fall asleep and pee in the bed. I was frightened by how my parents might respond, how ashamed they would be of me. Undoubtedly this must have had something to do with therapy, with regression. Nearly everything seemed to. As the sedated grogginess overcame me again, I vowed I would address it with Dr. Padgett in my next session.

One of the things that struck me as most frustrating about therapy was that nothing ever seemed to progress sequentially.

Nearly every intense session ended with Dr. Padgett's closing words:
“We can pick up on this next session.”
Yet, more often than not, that same issue might not be picked up for weeks or even months as we devoted the next session to something else entirely.

I'd left yesterday's session prepared to pick up the topics of religion and existence and afterlife in the next session. Instead I'd peed in my bed. And walked into Thursday's session sheepish and horribly embarrassed. I'd planned on the academic roundtable and yet, once again, found myself to be the little girl cowering shamefaced in the confessional.

I knew enough to know that any event so disturbing, so clearly in the forefront of my mind, was that which most warranted exploration. But sitting in Dr. Padgett's office, swiveling my chair, biting my fingernails, tapping my feet, not daring to look him in the eye, the words escaped me.

The session began not in the silence of being unable to put my finger on my thoughts, but of being absolutely revolted at the notion of discussing them. I hated such sessions, and Dr. Padgett knew it.

“What's on your mind?”

Little girl voice, eyes still downcast, deciphering the carpet pattern.

“Nothing.”

The chair swiveled more vigorously now, my feet tapped a quicker beat, and I was biting not only my fingernails, but also the ends of my hair.

“It seems like something is on your mind. Why don't you stop the motion and put it into words?”

He's right. Why don't I? Why can't I?

But my silence continued, and my hyperkinetic display of nervous anxiety and tics just kept intensifying. The more I deliberately withheld what was on my mind, the more anxious I became and the harder and more humiliating it became to attempt to reveal my thoughts.

Every shred of rational sense told me that I should just go ahead and bring it up. And yet the little girl had me mute, intent upon saying nothing, filled with shame and humiliation.

Finally I spoke. All I needed to do was say a few words, so I blurted them out as quickly as possible.

“Ipeedinmybed,” I mumbled unintelligibly.

“Excuse me?”

“What are you trying to do, humiliate the shit out of me? You asked me to say what was on my mind, and I said it, and now you're going to force me to repeat it?”

From vulnerable little girl to the hardened tough guy.

“Honestly, Rachel,” he said sincerely, “I really couldn't understand what you just said.”

Back to the vulnerable little girl in a flash.

“I peed in my bed,” I repeated, still in a barely audible near-whisper but at least decipherable. My eyes were still riveted on the carpet pattern. I couldn't bear to look up.

“How do you feel about that?”

“Really bad, really embarrassed. I don't want to talk about it. Let's talk about something else, okay?”

“You know we can talk about anything you want, but this seems to be pretty important to you.”

“Well, it's not, okay? Forget I said it. I didn't say a goddamned thing. All right? It doesn't mean shit.”

A battle of the inner children. The adult me was barely present and astonished to witness my behavior.

Silence again. Dr. Padgett was not going to lead me anywhere.

Finally I burst out again. “I'm so ashamed of myself. I peed in the bed. On the sheets, on my pajamas. Everywhere.”

“Why don't you look at me?” he asked calmly.

“I can't! You're probably disgusted with me. You think I'm stupid because I'm making a big deal out of it.”

“You can't know what I'm doing,” he said gently, “unless you look up at me and see for yourself.”

How could this be so hard? I was not a wallflower, not shy. I was known for my I-don't-give-a-shit-about-what-people-think-of-me attitude. Indeed, I had always prided myself on being tough, courageous, always looking people straight in the eye.
Like a real man does
.

Jesus Christ, where did that last thought come from?

Still I couldn't bring myself to raise my eyes. The thoughts within me were spinning wildly in momentous vacillation. How could I be aware of it and still let it go on?

“I hate myself,” I managed to say. “I wish I could just crawl into a hole and die.”

My God, you are overreacting, you disgusting little piece of filth! You just want attention. It's no big deal
.

I was overwhelmed by the desire to pee again, right in my chair. And mortified by the possibility.

“Why don't you look up at me?” he said again. “I think it would help. I'm not angry with you.”

“Well, you should be. You should spank me!”

“That's what your father would have done.”

“That's what you should do. That's what I deserve. That's what would make me feel better.”

“I'm not going to hit you. Why don't you look up at me?”

“You don't get it. I want you to hit me! You don't understand, do you?”

“Why do you want me to hit you?”

“Because I'd feel better, okay? Because it would help me get over this.”

“Help you get over feeling embarrassed because you wet your bed?”

“Goddamnit! Don't rub my nose in it. What are you trying to do, humiliate me?”

“No. You're trying to humiliate yourself.”

“You wanna fight me, you fight like a man! I know you want to; you're dying to. Beat the crap out of me! Damnit, I
want
you to!”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“Because I'm crazy. Because I'm shameful and I don't deserve to be alive. If you don't hit me, maybe I'll just hit myself.”

Here was an instance where the borderline personality disorder diagnosis became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I'd had plenty of plunges into the depths of self-hatred. It had manifested itself in many self-destructive ways. But I had never embarked on what could be considered outright self-mutilation. Having read quite a bit about it, I began to imitate what I'd read, slapping myself in the face, digging my fingernails into my arms and scratching. It didn't feel natural, but I was a borderline, and I was convinced that this was what a borderline would do. Maybe it would help.

“Rachel.”

“I hate myself! I hate myself! I wish I were dead.” I was crying hysterically now, twisting and writhing in the chair, eyes rolling and practically spinning in my head, slapping myself harder, digging my nails in just a little deeper.

“Rachel, look at me now!” His was no longer a gentle request but a command. I'd pushed Dr. Padgett as far as he was about to go, and I recognized the authority in his voice.

I looked up into his eyes, which were set and determined. He was not hiding his impatience.

“You're yelling at me!” I cried. “Don't yell at me, Dr. Padgett! Please. I'm so sorry.”

“That's enough!”

I was stunned by the sharpness of his tone. Enough to stop the slapping, the scratching, and the motion completely.

I didn't say a word, just kept looking at him.

“This isn't therapy. This is acting out.”

“I was just saying what was on my mind,” I whined.

“You're letting the child take over. The adult isn't present. And you're doing more than just talking; you're abusing yourself, humiliating yourself. It feeds on itself. And you need to stop it, right now.”

Summoned, as if by a hypnotist's finger snap, the adult reappeared.

“I'm sorry, Dr. Padgett. I just couldn't control myself.”

“You let the child take over,” he repeated, still a firm edge in his voice. “You can't do that. It's important to get in touch with the child within you, but it's just as important that you maintain a sense of perspective. Otherwise you're not exploring your feelings; you are literally immersing yourself in them, getting lost in them. It's dangerous to do that.”

“I know.”

With twenty minutes left in the session we began to explore what had just happened, the feelings and perceptions, the distortions that lay beneath it.

Dr. Padgett pointed out something I had noticed but was loath to admit. I had not only continued in the self-humiliation, but I had, in some ways, taken a perverse pleasure in it. My silence and subsequent skirting of the issue were not rooted in the desire to
avoid
humiliation and embarrassment, but to
increase
it. I took a certain pleasure in feeling ashamed. Once I had gotten a taste of it, unless and until he stopped me, I just hungered for more. Sick. Twisted. And totally true.

The pleasure. The increasing sense of shame paired with the increasing desire to urinate. It all came back to me. When I was a little girl and masturbated almost nightly, the pleasure was sexual. But I didn't know it to be sexual. I only knew it gave me some relief and enjoyment. I knew it was shameful, and yet that shame only enhanced the excitement. I didn't know what sexual feelings were. Rather my fantasies were of urinating, peeing, or, more accurately, of having an overwhelming need to pee but being denied the opportunity.

The more harshly it was denied, the more badly I needed to go, the more intense the excitement and pleasure.

Another recollection came to mind—the first time a boy fondled my breasts in high school. It was at an afternoon matinee at the neighborhood theater. I was frightened and disturbed by what I would discover later was an orgasm. By then I had a fair idea of what sex, of what making out was. But at first I was horrified that it made me feel like I wanted to pee and the climax was identical to the shuddering feelings I had when I masturbated to the cruel urination deprivation fantasies I had as a young child.

At the time I had quit thinking about it and began to seek the thrill of orgasm from any boy who would give it to me. Revisited in this context, however, my earliest notions of sexual climax were very disturbing.

I was not yet ready to openly share these thoughts and conclusions, although I realized their truth. Instead I listened as Dr. Padgett shared more observations and conclusions of his own. It is normal at a certain phase in a child's development, he explained, for girls to harbor deep feelings toward their fathers. Deep
sexual
feelings. Normal children, sufficiently loved, grow past this phase at about age five or six. But in the face of my normal sexual desires—Freudian desires that I had previously thought were pure fiction and perversion—my father humiliated and abused me. I had established a link, a distorted but close association, between pain/degradation/shame/humiliation and excitement/pleasure.

Part of the humiliation and shame centered around my own genitalia—the fact that I had a vagina rather than a penis. My brothers and father peed like men, standing up, while I was forced to shamefully squat. My parents did not favor girls, so I was ashamed to be one. My urination deprivation fantasies were based upon truth.

Often my parents, patience gone, not wanting to deal with their children anymore for the evening, would send me to my room with strict orders to stay there, not to come out—
or else
. On a few occasions when I tried to sneak out to use the bathroom, I could remember them yelling at me to get back into my room
immediately
. Their tone of voice frightened me. It was an indicator of a beating that was to come.

And so I would stay in my room, my fear and the intimidating tone of my father's voice shaming me. It made me need to urinate even more.

But I could not. I could not leave the room. If I wet the bed, as I had wet my pants in my preschool years, I knew I would be subject to a harsh, humiliating beating. The thought of it, in a distorted, twisted way, excited me even more and made me burn with the desire to pee even more. It reached the point where, lying in bed at night and holding myself between the legs as small children do, I discovered that the presence of my hand there led to even greater excitement and pleasure.

I did not tell Dr. Padgett much, if anything, about this memory during that session. Indeed, it would take a long time before I would be able to revisit the issue and even longer before I reached any kind of resolution about it. I was still dubious of Freudian theory that attributed sexual desires to five- and six-year-olds, but I had no doubt there was a strong link between humiliation and excitement for me. It was the vulnerable little girl who had felt those feelings of simultaneous shame and sexual pleasure. And it was the tough guy in me who found them repugnant and thus sought to be beyond intimidation, beyond humiliation, and beyond vulnerability—to be, in essence, the boy Daddy and Mommy wanted me to be.