Get Me Out of Here (31 page)

In the sight of my foes;

You anoint my head with oil;

My cup overflows
.

Only goodness and kindness follow me

All the days of my life;

And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord

For years to come
. (Psalm 23:1–6)

It was a new beginning to me, a proclamation of newfound faith known only by God and me. I had found myself in that area between numb detachment and total breakdown called passion, a voice on the emotional edge of tears, just on the cusp of breaking down and wavering, filled with soul and belief.

When I was finished, I noticed tears on the face of the director, on the faces of a few of my friends in the choir, and on the faces of several people in the congregation. They had been touched, as I had been touched. Then I, too, cried—tears of joy and relief.

“That was absolutely beautiful,” the director whispered as he hugged me, his eyes still watery. “You've never sung with so much passion before. It was inspiring.”

“Thank you,” I said. “It's the first time I actually believed the words I was singing.”

Thanksgiving dinners at Tim's parents' were as laid-back as Christmas dinners with the Marsten clan were arduous.

I remembered the first time I had met Tim's parents. I'd been sitting nervously in the observation car of the Amtrak train with Tim, both of us wondering how we were going to break the news.
Hi, Mom and Dad, this is Rachel; the one I told you about. I hope you like her. We're getting married in two months. Oh, and by the way, she's pregnant too
.

We'd planned a four-day visit, figuring that we'd take the first three days to let them get to know and hopefully approve of me and then spring the news. As it turned out, they'd been so open and easy to be around that we'd told them the very first day. Surprisingly they'd been delighted and had immediately welcomed me into the family without the slightest reservation.

Despite the distance, Tim's parents had visited me in the psychiatric ward more frequently than my own parents, who lived only twenty minutes from the hospital. They'd stayed to help with the kids. Just as they hadn't judged us for getting married, they hadn't judged me for being hospitalized three times for mental illness.

Tim's mom brought out the home-baked apple, pumpkin, and cherry pies. Everyone rose to get a slice or two. There were none of my father's disapproving looks and wagging fingers, his silent warnings about obesity that had made such festivities and overindulgence feel sinful.

There were none of my mother's and sisters' litanies of guilt: “Oh, I really shouldn't” or “I need this like I need a hole in the head.” Pleasure without guilt—it was a foreign concept to me.

Without question I was the thinnest adult in the room. I didn't know if overweight people in the country outnumber those in suburbia or the city, but I did notice these people didn't seem to be as bothered by their weight, or even as conscious of it, as my family and neighbors back home.

Sunday came too quickly. None of us wanted to make the drive back. But urban reality beckoned. The kids had to go back to school. Tim and I had to work, and therapy had to resume.

Monday morning, once Jeffrey and Melissa were off to school and Tim to the office, I slipped downstairs to the hidden scale in the basement. The moment of truth. I'd forgone breakfast and had stripped down to my underwear to tilt the scale in my favor. Grimacing, recalling the four-day feast of country cooking, I stepped on the scale. One hundred and twenty-seven pounds! It had to be a mistake. I tried again. The red digital display was stubbornly unchanged.

Three more times, the same result. One hundred and twenty-seven pounds. Panic filled me, as well as all-consuming guilt and self-hatred. How could I have let myself go? I started beating myself up for every plate of seconds, every slice of pie, every butter-topped roll.

It was a conspiracy. Tim, his parents, his relatives, Dr. Padgett were trying to get me fat. And I had succumbed to the trap, losing all self-control.

What next? 130? 140? 150? 200? Would I continue to expand, to bloat, to become a slovenly sow? Not only crazy, but
fat
and crazy? I reached into the medicine cabinet for relief.

Ex-Lax. The box said a dosage was one or two of the small, scored pieces of what looked but didn't much taste like chocolate. I couldn't wait for gradual results and opted instead to take four of them, vowing to lose the excess weight as quickly as possible. To never let it happen again.

Dr. Padgett and I had not discussed the anorexia issue in quite some time, in part because I was no longer in the dangerous range, in part because he insisted that the underlying issues and not the eating disorder itself needed to be addressed. The past few months had been fairly calm as I had felt freer to open up. The one-sided battles had been fewer, as my sense of connection and constancy in the relationship had become more secure.

That relative calm, I decided as I sat in the waiting room on Tuesday, was only because I had been oblivious to how fat I was becoming. Surely he must have noticed how big I was getting. But he hadn't said a word about it. He'd tricked me! I was seething with anger at his subtle conspiracy.

I'd spent a frenzied hour at home, digging through my drawers and closets, trying on outfit combinations, then tossing them on the bed in disgust, searching for anything that would hide the awful fat.

Dr. Padgett came out, clad in one of his shrink outfits, a tweed jacket-over-turtleneck combination that made him look like an over-aged beatnik, part hippie professor and part nerd. In lighter moments I would sometimes joke with him that his wife must not have been around to dress him.

Today, however, I was struck by how thin and trim he was in comparison to my own budding obesity. Seething with jealousy, I became even angrier.

With my arms crossed and eyes focused on the ceiling tiles, it was the beginning of another cold war of silence.

Nearly ten minutes had passed before Dr. Padgett prompted me.

“What's on your mind?”

The spark to gasoline. I exploded.

“I'm fat, damnit! Fat as hell! You wanted this, you sonofabitch, didn't you? You wanted me to be a pig!”

“Rachel,” he said patiently. “You're hiding behind weight again. There's more to this issue than a number on a scale.”

“Don't give me that crap! Do you have any idea how much weight I've gained in the last two years? Twenty-five pounds! I'm a goddamned pig. I'm disgusting!”

“You aren't overweight, Rachel, and you know it,” he said. “How much do you weigh?”

“You wanna humiliate me? Okay then, I'll tell you. One hundred and twenty-seven pounds. Are you happy?”

I was in hysterical tears by now.

“One hundred twenty-seven pounds at five-foot-six. That's normal. Probably the lower end of normal on the weight charts, actually.”

“Well, it isn't normal for me. Those weight charts don't mean shit!”

I pinched the flesh of my thigh.

“See this, Dr. Padgett? It's fat. I hate it. I liked myself better before. I'd rather be dead than be this fat.”

“In my opinion you look a lot more attractive now than when you were in the hospital. As a matter of fact, you looked best when I first met you.”

“My God!” I cried in astonishment. “I was a complete pig back then. I weighed 135 pounds. It was because I'd tried to quit smoking. I'll never ever do that again. I'd rather drop dead of cancer than be that fat.”

“Actually, 135 pounds was a good weight for you.”

“I wish I still had the discipline,” I lamented, ignoring him. “I wish I weighed what I did when I went in the hospital the third time. I never looked better than that.”

“You looked like a ten-year-old then. A skinny ten-year-old.”

“I looked like a
model
,” I corrected him. “I made it all the way down to a size three. Now I'm going to have to start stuffing myself back into a size eight again. Then what? Size ten? Size twelve? Plus sizes?”

“First of all, you aren't wearing plus sizes,” he sighed. “Second of all, most of the models you see are grossly underweight. Besides, what size you wear isn't what this is about. This is about fear.”

“Fear of what?” I seethed, burning him with a hateful stare.

“Fear of extremes. Fear of black and white. Fear that unless you completely limit yourself, totally abstain from all pleasure, you'll immerse yourself in it and never be able to stop.”

“What are you saying then?” I challenged him, the edge off my anger but still irritated. “That I'm afraid if I start eating, I'll never stop? I'll just keep stuffing my face until I weigh three hundred pounds?”

“On one level, yes,” he replied. “You're afraid that if you begin to rediscover the pleasure of food, you'll lose all sense of control. You won't be able to enjoy it in moderation. But it isn't just food that makes you feel that way. It's
all
pleasure,
all
feeling.”

“What other pleasure?” I asked him.

“One of the reasons you're reluctant to let go and trust me, to get in touch with the strength of your feelings about me, is that you're afraid if you do, you'll smother me, drown me in your needs. Love me too much.”

“Maybe,” I mumbled, too proud to openly agree with him.

“And your sexual feelings of pleasure,” he continued. “They scare you too.”

Not the sex thing. I don't want to deal with the sex thing. Who the hell do you think you are anyway, Padgett? What is this Freudian fixation with shrinks that they think everybody wants to fuck them?

“With Tim?” I asked hopefully, wanting to avoid the issue.

“Your sexual feelings toward me.”

“I don't have any sexual feelings at all toward you,” I said flatly.

“It's okay, Rachel. You might be afraid that somehow, if you get in touch with them, you'll end up rejected or exploited. But there's a middle ground. It doesn't have to end up that way. Still you're afraid of how I'll handle these feelings, afraid to trust that there can be a satisfactory outcome without the nightmare scenarios you envision, the trap you see.”

“I told you,” I repeatedly firmly. “I don't have the slightest sexual interest in you.”

“Not as an adult, but you do as a child.”

We continued this circular argument for the remainder of the session, Dr. Padgett maintaining that I had sexual feelings toward him and that it was important that I get in touch with them. Me steadfastly insisting that he didn't know what he was talking about. Meanwhile I could feel the tingling sensation between my legs as I wondered if the sex issue was ever going to go away.

It's springtime, and I'd gone to session in a cream cotton dress, long and flowing beneath my waist, clinging tightly to my well-developed breasts. I'd spent quite some time applying my makeup, assessing myself in the full-length mirror, for once feeling pleased with what I saw—not disgusted by fat, but proud of my curves
.

We'd been discussing issues of my childhood, the sadness that I had never been able to enjoy my femininity. The melancholy was bittersweet, the recollections painful. But the sense of connection with Dr. Padgett was strong enough to make it bearable. The pain of memory was intertwined with the warmth of feeling loved and cared about
.

“You look beautiful today,” he says. “Very feminine.”

“You really think so?” I ask him, beaming with pride
.

“Yes, I really do.”

“I'm glad I've gained the weight back. I've got curves now, breasts. Do you like them too?”

“They are beautiful.”

I begin to feel aroused, a longing to be touched, a frustration in knowing that I can't be
.

And then he rises from his chair and settles beside me on the couch
.

“I know this has been a difficult session for you. Would you like to lay your head on my lap and relax?”

“Yes,” I say, thrilled by the warmth of his body
.

He begins stroking my hair, relaxing me so much, his calming touch a lullaby as I struggle to keep my eyes open
.

“It's okay,” he says. “You don't have to say anything. Just close your eyes. Relax. Enjoy.”

Soon his hands wander to my thighs, caressing the curves of my hips, and then settle on my breasts. A gentle, soothing touch, not at all aggressive or clumsy
.