Get Me Out of Here (36 page)

Tim chuckled at the other end of the line. “Maybe you've found a new discovery. It's great to hear you so happy—glad you're enjoying it. I'd love to talk, but I've got a prospect coming in five minutes, and I have to put a few papers together. I'll see you at five.”

“I'll see you too!”

While Dr. Padgett smiled at my account of my Effexor buzz and expressed concern about my inability to sleep, he assured me that this burst of energy and hyperawareness was a temporary side effect. Despite the frustration of not being able to sleep, I was a little disappointed that the fun and giddy aspects were destined to fade. Common sense reminded me, however, that Effexor was not a recreational drug, but an antidepressant.

With a mild sleeping aid Dr. Padgett prescribed, soon the initial manic effect of the drug wore off. Within three weeks, I resumed a state of equilibrium. The darkness and the suicidal thoughts were gone, and I began to settle into the state of contentment I'd felt in April and May.

I wasn't sure how this chemical combination worked. But I was glad it existed. It reinforced that mental illness, depression, was indeed an illness with a physiological basis. It wasn't a sign of failure. I wasn't a failure.

I wondered why mental illness was surrounded by such hopelessness, shame, and stigma when treatments—sometimes as simple as a prescription—worked so effectively and could transform a person's life.

Long ago I had been taught my father's solution to emotional problems: pull yourself up by your bootstraps and move on. Psychiatry, he'd insisted, was nonsense. Believing this myth, I had resisted seeking help, had been driven away from it by my shame, until I, too, had been on the brink of becoming yet another tragedy. Another Kurt Cobain.

Mercifully my will to survive had superceded my misguided pride and distorted shame. The right people had come into my life at the right time, and I was spared long enough to learn the lesson of hope. As long as a person was still alive, help and hope were there if the individual dared seek it.

I vowed that whatever happened in my life after therapy, however full my life might become, I would never forget where I had been and the lessons I had learned. To make sure I could always appreciate the new light of day, I vowed to never forget the pain of the depths of darkness.

For some reason, God—or fate, or destiny, or whatever one might call the controlling forces of the universe—had decided that I would be given the gift of hope. I knew then that as bleak as life could become, I would never again seriously consider suicide.

Somehow, someday, I would share this message of hope. Maybe someone, feeling the pain of hopeless desolation, could take heart, see that anything could be possible, and choose to live.

Whatever I might do to spread this message, if it could spare even one life, kindle the flames of just one second chance, it would be worth it. After all, many, many people had joined forces to do the same for me.

The summer of 1994 was hectic enough that my twice-weekly sessions with Dr. Padgett became more like the icing on the cake than the main course. Tim and I were both busy with our businesses. He was putting in night and weekend work, and I was now devoting about twenty-five hours a week to my accounting practice. Both Jeffrey and Melissa were playing T-ball. Tim and I were in a coed softball league. During the busy summer, therapy became a place I could relax and unwind from it all, with less focus on introspection about the past and more discussion on my present and future. Sometimes we just shot the breeze.

The first day of June was a landmark date in our lives as I walked to the mailbox to ceremoniously deliver the bill payments. I was now caught up with Dr. Padgett's invoices. We'd paid the last installment of the hospital bills we'd financed, and our credit cards, once looming in the $10,000 range, now all carried a zero balance. Since both of our cars were paid for, the only debt Tim and I had now was the mortgage on our home. As a bonus, there was still money left in our savings account.

We went out to dinner to celebrate our newfound solvency. Given the financial strain therapy and hospital bills had placed on us, becoming virtually debt free was as much of a success to us as if we'd been outright wealthy.

Summer passed into early fall, and the church choir resumed its schedule. I loved being back with the group, and I felt emotionally strong, physically healthy, and closer to these people than I had ever been.

It was now my turn to cook for the meals chain, my turn to offer a shoulder to cry on, my turn to be the support person others could lean on as our intertwined lives marched on. I relished the role. For all the generosity these people had so selflessly given to me, I liked being able to return it in kind.

Each Sunday those of us in the choir had an excellent view of the congregation. During the course of a long-winded sermon, many of us covertly entertained ourselves by baby watching, occasionally flashing a silly face to bring a smile from a little one. Most of us were still of childbearing age but already had kids. Some women had children approaching high school and college; others had children enrolled in the parish school. A few younger women had babies or toddlers.

At one time or another over the years, it seemed, one of us could be found juggling a squirming infant our husbands could no longer placate as we held our music and sang. And, more than a few times, when a particularly cute cherub had delighted us in church, afterward we'd discuss our “baby cravings.”

One day during Mass I watched a young mother rock her child, a tow-headed infant. I wistfully recalled when Melissa had been that young. As my entire life had changed over the course of therapy, she, too, had steadily grown and changed.

When I'd first entered the hospital, she'd been barely two years old, still in diapers, speaking in baby talk. Now she was in kindergarten, the baby fat all but gone, still calling me Mommy but once in a while shortening it to the more mature “Mom.”

Although Jeffrey's birth was more a result of fate than planning, once he was born Tim and I had decided that we wanted three children spaced two years apart. Melissa came right on our planned schedule.

With the emotional and financial burdens of my illness, however, we never did try for the third one. Undoubtedly Tim would have been willing to have a third child in a heartbeat but respected my feelings that the timing just wasn't right. Was it too late? I was thirty-two years old, well within the low-risk range of pregnancy. The worst phases of my mental illness had passed, and I was feeling good both emotionally and physically. I was healthy enough to have a child, I thought. With the debts paid off and Tim's business in particular becoming more firmly established, we were in a good financial position.

As I sat there, the cravings became an obsession as I remembered what it was like to be pregnant, to hold a newborn in my arms for the first time, to have it accompany me everywhere snoozing soundly in a pouch.

By the time Mass was over, I had decided. I was going to have a baby.

Tim's eyes lit up at the news of my decision. We even discussed turning the attic into a bedroom for Jeffrey and using his current room as a nursery.

The joy of new life. The promise of the future. Everything seemed to fit in a perfect scenario. I couldn't wait to tell Dr. Padgett.

“I'm going to have a baby,” I announced proudly at our next session.

“You're pregnant?” he asked, eyes open wide, obviously surprised.

“No, no,” I said. “I realize I have to quit the medications first. But we decided that we're going to try and have another baby.”

“I really have to advise against it,” he said bluntly.

His words stunned me. As a surrogate father, I thought he'd greet the news with the same joy as a surrogate grandfather. Here was a man who was so loathe to give direct advice he would barely tell me what time it was, and yet, on this matter, he was suddenly vested with a strong opinion. Things were not working out as planned.

“Maybe it's none of your business!” I snapped back, irritated that he'd burst my bubble.

“I'm speaking in your best interests, Rachel. I don't ever recommend that a patient of mine try to get pregnant during the course of therapy.”

“So what are you saying?” I demanded. “That just because I've been mentally ill I can never have another baby? What gives you the right to butt into my personal decisions?”

“First of all, I didn't say you could
never
have a baby—just that being in the middle of therapy is not a good time to do it.”

“I'm almost done. And I've decided to get off the medications.”

“It isn't just the medications. That's a separate issue. It has to do with emotions, unresolved issues.”

“I've managed to be a good mother to my first two, haven't I?” I retorted angrily, disliking his implication that I was not emotionally stable enough to have another child.

“And it's been hard as hell, hasn't it? If you choose to have another child, it should be at a time when you are emotionally ready to do it, when you're doing it for the right reasons.”

“I love the two I have. I loved them as infants. Isn't that reason enough? Why else do people have babies? It's natural. This isn't a therapy issue.”

“I recommend that you wait until a year after terminating therapy to have a child.”

“A year? A
year
before I can have a child?”

“A year before you try to conceive one,” he clarified, which was even worse than I'd thought.

“How long could that be? I don't want to have a baby when I'm forty. I don't want my kids to be ten years apart. I can't believe you're saying these things!”

“You need the time for
you
right now. You need to resolve the final issues and put some closure on therapy.”

“Issues like what?” I retorted in frustration. “I've been through every detail of my childhood with a fine-tooth comb. I'm feeling better now. I'm okay.”

“For starters,” he said in the same firm tone I had given him, “we need to explore why you suddenly feel this need to conceive.”

“Because I'm in my thirties now. My kids aren't getting any younger, and neither am I.”

“Any other reasons?”

“It's none of your damned business why I want to have a baby!” I exploded in tears. “Tim is my husband; you're my therapist. This is Tim's domain, not yours. I don't have to discuss my reasons with you.”

“Pretty major life decision to not want to explore it, wouldn't you say?” he said as he raised his eyebrows.

I hated that look.

“Okay, Dr. Know-It-All,” I quipped sarcastically, my arms folded across my chest. “What do
you
think my reasons are?”

“For starters, I think this baby could be a way of running away.”

“From what?” I narrowed my eyes.

“The pain of terminating therapy.”

“It always comes down to this, doesn't it? Everything is supposed to center around you. You're pretty self-impressed, you know that?”

Brushing aside the insult, he continued.

“The closeness a mother experiences with an infant could be a substitute for the closeness you feel here, a way to avoid the pain of separation.

“You've said that the time when your kids were infants was the most peaceful, secure time you'd ever felt. Things began to fall apart when they started to grow a little older, to become independent and separate. Another baby would inevitably grow up too, and you'd still be faced with dealing with separation without having worked it out here.”

His words stung me. I felt as if he was reminding me of when I'd abused Jeffrey. The mere thought of the incident filled me with remorse.
How dare he!
I felt attacked.

“I know what this is. It's a trick to shove me out the door. I can't have a baby until I leave therapy, so you force me out of therapy.”

I realized immediately that I had just underscored his point. His silence implied that he realized it too. I quickly changed my approach. I wasn't willing to give up so easily.

“We're talking about a baby here,” I replied in as sincere a tone as I could muster. “A human life. That's God's decision, not mine or Tim's and certainly not yours.”

I never had bought into the artificial birth control ban as expressed by more conservative Catholics and had always figured that the day the church hierarchy had the right to tell me I couldn't prevent birth was the day they were willing to cover all the expenses of child rearing. Nonetheless, the conservative Catholic view of birth control suited my purposes here, and I didn't hesitate to use it.

“We're not talking about therapy issues here,” I concluded. “We're talking about religious conviction.”

It was obvious that Dr. Padgett knew I was completely full of crap. He chose to ignore my recitations of religious dogma.

“Some people in this world are really ready to have another child. Some people aren't. I don't think this is something you should jump into recklessly without really sorting out the issues. Otherwise it might not only be detrimental to you, but to the child you bring into the world.”

A crushing blow. In moments of desperation I could dismiss whether or not something was beneficial or detrimental to me. But my kids were a different story—my Achilles' heel—and he knew it. I wasn't sure whether he was using this approach as a strategy or was merely being painfully candid.

It was an acrimonious session, the first such battle in months. I was angry and disappointed in Dr. Padgett. What made me angriest of all was the logic in his words, the kernel of truth I couldn't dismiss. Still I felt enough stubborn pride to hurl a parting shot, the last word, as I walked out of his office.

“This isn't any of your business,” I snapped. “I shouldn't have said a word. And if I walk out of here and Tim disagrees with you, I'm going to side with him and not you. He's my husband. I might get pregnant tonight, just to spite you!”

Tim was as surprised and disappointed as I was by Dr. Padgett's reaction to the idea of my having another baby. After years of waiting and almost becoming resigned to the fact we would have only two children, his hopes had been high once again.