Almost Lost (4 page)

“I'm not sure.”

“Were you taught in Sunday school that God could forgive you?”

“Yes.”

“I think much more often than not, God forgives people
but people refuse to forgive themselves!
Does that make sense?”

“Maybe.”

“Will you ponder a little on that till the next time I see you?”

“Yes…but…”

“But what?”

“I'm still a little…no, a
lot
…scared and lost. I feel like I'm filled up to my eyebrows with…” (He didn't seem to be able to find the words to describe his load.)

“Garbage?”

“Yes, rotten, stinking, dead horse, maggot-infested…”

“I get the picture.”

“There's absolutely no room left for anything good.”

“Then why don't you dump the garbage?”

“I'd like to. It's like rotting me from the inside out.”

“Well put, smart person! I think you know more
about how your ‘YOU' works than you ever imagined!”

“Can't you just hypnotize me and wipe out everything in my memory for the past year or so, sort of like amnesia or something?”

“Sorry, but we've got to take it a little slower than that.”

“How long?”

“Not very long, now that
you've decided
to recharge, rechannel, and upgrade your life. Actually,
no one else can do that for you
no matter how hard they try! However, any good, friend, teacher, parent, sibling, counselor, priest, etc., can help you make a positive alteration in both your present and your future if you
choose
to allow them to do so.”

“I'm allowing, I'm allowing. Let's get on with my, from-repulsive-maggot-to-beautiful-butterfly-type metamorphosis—I hope.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“But I feel so unglued. How can I ever find the broken, lost pieces of myself and put them back together?”

“Do you think maybe we should go back and find out
why you made the decisions to do what you've done?
”

“No. No way! I want to forget all that crapola. I've got to get
on
with my life like you said I could.” (Sammy began to look frightened, dejected, and beaten.) I want to start over new. I want to go
on and up, not back and down!
Maybe you can't or don't want to help me. Maybe nobody wants to or can!”

“You're wrong, dear, dear Sammy. I can and want to help you, but there's no way I can do it if you close me out. It's okay for you to disagree with what I propose, and I may not always be right in my as
sessment of a situation at first glance, but we've got to start somewhere. And I have a lot of training and experience in putting people back together who have felt fragmented.”

“I know I'm just a wuss being paranoid, afraid of letting someone else get inside my head.”

My hand reached out and patted his knee. “You're a good kid, Sammy.”

He smiled. “You sound like my mom.”

“I take that as a great compliment.”

“It is.” He gave me two high fives.

“Let's try again to find a beginning place. That's often the hardest thing to do in a therapy session.”

“Okay.”

“Are you sure?
Completely
sure you can trust me with the hurtful, destructive things that are inside your heart and head?”

He hugged himself tightly, took a deep, deep breath and relaxed. “Ummmm…I guess I have to, don't I?”

“Some people I see can start from where they are at the moment in their rediscovery and recovery program. They don't have to go back and regurgitate the past. With you, it's different. You have the equivalent of some deep, inner, abscessed wounds that need to be cleaned out before they can begin to heal. You've got to get them cured before you can proceed with the rest of your healthy, happy life.”

“Are you sure?”

“This session is going to be like taking out slivers. Remember when you were little, you probably had some big ones and some little ones. Some you fought having taken out, even though you knew they might get infected if they weren't removed.”

“I remember. Once I even had to go to the doctor to have him cut out a piece of glass in my foot.”

“So? Where do you want to start? With the worst slivers or the barely-there ones?”

Sammy bowed his head and shriveled into himself. He seemed half as big as he had a few minutes before and about ten years younger. “I guess we'd better start with the big one. Everything bad and horrible started there.”

“I'm sad that it's going to hurt, Sammy. But again, I want you to know I deeply care about you, and anything you share with me will be considered
absolutely
secret and sacred.”

Sammy's eyes and nose started running in torrents. He didn't bother to wipe the stuff away as he began blurting out his story.”

“I was a happy, sunshiny, self-confident, king-of-the-mountain type little kid. Even after we got the divorce, which hurt a whole lot, I felt I was special, and that I could lick the world at anything I cared about. I was on the tennis team, the soccer team, a partly A student, I played a little on a lot of musical instruments, I had two cool little sisters, and then…”

After about fifteen seconds I asked quietly, “And then?”

“And then that dirty, bastard-shithead…”

Almost instantly Sammy became another person, writhing and cursing loudly, incoherently, uncontrollably.

I put my arms around him in a firm, fiercely protective manner. “Shhh…Shhh, Sammy. Let go of the pain, the hate, the anger. Shhh…relax…relax…relax.” I began gently, slowly, kneading nerve points in his shoulders, neck, and head. “Shhh, let the pressure, the rage, the tension, wilt and dissipate. Take some slooow deep breaths…”

After a few minutes the rigid tautness in his body softened into exhaustion. He looked up with embarrassment.

“I guess I'm not ready yet to face the hard-ass stuff. I had no idea it would be so tough to upchuck. One part of me wants to, but another part of me wants to bury all the crappy crap deep inside and never, never let it come to the surface till hell freezes over and beyond. The last part of me wants to snuff and get it over with. Does that make me paranoid and schizophrenic and other crazy types of stuff?”

“No, no, no, no. You're okay, Sammy. And you're certainly not alone in your feelings. Many, many people live all their uncomfortable lives trying
not
to face their pasts, or trying to pretend that the bad things that happened, didn't happen, or thinking about suicide.”

“That's me.”

“No! It's
not
you!
You
are willing to dump your past garbage. Together, we just made the mistake of trying to have you dump the biggest, baddest batch first, instead of starting with the smaller emotional bangs and bruises. You still want to go through with it?”

“Yeah, I do. I really do. I know I'll never feel clean and good until I get rid of all the rot-gut I've got packed away inside me.”

“Would you like to pick a minor trauma to talk about and let the major one or ones sit for a while?”

“Like, just sit and rot and rust and disgust the guts of me till my whole me collapses into one thickness like a cardboard person or someone run over by a steamroller.”

“Sweet, neat Sammy, it's not
that
bad!”

“Yes, it is. I'm a Humpty Dumpty you can never put back together again.”

“Remember the little blue train that you read about when you were just a child? The one that said, ‘I THINK I CAN! I THINK I CAN! I THINK I CAN!' AND HE COULD!
AND HE DID!
”

Sammy sighed deeply. “Well, okay. I was many, many miles from home when
it
happened, and all I wanted was just to put space between me and…the UGH. It seemed Mom was light-distances away on another planet, but I had to—I just had to get home to her and…it was like I was all the time swimming upstream—upstream with the salmon, upstream forever.

“By the time I got home, after three bus changes, and I don't know how many days, I was not only tired to death, I was hungry and dirty and stinky. I'd run out of money and energy and patience. I screamed at a guy in one station who sat next to me and dropped his head on my shoulder, and I cursed at the man at the ticket counter who said I was short twenty-three cents on my final ticket. I finally scrounged it up by going through every one of my pockets. I called him something I'd heard at school but had never before said myself. It was vile, but in some perverted way it made me feel good. Sick, huh?”

“Not sick, just acting out hurtfulness and sadness.”

“I kept thinking that when I got home everything would be better. The nightmarish things would go away, and I'd go on with my nice life as it used to be.” (Long pause.)

“What did happen when you got home?”

“It seemed like Mom was always ragging at me,
and the kids were nonstop screaming and quarreling and bugging me in every way possible. Even Dread Red Fred, who had become a wimpy dog, hated me and spent more time romping with my creepy sisters than staying in my room listening to the new Metallica tape I'd bought. I couldn't figure out what had changed everybody. I didn't know them anymore. They were like hateful, distrustful strangers.”

“What happened when you went back to school?”

“My so-called friends had all become snots, snobs, self-centered, conceited, uncaring, unconcerned ignoramuses, jack asses all! I couldn't stand their guts. They seemed like protected little babies, only interested in their own sissy cotton-cushioned lives. They had no idea about what was going on out there in the real world. The thoughts made anger flame up inside me, hot and red as an out-of-control forest fire, wasting everything in its path, with me on the sidelines enjoying every minute of the disaster. My anger seemed like the only thing I could relate to and actually, in a way, enjoy. The rest of life was colorless, tasteless, odorless, drab and blah and not worth living, completely meaningless.

“After a few days I started wondering about the ‘home boys' who sauntered up and down the halls. They seemed so secure and self-confident and protective of each other that in a way I envied them. They were not just single kids fighting their way through life alone; they were a solid, unified force. I wanted that kind of a support system. I needed it!” Sammy sat silent for a while.

“Before all the crap I had liked,
really, really
liked Harmony Harmon. We were close. Now she seemed like a holier-than-thou bratty bitch, always telling me to stop being so moody and so sarcastic and every
thing else. I didn't need her to swipe at me. I got enough of that at home.

“One day when we were out behind the school bleachers, she tried to snuggle up to me, and I was repulsed. It was scary because her touch had always been like electricity before. I pushed her away. Actually I…not just pushed her away…I shoved her…more like
hit
her…actually…
really
punched her hard three times! It was like someone else had done it. Someone else I didn't know, didn't want to know, couldn't stand. She felt it, too, because she ran away crying, ‘You're not
you
anymore. I don't know who you are, except you're a pig, and I don't care if I never see you again. In fact, I don't want to ever see you again
ever!
' I knew she meant it, and I didn't blame her. She was right! Someone, or something, had taken over my mind, my body, my soul. I began to think I was possessed, taken over by devils, vampires, ugliness, evilness.

“On the way home I stopped at the bookstore and bought a vampire book and a ‘possessed by demons' book. I was totally stunned by the number of books there were on the subjects. They disgusted me, but they fascinated me, too.

“A couple of weeks or months or something passed, and the supernatural became my natural. I combed all the bookstores for works on witchcraft and devil worship, convincing myself that I was just seeking information. Gangsta rap became my music of choice. One night I had a horrible experience that I can't even tell you about. It was real! More real than the experience I am having right now. I still get goose bumps when I think about it, and the hair stands up on the back of my neck. I knew I had to get out.”

“Did you?”

“Yes, but then I was sooooo alone again, so empty. It was almost like being filled with blackness and evil was better than being filled with nothing at all. Life was so painful that it couldn't have been worse if I had been covered with boils in a solid mass from my head to the bottoms of my feet. No one who has not been there can possibly understand how awful it was.”

“I'm sure you're right.”

“It drains me to even think about it.”

“That and the fact that you're hungry, and you need and want to get home. Do you think you're okay now? Can the rest of our inside cleansing, disinfecting, and deodorizing process wait until later?”

“Yeah. I really do think I feel a
little
better, that I kind of, in some small way, think maybe there might be a solution to my problems.”

“Good. I'll drop you off at your house on my way home.”

“Are you…sure my mom will…”

“I'm sure! And if there's trouble with money, don't worry. We'll work something out. In fact let's call this session a freebie. Call me tomorrow if you want.”

Sammy smiled from the inside out for the first time.

SUMMARY OF SESSION

Sammy is home from a runaway experience. He is facing his past pain and fears heroically.

Working through general problems, past suicidal tendencies, experimentation with witchcraft, low self-esteem, etc.

Samuel Gordon Chart

Wednesday, July 27, 9
A.M.