Get Me Out of Here (26 page)

He gave me a warm embrace.

“Someday, Rachel, you'll be able to forgive the person you need to forgive most—yourself. And you will realize what a special person you are.”

As I started to open up the front door to leave, Father Rick called after me, a cellophane-covered plate of Christmas cookies in his hand.

“Here, take these with you. I get more of these than I could possibly eat.” He patted his rounded belly. “I don't need them, but you could use a little more meat on your bones.”

“Thanks,” I said, taking the plate.

“Take care of yourself,” he said in parting. “You're one of God's chosen people, you know.”

It was hard to believe the day had finally arrived when Dr. Padgett returned. The vacation countdown had been sheer anguish.

We spent most of January rehashing the Christmas break, exploring the dynamics of the family, speculating on the origins of my parents' dysfunction and the legacy of their own abusive childhoods.

We talked about Father Rick's concept of original sin and the notion of stopping the chain. It was becoming an increasingly intellectual and detached process as the focus steered away from my own childhood feelings and toward those of my parents and siblings. They were interesting sessions, but after a few weeks my anxiety and frustration grew, and the stubborn numbness crept in again.

I wondered if this lack of emotion were somehow a sign that I had taken therapy as far as it could go. But deepest within me I still felt a gnawing emptiness: a warning that I was avoiding something.

I had been going to therapy sessions for more than a year and a half now—long enough to detect some clear patterns. As much as I loathed pain, progress did not seem to come without it. I still had not reached a point where my deepest emotions could surface spontaneously without some catalyst. Usually that catalyst came in the form of some emotionally charged event or on the heels of a belligerent confrontation with Dr. Padgett. I had picked more fights with the man in nineteen months than I had with everyone I'd ever known over a lifetime.

While these one-sided battles often served to prod the feelings out of me, I was growing battle weary. No matter how much I tried, I could not simply snap my fingers and conjure emotional openness.

It reminded me of when I was a kid, nauseated from the flu or overindulgence in candy or dessert. I lay in bed, feeling horrible, my stomach rumbling, threatening to erupt. Yet I willed myself to avoid vomiting. Indeed, I could recall times when I'd literally prayed to God that I wouldn't throw up. As much as I knew that vomiting would bring relief, I feared and loathed the act of throwing up even more. I'd hold it back, totally miserable for hours.

It was the same way with getting to the root of emotions in therapy. I knew that in the end letting go would bring relief. And yet I was still resistant about going through the painful process it took to get there. Thus January was a period of relative calm in sessions but a miserable choke of repressed feelings.

The calm before the storm.

A longer than usual midwinter thaw had fooled February into an early spring. Already the trees and flowering bushes had begun to bud and bloom, boldly defying the likelihood that the winter's freeze would visit again. The city was energized by a collective bout of spring fever, hordes of children set free to ride their bicycles, the parks filled with joggers, cyclists, and in-line skaters. The smoky smells of barbecue grills wafted through the air.

Spring. The season of hope and renewal. There was an extra bounce in my own step as well as I had decided to arrive for session an hour early, strolling through the immaculately landscaped hospital grounds in a floral print blouse and white slacks, glad to be alive.

My stomach was rumbling a bit, which I attributed to a particularly heavy bacon-and-egg breakfast. About twenty minutes before my session, I stopped in the restroom.

The tiny red spot in my underwear threw a wet blanket on my high spirits. Resigned once again to the inevitability of nature, I reached into my purse. But I didn't have any tampons. Rolling my eyes, I dug a quarter out of my purse and went to the tampon machine. Out of order.

My disappointment was replaced with panic. I was wearing white slacks! And now I had less than fifteen minutes to make it to session. Stuffing my underwear with a wad of toilet paper, I walked awkwardly to the hospital pharmacy—which charged the outrageous markups of a monopoly.

The clock behind the pharmacy counter read 2:50. I had only ten minutes. I needed to hurry. Scanning the shelves, I found nothing, my panic beginning to rise. Finally, with seven minutes to go, I saw the familiar blue boxes stacked on a shelf behind the counter. I was going to have to ask for them. How humiliating! Filled with anger at the counter clerk, convinced that she was the one responsible for forcing me to shamefully request a box of tampons, I muttered my request to her.

“Excuse me?” she asked innocently.

“Tampax, damnit,” I snapped, not daring to look up. “I said I need a box of Tampax! Are you deaf or what?”

A bit rattled, she retrieved a box from the shelf behind her. Three-fifty for an eight-pack! It figured.

By the time I had myself put together and rushed to Dr. Padgett's waiting room, it was already 3:05. Five minutes late. I knew what the rules were. If he were running late, it was okay. If I were running late, however, the time was docked from my session so as not to disrupt his schedule. His receptionist, noticing my arrival, had picked up the phone to notify the doctor. He came to greet me at 3:07. Seven precious minutes lost to “the curse,” as if it weren't enough of a burden to begin with.

I was an emotional wreck, on the verge of tears, when I finally settled into my chair, not only disappointed at the lost time but also mortified at the prospect of having to explain the nature of my tardiness. This was infinitely worse than the bed-wetting incident.

My cheeks were flushed and burning as I began to feel the weightlessness of shame. The cramps had become more severe, exacerbated by my embarrassed awareness. How could I tell him?

Dr. Padgett was obviously aware that something was up. My awkward silence was not the product of a lack of things to say, but of something too painful to articulate. All the signs were there—the rocking, swiveling chair; the tapping feet; my head shaking as I grabbed fistfuls of my hair. The longer the silence lasted, the more painful it became, the deeper I sank into the pit of shame.

“What's going on?” he asked softly.

“Nothing!” I pouted.

You moody bitch! See what the hormones do to you?

“Nothing?”

“Nothing that's any of your goddamned business!” I snapped, the pain of my cramps rising to epic proportions.

You think he can't guess you're on the rag? Get a grip!

“Whatever it is, it's obviously upsetting you. We've been through this before, Rachel. You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to, but as we've seen in the past, sometimes the things that are hardest to talk about are the things you most need to talk about.”

More painful silence.

“Like you don't already know?” I cried, surprised at the hysterical edge to my own voice. “Like it isn't fucking obvious?”

You hysterical hormone-crazed bitch! You're giving it away!

Dr. Padgett, showing no signs of impatience, said, “I can't read your mind. I honestly don't know unless you tell me.”

“I … I … I can't,” I stammered, shaking my head through my tears.

He sat there waiting. At times like this he rarely pushed me. Indeed, it wasn't necessary. My charged emotions would break through the surface driven by their own velocity. Anything he could say at a time like this would only serve to keep them submerged.

Finally I could no longer contain the burning secret.

“It's that time,” I muttered softly.

Clearly he wasn't getting it, as evidenced by the confused expression on his face.

“I'm sorry,” he said, “but I don't know what you're getting at.”

“What do you want me to do?” I roared. “Write it on the walls? Send you a press release?”

“Rachel,” he said kindly but firmly, “I'm not here to attack you. I'm here to help you. And you aren't helping yourself by holding this in—whatever it is.”

I stared at him for a moment, then decided to tell him.

“That time,” I said, forcing the words, “that time of the month.”

“Oh,” he replied. “You're menstruating.”

The words cut at me like a sword, a fresh surge of shame shooting through every part of my body. There I was, bleeding in the middle of his office, and Dr. Padgett now knew it. A horrifying thought.

“You didn't have to say it!” I retorted angrily.

“Say what?” he asked innocuously. “That you're having your menstrual period?”

Another plunging stab. I was sobbing uncontrollably now, afraid to look at his face.

“Do you have to use those words? Why can't you just leave me alone? Why don't you mind your own business? Why are you humiliating me?”

As much as he tried to mask it, he still looked surprised at the vehemence of my reaction.

What the hell is wrong with this guy? He acts like it's nothing. I'm bleeding here, drowning the place in hormones. How much more disgusting can I be?

“There's nothing at all shameful about the menstrual cycle,” he said delicately, as if walking on eggshells. “It's a natural process.”

Those words again!
I wasn't sure how much more of this I could take, afraid the embarrassment would literally blow me apart, wishing in a way that it would, longing to crawl under a rock and hide.

“Nothing shameful?” I asked incredulously. “I'm sitting here bleeding, a raging bitch, disgusting and gross, and you don't think it's shameful? You liar!”

“No,” he said in point-blank fashion. “I don't see anything shameful about it in the least. Clearly, however, you do. Which is something we need to work on.”

“What do you know? Huh? What do you know about it? You're lucky; you're a man. You don't have to deal with this shit. You don't know the first goddamned thing about what it's like. You don't know how horrible it is. If you weren't disgusted with me before, I'll bet you are now. You probably can't wait until I get the hell out of here.”

“Why would I be disgusted with you for being a woman?”

“Oh, you say that, but you don't mean it. It repulses you, but you just won't say it.”

“It may repulse you. It may have repulsed your father. But that's a distorted viewpoint; it isn't mine—”

“It's disgusting!” I repeated, ignoring his comments.

“I realize,” he said slowly and deliberately, “that menstrual periods can be messy, inconvenient, and uncomfortable. But it's purely physiological. There's no shame in menstruation.”

A slew of blades piercing me.

“Quit using those words!” I demanded.

“Menstrual period?”

“Damnit! You're doing it again. Quit rubbing my nose in it, will you?”

“You can't say those words, can you?” His face filled with sadness at this question to which he already knew the answer.

My parents had not been ones to discuss sexuality openly. My mother seemed to be as embarrassed about these things as I was, seldom discussing them. Despite the presence of three girls in the house, I didn't recall her ever mentioning a word about periods, cramps, or anything biologically feminine. My father had been more prone to mention the menstrual cycle, mostly as a means of discounting his daughters' emotions or logic. He never easily tolerated moods and emotions, but the onset of adolescence in his daughters had given him a new way to stop them cold.

“Are you having your period?”

“You aren't making any sense. Is it your period?”

“Quit crying. Is it that time of the month or something?”

For some reason it hadn't seemed to thwart the emotions of my sisters, who would often run out of the room crying—in my eyes simply proving him right. For me, however, it was all the more reason to keep my emotions in check, to handle things “like a man.” I would have preferred being beaten, grounded, anything, than to have him level that accusation at me. No matter how many emotions were churning within me, I'd made certain to avoid this ultimate humiliation and would put on a brave, tough front.

Even in the confines of my own room, I'd feared that he would walk in and find me there and shame me by attributing my isolation to my period. Just as in the earlier years of childhood, I had not felt safe at home. In adolescence I felt even less so and had engaged in a nomadic life of outside activities even more than before.

Dr. Padgett was right. Over the years I had established an array of euphemisms to be used in times of absolute necessity. “That time.” “The biological processes.” Sometimes just a pained look on my face until someone else could guess its origin. The mere mention of the words “menstrual period” could immediately send me into a flood of painful embarrassment.

“Never!” I exclaimed. “I never ever use those words, and you can't force me to use them!”

“I have no intentions of forcing you to say anything,” he replied. “In fact it appears that you are trying to humiliate yourself, not me. Trying to drive yourself further into shame because a part of you takes pleasure in humiliation.”

Not much remained hidden from this man.

“You are trying to humiliate me! Rub my nose in it! You are disgusted with me. You think I'm immature and revolting!”

“Rachel,” he said firmly, “you're doing it to yourself again. I'm not going to be a party to your self-shaming. I don't find your womanhood disgusting. I don't find it revolting, and I haven't shown you a shred of evidence that I do. You know that. But this isn't about sharing your feelings in order to relieve them; this is your own game to exacerbate them. You are digging a hole for yourself, and in your own best interests I can't just sit back and let you continue it.”