Get Me Out of Here (38 page)

The early part of 1995 passed quickly as we arranged the financing and the closing. Both went smoothly. On February 28, 1995, the city home was no longer ours, although we still lived in it because of the leaseback arrangement.

We spent most weekends in our new home in Nottingham, painting, stripping woodwork, and preparing it for our move-in date. In between we shuttled the kids to ball games and Cub Scout and Daisy meetings, said good-byes, and squeezed in time to enjoy our last months in the neighborhood.

Meanwhile, in our now once-a-week appointments, Dr. Padgett and I prepared to end our sessions. Once therapy had been the central focus of my life. Now it almost felt foreign to go to his office. My life—my future—was swirling around me, and often I walked into his office with my mind elsewhere.

I still felt close to Dr. Padgett. His warm greeting smiles and soothing voice were still comforting. But I no longer burned with the need to be with him. Still I wasn't looking forward to actually setting a termination date.

We talked about the future. I showed him photographs of the new old house and discussed my career plans. He was still like a father to me, but now our relationship was adult to adult rather than father figure to child.

Occasionally I felt guilty, wondering what introspective work I was avoiding. But he assured me that sharing good news as well as bad was a step toward independence. Amid my wildly hectic pace, therapy was a haven where I relaxed and unwound.

As spring began to emerge, the move only a month or so away, we delved more into the specifics of termination. Dr. Padgett's policy was that termination initiated an agreed-upon, one-year no-contact period. The prospect made me uneasy.

“Why?” I asked him. “I've come to understand your other rules. But this one seems needlessly cruel. How do I know what might happen during the next year? What if I need you? What will I do?”

“Termination doesn't end the process,” he told me. “Old issues will still come up, along with new ones you hadn't anticipated. It isn't the end; it's just the beginning of a new chapter in your life—one where you handle things on your own.”

“What if I can't handle it on my own? What then?” I asked, beginning to panic, to regret the commitment I'd made to set a termination date in summer, just a few months away.

“Do you think you can?”

“I don't know. What if I can't?”

“I think you'll find yourself more capable of it than you might believe right now. But, if something became so burdensome you couldn't handle it on your own, I could refer you to another good psychiatrist.”

“I don't want another psychiatrist!” I insisted. “I don't want to have to explain my whole life story to someone else. You understand me; we have a history.”

“We do have a history, and that doesn't change. Our bond didn't end when I took vacations. Our bond won't end just because you've terminated.

“Don't you see?” he said. “You've changed, Rachel. In fundamental ways. You aren't the same person you used to be. You couldn't return to be that if you wanted to. Our history is a part of you now. No one and nothing can take that away from you.”

“It sounds like death or something,” I lamented. “Like this is forever. Except that, unlike a death, you'll still be here holding sessions, maybe with someone else who was where I was a few years ago. It's like mourning someone who's still alive. Why do I have to?”

“I didn't say forever,” he reminded me. “I said a one-year no-contact period. After that time passes, you are free to come back again if you need it on a limited basis or an open-ended basis.”

“Why a year? Why not four months? Six months? Forever? Why any limit at all? Don't you trust me? Are you afraid I'll cling to you for life?”

“The subconscious mind is always at work,” he explained. “When you terminate, a part of you will feel pride, independence, and joy that you've moved on. But another part of you will still be ambivalent. You could subconsciously create a crisis just to avoid the separation.”

“Like an emotional hypochondriac?”

“I don't know if that's exactly how I'd put it. But, after you leave here, there are going to be some hard times. They could be based on unresolved issues. But they could also be based on a subconscious desire to run from perceived abandonment. If you know that there is a defined length of time when you can't see me, you'll be more inclined to work through these temporary moments on your own and see them as challenges not failures.

“If, after a year, you still feel you have unfinished business to work on, you are welcome to come back. By having the limit, both of us can be assured that if you do opt to resume therapy, it will be for the right reasons, not just to avoid the pain of saying good-bye.”

I considered this for a moment. I had to admit it made sense. As much as I wished the rule didn't exist, I had grown over time to understand that his rules and limits were there for my best interest.

“You know,” I said sadly, my eyes filling with tears, “I'm probably going to cry like a baby when I have to say good-bye. You're one of the best things that's ever happened to me. I'm going to miss you.”

“Believe me,” he said, his own eyes glistening. “The feeling is mutual.”

As wistful as I was at the prospect of saying good-bye, I did believe him. He would miss me too. Both of us had committed ourselves to therapy, and we had developed closeness and mutual understanding. Termination, while inevitable and necessary, wasn't going to be easy—for me or for Dr. Padgett. But, like the parent who puts on a brave face to his anxious kindergartner as she goes off to her first day of school, he wasn't going to let his emotional ambivalence exacerbate my own.

Moving day went fairly smoothly. The friendly movers managed to move eight years of accumulated furniture and belongings out of our city house before noon. I felt a touch of remorse and fear as I looked around the now empty home. The walls were barren. Outlines still shadowed the bedroom carpets where the ghosts of bed frames and other furniture remained.

The previous week I had gathered nearly a thousand scattered yellow ledger pages, a series of emotional snapshots of my therapy process. I didn't want the movers touching these. I'd packed all of them away into a big, black filing box that sat in the corner bedroom as I vacuumed and swept, erasing our presence for a new family.

Once I finished the final cleanup, I snapped pictures of every corner of the house. I never wanted to forget this house and the years we'd spent there, the good times and the bad. The joy of bringing Jeffrey and Melissa home as newborns. The beautiful oak staircase we painstakingly restored.

After lingering in the house for a half hour or so, shooting pictures, letting the waves of melancholy wash over me, I had to leave. Mourning was a part of letting go and moving on to the future. I locked the door for the final time, took a few last photos of the house and yard, and drove through the neighborhood streets on my last day as a resident. Slowly I passed the houses of my friends, the neighbors with whom I'd worked side-by-side fighting the city battle. My role would be passed along to someone else.

I went by the homes of the choir members who had been there for me in my worst times, who had come to be the close and supportive family I had never known. I was tempted to stop at every one of them for a final hug and yet another round of tears. But my family was awaiting me in Nottingham. I'd had six months to say my good-byes. It was time to move on.

As I drove alone down the interstate, my car stuffed with cleaning supplies and the precious black box of writings, I realized that as sad as it was to leave, this time I wasn't running way from anything. This time I was going on to something better. The friendships I had in the city, like my relationship with Dr. Padgett, were a part of me now, and I vowed to keep in touch with them. The most important people in my life, Tim, Jeffrey, and Melissa, would be with me. By the time I reached the Nottingham exit, I was no longer looking behind but ahead to the life that awaited me there.

With all the transitions in my life, I was glad that I still had Dr. Padgett. It was a one-hour drive each way to his office, which gave me time to collect my thoughts and reflect on the way home.

In late June, a few weeks after the move, I set a termination date for therapy. September 12, 1995. I circled the date in red in my appointment book. Twelve more sessions, marked discreetly in my planner by the code “Dr. P.,” the final one with an extra line: “Termination.”

Setting the date had been easier than I'd expected. I'd made so many changes in my life, and right now this seemed like just one more.

Now that I knew the end was near, I was determined not to waste the precious time we had left together. The good-bye, I realized, was not going to be limited to the final session but would last for three months.

During our sessions I told him just how much he had meant to me, just how much of a difference he had made in my life—in all of our lives. Because of him, Tim and the kids would enjoy a healthy wife and mother who planned to live to a ripe old age and spoil her grandchildren. A man they had only met once spared them a potential tragedy. Someday, when they were ready, I would tell them about this man who had helped give their mother a second chance.

It was also a time of reminiscence. The changes had been so subtle and incremental they were impossible to see on a day-to-day basis. But over the course of four years, I had been completely transformed. I had fit every one of the terms in the psychological profile. “Manipulative.” “Self-destructive.” “Seductive.” “Attention-seeking.” “Histrionic.” The fact that I could look upon those labels in the realm of the past gave me hope that I really had changed, that they would not be a part of my future.

“How did you put up with me?” I asked him. “I said some pretty vile things. I deliberately threatened you, manipulated you, and pushed you to the hilt.”

“Because,” he smiled, “I always knew that underneath the layers of caked-on dirt you had a diamond core. I knew it from the very first day.”

“Did you ever dream that I'd make it to where I am now?”

“If I didn't, Rachel, I would never have taken you on as a patient. No one can read what the future holds. But I always knew the strong possibility was there.”

“You never gave up on me, did you? You know, you should be really proud of what you've accomplished here.”

“I just helped you,” he reminded me. “You did the work. You're the one who never gave up on yourself. The real accomplishment, the real pride, should be yours.”

It wasn't just false modesty. I knew he was right. Both of us were proud.

“One more question?” I asked, as that session was drawing near to an end. “Once upon a time you diagnosed me as a borderline. A lot of the stuff I've read says it can't ever really be cured. Am I a borderline now? Will I always be a borderline?”

“What do you think? Do you believe you're borderline?”

“You're the doctor,” I said, wishing just this once he wouldn't answer my question with one of his own. “I'm not the expert in the field. You are.”

“Right now,” he said, “I'd say you have as thorough and intuitive understanding of what it means to be borderline as a lot of the psychiatrists who write about it and treat it. You are equipped to answer your own question.”

“But that's something I can't find in the books,” I persisted. “Everybody talks about what it is and its effects. But I can't find any that say it can be cured. Or, if it could be cured, what would constitute a cure. Cancer is more clear-cut: The tumor's malignant, or it's not. The chemotherapy works, or it doesn't.

“But with borderline personality disorder, who can tell? A few of the researchers seem to think that once a borderline, always a borderline. That you can't cure it—you can only control it. That a lot of people are destined to live their lives in and out of institutions, that there isn't much hope.

“I'd hate to think I've made all this progress but that there's some little vestige of BPD inside me, like a cancer cell, just lurking in the background, waiting to grow like a cancer and take me over again.”