Get Me Out of Here (40 page)

“Rachel,” he said from within the embrace, “it has truly been an honor and a privilege to have known you and worked with you.”

“It's been an honor and privilege to know you too,” I said, trying to hold back the tears, bracing myself for the final exit.

At the door I turned toward him.

“I hope that the rest of your life is blessed with happiness. And I'll never ever forget you.”

“I wish you the same,” he replied, “and I'll never forget you either.”

With that I left his office, walking past the familiar sights as I returned to my car.

The tears were gone. A surreal feeling, akin to shock, filled me. I couldn't believe I hadn't become hysterical, clung to him, or begged to delay the termination. Instead I had calmly accepted the moment.

Outside the sun was shining, the linen delivery truck parked in front of the entrance as it always was at that time. A cadre of nurses came and went, the changing of the guard. Cars buzzed up and down the street; people went in and out of surrounding shops and businesses. Life was going on. I was just another driver in just another car as those passing me were going about their own lives oblivious of how much mine had just changed.

As I drove down the interstate, I was barely conscious of the exits and landmarks I was passing. No tears. No hysterics. Just an inexplicable feeling of emptiness mingled with hope. The warmth of Dr. Padgett's hug still touched me, sustaining me all the way home.

Tim, prepared for The Day, had already returned home when I arrived. The kids were playing out in the yard.

“How are you?” he asked, reaching out to hug me.

“Numb,” I replied. “Just numb.”

He had, no doubt, expected more emotions, more tears, and had cleared his schedule to make sure he was there for me when I needed him.

“Want to go out to dinner?” he asked. “There's no reason to cook tonight. Name your place; I'll get the kids ready.”

“Not hungry,” I mumbled. “Not sure if I'll ever be hungry again.”

Tim stood there with the helpless look of one who wants to erase the burden, make it all better, but has learned that sometimes he simply cannot. I went into the office, closed the door behind me, and began to type away at my PC.

“We need to go eat,” Tim said from the doorway a few hours later. “You need to eat too. It's getting pretty late.”

“Why don't you just go ahead without me?” I responded, weary of writing down my feelings but not wanting to move.

“Please, Rachel,” he insisted. “You really should have some dinner. Have you eaten anything today?”

“No,” I answered, realizing that I hadn't. “Maybe I'll grab something later. Why don't you and the kids go ahead without me?”

“The kids are worried,” he said. “Can't you just come with us?”

“No,” I pouted. “I'm not hungry. I'm not coming. Go ahead, will you?”

With a sigh Tim went out to get the kids. From outside the window, I could hear them.

“Why isn't Mommy coming?” Melissa asked, her voice on the quivering edge of tears.

“She's sad,” he answered. “She's not very hungry. She needs to be alone.”

“But I miss her,” she insisted. “I want to see her! We can make her happy again. I know we can!”

“She's going to be okay. I promise.”

“Dad?” Jeffrey asked. “Is Mommy on a diet again? Is she going to go to the hospital?”

“No,” Tim said in a worried voice that meant he wasn't so sure. “She's going to be okay.”

“I'm not going without her!” Melissa insisted.

“Me neither!” Jeffrey echoed.

Tim's patience had worn thin, stretched by having to explain his wife's confusing behavior yet another time to his children, having to act as mediator between my pain and theirs, having to play the strong one, hiding his own pain and fear.

“Just get in the car
now
,” he yelled. “We're going.”

I could hear the kids crying as he pulled out of the driveway. I wished he hadn't been so harsh but understood that everyone had a limit. He, too, had emotions. The kids hadn't deserved his outburst, but I couldn't really blame Tim either.

My termination from therapy had been a graduation of sorts—a sign that I was an adult emotionally as well as chronologically. Now it was time to act like one. I had been pouting, forgetting that I wasn't the only one who could be hurt and confused.

I turned off the computer, found my keys, and snatched my purse.

When I entered the restaurant, I didn't see them at first.

Then I saw Jeffrey and Melissa, still pouting silently, toying with their straws. Tim looked grim.

“I decided to come after all,” I said, smiling down at them in the booth. “I forgot for a moment that I belonged here, with all my family.”

The kids squealed in delight, and relief flooded into Tim's face. The Homecoming. Jeffrey and Melissa both scooted in the booth to sit next to me, giggling and smiling, telling me about their day.

“Let me order you something,” Tim said.

“No. I'm still not really hungry,” I started. Then, seeing the pain in his eyes, the confused expressions of the kids, I relented.

“Okay, why don't you get me a cheeseburger and fries. Maybe I am hungry after all.”

You return the love by sharing it with your husband, your children, the people you know, and the people you'll meet
.

Saying good-bye to Dr. Padgett had left a void in my life, but it could be filled. This smiling family had been with me, loving and supporting me, long before I ever met the therapist and would be there long after I had stopped seeing him. I would still have painful and wistful moments of wishing Dr. Padgett were there. But the legacy, the blanket of stars, remained.

Now able to feel love—to give and receive it—I was no longer abandoned. I had my family. I had my friends. I had my church. I had my God. Now I could reach out and capture those many drops of kindness and love.

I would get by. And thrive.

It is now January 2004. It's been eight and a half years since I said good-bye to Dr. Padgett for the last time. It's hard to believe that I've now been out of therapy for a much longer time than I was in it.

Of course eight and a half years in the course of anyone's life is bound to bring all sorts of challenges and opportunities, victories and defeats, celebrations and tragedies. My own life has been no different.

Dr. Padgett once said that my journey to wholeness wouldn't end at termination but would take a new path. He believed that I was capable of withstanding all the good and bad that life has to offer. And, as usual, he was right.

My life since that fateful September day in 1995 has been hectic. I gave birth to our third child, Julie. I quit my job to become a writer. We buried Tim's mom and, a few years later, buried my own. I have been through all the turmoil and joy that comes with motherhood, marriage, and career.

While mine hasn't been a life of end-to-end happiness—as no one's is—I can honestly say that it has been one of emotional stability and lasting peace of mind that has weathered life's challenges.

For a little more than four years, I clung to Dr. Padgett, more akin to the child I'd never ceased to be than the adult mother of children I actually was. In that sense termination was a graduation of sorts: time for me to stand on my own as a wife, mother, and adult.

One aspect of psychoanalytic therapy is that it raised my awareness of just how much the events of childhood form a person's perspective and just how important the act of parenting is. Thus did I realize that while I was going through my roughest times, so were my kids. It was time for me to grow up and turn my attention to them. Now that I was healed, they needed their mother to help them heal too.

Once I'd healed from my own wounds enough to look beyond myself, I began to see what had become of Jeffrey and Melissa. Jeffrey, although very bright and sensitive, was also timid and self-conscious. It was as if he feared that anything he might do could provoke an explosion; the stability of his world was subject to change without notice. Melissa, beneath a sweet and somewhat shy demeanor, harbored an inner anger, a toughness born of necessity.

In the course of my therapy, Dr. Padgett spent many hours listening to me, gently calming me, being there for me. In our new home in Nottingham, I did the same for Jeffrey and Melissa. I was home for them when they came home from school. We went on long walks with no particular destination. Most important, I listened. I immersed myself in their world as Dr. Padgett had done in mine. Slowly, but not painlessly, they, too, began to heal. Like wisdom passed down through the ages, I have shared with them much of what Dr. Padgett once said to me. His words and thoughts have comforted them and helped them gain emotional strength.

Jeffrey and Melissa are in high school now. Both are very book smart, but more than that, they are life smart, the kind of insight and sensitivity that comes from having been through great trials and emerging even stronger. We couldn't be prouder of the people they have emerged to be, nor could we be more blessed. Teenagers though they may be, they feel quite comfortable spending some time at home and being around us.

Julie is in first grade. She is the one that Tim and I have been able to raise with the benefit of all we learned through my own therapy experience, without the burden of uncertainty that marked the toddler years of her older siblings. Teachers and others comment about Julie's irrepressible smile and happy demeanor, the product, I think, of being surrounded by a functional, though not perfect, family rich in communication and love.

The first time Tim tried to read this manuscript—the first draft of it written in 1997—he could not bring himself to finish it. It conjured too many frightening memories that were still too fresh in his mind. He is as strong and loving and loyal now as he was then. The difference is that now he has an equal partner. He admits that, at times, he wondered if there would ever be light at the end of the tunnel and if he could withstand anymore than what he had already faced. But he is now thankful that he stayed by my side as I went through therapy and learned to become whole again. I know that such is not always the case, nor should it be, for everyone. I'm just glad that it was in mine.

Perhaps the most healing experience for me throughout the course of my journey was my ability to forgive those who would never apologize. In time my relationship with my parents flourished as my understanding grew of just how much they did care, did try.

My mother died in 2003 after an eighteen-month battle with cancer. Despite her arduous suffering, her exit was a graceful swan song as, bolstered by the miracle of faith, she displayed more courage, strength, and insight than any of us had witnessed in her seventy-plus years of life.

During this time the two of us talked more openly than we ever had before. I didn't share the entirety of my story. I didn't need to. She told me she knew that she'd made a lot of mistakes in her life and knew that my therapy had had something to do with them. At the time it had frightened her, which is why she couldn't bring herself to visit in the hospital. She was afraid I wouldn't want to see her. But seeing how therapy had transformed me, she thanked God that I had been through it. I told her quite sincerely that I had long since forgiven her, that I knew she'd done the best she could under tough circumstances.

Most of all, I told her I knew that she'd loved me all along, and it was that foundation of love that ultimately helped me to land on my feet. The day before she died I held her frail body close to mine and whispered to her that I loved her, that I'd forgiven her and Dad too. I told her I would look out for Dad for her. Her eyes, which had been transfixed in a semicatatonic state for hours, flashed with life as she smiled and hoarsely whispered back the words “I know.” I cried openly at the funeral, but they were the healthy tears of closure not the bitter ones of remorse.

I have Dr. Padgett to thank for that too. And, of course, God, whose presence runs through every chapter of this story and every one of my life.

Back in September of 1995, I wasn't sure if I could last a month without Padgett, much less twelve of them. Some people who have read my story have wondered why he was so insistent that we maintain such a strict no-contact period. I now fully understand. Knowing that he was inaccessible to me, I had to rely on myself to handle the challenges of day-to-day living. By the time a year had passed, I knew I could handle things on my own. And I have. Not perfectly every time. Not without some tears and times of doubt. But I've handled them.

I still send Dr. Padgett a newsy Christmas card every year, and he always writes back with a brief anecdote about his life as a grandfather. He has read this book, has given copies of it to his patients, and is glad that I've written it. While I may not have seen or spoken to the man for many years, the memories of the time I spent with him remain with me and sustain me in the most challenging of times.

This book will undoubtedly resonate with those who have faced mental illness in themselves or in a loved one, but this is just one woman's story. I am unique, as are my circumstances, family, and psychiatrist. Tempting as it may be to draw one conclusion or another from my story and universalize it to apply to another's experience, it is not my intention for my book to be seen as some sort of cookie-cutter approach and explanation of mental illness. It is not an advocacy of any particular form of therapy over another. Nor is it meant to take sides in the legitimate and necessary debate within the mental health profession of which treatments are most effective for this or any other mental illness.

What it is, I hope, is a way for readers to get a true feel for what it's like to be in the grips of mental illness and what it's like to strive for recovery.

Most important, the reason I wrote this book is to serve as proof that miracles do happen, that love can and does heal wounds, that there is hope for those with the courage and fortitude to seek healing.