Get Me Out of Here (9 page)

“You need to remember,” he said, “that what you just experienced are memories. Of the past. They feel very shameful to you, but they weren't shameful at all. The only people who deserve to feel some shame are your parents for making you feel that way. You're an adult now; they can't hurt you like that anymore. You aren't so dependent on them as you were then. This is the present. And you're with me now. It's safe here. It took a lot of courage to endure what you just did now and what you did then. You survived it. You made it. You grew to be an adult. You should be proud.”

I was completely drained and numb from the entire ordeal. Words couldn't find their way out of my mouth, but I could have listened to him forever. When the time was up, I tried to burst out of the room, still crying, but Dr. Padgett stopped me. He bent the rules. The session went on for over an hour, delaying the next patient. As I was still visibly shaken, he offered to let me collect myself in an adjacent conference room while he saw his waiting patient. But I declined. The scene was still all too real for me, and I had trouble negotiating the blurry line between past and present. I just wanted to get out of there, as far from that couch and those memories as possible.

Choking in a heavy fog of emotion, I headed to the hospital parking lot, which was cluttered with a dizzying array of detours, barricades, and yellow caution lights to facilitate a major expansion. After starting my car, I proceeded to crash into every wooden barricade, smashing them to pieces—energized and accelerating at the sickening sound of scraping metal and splintering wood.

It was the only time we ever tried the couch. I was neither emotionally ready nor stable enough to handle the intensity. Still, the lid had been taken off the desperately guarded Pandora's box of my early childhood. And I was about to face a past I had denied for years, a reality I had feared so much that even death had seemed preferable. Indeed, the notion of death was comforting in comparison.

The shattered barricades were only the beginning of a rapid descent out of reality and into loss of control.

I was more caustic, sarcastic, and belligerent than ever in sessions as I tried desperately to slam the lid down on the past. I was barely functioning at home, shrieking obscenities, hurling objects at the wall, sometimes writhing on the floor in howling agony, as a stunned and frightened pair of children looked on and a helpless Tim feared what might happen next. About the only stability the kids had was at the babysitter's.

I was more convinced than ever that I had snapped and insanity had taken over permanently. And I was just as convinced that it was Dr. Padgett's fault. I hated him—at least, I fervently wanted to hate him—and yet, the angrier and more erratic I became, the more I felt I couldn't survive without him. Not even between sessions.

It was becoming a nightly ritual. I'd go off like a detonated explosive, and in the aftermath of the tirades and vicious acts of self-destruction, I would immediately call Dr. Padgett. I wanted him to see me this way, to know how crazy and despicable I was, to know how crazy he'd made me by toying with the past.

Secretly, more than anything, I wanted him to put me back in the stress unit. I was safe there.

It was a shameful, embarrassing feeling, one I did not dare share with Dr. Padgett or anyone else. Who could possibly want to be on the psych floor instead of at home with family? What kind of a sick, twisted, and pathetic individual would want to be stripped of the adult freedoms of coming and going as she pleased?

Horrified by these secret desires, but nonetheless compelled by them, I expressed them in an indirect fashion. If I was destructive enough—could clearly display my utter insanity—Dr. Padgett would have to put me there.

I'd been outside the house raking leaves when Tim called out to me from the front porch.

“Rachel! Telephone!”

Damnit, I thought. I'll never get these stupid leaves raked up.

“It's Dr. Padgett.”

I dropped the rake as my heart raced with excitement. Imagine, Dr. Padgett calling
me!
Maybe he wanted to tell me how worried sick he was about me. Maybe I'd convinced him to admit me on the psych floor again. I ran as quickly as I could and breathlessly picked up the phone.

But he spoke neither of worry nor of hospital wards. He was calling to say he wanted Tim to accompany me to my next session. I was confused and disappointed. Why did he want Tim there? As it was, I only had the doctor to myself for three painfully short fifty-minute “hours” a week—not nearly enough. The last thing I wanted was to be forced to share my time with Dr. Padgett with Tim. I was overwhelmed with jealousy until a possibility came to mind. Maybe he wanted Tim there to drive the car home if he chose to admit me as an inpatient.

I wished Tuesday was now so I could find out.

Tim pretended to focus on a pamphlet about depression as he fidgeted in the waiting room. I stared at him with burning resentment. This wasn't a trip to the obstetrician. He didn't belong here. It was
my
place. Tim knew this, as I'd been griping about it since Dr. Padgett's call.

The doctor appeared with his customary broad smile and gave Tim a firm handshake.
He shook Tim's hand!
I seethed with envy. Dr. Padgett had never ever so much as touched my hand. He strictly prohibited any physical contact whatsoever (another of his many rules), and here he was shaking Tim's hand.

The doctor invited both of us into his office. By then I was ready to explode. Dr. Padgett sat behind his immaculate desk instead of his usual chair.

Then he began speaking to both of us. “As you both know, Rachel has been completely out of control these past few weeks. Losing contact with reality. Losing awareness of her responsibilities. Every act of self-destruction just seems to fuel this; to make it worse …”

My ears perked up. This had all the earmarks of a preadmission announcement
.

“… I just can't be available all the time, and neither can you, Tim. This is becoming a dangerous situation …”

I crossed my fingers. This was music to my ears. Please put me back in the ward, Dr. Padgett, please!

“… which is completely unacceptable. Rachel, you have it within yourself to regain and maintain control. But you aren't doing that. I can't conduct psychoanalysis with a child in tantrum. You have to participate too. You have to be able to find some insights. And you can't do that when you've lost all control. I'm going to have to draw the line here. If you can't get it together, therapy just can't have any benefit. It's accomplishing nothing and costing a lot of money. If you can't bring yourself to at least some degree of rational reality, I see no other choice but to temporarily suspend our therapy.”

Numb weightlessness and shock consumed me, a knot of nausea balling in my stomach. A stinging sensation as if I had been slapped in the face. Hard. I had really blown it. I'd pushed too far, and now Dr. Padgett was bailing out. How could he?
I ought to kill myself
, I fumed.
It would serve the sonofabitch right for leading me on and then dumping me
.

Tim, meanwhile, was open-jawed in near panic, probably wondering how he could possibly manage my uncontrollable outbursts on his own. He, too, in a short time, had come to rely on Dr. Padgett.

As if sensing this, Dr. Padgett continued firmly, “I told you, Rachel, that I will not abandon therapy, and I won't. This is a temporary break I'm talking about, just until you can show me you're ready to be an active part of therapy. If you can't manage that and your behavior becomes a threat to your own life or your family, I will commit you. But not to this hospital. If you can't afford another stay and your insurance limit is up, it may have to be the state hospital.”

State hospital! I gulped hard. The government-funded state hospital was a chilling nightmare. I'd be trapped with felons, junkies, and psychotics. Those scary people with rusty grocery carts filled with crumpled newspapers, mumbling to themselves. I shuddered at the thought of being locked up in the closest thing to a prison not run by a warden.

Dr. Padgett continued to lob bombshells. If I were placed in the state or any other hospital, therapy would come to a temporary halt until I was released. He would refer me to another competent psychiatrist to make rounds visits and monitor medications. Dr. Padgett would continue to consult and closely follow my progress, but we would have no direct contact until I was released and my self-control had significantly improved—as long as that might take. At the state hospital, there would be no insurance company demands to release me.

In the interim, my constant after-hours emergency calls to him had been a privilege I had grossly abused. Taking pains to preface that this was not based on any inconvenience to him, he explained that the constant calls were undermining my ability to control my own behavior. Until further notice, he limited me to one call per week. Period.

I was stunned, as was Tim, at the hard-line stance taken by this gentle man. Clearly Dr. Padgett meant business. There was no doubt in either of our minds that the doctor would follow through on everything he said if he felt it were necessary. White-faced and shaking, I tried to open my mouth and say something, to cry, to protest—anything. But nothing came out.

“This isn't cruelty, Rachel,” Dr. Padgett said, maintaining his firm edge. “You might think that it is. But it isn't a punishment, and I'm not abandoning you. The more you lose control, the worse it gets. You're playing with fire here. Therapy isn't a luxury for you. It is a matter of life or death.”

His voice softened a bit. “I care about you very much,” he said. “I think I've shown you that. I'll do whatever I have to do, no matter how harsh it might seem to you right now, to act in your best interests, to protect you and your family from your biggest threat—yourself. I'm not going to sugarcoat or play games with this. This is your life we're talking about here. I made a promise to stay with you through the worst of times. And I'm keeping it.”

Dr. Padgett made his points compellingly and transformed the course of our therapy in a single consultation that lasted less than thirty minutes. It would be years until I fully comprehended the courage that his stand had entailed. It had been a tremendous risk on his part, given my erratic state of mind at the time. I could have chosen that abbreviated but shocking session as the catalyst for suicide or as a reason to terminate therapy completely—dumping him before he dumped me first (which I was convinced was inevitable).

However, it worked. Many more moments of suicidal ideation would come, many more angry rages. Through all of them, however, I would somehow manage to maintain at least some contact with reality, albeit with only a precarious link at times.

That single abbreviated session, nearly four months after our first meeting, was when the real work of psychoanalysis began in earnest.

Inherent in our work together was delving into the issues of childhood. Still, it was difficult for me to look past the airbrushed portrait of my childhood. I clung to it in desperation to avoid the hell it had really been. I had invented my own version and repeated it so frequently that it had become my truth. I had been the favored child, the precious baby of the family. Daddy's little girl, the highest achiever, the one my parents were most proud of.

Mine had been a fortunate childhood, wanting for nothing. I'd had the advantage of the best private schools. Dad took care of everything for us kids. I'd always perceived myself as lucky. I'd been convinced that any internal anguish I might have felt was because I was somehow born defective. It was the only way I could explain living amid all this richness and love yet being unable to fully appreciate it.

Okay, so maybe Dad had pulled out the belt here and there. He'd raised his voice, said some things, lost his temper. But he'd been an important man, providing well for us and dealing with the daily stresses of a successful business. I'd been proud of him. He'd been strict, maybe sometimes a little too strict, but he'd done so with the best of intentions, not wanting us to grow to be “too big for our britches.” He hadn't hit me as much as he did the others. I was Daddy's little girl.

And yes, Mom had gotten upset a lot too. Her strikes hadn't been as powerful as Dad's, so she'd thrown things. Sometimes she had hysterical tirades and tearful fits that didn't seem to make sense. But once again, these had been directed more frequently at my older siblings than me. There had been lots of feigned illnesses. Lots of times she'd enlisted Dad to take over and mete out the punishment. I hadn't thought too much of this. That was just the way Mom had been. She was weak, perhaps, but harmless. And often I'd been in the position, as the youngest child, for her to confide in me about the great pain caused to her by my older brothers and sisters. This role that had made me feel special and strong. She'd needed me.

Case closed, Dr. Padgett. My childhood wasn't perfect, but whose was?

Dr. Padgett, however, knew that there was much more to my childhood than I would dare recall. He also knew that if I didn't face the truth, I would never be free.

It was a difficult task indeed, as my loyalties, by then, were divided. I'd grown to depend on Dr. Padgett as much as I had depended on my parents. I felt as if, somehow, I was being forced to choose. It was a painful dilemma.

“I love them, Dr. Padgett,” I told him, “and I know they love me. How could I feel that way still if it had been so horrible back then?”

Whereupon, he told me the duck-test story.

“Some scientists were conducting an experiment,” he said, “trying to gauge the impact of abuse on children. Ducks, like people, develop bonds between mother and young. They call it imprinting. So the scientists set out to test how that imprint bond would be affected by abuse.

“The control group was a real mother duck and her ducklings. For the experimental group, the scientist used a mechanical duck they had created—feathers, sound, and all—which would, at timed intervals, peck the ducklings with its mechanical beak. A painful peck, one a real duck would not give. They varied these groups. Each group was pecked with a different level of frequency. And then they watched the ducklings grow and imprint bond with their mother.

“Over time,” he went on, “the ducklings in the control group would waddle along behind their mother. But as they grew, there would be more distance between them. They'd wander and explore.

“The ducklings with the pecking mechanical mother, though, followed much more closely. Even the scientists were stunned to discover that the group that bonded and followed most closely was the one that had been pecked repeatedly with the greatest frequency.
The more the ducklings were pecked and abused, the more closely they followed
. The scientists repeated the experiment and got the same results.”

It was a compelling story that resonated within me. Even I had to admit the possibility that my fierce loyalty to my parents may not have been because I wasn't abused, but because I
had been
. It was frightening. My airbrushed memories of the past hid a reality I'd spent a lifetime avoiding, a truth so painful that I had considered death to be a preferable option to facing it. My father hadn't spared me because I was Daddy's little girl. It was because he worked such long hours and because I had witnessed so much I had become adept at avoiding him. Often his explosive violence had been irrational and triggered by the slightest provocation: a facial expression he found disrespectful, tears he didn't want to see, any expression of emotion he didn't have patience for. And the rules changed all the time. Something that could bring him to smile or laugh one day could provoke him to angrily pull off his belt a few days or hours later.

In truth I'd been unable to completely avoid his explosive temper either. I had just become a master of concealing emotion, making myself virtually invisible when I thought I saw an explosion coming. I blamed my own inadequacies when I failed to escape.