Chapter Three
My mom was a party girl. Sometimes I would wake up in strange people’s houses and take a taxi to school. Other times, I would wake up and just wouldn’t go to school at all. In third grade, I missed 64 days of school. I asked my mother to talk to my teacher, Mrs. Fontaine. I thought she hated me. Mrs. Fontaine never moved me when she did class shuffles and I was always in the front row, to the left of her desk. Louis Cheater, honest to God, would sit behind me and stick his stinky feet on the back of my chair. He was the kind of kid who had a curl in the middle of his forehead. Mrs. Fontaine was passing out candies to us one day while we were coloring, and I got a marble. I’m sure it wasn’t her fault, she didn’t intend it, but to this day, I still blame her for the marble “candy”.
Anyway, I didn’t like going to school in grade 3, so I just didn’t go. They passed me onto Grade 4, during which I caught pneumonia on Christmas break and missed a couple of months of school. Cool. In Grade 5, I leveled out, as I did throughout the rest of the school years. I wasn’t one to skip school or cause trouble.
Except in Grade 1.
I decided that I would run away one morning. I coaxed another girl into doing the same thing, so we hung out in a little crevice in an older building. There were about three stairs down into someone’s basement. We ate our lunch, giggled, walked on top of the snow banks and slid down. I got hungry, and went to knock on someone’s door for food. The people called the police and subsequently the school.
At the beginning of the afternoon, at some point, I decided that I needed to go home. My friend had ditched me at this point. Back at 571, I messed up all of my toys, put my grandmother’s White Shoulders perfume on, and plastered sample pearl lipstick all over myself. The lipstick was in small white tubes. There was never a proper lipstick tube, just the many samples that she would collect. She had some cheap necklaces hanging above her bed on a hanger, so I draped a few of these on myself as well.
The phone rang; it was the Mother Superior. I needed to come to school immediately. OK, no problem. I was all gussied up and, walking to school, I pretended to be smoking as I passed a group of people waiting for the bus. As a kid, when the temperature is cold, blowing out warm air can simulate smoking. I vividly recall walking past the Independent Jewelers store, with my “cigarette” in hand, smoking and blowing away.
I made it to the school. My mother had been called away from Gillam’s Café and was furious. The Mother Superior slapped me on the hands with a ruler, and recited some Hail Mary’s. She angrily told my mother that this has never happened before, in her school. At least Mother Superior knew who I was after this.
When I got home, my mother told me to lean over in front of a chair, and she hit me with a belt across my bum. Yikes, I never skipped school again. She punched me in the face once for painting the basement floor silver. I don’t recall any other physical punishment.
When one hears about neglected or abused children, there is a tendency to think that these families are low-income, destitute, alcoholic low-lives…I never considered myself to be in this company. My mother never physically abused me. I was lucky. There are so many horror stories out there that make our blood curl when we hear about physical or sexual abuse. My father had never spanked me either.
I had food, lived with my grandmother, wasn’t physically abused, what the hell was my problem? My childhood had been pretty normal, except for a few things.
The doctor asked, “Like what?”
Well, my mother drank and partied a lot, there were very colorful people around most of the time, my grandmother the bootlegger also ran a rooming house with tenants coming and going. Parties would take place and I would hide in my closet forts. I recall actual musical bands in our living room, and one time I cleaned ashtrays during one of these fests. I stood on a chair at the sink at 571 and cleaned the ashtrays out of the little yellow plastic bowl that my grandmother would use to wash the dishes. We couldn’t waste water, so dishes were washed over and over again in the water in the yellow plastic bowl. To this day I cannot waste water. To this day, I need to ensure that my dishes are washed in a dish washer with a good rinse cycle. I will starve myself and refuse to eat at the thought of eating on dishes that are not properly washed. At 571, I once drank a glass of milk with a cigarette butt in the bottom of the glass.
Speaking of dishes, my dad had an odd way of cleaning his dishes and utensils. By the time I was in my early twenties, he had given up on the normal conventions of living in a city and blending in with the rest of society. He told me that one day he’d been driving down a road and saw a bright light. He had found God, or rather it seems like God had found him. Anyway, it changed his life.
At the time he was engaged to be married a third time to a woman a few years older than me. After his experience, he cut off the engagement and moved into an old milk truck. He rented some space next to an industrial area, had an electrical outlet draped outside of his truck for electricity and was quite happy living like this. He relied on the cleansing and sterilization of the cleansing of knives and forks and spoons over an open fire. Sitting around his fire pit on old wobbly bus benches, I would wave the cutlery over the fire over and over again to “wash it.” My husband at that time refused to dine with my father.
My father had not been problematic in my life, so I didn’t talk about him. A year and a half into therapy, the group members had thought I’d never had a father. Towards the end of my sessions with the doctor, I would begin to talk about my dad. The doctor told me that it sometimes takes years to talk about the parent who had actually caused great traumatic pain. It’s usually the secondary person, the one least obvious, that one begins to talk about after the primary person has been talked about over and over. I didn’t understand what he was saying until I began having sexual nightmares about my dad, nearly two years into therapy. Let’s revisit this later. I think I’ve made my point about the dishes and the water and the cleanliness!
My grandmother’s rooming house always had a colorful assortment of boarders. Mary-Ann, such a gentle person, actually failed fifth grade five times. She never went beyond Grade 5. Mary-Ann was about 200 lbs, with bad teeth and dry hair. But I loved being with her. She would smoke and cough, and we would do things together like go to the street fair. I once put a slippery, squishy fake snake in her bed, and was delighted when she screamed. She was very nice.
She got pregnant by a guy named Bob. I witnessed them in a romantic encounter in my grandmother’s living room. Mary-Ann wanted to be a hairdresser, and Bob, with his Wally Cox look, didn’t quite understand. Around the time that Nixon was being impeached, Mary-Ann had an abortion. Soon after that I lost touch with her. She moved out of my grandma’s house and we literally never heard from her again.
Another rent payer was Rolly, my mother’s second cousin. One of the cousins who was born legitimately, of course. Rolly was not a bastard child, but rather a bit of a bastard. He was dating a woman who was living in the back bedroom of 571, named Jackie.
Jackie was sharing her room with a woman named Linda, who I recall was a mother to four children in some northern town. I remember Linda telling me about how painful childbirth was, that she needed to grab onto the rails of the bed. All of her children had carrot red hair. Jackie had four daughters, with a pair of twins named Sherri and Shelly. Both sets of kids lived with their fathers.
Their room was a sharp shiny teal color with a horrible single light bulb making its appearance known in the middle of the room as it lit the room garishly. Think of any old terrible movie where there is a bare light bulb in the middle of a room, shining away against some hi-gloss painted wall.
There were two twin beds in the back room, one for each guest. Nan’s house did not have closets, so there were wardrobes in each room to hang clothes in. There was also a burn stain in the middle of the dark brown linoleum with the huge flowers. A previous renter had started a small fire with his hot plate.
Rolly’s room was at the front on the second floor, against busy Balmoral Street. A younger tenant named Gail was right beside Rolly’s room. I remember Gail as being gentle, liking sardines, and having a black spot on her front tooth.
I would sleep with Gail at times, can’t really recall where I would normally have slept. One night past the hours of midnight there was commotion in the 2nd level hallway. When I stepped out of Gail’s room to see what was happening, I could see my mother holding a small pistol with a white handle, pointed at her cousin Rolly. I was terrified, but only because I was worried about my mother. As if it were in slow motion in my mind, I remember standing in front of my mother as she held the gun steadfast toward Rolly, screaming at him for whatever she was mad about. Other people who I can’t remember were restraining Rolly from attacking her.
Standing in front of my mother, Gail grabbed me and took me into her room again. The hallway bedlam was beginning to settle down. I guess I fell asleep at some point. I don’t think anyone thought much of this moment, beyond the moment itself. I’m sure drunken bodies fell asleep, and it was forgotten by morning. I remember seeing the white pistol in my grandmother’s closet afterwards, and always wondered what it could do.
Rolly later committed suicide, supposedly over Jackie, who now slept with a baseball bat under her pillow in fear of his family. I remember his service; I wore a striped dress, orange and yellow. His casket was gold, and I observed the service from behind the Catholic pews, not really sure what was happening.
The doctor intervenes here, calm, no emotion; stops writing on his sheet to look at me. He has been listening to what I’ve been saying. My tone is matter of fact, yeah, whatever. I remember this incident in a flat tone. For whatever reason, for the first time, I feel the doctor has taken notice. Aside from my complaining, there is a feeling of obscurity, of non-normal. I feel as though I’ve crossed the line in my loyalty to my mother. I tattled to the doctor about this incident, which many have not heard before. I think, but I’m not sure, that this is an incident that is different. I remember feeling that I needed to save my mom while this was all going on. She was my life, and I needed to save her. I also remember thinking that the doctor is not surprised. Whew… this reaffirms that this stuff is common.
But at the same time, the doctor seems angry to me. He hints at neglect, and I vehemently disagree with him. There are starving children in Africa, people who lived through a Holocaust. I doubt my little story and life are worthy of the pain these people have experienced. We’ve argued about this so many times before and I refuse to believe him. I’m truly pissed with him; to me he doesn’t understand and he probably just scapegoats people all of the time. I try to explain to him that all of this kind of stuff is no big deal. It’s only stuff that happened in the past, and everyone has a history. I tell the doctor that I think he’s blowing this all out of proportion. To me, physically or sexually abused children should be the main concern of neglect. I always had food and clothing so it was obvious my mother didn’t neglect me. I left that particular session thinking that he was trying to turn me against my own mother. I had told him about her past, he knew she was troubled, yet he didn’t express empathy towards her. I felt enraged, didn’t want to go back.
The next session, I tried to explain to him that when my mother is sober and in a good mood, she’s absolutely wonderful to be around. I enjoy her company, she’s funny and we do a lot of things together, like going to the movies on a Friday night. I had learned as a child that if I keep my mom busy, she won’t drink. I wasn’t physically or sexually abused, and I didn’t want to talk about it.
He told me, “I’m not concerned about other people and their lives, I’m concerned about you. My focus is on you. You are here, and it is my job to help you understand why you choose the choices you do. You are 44 years old and have lived a life of torment, and it’s my job to make sure that your next 44 years are not spent in the same way.”
I realize that I am a human being with as many rights and desires as anyone else. I am dizzied by this revelation, intellectually absorbing, but emotionally not feeling, it. I have a right to live, to eat, to breathe, just like anyone else. It doesn’t matter if my mother isn’t legal, or I’m not smart or beautiful, I have a right. My right is to eat and breathe and sleep and feel. I want to want. I want to feel that it is OK to want. That it’s OK if I want.
Intellectually, I know this. If I’d been giving advice to someone else about these issues, I’d certainly feel they were worthy of this type of advice. As women we tend to lie to ourselves sometimes. We will affirm when we know it is not right, we will accept when we feel it is not right. I still cannot accept that I have been neglected or mistreated as a child. The doctor has grossly exaggerated my stories and my mother.
The doctor went on to tell me that children who have chronically been abused or neglected their entire lives have more difficulty coping than children who have spent periods of their lives in short turmoil. He said, “You lived it everyday. You have experienced soul murder.”
It’s difficult for people to understand. I know my mom had some issues and I was really trying to help her, as any good daughter would. I’d held an intervention for her some years ago when my first daughter was a baby. I couldn’t feel safe when my mother was around my daughter, and I anxiously ignored the feelings. There was a big 1st birthday party with all the family, and my mother showed up drunk. She was drunk and her date, someone I did not know, was plastered as well. As a gift, they brought me a microwave, which was later found to be stolen property. Throughout the party I ignored the fact that my mother and her date were absolutely shit faced, and tried to carry on with my daughter’s celebration of her 1st year.
This wasn’t the first time that my mom had been loaded for my special events. The day my daughter was born, I couldn’t get in touch with my mom. The phone rang and rang and I tried not to worry about her as I was in labor. My daughter was born, beautiful. My mother showed up the next day in a mini skirt with high-heeled boots, drunk at the hospital. I wanted so much to share this joyous moment with her, but she was too pissed to appreciate it. She had been partying with her friend Danielle throughout the night and decided to stop by to see her new granddaughter.
As usual, I ignored it. I wanted this to be a happy occasion, even though my husband was furious with her. I didn’t like him to be mad at her; it would upset her and make her drink more. She and he did not get along. Come to think of it, my mom didn’t get along with too many people.
So back to the intervention. I went to the Alcoholics Rehabilitation Society on River Avenue to ask for help with my mom. I had tried and tried, and she couldn’t stop drinking. Could the Society help me save her?
Over the next few weeks, my family and I went through rehearsals of what we would say to my mom during her intervention. My husband refused to participate.
On the day of the intervention, I had an enormous headache and had to lie to her to get her into the building. She entered the room surprised, shocked and not too happy. Her doctor, a friend, some relatives, and I were in the room to confront her. It was difficult and after the intervention she was taken to a hospital for detoxification. She stayed in the hospital for a week, remained in the program for the next three weeks, and was drinking the week she got out of rehab.
The doctor asked me if I thought she was a good mother. Yes, of course. I had decent clothes and always had food. Again, not like those poor children in Africa, who didn’t have either. They and the Holocaust victims were surely the ones who had been neglected and were worthy of feeling depression.
I rationalized to the doctor, telling him that my mom would cut the crusts off my bread, and I liked that. The doctor asked, “Would you treat your children the way your mother had treated you? Would the same level of treatment, in terms of drinking and partying, be OK for your children?”
Touché and I had a tough time arguing the point. But, but, but, this and that and, and, if… The doctor pursued, “Would you have wanted your children to go through some of the same stuff you went through?” No, of course not. But…
I think that my mother was always thinking in terms of my well-being. Back to the question, “Was allowing you to experience what you have experienced, loving’?” It was as loving as I knew my mother to be. End of story, doctor, it’s not an issue and you are making too big of a deal out of this. I ferociously back talked to the doctor, “You just don’t understand.” I would think this way for awhile yet.
Over the months, I kept attending group therapy, with a fascination about people’s lives. I never knew that depression was as serious as it was, thinking that it was weak people such as me who were caught in this dolor maze.
Another group member, Albert, a CEO and a gambler, had lost his fortune, and was inconsolable. He spent days in front of his computer in the basement, reviewing, going over what had gone wrong. His obsession led him to extreme depression where he could not get out of bed or speak to anyone. His wife had contacted the doctor.
Anne had been a patient for 8 years. She was beginning group therapy at the same time I was. Prior to that, Anne had not been able to walk, and she lay speechless in a psychiatric ward. The doctor had been working with her for a long time. During our sessions, she was fidgety, defensive and refused to participate in the discussion. To me, it was obvious why she was here, SHE needed help. Anne would become angry with the others in the group when they said something she didn’t like. The doctor would put her anger back in her own court so to speak, and ask her why something someone else said, triggered such a fierce and angry response. The doctor was always looking for the linkages in people’s lives to measure against their reactions. Group isn’t just about you, it’s about the whole of the patients and it can change direction very quickly depending on the situation. Knee jerk reactions to any situation must indicate that it means something to you, good or bad. A memory may be evoked by another group member, and this is the crux of group therapy – you are not alone in your feelings and there is extreme comfort in this realization.
A guy by the name of Sander took the role of amateur psychiatrist in the group. Sander had gone through extensive psychotherapy and seemed to be the next logical graduate of our class. He had mentioned that he didn’t feel he needed to participate in the group sessions any longer, feeling that he’d beaten his alcoholically dependent personality. Sander had a love for quick one night stands. He had been violent in the past, getting in trouble with the law. Drinking and pissed was his debut for the doctor, including his hands being cuffed and screaming violently while the police brought him to the Psych Emergency Room at the local hospital. He was now ready to move on, and he felt that by springtime, he would no longer need the group as support.
I sat on the couch, pale, skinny, and listened. Initially, I rarely participated and later on the doctor would bring this to my attention. Sander also told the group that he had to attend a professional meeting one day a month and he would have to miss his session with us at that time.
Attendance was always noted, and if there was not a good reason to miss it, the doctor would penalize us by invoicing us around $50 for the missed session. I missed the session the week before my mother died, and I got billed for it.
The doctor felt that if one wasn’t going to attend the sessions regularly, then he would replace you with someone who was committed to the betterment of themselves. I would have to go on business trips at times, missing my sessions. Like a child handing over a bad report card to a parent, I always broke the news to the doctor and the group at the end of the session. Always feeling guilty, I was reminded by the group that I needed to work on my issues as much as I could, and thereby “I” should be the priority. Not my job, my mother, but me. I acknowledged, yes, yes, I know, but. I didn’t realize it until much later that I needed to put myself first. I needed to look after myself and in doing so, I was able to look after my children more effectively. Makes sense now, but it didn’t so long ago.
At varying times during the group sessions, one person dominated the conversation. I don’t mean to say only one person, but if there were problems and issues going on with someone’s life at that particular time, we as a group would respect and listen. Imagine walking into a room with nine people sitting on black folding chairs. The doctor would initiate by closing the door and, within minutes, I was hearing about the woman who caught her father screwing her dog, the father who in a rage shot a bullet into his son’s leg while he tried to run from him, the schoolteacher and board member mother who beat her daughter with various kitchen paraphernalia. The little girl would have to pick out the utensil that her mother would beat her with. The school principal dad who enjoyed the company of young girls and his daughter’s friends. The daddy who liked his little girl to sit on his “lumpy” lap. Promptly at 6:00 pm, the doctor would end the session, and we’d all walk out together, chatting about the weather or whatever else was inconsequential. We each departed in our own cars, waved, “Have a good week, see you next week,” and went on our way. No gossip, no socializing, no judgments. It’s an amazing feeling recounting to a group of people, who are as troubled as yourself, and knowing they will listen to you. No one laughed when they weren’t supposed to, we cried together when we could feel the pain for one another, and we never knew each other’s last names.
Every Thursday afternoon, for two years, I would get ready to leave at 4:30ish to go to group, and every Thursday afternoon, for two years, my children would ask me, “Where are you going?” “I’m going crazy,” I’d answer back, “Where do you think I’m going, it’s Thursday!” “Ohhh,” they’d reply and giggle. It was a running joke for us.
The girls had gone to see the doctor with me once. Throughout my whole process with group and individual therapy, Jordan and Sean were always aware that I was going to see a psychiatrist. They knew I needed daily medication, and I spent way too much time in bed. Really, it’s not as though I could have hidden it from them forever.
They sat together on the black leather couch, so close they were almost falling into one another. They talked about me, in front of me. My eldest, Jordan, could tell a difference in me since I began my treatment. She asked the doctor if he’d self-actualized. Straight out of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs from a grade 8 textbook. My youngest daughter Sean thought the doctor was nice and friendly.
My daughters respect the psychiatric process. They’ve got first-hand experience in dealing with it. They are the first ones who noticed that I’d been changing. To this day, we often talk about the doctor, psychology and how people work inside. Or how we think they should work.
My daughters also respected their grandmother. My mom was the eccentric “Grams,” as they called her. They treated her with courtesy and empathy. About a month before she died, I asked my mother if the girls had ever been disrespectful to her. “Not once,” she said. A few days before her death, we were out doing some grocery shopping and Jordan called her to see what groceries she wanted. My mom was not in a good state and she yelled over the phone, “Why the fuck don’t you know what I want?” Jordan was horrified. I took a stand against my mother and called her back and told her she needed to apologize. She begrudgingly apologized, but Jordan was absolutely crushed. For all of the grand-mothering that she had done over the years, she had never spoken to them in any way close to how she spoke the few days before she died.
Two months before my mother died, she and I went through emotional chaos. My mother, sensing that I was pulling back and not as responsive to her as I used to be, became angry. She displayed her anger with silence, apathy and further misuse of alcohol and her medication. I felt as though I was being punished, once more. I’d been making progress in my individual sessions. I was able to see that I had enmeshed my life within my mother’s life. There is an unhealthy point when there is too much dependency on another person. I felt my mother’s happiness and welfare on my shoulders, and this made me less able to carry my own self. It was so heavy that I couldn’t escape it and continue to carry on. I had learned that my own children should be my priority. My mother had made choices within her life. She’d been given opportunities for help many times, and did not or could not seek what she needed. I, on the other hand, had reacted to her choices, sometimes making them my own choices. The doctor kept repeating to me over and over again as I told him more stories, “Would this situation have been acceptable for your own children?” There was little resistance as time wore on, as I began to recount more bizarre stories and could only see the danger if I applied it to my own children.
At the onset of therapy, I did have a vague idea that my upbringing was somewhat different. Comparing my family life to the TV sitcom world, “normal” mothers didn’t leave their children in fear for hours, all the time. “Normal” children did not obsess about their mother’s impending death on a continued basis.
I fought hard not to accept the presumption that my mother had not been the best of caring parents. Over many months, the doctor was patient with me as I denied over and over again. I was fine, I’d always been fine and I just needed a little help.
“Would you say that a person with a brain tumor is fine?” he asked. “No, but…” “Well, you have an illness, too, and you are not fine.” Dryly, I commented “It’s not a brain tumor, doctor.” He retorted, “How can you say you’re fine when you’re taking triple the amount of prescription anti-depressant medication that is allowed by the drug companies?” Touché again. OK, maybe I had some issues, but I still didn’t have a brain tumor, had not survived the horrors of the Holocaust, and always had food. This was my constant rebuttal.
He was amazingly patient, calm, all of the time. He never told me what to do, his concentration was on feeling, reacting, repeating behavior. Each session with a clipboard and one piece of paper to document for his file. It’s a legal requirement for psychiatrists to maintain strict confidential records on their patients and these records may be subpoenaed by law.
I was beginning to see cracks in my own concepts of my past. I was able to observe how the psychiatric process works. One talks and talks, and by gentle probing by the doctor, I began to see and rationalize why I did what I did. Why my choices were the same, why my reactions were the same, why my life was the same.
Think back to the lottery house. If I didn’t desperately want a home of my own which would make me feel secure, why would I have gone to the extremes to try to win a lottery, for God’s sake?
I could see patterns of behavior in my work environment as well. With each position I had, I would start off great, be willing, diligent. After a while I would rebel. I would quickly get involved with the problems at work, specifically the people. At the expense of my own job, I would take on their battles, determined to save them. I was always in trouble with management as I felt I knew better (maybe I did!) and would angrily express my feelings over any injustice I felt was taking place with my co-workers. I rebelled against the imposed authority. When I was a kid, I had no defined bedtime; later on as a teen, no curfews. I could do what I wanted without question. I didn’t need to tell my mother where I was going, she seemed to trust me. I traveled around on city buses for hours on end by myself or sat in a movie two or three times before I went home. I don’t ever remember any questions asked, or anyone ever being concerned or worried about me. I didn’t see why I couldn’t take this same attitude with me in my workplace.
When I was around 9, a friend asked me if I could go bike riding. Balmoral Street was busy with four lanes of cars. Of course I could, no one was home. I said that I needed to go inside and ask my mom if it was OK that I went bike riding. I ran inside the empty house, waited in the kitchen for a few seconds and ran out to tell my friend that my mother had said that I could not go bike riding on such a busy street. Of course, I’d done it many times before. Maybe this was the first time I realized that my mother was unique. I would spend time at the park by myself, go downtown on my own, return home from Brownies in the dark. One night my grandmother was sitting at the kitchen table knitting, babysitting me. It was wintertime, my mom was out and I wanted to go skating. I asked Nan if this was OK, and she said sure. It was early evening and I put on my skates (that my mother had dyed royal blue) and proceeded to walk to the skating rink, which was about six blocks away. By the time I reached the rink, I could barely walk, let alone skate. I was alone in the dark park, which also happened to be diagonal to a rowdy bar on Maryland Street. I walked back in anguish, and never walked around in skates again. I even remember going out for Halloween once by myself as a 60s hippie. Those were the days when one would actually get apples as treats!
I was my own island and was extraordinarily independent of my parents. I never felt as though I needed to tell them of my whereabouts, they didn’t seem to ask. I did my own thing, didn’t get into any trouble. People just never noticed me. Like I said, I was an extremely quiet and unnoticeable child. I woke up on my own, starting in second grade. I would dress myself, walk over to the café where my mom and grandmother worked, have breakfast and walk the seven blocks to Catholic school. I had shortcuts which included back lanes and running through people’s yards, but I don’t recall ever feeling threatened at any point. I walked to a local swimming pool on Sherbrook Avenue and would go swimming for hours by myself. Later, when my dad moved into an apartment with a pool, I would swim alone unsupervised, with no swimming lessons. This was just all normal to me. I did what I wanted.
Jason, a young man in the group therapy, also had the same liberties as a child. His mother was a lady of the evening, wherein she worked in the daytime at a whore house. Jason would sit by the window and watch her go to catch the bus. Usually within an hour or so, Jason would become restless and would take it upon himself to go traveling downtown, hiding in trees, staring at people. Dangerously walking around the streets, a five year old kid has absolutely no fear. I think both Jason and I both had guardian angels watching out for us throughout our childhoods.
When I heard this, I felt that we shared something. As corny as it sounds, I was able to identify with him. This was my ice breaker into the group. I wasn’t going to discuss any deep sociological issues again. I could now identify with what this young man was saying. Certainly in my everyday life, the conversation of wandering streets as a child doesn’t normally surface, and I’d never known anyone else who had the same “freedom” as a child. For the first time, I could see that I had something in common with someone. Maybe I’m not as alone as I thought I was.
Having said that, this is the most wonderful thing about group therapy. It took me awhile, but I started to comprehend its benefits. When you’re not alone, when someone else knows what you’ve gone through, it feels astonishing; it’s a definite, “Really, you did that, too?”
This all sounds so simple and the logistics of psychotherapy are very simple when they can be unraveled. Talking, talking, can make you feel better. It’s an amazing process, and so, so simple. I can’t tell you whether my doctor was a Freudian, a Yung follower, or a quack, I just knew that I was starting to feel better.
Chapter Four
I maintained my distance from the doctor and the group by not talking. At some point, the doctor told me that I hadn’t really developed an attachment to either him or the group. I had mentioned that I found it very easy that if people were out of my sight, they were out of mind. I never really missed my old friends, just made new ones. There were no long-term friendships for me, just “let’s move on” scenarios, “thanks for coming, we had some great times”… Reality.
The doctor could not feel an attachment developing between us and he seemed concerned. When a psychiatrist mentions he’s noticed a difference between you and everyone else, one takes notice. He commented that I had probably never developed any attachment to anyone, not even my mother. The only emotion that I could relate “attachment” to was what I felt for my daughters. I didn’t feel for anyone the way I felt for them. This is what I thought attachment was. It was always easy for me to detach from one person or a situation and quickly move on. I had no roots to speak of and at times felt a smothering type of pressure with friends when they became too close.
When my first daughter was born, I had anxiety attacks. I couldn’t believe I was now responsible for someone else. How would I muddle through, what would I do? For the first three weeks of her life, I felt smothered, anxious, what if I lost her? I would watch her sleeping in the crib next to my bed, anxious at every breath she took. I’d been used to not sleeping, so that wasn’t my problem. I was afraid to love this little girl, this little girl I was so terrified I would lose. Instinctively, I shut my feelings off for her. I had to look after her, and I hoped with all my heart that she would be OK. I feared something would happen to her, that she would die during childhood. How would I carry on with my own life?
A friend of mine was having a baby shower and I went. I had kept my distance from my daughter for a number of weeks now, and in seeing this new baby in front of me at the shower, I changed.
I went home and immediately looked at her in the crib. So beautiful, innocent, just there… no assumptions. I knew I loved her and wanted everything possible for this little girl. I would love her no matter how afraid I was. She was not someone who I would have to look after; she was a child who deserved nurturing and love. She wasn’t my burden, she was my child. At the same time, wondering how I was going to balance my daughter’s needs with my mother’s.
When the girls and I had the session with the doctor, we talked about freedom. Freedom to love and let love live its life. I can’t recall all the rhetoric, but I do remember the doctor telling my girls that true love lets go. True love doesn’t hang on for its own purposes; it allows the person to grow, to expand, to live their own lives. I knew that I would give this to my daughters. I knew what he was talking about.
For all of those people who have had to please their parents, I know what you’ve gone through. The burden is excruciating, thinking that the love you receive from them may be based on how much they like what you do, or the decisions that one may make. Depending on whether you go to medical school, or whatever. What is “IT” that mom and dad will approve of? Critical for our development, critical to our choices in careers, spouses, buying tickets for lottery houses. I will always applaud Reese Witherspoon for her acceptance speech when she received her Oscar for Best Actress for Walk the Line. She thanked her parents for giving her praise when she made her bed and when she made a movie. How wonderful. Looking at Reese Witherspoon, I never met the lady, but I know that she is a happy person, and is confident and determined. I have no doubt that she will raise her children with the same thought and consideration for them as she was given as a child.
Obligatory dependency dissolves love and replaces it with anxious, angry love—the kind that turned into depression for me over time. Depression which one tries to avoid by drinking too much or taking stupid pills. You know the story by now, it just gets worse. Trying to cover pain may do it for the moment, but I always woke up to the hurting, the same as it was the night before.
In my individual sessions with the doctor, I explain that I am not having empathy for some of the group members’ experiences. This is in contrast to the group members themselves, whom the doctor has relayed to me have expressed concern over me in their own individual sessions. Hmmmm… I can’t comprehend why anyone would really even give a shit. I never talked about them in my individual sessions, why the hell would they talk about me? Why would they even care? As I began to divulge more in the group, the doctor would tell me regularly how they felt about what I was saying.
I was perplexed. I could not understand them talking about me and using their time with the doctor. I didn’t express any concerns for them in “my” time. It was all very weird, but it did start to make me wonder. I wondered about me, what was it that I had lived through which caused people to “talk.” I felt as though I needed to shake my head in wonderment, “What the heck?”
I could not understand. I now know, within the process, that the doctor was trying to give me peer feedback on my life. He would never presume to tell me anything, but he felt that it was important for the group to hear my stories and tell me what they really thought. I was starting to kind of “get it.”
The whole process is fascinating to me as I’m also observing how this works. I enjoy playing amateur psychiatrist, and try to figure out where we’re going to go next. I recall telling the doctor that this whole thing is about how we are interpreting and feeling about our childhood now. Is it red or green? In his absolute confidence and professionalism, he makes me believe that I am right. True strength is knowing, but not necessarily revealing.
As the sessions continue, I am trustful enough now to express my concern that I don’t have empathy for Alexandra feeling distraught over large red objects. Again, we discuss attachments and emotions. Why would I think that everyone feels the same way that I do? I just do.
“It’s all a bit egocentric isn’t it?”, he asks.
“What do you mean?”
Response, “Do you think that your opinions and thoughts are common and are only worthy of justification?”
I hadn’t thought of it. I just thought that everyone thought and felt the same way I did. Ahhh… no. If I saw powder blue, then everyone else must see it that way, too. It may be spring blue, meadow blue, but it probably wasn’t the exact same powder blue that I thought it should be.”
A revelation, honestly. Not everyone interpreted, perceived or thought of the color blue as I did. Blue invokes moods, emotions, music, the color of the sky, but it is not the same for everyone. This was a “wow” moment.
I started to see how other people could think and feel. Hello, not everyone could see the powder blue as I did; some saw it as baby blue, or sunset blue. All of a sudden this made sense.
For months in my individual sessions, the doctor had been trying in his way to help me understand other people’s perspectives. What may be green to me, based on my past, may be red to someone else. I tended to think that everyone else was seeing green, which was a mistake in my thinking.
Alexandra continued to talk about her traumatic experience of remembering the red devil movie. I realized that it really didn’t matter what I thought; my thoughts absolutely do not matter in how someone else feels. Am I so great that I can impose my feelings on how other people should react? Another “wow” moment.
Let’s go back to Katie Couric. Here’s a woman facing adversity in her life, and I, matter-of-factly, compare her life to mine and determine that my pain in life is greater than hers. I think because chauffeurs “probably” pick her up every day that her pain is less than mine.
Why should it be? Why should my pain be greater than hers? Are we in a contest with one another as to who feels more hurt? The lesson is that we all feel pain in our own way; we are all individuals, we are all people who have vast experiences in their pasts which have shaped our lives today. Not one other person feels what we feel. We, in turn, cannot think that we can feel what others do.
I apologize to Katie Couric. I understand that each person’s grief, feelings or reactions are based on their exclusive experience, their own very unique and individual experience. No one has the right to judge how anyone else is feeling.
I was able to relay this message to my youngest daughter. We had gone to an ice event, The Lion King. When we left the auditorium, there was a gentleman in a wheelchair sitting outside, begging for some money and holding a tin cup.
People walked by him afraid, or they just ignored him. My daughter stared at him. At a general societal level, he’s only a street bum, a homeless person. Someone who was begging for money. Oh, why can’t these people find other ways to get money? Everyone knows they are going to spend it on drugs anyway. Thereby, in my middle class way, I refuse to exacerbate the problem and will not give them money to buy drugs. Walk by and don’t look. They’re bad, is what we think and we have the right to feel repulsed by their lives.
I had heard this stuff before, many times and I didn’t want Sean to think this way. I asked her, “What if that man had a family and something terrible had happened to them?” She asked me what I meant. I said, “That man may have been in a terrible accident where his wife and children were killed and only he survived.” What does that man have to live for? We can never judge anyone because we don’t know what they have been through. Maybe this man was a respected accountant at one time and, after the tragedy, he didn’t want to live anymore. His love, his family had gone. How can we judge how we would have responded or reacted? Think about it. Could you go back to your work as an accountant or sales manager after your family had been killed in front of your eyes and only you survived? Everything else in life would be minor. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Exactly. Escape, continuing on with life, may mean sitting on the streets, stoned, begging for a hand out. One cannot know or judge.
People just don’t fall into self-destructive habits because it’s fun or there is nothing else to do. People have instinctive feelings about wanting to be loved, being successful in what they do, loving other people. Absolutely everyone wants to feel wanted, accepted, successful, feel that they have worth in what they do and say.
When one loses the ability to feel worth within themselves, we look for worth in any way we can. I think this is human. Alcohol, sex, eating, gambling, whatever our drug of choice, we devour it. Whatever will pacify our pain. It needs to stop. Whatever will make us feel that we’re worthy. Please. Many times we know that we’re living in a type of fantasy while we are calming our pain, but it’s still better than the actual pain. When you have pain, getting rid of it can be the sole objective of your life.
My group members are in pain, and have the guts to address it. It is very easy to take drugs and swallow alcohol. I speak from experience. I have clung onto normalcy based on being drunk or stoned.
Sue, is an alcoholic and attends AA meetings regularly, has recently confessed that within her current marriage to a wonderful man, she had no idea who the father of one of children. When her second son was born, she prayed that he would not have traces of an Asian heritage. This has been going on for a number of years and… well, here we are. She tells her husband that he is not the father of her second child because she cannot maintain the lie. The marriage is hanging by a thread. Her life is changed. Everyone in her life has been affected. Sue could not live with herself with this burgeoning secret in her life.
I can honestly answer, “I don’t know” and I can’t imagine. Because I can’t imagine it doesn’t make it right, or wrong. It is what it is. It is neither right or wrong, and according to whom, by the way?
This is not when I get into God and begin to impose my judgments on anyone. That is not my point. We as people, humans, or any other anthropological term you may refer to us as cannot, with any sense of the absolute, judge anyone else based on our individual criteria. Because we all have different perceptions of situations.
Think of Marilyn Monroe. Not everyone sees her as sex goddess; others may see her as a slut. When I was able to begin to understand that not everyone saw the world as I did, I was able to feel for other people. Walk in their shoes, as the saying goes.
I grapple with my pain and my mother’s. Which one takes precedence for me? I don’t know. I feel that I am stronger than my mother and can endure more, so I must protect her. But 43 years is a long time. I also carry over this trait into my marriage and my work. I am strong, I cannot be hurt easily, therefore, come and attack me. I have an overextended ego of my worth as a savior at this point, and I have no will to live myself.
Fiona is a beautiful woman with graceful hands and wavy blond hair. Her voice is soft, she is educated. She begins our group session one day, extremely upset. I’m starting to see a pattern developing now. Fiona is always having problems at work; she works for a retail chain store, but she herself gets dragged into the internal office politics and is the renowned bleeding heart to go to if there are managerial problems.
As Fiona is talking, I sense that she’s headed in the wrong direction and I’ve been there myself. She complains about her boss, how he treats everyone, and how he is treating someone in particular. Her boss was belligerent. Fiona’s mom would beat her with the kitchen utensils. There was lack of support from her husband. Her youngest child had been diagnosed with cancer when he was about 5, and Fiona and her husband risked everything they had for an alternative treatment method in California. Their son is fine, but the years of emotional and financial struggle had worn itself into their marriage.
They met when they were both attending a marketing conference. Fiona became pregnant during her internship. The rest is history, a familiar story of how these marriages struggle when they are unionized only because of an event, such as pregnancy. Forces beyond her control.
