A charismatic, ambitious, handsome basketball player, Todd was a near celebrity on campus. She had met him two years ago, when she was a freshman in college and he was a sophomore. Everyone knew Todd. The revelation for Elise was that he wanted to get to know her. He was physically attracted to her, and he liked that Elise didn’t try too hard to impress him. She wasn’t superficial. Their personalities seemed complementary—she was quiet and shy, he was talkative and outgoing; she was an observer, he a performer. They hadn’t been dating long before Todd asked her to move in with him.
Elise brightened as she recounted the early months of their relationship. She said that in the spotlight of Todd’s affection, for the first time she felt not just good enough, she felt extraordinary. It wasn’t that she had ever felt neglected or deprived or unloved as a child or in her earlier relationships. But Todd’s attention made her feel alive in a new way. She loved the feeling.
Unfortunately, it was a feeling that came and went. Sometimes she felt insecure in their relationship. Especially at basketball games and parties, when other women flirted with Todd, she would feel chills of jealousy or inadequacy. Sometimes she scolded Todd after parties if he had appeared to flirt back. Sometimes he would reassure her, sometimes he would express irritation at her insecurities. She tried not to be the nagging girlfriend. She tried to find ways to be indispensable to him. She became his main academic support. He struggled to maintain the passing grades that his athletic scholarship required. At first Elise helped him study for tests. Then she started helping with his homework. Soon she was writing his papers for him, staying up late to do his work in addition to her own.
Consciously or not, Elise found a way to make Todd dependent on her. The relationship would have to last, because he needed her in order to maintain his scholarship and everything it enabled. The feeling of being indispensable was so intoxicating and soothing that Elise’s life became organized around one equation: The more I do for him, the more he’ll love me. Without realizing it, she had begun to equate her sense of self-worth with having his love.
Recently, Todd had confessed something that Elise had always feared would happen: He had slept with another woman. She was angry and hurt. He was apologetic and tearful. But he hadn’t been able to break things off with the other woman. He loved her. He was sorry. He hoped he and Elise could still be friends.
Elise could barely force herself to leave the apartment that first week. She had no appetite. She couldn’t get dressed. She was terrified of being alone, and she was ashamed. She realized how completely she had let her relationship direct her life—and at what cost. Then Todd called. He wanted to know if she could do a huge favor for him if she wasn’t too busy. He had a paper due on Monday. Could she write it?
She wrote the paper for him. And the next one. And the next one.
“I gave him everything,” she said. She was crying.
“Honey, that was your first mistake. You martyred yourself to him. What was in it for you?”
“I wanted him to be successful, and he was so happy when I helped.”
“And what’s happening now?”
She told me that yesterday she had learned from a mutual friend that Todd and the new woman had moved in together. And he had a paper due the next day that she had agreed to write.
“I know he’s not coming back to me. I know I have to stop doing his homework. But I can’t stop.”
“Why not?”
“I love him. I know I can still make him happy if I do his work for him.”
“And how about you? Are you becoming the best you can be? Are you making yourself happy?”
“You make me feel like I’m doing the wrong thing.”
“When you stop doing what’s best for you and start doing what you think someone else needs, you are making a choice that has consequences for you. It has consequences for Todd too. What does your choice to devote yourself to helping him say to him about his ability to meet his own challenges?”
“I can help him. I’m there for him.”
“You really have no confidence in him either.”
“I want him to love me.”
“At the cost of his growth? At the cost of your life?”
I was very worried about Elise when she left my office. Her despair was profound. But I didn’t believe she would take her own life. She wanted to change, which was why she had come to seek help. Still, I gave her my home phone number and the number to a suicide hotline and asked that she check in with me every day until her next appointment.
When Elise returned the next week, I was surprised to see that she brought a young man with her. It was Todd. Elise was all smiles. Her depression was over, she said. Todd had broken up with the other woman and she and Todd had reconciled. She felt renewed. She could see now that her neediness and insecurity had pushed him away. She would try harder to trust in the relationship, to show him how committed she was.
During the session, Todd looked impatient and bored, glancing at the clock, shifting in his seat as though his legs were falling asleep.
“There is no such thing as getting back together without a new beginning. What’s the new relationship you want? What are you willing to give up to get there?” I asked.
They stared at me.
“Let’s start with what you have in common. What do you love to do together?”
Todd looked at the clock. Elise scooted closer to him.
“Here’s your homework,” I said. “I want you to each find one new thing you like to do by yourself, and one new thing you like to do together. It can’t be basketball or homework or sex. Do something fun and get out of the familiar.”
Elise and Todd returned to my office occasionally over the next six months. Sometimes Elise came alone. Her main focus continued to be on preserving their relationship, but nothing she did was enough to erase her insecurities and doubts. She wanted to feel better, but she wasn’t yet willing to change. And Todd, when he came to the appointments, seemed stuck too. He was getting everything he thought he wanted—admiration, success, love (not to mention good grades)—but he looked sad. He slumped, he receded. It was as if his self-respect and self-confidence had atrophied because of his dependence on Elise.
Eventually, Elise and Todd’s visits tapered off, and I didn’t hear from either of them for many months. And then one day I received two graduation announcements. One was from Elise. She had finished her degree and been accepted to a master’s program in comparative literature. She thanked me for the time we spent together. She said that one day she woke up, and she had had enough. She stopped doing Todd’s schoolwork. Their relationship ended, which had been very hard, but now she was grateful that she hadn’t settled for whatever she had been choosing in place of love.
The other graduation announcement was from Todd. He was graduating—a year late, but he was graduating. And he wanted to thank me too. He told me that he had almost dropped out of school when Elise stopped doing his homework for him. He was indignant and furious. But then he took responsibility for his own life, hired a tutor, and accepted that he was going to have to put in some effort on his own behalf. “I was a punk,” he wrote. He said that without realizing it, the whole time he had relied on Elise to do his work for him, he’d been depressed. He hadn’t liked himself. Now he could look in the mirror and feel respect instead of contempt.
Viktor Frankl writes, Man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life. … This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone; only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning. When we abdicate taking responsibility for ourselves, we are giving up our ability to create and discover meaning. In other words, we give up on life.
CHAPTER 21
The Girl Without Hands
The second step in the dance of freedom is learning how to take risks that are necessary to true self-realization. The biggest risk I took on that journey was to return to Auschwitz. There were people
on the outside—Marianne’s host family, the clerk at the Polish embassy—telling me not to go. And there was my internal gatekeeper, the part of me that wanted to be safe more than I wanted to be free. But the night I lay awake in Goebbels’s bed, I intuited the truth that I wouldn’t be a complete person until I went back, that for my own health I needed to be in that place again. Taking risks doesn’t mean throwing ourselves blindly into danger. But it means embracing our fears so that we aren’t imprisoned by them.
Carlos began to work with me when he was a high school sophomore, struggling with social anxiety and self-acceptance. He was so afraid of being rejected by his peers that he wouldn’t risk initiating friendships or relationships. One day I asked him to tell me about the ten most popular girls at his school. And then I gave him an assignment. He was to ask each of these girls out on a date. He told me that was impossible, that he would be committing social suicide, that they would never go out with him, that he would be laughed at for the rest of his high school days for having been so pathetic. I told him, yes, it’s true, you might not get what you want—but even if you don’t, you’ll still be better off than you were before, because you’ll know where you stand, you’ll have more information, and you’ll be seeing what’s actually real instead of a reality created by your fear. Finally, he agreed to the assignment. And to his surprise, four of the most popular girls accepted! He’d already made up his mind about his worth, he’d already rejected himself five hundred times in his own head, and that fear had been coming through in his body language—in eyes that were hooded and averted instead of sparkling, connecting. He had made himself unavailable for joy. Once he embraced his fear and his choices and took a risk, he discovered possibilities that he hadn’t known existed.
A few years later, on an autumn day in 2007, Carlos called me from his college dorm room. Anxiety pinched his voice. “I need help,” he said. Now he was a sophomore at a Big Ten university in the Midwest. When I heard from him out of the blue, I thought that perhaps his social anxieties had again become overwhelming.
“Tell me what’s happening,” I said.
It was pledge week on campus, he said. I already knew that it had been his dream since he was in high school to belong to a fraternity. Once he began college, the dream had become even more important to him, he told me. Greek life was a significant piece of his university’s social fabric, and all of his friends were pledging, so being in a frat seemed necessary to his social survival. He had heard rumors about inappropriate hazing rituals at other fraternities, but he had chosen his fraternity carefully. He liked the racial diversity of the members and the fraternity’s emphasis on social service. It seemed like a perfect fit. While many of his friends were anxious about the hazing process, Carlos wasn’t worried about it. He believed that hazing had a purpose, that it helped the young men to bond more quickly, as long as it wasn’t over the top.
But pledge week was not turning out as Carlos had imagined.
“What’s different?” I asked.
“My pledge master’s on a power trip.” He told me that the pledge master was incredibly aggressive, seeking out every pledge’s weak spots and pushing hard on them. He called one young man’s taste in music “gay.” During a pledge meeting, he looked at Carlos and said, “You look like a guy who should be mowing my lawn.”
“How did you feel when he said that?”
“I was so mad. I wanted to punch him in the face.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing. He was just trying to get me worked up. I didn’t react.”
“What happened next?”
Carlos told me that that morning, the pledge master ordered him and the other pledges to clean the frat house, assigning them different jobs. He handed Carlos a toilet brush and a bottle of cleaner. Then he gave Carlos a huge sombrero. “You’re going to wear this while you scrub the toilets. You’re going to wear this when you leave and go to class. And the only words you’re allowed to say all day are, ‘Sí, señor.’ ” It was a public shaming, an appalling act of racism, but if Carlos wanted to join the fraternity, he would have to force himself to endure it.
“I felt like I couldn’t say no,” Carlos told me. His voice shook. “It was awful. But I did it. I didn’t want to lose my spot just because the pledge master’s an asshole. I didn’t want to let him win.”
“I can hear how angry you are.”
“I’m furious. And embarrassed. And confused. I feel like I should have been able to take it without it upsetting me.”
“Tell me more.”
“I know it’s not the same at all, but while I was scrubbing toilets in the sombrero, I thought about that story you told me about when you were at the death camp, when you were forced to dance. I remember you said that you were scared, and you were in prison, but you felt free. That the guards were more imprisoned than you. I know the pledge master’s an idiot. Why can’t I just do what he wants me to do and still feel free inside? You’ve always told me it’s not what’s happening outside that matters, it’s what’s inside. I’m proud of my Mexican identity. Why should his bullshit matter to me? Why can’t I just rise above it?”
It was a beautiful question. Where does our power reside? Is it enough to find our inner strength, our inner truth, or does empowerment also require that we take action on the outside? I do believe it’s what’s happening inside that matters most. I also believe in the necessity of living in congruence with our values and ideals—with our moral selves. I believe in the importance of defending what is right and defying what is unjust and inhumane. And I believe in choices. Freedom lies in examining the choices available to us and examining the consequences of those choices. “The more choices you have,” I said, “the less you’re going to feel like a victim. Let’s talk about your choices.”
We made a list. One choice was for Carlos to wear the sombrero around campus the rest of the day, saying only, “Sí, señor.” He could agree to submit to whatever other humiliations his pledge master devised.
Another choice was to object. He could tell the pledge master he refused to comply.
Or he could withdraw his application to the fraternity. He could put down the sombrero and the scrub brush and walk away.
Carlos didn’t like the consequences of any of these choices. He didn’t like the shame and powerlessness he felt in capitulating to a bully, especially when the humiliations were racist. He felt he couldn’t continue to play the racist caricature without eroding his self-respect—if he continued giving in to a bully, he would make the bully stronger and himself weaker. But outright defiance of the pledge master could be physically dangerous and socially isolating. Carlos was afraid of being assaulted—and of responding in kind. He didn’t want to get swallowed by violent urges, he didn’t want to fall into the pledge master’s trap of trying to rile him, he didn’t want to participate in a public showdown. He was also afraid of being ostracized by the fraternity and the other pledges—the very community whose acceptance he was trying to court. The third choice—to walk away—wasn’t any better. He would have to give up his dream, give up his desire of belonging, and he wasn’t willing to do that.
In sifting through the available options, Carlos discovered a fourth choice. Instead of confronting the pledge master directly in what he feared would become a violent fight, he could file a complaint with someone who had more authority. Carlos decided that the best person to approach was the fraternity president. He knew he could bring the issue higher up the ladder, to a university dean, if necessary, but he preferred to keep the conversation more local at first. We practiced what he was going to say, and how he would say it. It was hard for him to remain calm while he rehearsed, but he knew from our years of work together that when you lose your temper, you might feel strong in the moment, but really you are handing your power over. Strength isn’t reacting, it’s responding—feeling your feelings, thinking them over, and planning an effective action to bring you closer to your goal.
Carlos and I
also talked about the possible consequences of his conversation. It was possible that the fraternity president would tell Carlos that the pledge master’s behavior was acceptable, and that Carlos could take it or leave it.
“If that’s how the president sees it, I guess I’d rather know than not know,” Carlos said.
Carlos called me after his meeting with the fraternity president.
“I did it!” His voice rang with triumph. “I told him what was happening, and he said it was disgusting and he wouldn’t tolerate it. He’s forcing the pledge master to stop the racist hazing.”
Of course I was happy that Carlos was being validated and supported, and happy that he did not have to give up his dream. But I believe it would have been a triumphant encounter no matter the fraternity president’s response. Carlos had embraced his power to stand up and speak his truth at the risk of being excluded and criticized. He had chosen not to be a victim. And he had taken a moral stand. He had acted in alignment with a higher purpose: to combat racism, to protect human dignity. In defending his own humanity, he protected everyone’s. He paved a way for all of us to live in keeping with our moral truth and ideals. Doing what is right is rarely the same as doing what is safe.
* * *
I think that a certain amount of risk is always inseparable from healing. It was true for Beatrice, a sad woman when I met her, her brown eyes distant, closed off, her face pale. Her clothes were loose and formless, her posture slumping and hunched over. I immediately recognized that Beatrice had no idea how beautiful she was.
She stared straight ahead, trying hard not to look at me. But she couldn’t stop herself from shooting me quick glances that seemed to probe me for secrets. She had recently heard me give a talk about forgiveness. For more than twenty years, she had believed that there was no way to achieve forgiveness over her stolen childhood. But my speech about my own journey of forgiveness had sparked questions for her. Should I forgive? Can I forgive? Now she assessed me carefully, as though trying to discover if I was real, or just an image. When you’re listening to someone up on a stage tell a story about healing, it can seem too good to be true. And to some extent, it is. In the hard work of healing, there’s no catharsis when forty-five minutes are up. There’s no magic wand. Change happens slowly, sometimes disappointingly slowly. Is your story of freedom genuine? her darting glances seemed to ask. Is there any hope for me?
The Choice Page 29
