Two days later. It’s time to say it.
“I burned my foot last week, before the last session.” I’m so nervous my hands sweat while my core flexes tight as a jungle snake ready for a kill. How could I discard him, risk the loss of him this way? All for one burn, thirty minutes max of postburn transcendence?
“And you didn’t tell me? You paint pictures with words that aren’t honest.” I’m not sure what he means. Once again we go through the usual “I’m angry” “You’re angry” routine. Lately, I can’t decide if “angry” or “annoyed” is my least favorite word … it’s close.
“I don’t know myself outside of here. What you really are. I feel very confused. I just want to be taken care of. I’m angry with you, with everybody, yet I don’t let anyone—”
“You want out of here,” he says, interrupting me.
“I do and I don’t.” What an extraordinary thought.
“Your actions say you do.”
I’m so beyond the limit of okay that I go ahead and say it. Like Nicole in Tender Is the Night, “I didn’t care what he said” because “when I am very busy being mad I don’t usually care what they say, not if I were a million girls.”
“Right. Mine—yes, they are the actions of a person who wants to live alone, who trusts the 11s magic, who wants to hide in the desert. She definitely wants out of here.”
“What did you think I would do when you told me?” he asks.
“Say ‘Go to the hospital or you can’t come here.’ Now I feel like I can’t come here anymore.” Falling between the lines, I see what might have been. The tears come on hard. Banished. Ousted. All because I’m too weak to simply smoke my cigarette.
“My head says you should go to the hospital,” Dr. Kohl says. “I feel like I’m on trial.”
I know him. This is my communion; reprieve from impossible loss. I’m giddy but in no way emboldened. I have no doubt another lapse will seal my dread portion.
“Truth is,” he writes to himself at the bottom of the page, “I feel responsible for what is happening to her. I can’t pretend.”
CHAPTER 42
Mamsy-Pamsy Parenting
Later that week I call for an extra session and spend time in the waiting room, just sitting where I feel safe and calm. Sometimes when I do that he calls me in between sessions with other patients to talk for five minutes. This makes me feel exceptional.
I tell him about my crush on Jay and the revelation of his secret girlfriend.
“I don’t feel badly about Jay. It’s like I dismiss it, get really hard, it creeps up later.”
“All the bad feelings get put into the burn.”
“Or onto the paper,” I add.
“Do you bring any here?” he asks.
“I do. I will.”
“Is there some concern on your part that I’m drifting away from you?” he asks.
“I was feeling life was impossible. Burning is hopelessness,” is my nonanswer to his question.
“And why not tell?”
“Fear of having to leave you. I was very afraid.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“It was out of the question. I just didn’t call. It happened really fast.”
“An act of denying it?”
“I felt alone, assaulted on all sides. My body doesn’t even feel attached to me in many ways.”
“Somebody else hurt it,” he says.
“So I left it.”
“You sound sexually or physically abused to me.”
“I’ll never know that.”
Dr. Kohl calls me “an outsider with insider insights” at Sneakers, at King Street Youth, with my roommates, with my family, even with my sister. “She dances so well verbally as to befuddle the people around her and maintain her aloneness,” he writes in my chart. And yet, he observes, “She wins all the arguments by not having them; gets all she wants by not asking for it (or them).” Most people don’t notice any of this and I’m disdainful of their failure to see through me.
“The way people respond to me is inconsistent with how I feel about myself,” I tell him. “People are nice to me. If only they knew, they’d hate me. They’re fools. I’m defiled. Born evil and different. There’s evil in me that’s tied with the 11s, secret. Makes the outside seem very far away and ghostlike. Left side is to burn right side, I’m a lefty after all. Right is foreign, not mine.”
But the burns have made the right more mine; the burns are all wrapped up in the complicated effort to placate the 11s. Maybe I really do want to burn away something bad inside me. Historically, one way to get rid of the evil in a “witch” was to burn her alive. Just ask the Puritans—or Hansel and Gretel. By destroying the vessel, the demonic spirit within is also eliminated. Burning books has a similar effect; it rids the world of the evil in the object while destroying the offending object itself.
“I need you working on what’s going on here instead of splitting,” he says a month later, in early September. A big chunk of that work entails making an end of brief bouts of hating him overlaid with a love that borders on idolatry. I fail to see him as a normal, fallible human. I’ve turned him into a cartoon.
In a note to himself he writes, “I’m feeling frustrated with her active way of staying separate, except here.” Why bring him off his cloud? His power to fix me, if he only would, depends on this fantasy. Failing to accommodate nuance in him or just about anyone else—including myself—brings out my most unforgiving impulses. It’s me at my worst.
“Sad, angry, in my miserable little hole,” is how I describe my state without him. I’m reading, eating tons of candy, feeling weird on Zoloft, and smoking, as he says, “like an alcoholic tending bar.”
“I’ve been miserable all week,” I tell him. “I would have slept forever. Held a cigarette near my arm. Heat felt very good. It’s like I want to go to the hospital, leave my life.”
In October when my mother visits, my most obvious symptoms are briefly in check—burning, vomiting. Stubborn depression combined with the frustration of my unrequited attachment to him makes for lax progress. Not being “in crisis” every single day over suicidal fantasies, vomiting, and burning leaves space to talk about other things, to work on building a sense of justice I can apply beyond the extraordinary space of his office.
I’ve arranged for two sessions with my mother. My defenses are keen. As Dr. Kohl points out, “Mother’s arrival brings up boundary between feelings, thought, speech, and action. Afraid of herself.” It’s not a social visit. On Dr. Kohl’s advice the first I see of her is in the waiting room at 112 Church Street.
“I’m glad Cree has found someone to help her. To talk to,” she begins, turning to me. “I know it’s difficult for you to see me.”
“Why do you think it’s difficult?” I ask.
“I make you angry, have made you angry,” she says. Shifting to the burning, she says, “I know when it happened after one phone call. I had a huge argument with Nicole for trashing my apartment.”
I’m astonished: she thinks burning myself was precipitated by an interaction with her.
“That had little to do with burning. I was angry but felt good, I told you that you weren’t being fair to Nicole.” My mother is nervous. A shrink’s office is not her territory. “I try to keep myself from you in a lot of ways. You tainted me, I couldn’t be myself,” I tell her, my way of explaining why being around her is difficult.
“Are you angry I left your father for a lesbian lover?” Of course I was angry—I was outraged and confused at the time, but it’s ancient history now. That’s not what this is about.
“I mean our closeness before, in Aspen,” I say, changing the subject back.
“We were close with riding and on pack trips,” she admits.
“I feel a lack of meaningful experience, I gave myself away, you wanted something from me for some other reason,” I explain.
“That’s too abstract for me.” She’s not digging in that pile.
“
Buddy,” I say. She used to call me her “Little Buddy.” It has become shorthand between Dr. Kohl and me for the imbalanced relationship between us. I was not a daughter to her—I was her adult caretaker and partner in crime. Dr. Kohl has suggested that my discomfort with this role has led me to devalue this adult, responsible part of me.
“I don’t understand how you live your life. There’s something empty. A lack of respect for the way you choose to live is scary to me. I wouldn’t trust what came out of it,” I say, referring to her alcoholism.
“At the time I didn’t realize it was wrong, it was my way. I drank a lot and relied on you. Often when I was drinking you helped me: catch planes, I’d drink in the airport.” Turning to Dr. Kohl, she says, almost as if she’s proud, “She took care of me, got me to the plane on time. I drank a huge amount more in Aspen than I do now. I drank while pregnant with both daughters.”
“Not fair,” says Dr. Kohl.
She blows by that. “I’m still drinking, I feel in control of my drinking. I drink a lot less, I don’t offend anyone. I used to drink until drunk; I don’t anymore. I enjoy alcohol.”
Looking her in the eye, I say, “I enjoy burning my arm.”
The next day is no prettier. When her abandonment of my sister and me in high school comes up, Dr. Kohl writes in my chart, “Mother stated it was ‘usual’ and ‘natural’ to leave two young children to raise themselves.”
When her drinking comes up again, she says, “At age 55 you don’t think I’m entitled to do what I want?”
Of course she is. But I tell her very plainly what she’ll get in return from me. “I can smile, be pleasant, some of it is genuine.” But, I say, “That’s all there is.”
“I can’t change,” she says. I know it’s true. “I want you to be my daughter.” I pity her but I’m not taking her up on a soft reconciliation so familiar for its absence of thought, work, or sacrifice on her part. I recognize her bald unwillingness to change and what it has cost me—and her.
“You haven’t earned it. Not listening to me, seeing me through your own shit. You have no idea who I am.” I finish by telling her, “I was good at giving you whatever you needed in the past and I’m trying to change.”
Dr. Kohl writes in his notes, “Both acknowledge feeling sick.” Gutted is more like it.
After my mother leaves, Dr. Kohl suggests that she is mentally ill, not just an alcoholic. I have no doubt she’s been depressed and deeply anxious all her life; more than that I don’t know. I need to wash her off; the poison of her “I can’t change” despair feels lethal.
“It’s as if your mother’s evil is inside you,” he says.
“That disgusts me. Makes me want to kill myself to be like her.” That she’s chosen to be drunk rather than take care of me my whole life has repeatedly blotted out my worth—the sense I could possibly deserve the space, resources, and oxygen I take up.
I’m falling down the rabbit hole of his dreamy world, salty tears my medium—“‘I wish I hadn’t cried so much!’ said Alice, as she swam about, trying to find her way out. ‘I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears!’” It was a rational fear, as it turned out.
“You wandered in here with Matthew and got hooked on a new you. You’re afraid to lose me but not motivated to change,” Dr. Kohl says not long after my mother’s visit, accusing me of not working hard enough. It’s unusual.
“It’s hard to be motivated when I’m sad.” There’s no pity or I’ve already spent my share.
“This can’t be a vacation,” Dr. Kohl says. “It’s a real opportunity to change your life.” He never says things like this to me.
If I’m a legitimate object of treatment with the aim of psychic metamorphosis it isn’t for want of trying that I’m confused. Quite the opposite. But I’m too far gone. Letting up leaves me half drowned in that terrible salty pool with the Mouse, Duck, Dodo, Lory, and Eaglet. I’ve thrown open the possibilities of who I am and where I’ve been. Fevered, changeable, and unpredictable as I am, dangerous as it is, transforming enchants me; I won’t leave it alone.
“Do I play with my life or engage it?” I ask him. What sort of person am I? Do I get to decide and if so, how? I wish I could just do it …
I’m less stable than ever before as my dependence on this quasi-father figure long ago mauled my defenses—all that tough bravado that once served me so well. The conscious mantra I’ve long applied to virtually everything that hasn’t come easily: Work harder. Be tough. Pull it together. Don’t be lazy. None of it stands a chance against what feels like a stream of incipient madness and a hopelessness that makes me think of dying the way I obsess over which carton of milk to choose. I’ve tried many times to dismiss anxiety or con myself out of depression.
At fourteen I wrote, “What do I fear? Is it that something is acutely wrong—yes—and suddenly it overtakes my mind and the ugliness and distortion that I see terrify me.” At seventeen I knew I was just hanging on when I asked myself, “What am I doing sitting here alone? What’s wrong? Is this a phase or am I destined to be alone like this? If I am I don’t think I can bear it.” I then added, “I can’t stand the thought of this being my life.”
Ten years later and I’m afraid death might get me. I don’t know how to defend myself from despair if I can’t just tough it out, put all the shit I don’t want to think about away. Bury myself. It’s dangerous to nudge aside the loathsome Archie Bunker parent: “Meathead!” “Why don’t you just shut up?” “Just gimme a beer.”
Dr. Kohl suggests I could use more of what Archie would call “mamsy-pamsy parenting.” In other words, what I keep going back to is a harder, meaner disciplinarian—a role I’ve pretty effectively filled as I raised myself. Now, if I’m ever going to change I need its opposite, forgiveness, along with basic human contact. It all looks so easy on paper.
I have to try something different if I want to change the uneven lens through which I’ve experienced myself for the past decade and a half. My natural instinct to force myself into it with the 11s at my side is just more of the same. How, then, is it to be done? What else do I have but hard work and a steely will? What remains for me is more ambitious than all that—terrifying and entirely untried.
CHAPTER 43
Pocket Trick
In brief flashes beyond Dr. Kohl’s office I’m beginning to locate a semblance of the tolerable stranger he sees in me. This benevolent self comes and goes as if I have poor radio reception, cutting out unexpectedly only to flare into fresh song. Nothing feels better than the stasis of feeling content in the present. Just breathe. I’m learning to stay in this place when I read in the bath, soaking quietly in full awareness of my extraordinary existence, of opportunities, possibilities, and surprises. In these moments the comforts of hot water, silky bubbles, neat letters, strings of words and bound books are enough. If only I can hold on to a little gratitude.
Even if I don’t carry away much, as autumn wears on the sessions begin to steady me. In between I dream of living alone again someday, finding a better job, going to grad school, reading books I’ve never heard of. I’m working hard to remain present, embodied in and out of his office. I do my best to coolly analyze my mind when nothing feels right, beautiful, or worth the effort. Dr. Kohl recognizes this hopelessness sprouting from me before I do. He then talks me back to clarity and desire.
Depression can feel like pure hatred or terrible emptiness. It returns as predictably as a book briefly closed flips magically open to the page last read. I recognize the signs in my unwillingness to meet anyone’s eye, touch what a stranger’s touched, answer the phone, or make plans. I’m counting everything, looking for the numbers, choosing one object from seemingly identical objects—a pencil, a box of cereal, a Zoloft tablet, apples in the produce aisle … the list goes on. But doing it more often and putting more at stake in making the “right” choice signals the decline. I’m in deep when the decision isn’t in my control, when seeking oblivion in any form starts
to feel inevitable. Food. Pain-pleasure. Sleep. Dreaming of dying … the bidding never ceases.
Dr. Kohl says, “I’m committed to giving the courage in our relationship.” I wonder if this means I can keep siphoning his off forever. I have none to spare. His words give me hope. Courage. Yes, I’ll borrow his.
Sitting by the phone in my room in the oversize Victorian house I share with my dreaded roommates, I stare at my cigarette burning down, keeping time for me fair and even as no other measure. I could punch the buttons. I could listen to see if he can make something of me. Again. Before I can’t anymore. So often I need more than I can make here with tea, a smoking cigarette, a cat, and a room full of clothes, shoes, and books.
When I do pick up the phone to call him, the sound of his voice washes away the fury, smoothing out the tousled thoughts. My longing spills over as I say, “You don’t belong to me. I belong to no one.” There is no denying this but he can and does understand and listen. That’s enough. His kindness and composure blunt the painful need, weakening the conviction of my worthlessness while diluting the valence of 11s. It works until I can sleep, until the clock flicks 11 to remind me who’s really in charge. They’re often the best I can do to feel connected. It’s a laughable system of measuring oneself—how frequently the numbers find me, signaling they’re with me—good or bad. I imagine the feeling I have might be close to what it is to be truly devout. I’m Calvinist; right action is the only way to salvation even if it may not save me. I’m not crazy, I’m absurd.
The outline of Dr. Kohl remains limited by his professional stance. What I know best is the sound of his voice, favorite phrases, pet peeves, infallible memory, humor, intelligence, and the fragile gifts of humility I’ve learned to take on board but can never repay. I know the sight and smell of his fast, expensive car, the comfort and warmth of his tasteful office, the neutral waiting room, the blue Smith-Corona typewriter, and the lovely noise his receptionist makes as she taps away at it. I know he lives south of Burlington in the town of Charlotte with his independently wealthy wife and two grown sons who, judging from brief glowing mentions, he loves and is proud of beyond measure.
Lights On, Rats Out Page 22
