The Flock

Home > Other > The Flock > Page 29
The Flock Page 29

by Joan Frances Casey


  I was sensitive to anything Lynn might say, and she couldn’t seem to find a level where we could relate. When she offered advice, I told her to stop smothering me. When she suggested I make my own decisions, I felt rejected.

  “Why don’t you get angry at Nancy?” Lynn said. “That’s really what this is about, you know.” The Flock had twenty-eight years’ worth of reasons to be angry with Nancy, but that anger still seemed unsafe.

  “What’s the worst that could happen if you told Nancy that you are angry with her?” Lynn asked.

  “She’d be more angry in return,” I said. “Nancy’s anger terrifies Joan Frances.”

  “But, Renee,” Lynn said, exasperated, “why do you continue to put up with it?”

  The Flock had its reasons. “She’s my mother,” Joan Frances said. “It’s not right for a daughter to show disrespect to her mother. I want my mother to love me.”

  “I promised my father when he was dying that I’d look after her the best I could,” said Jo.

  “And anyway,” I reminded Lynn, “I’m mad at you, not Nancy.”

  Lynn tried to sidestep situations before they erupted, but again and again that summer she and I became embroiled in arguments without even knowing how they came about. Though I felt guilty about what was happening, I couldn’t seem to control my impulse to push her past her limits.

  “You know, Renee,” Lynn said after one fight, “you’re testing our relationship, and you are learning that both your anger and my anger are safe. It’s hard on both of us, but I promise we’ll survive. You don’t think that it is safe for you to be angry with Nancy, so you are testing out that anger on me.”

  “Transference!” I shouted. “That’s all you think about. Isn’t it possible that I have some legitimate reasons for being annoyed with you?” But I could rarely put my finger on those “reasons”!

  In July, I knew my anger had a cause. Lynn and Gordon were deserting the Flock. They were leaving for a three-week trip to the West Coast. Perhaps I couldn’t expect them to cancel their vacation two years in a row, and I could understand that they might need rest and time alone, but I didn’t want them to leave the Flock. I knew that I was being irrational and refused to discuss my feelings about their trip.

  The evening before Lynn and Gordon left started out peacefully enough. I chatted with Lynn while she packed. Gordon wandered in and out of the living room, interjecting a comment or two, and then went off to pack in another part of the house. I was glad that the Flock would have an evening like this to remember during the weeks ahead.

  “I’m surprised how much I miss kids,” I said, thinking back to my teaching days. “I wonder if I could babysit for Marianne and Neal sometime,” I said casually. Lynn’s daughter and son-in-law lived nearby with their preschooler and infant.

  My remark hadn’t been very serious, and I expected an equally offhanded “Sure, why not?” from Lynn. Instead, she paused and said, “Well, I guess you’ll have to ask Marianne and Neal.”

  “Do you think they might not trust me or something?” I was puzzled by Lynn’s response. Marianne and Neal were aware that I was a multiple, but the only personality they had met was me.

  “Well, I can understand why someone who didn’t really know you might not trust you with their children,” she said.

  Lynn’s response cut deeply. “You know no one in the Flock would ever hurt a child!” I shouted angrily. I felt betrayed.

  Lynn said soothingly, “Renee, if I had young children, I’d trust you with them. Gordon and I trust you to take care of the house, the plants, and our animals while we’re away. What I’m saying is that other people don’t know the Flock as well as we do. Marianne and Neal don’t have any reason to be sure of you.”

  Nothing Lynn said now made any difference. I was hurt. I was angry. All I heard was that Lynn’s daughter might not trust me with her children and Lynn understood why she might feel that way.

  Gordon wandered into the room and found Lynn and me fighting yet again. He listened silently until he had picked up the essence of the quarrel. “I don’t know why you’d want to babysit anyway,” Gordon said. “You’re busy enough as it is.

  “So what if they don’t understand,” he said. “There will always be people who won’t take the time to understand,” he said.

  I felt misunderstood and betrayed. Just as Nancy and Ray had done so many years ago, Lynn and Gordon were now ganging up on me. I couldn’t fight them both.

  “What if Josie came out and found herself with little kids?” Gordon suggested. “She certainly wouldn’t know what to do with a baby.”

  This upset me even more. “Josie would never appear around children, any more than she or any of the others who couldn’t handle it would appear when I’m driving the car or when Rusty is sailing with you,” I said. “You know that the Flock has better control than that.”

  Yet, even as I spat out my rebuttal, which was technically true, I remembered, and knew that Gordon and Lynn were remembering, how close I had occasionally come to losing that control.

  I felt trapped between my obvious ability to function well and my equally obvious pathology. I felt trapped by the mixed messages I seemed to be getting from Lynn and Gordon. They knew the competent me, and they knew the Flock’s pathological responses. They had dealt with suicidal impulses and shattered child personalities. Still, they agreed with me that I had the strength to do anything. They cherished the Flock as a unique entity. And now they seemed to be saying that I was too sick to babysit for their grandchildren.

  So many memories and conflicting feelings. I felt backed into a corner from which there was no escape. I got up from the sofa and started for the door.

  “I don’t think you’re ready to leave,” Lynn cautioned firmly.

  “No, you shouldn’t drive like this,” Gordon agreed.

  This was too much. “Great,” I said. “Now you think I’m too crazy to even take care of myself.”

  I stopped at the head of the stairway, paralyzed by my own ambivalence. I didn’t want to leave like this, didn’t want Lynn and Gordon to go away while we were still angry with one another.

  Josie found herself mid-step, teeming with panic and rage. Those feelings hurled her through the air, as they had so many times in the past. She threw herself through the glass door.

  Lynn and Gordon rushed out to see Josie lying amid broken glass, bleeding and dazed by it all. Gordon led Josie inside, and after taking a look at the deep cuts, Lynn called a friend who was an M.D. Someone had to decide whether the arm needed to be sutured. An emergency room was out of the question. That would cause further trauma.

  Josie disappeared, and Jo found herself sitting on the rug, Gordon’s arm draped protectively around her. Amnestic as always, Jo knew only that the cuts were deep enough to hurt and that blood was spattered on her jeans and the rug. “Sorry about the blood,” she said. “What happened this time?” Jo shook her head in disbelief that Josie had gone through the door because Renee and Lynn had had another fight.

  Jo stayed in control while Lynn’s internist friend examined and bandaged the cuts. It was well after 3:00 a.m. by the time she wearily drove home to Steve’s. Humiliated that I had proved myself to be exactly as sick as I denied, I didn’t re-emerge until the next afternoon, when I went back to Gordon and Lynn’s to strike an uneasy peace before they left on their trip.

  So often now, estranged from Lynn, I found that Jo and Steve were sources of empathy and counsel to me. Jo was a good mediator between Lynn and me. When Jo heard about our arguments, she ventured perceptions that rang true to Lynn and, much to my surprise, to me as well.

  I was too caught up in my struggle with Lynn to accept much that she had to say. Jo became an inner counsel, a wise older sibling who could point things out to both my mom and me.

  In her journal, where Jo so often criticized the Flock—referring to the other personalities only as “they”—she wrote:

  Renee, I feel close to you now. I’ve known about you
from the glimpses and shadows I’ve caught out of the corner of my mental eye. I’ve seen evidence of your accomplishments, have been shamed by your competence, and have been forced by circumstances to pretend that I am you. Usually I am aware of you only peripherally. It’s different now. Now I see deeply into you, within the recesses of myself.

  Now we face one another. When I look into you like this, essence to essence, we soften the barriers between us. It scares us. I can see your fear reflected in my own. But isn’t it exciting as well? We’re on a roller-coaster ride at the very peak and have each other’s hands to hold for the breathless ride down.

  Jo and I were becoming friends, and I realized that I loved the rest of my Flock as well. Missy was a fun-loving, artistic kid. Rusty had a droll sense of humor. Everyone seemed to be getting healthier, happier, and more productive. When I wasn’t putting stress on the Flock by fighting with Lynn, I now felt that I was sharing this body, this physical space, with a whole group of very interesting and worthwhile people.

  I was learning to depend on Steve too. He comforted me throughout the summer as I returned home from the latest bout of the ongoing, unresolved conflict with Lynn. He also spent more time than ever before with other personalities. Now, if Steve and I began talking about some serious abstract idea, I willingly moved aside and let Jo finish the conversation. Missy often joined Steve when he walked the dogs, and on a few occasions Rusty helped cut some wood.

  Steve said he was glad that I trusted him to develop relationships with the other personalities. He knew that my acceptance of them was a sign of greater health, but he really liked me best and wanted to know when I’d be integrated—when the other personalities would be gone.

  “Look, Steve,” I said, “whether you like it or not, all of the personalities are part of this entity. No personality is ever going to disappear.”

  “What about Robin and Reagan? Little Joe?” he asked.

  “Those personalities were absorbed, not exiled. No one inside will ever disappear. We’re all real. We all matter.”

  DIARY    August 23, 1984

  Contrary to my expectations of a placid summer, we have had a horrendous time—in some ways more wearing than last summer for me, because of my complete lack of preparation. I was proud of Renee’s new ability to stick up for herself with Dr. Tate. It was quite different to have her direct her anger toward me, particularly since she could not stand to have it labeled anger.

  This summer was the October weekend all over again, without its redeeming features. I was faced with a full-blown adolescent, churning with inner turmoil she was projecting on me. And I wasn’t ready for it, didn’t understand it, and resented it fiercely.

  I found it especially hard to deal with in the Renee personality, with whom I had always had so much fun. Now I could do nothing right. I was used to having long, painful discussions with Jo in which I had to be very careful of what I said and did. Renee and I, on the other hand, had discussed, argued, agreed, and disagreed, easily exploring, comfortably thinking aloud without much censorship. Now she began acting like Jo, but was far angrier than Jo had ever been.

  I could at the same time see that the Flock was obviously moving closer together and developing a great deal of healthy self-respect. Why, then, did Renee not only take me and the treatment for granted, but continually point out my mistakes and accuse me of not caring or understanding? I felt baffled, used, hurt, and angry in turn. Nothing I tried seemed to work until the night before we left on vacation, when Josie went through a storm door in a violent statement of Renee’s anger.

  The shock of dealing with that forced all of us to take a second look. I was able to step back and realize that, just as Renee was acting the adolescent, I was reacting very much like the adolescent’s mother. This realization, while not a solution, did make the rest of the summer more bearable, and the explosions became less frequent.

  31.

  The Flock returned to Harvard with a new closeness among us. We were gaining confidence in our notion that cooperation, not integration, was the realistic goal. We were eager to prove that we could function well in an ongoing group existence.

  Jo and I still had amnestic barriers that kept us from communicating internally, but we joined forces in deciding that this multiple need not integrate. Jo was sure that the merging of multiple selves into a single personality constituted some logic problem. I had other reasons.

  It was clear to me that, despite occasional bouts with depression, the Flock was more effective than many of the other graduate students. This was even more true now that we had our own apartment and could work undisturbed for fourteen or sixteen hours each day. (I thought we needed the privacy of our own place and had secured a double teaching fellowship that would pay the rent.)

  The Flock required only four or five hours of sleep a night. That left a lot of time for work. And the amnesia that in the past had crippled us became an advantage. Our production multiplied because each personality could focus on a separate task. Jo, for example, worked for many hours researching and writing a paper, unaware of what else needed to be done. When I pushed Jo aside to fulfill my graduate-assistant duties, I didn’t worry about the progress of the paper. When Jo came back to work, she picked up precisely where she had left off, with no concern about her “lost time.” She had near-perfect recall of all that she experienced. This was augmented by her near-perfect amnesia for all the time that elapsed between her points of consciousness.

  Being a multiple apparently created more efficient use of my conscious and semiconscious mind. I didn’t want to give up my greater productivity to become just like everyone else.

  But I knew that the rough times were not yet over. Despite a summer of practice on Lynn, I still overreacted to disagreements among the personalities and was still shaky in most of my interpersonal relationships. I also knew there would be some unavoidable stress connected with the doctoral work, particularly since we had decided to complete two years of study in one and had double teaching responsibilities as well. Multiple personalities couldn’t increase the amount of time available in a day.

  I decided to seek some ongoing professional help. I hadn’t forgotten the horror of Dr. Tate, but I convinced myself that this was different. Now I decided to approach the affiliated psychiatric group, not in crisis but as any other student who wanted to talk with a mental-health professional on a regular basis. Many students were in weekly psychotherapy. My request would not be so unusual.

  I discussed my need first with Dr. Matthews, the doctor who had agreed to be the Flock’s safety net. I told him my reasons for wanting support in Cambridge instead of initiating regular contacts with him on the North Shore, and cited my financial difficulties as well. “I have to pay Harvard hundreds of dollars each year to cover health care. Why should I pay you sixty dollars an hour on top of that?”

  Dr. Matthews agreed that my request for ongoing support with a Harvard affiliate didn’t seem unusual, even if the disorder was. He suggested that I make an appointment with Dr. Brandenberg, who served as the director of the group practice that included Dr. Tate. “Dr. Brandenberg may not know anything about multiples,” Dr. Matthews counseled, “but she will understand that you have a right to some care.”

  A few days later, I waited outside Dr. Brandenberg’s door and realized that I was tired of excusing the medical community for “not knowing anything about multiples.” MPD had been recognized as a disorder for at least a hundred years. It had been brought to the attention of the professional and public communities through Three Faces of Eve in the 1950s and again by Sybil in the 1970s. Literature related to the disorder had snowballed in the clinical journals.

  I could understand that not every mental-health professional had treated a case, but I couldn’t accept that mental-health professionals knew so little about it. At the very least, the doctors had access to the journals that had provided Jo with her wealth of information on the topic.

  The Flock had seen other mental-health
professionals before finding Lynn. They had not recognized the disorder, but the Flock had been working hard to hide it then. Now, however, comfortable with the diagnosis and able to explain the condition articulately, I could not see why it should be so difficult to find a doctor willing to learn.

  “I’m not a freak,” I told Dr. Brandenberg, “and I’m tired of being treated as though I’m bizarre and unmanageable. I’ve seen true psychotics in the student population, and they are tolerated here. I’m functional, I’m a good student, and when I came here last year in crisis, I was threatened with involuntary withdrawal from school. That’s just not right.”

  Dr. Brandenberg told me she’d look for someone willing to work with me.

  “It bothers me that you should have to look for someone special, as though I’m some sort of freak,” I said.

  “Some psychiatrists don’t believe in multiple personalities,” she reminded me.

  “They don’t believe in multiple personalities,” Kendra mimicked as we left Dr. Brandenberg’s office. “Since when does one have to have faith in a mental disorder?” Kendra kept a low profile these days, generally expressing herself as part of the Alliance, but when her mitigating influence didn’t stop me from doing something she considered dangerous to the Flock, she let me know.

  A few weeks later, I called Dr. Brandenberg. No one had yet called to set up an appointment. She said that she hadn’t forgotten, and that a Dr. Wu had said she was interested. Another week went by before Dr. Wu called.

  I answered the phone, but when the doctor identified herself, Kendra stepped out from the Alliance and pushed the rest of us aside. “My turn,” she said internally. “I’m handling this one.” She and I were by this time identical in speech and inflection.

 

‹ Prev