Innocence Revisited

by Cathy Kezelman

  My children’s demands continued unabated and as much as I resented having to try meeting them at the time, the duty of it forced me to keep functioning. On okay days I could do the minimum needed to keep the household operating, but on bad days I couldn’t even manage that.

  I devised a rigid schedule in an attempt to stay afloat.

  Step one. Get out of bed and into a piping hot shower.

  The heat of the shower would help jolt me awake.

  Step two. Dress in a daze.

  I would throw on the same pair of jeans and black T-shirt day in, day out. Join my family at breakfast only a couple of minutes before we had to leave. I couldn’t stomach any more chitchat than that.

  Step three. Crawl into the driver’s seat.

  I would listen to my kids chattering away. ‘Have a good day. See you this afternoon!’ I would offer with contrived enthusiasm as they jumped out of the car.

  Step four. Drive straight home to bed.

  I would drive home via the quickest route and hop back into bed, pull up the covers and languish alone until three o’clock came.

  Step five. Get up.

  I would force myself back up and out. Pick the kids up, drive home and spend the afternoon trying to meet their demands. I couldn’t; I didn’t have the capacity to look after myself let alone anyone else.

  Step six. Spend an interminable evening.

  I would count the minutes until my children went to bed. Sometimes I’d retire before my youngest had brushed her teeth.

  Step seven. Get into bed

  I was invariably desperate to get into bed and yet when I did, I could rarely fall asleep. I would toss and turn until morning. My husband would lie snoring beside me as I lay awake with my thoughts. I didn’t share the restlessness of my nights with him, not then.

  I was a bundle of nerves and life had become one big chore. The one positive in my days was seeing Kate. Yet the benefit of my visits would only last for the duration of the session; once I left her office, any connection I’d felt would vanish. I became obsessed with seeing Kate and began a countdown the moment I awoke. I would imagine walking down Kate’s drive, pressing her buzzer, hearing her say ‘hello’ and walking into her waiting room. I longed to feel safe, if only for fifty minutes in the day.

  On the days on which I didn’t have a session, I would call Kate’s number frequently. I didn’t necessarily want to talk to her. I just wanted to hear her voice, to know that she cared, that someone did. Sometimes when Kate answered, I would hang up, not knowing what to say. Sometimes just listening to her message would be sufficient to contain my panic. Occasionally I would pluck up the courage to leave a message. And when I did I would wait anxiously for her return call, as though she had no patient to tend to but me. And when she didn’t call straight back I would wonder why she was ignoring me and soon panic - perhaps she might think that I was a bother, or worse still, maybe she might know that I was.

  When Kate finally did ring back I often still didn’t know what to say. I had just needed to know that she was there. Kate was the only person I called during that time in my life. I shunned most conversations otherwise, and rarely initiated any contact. Unless someone rang me, I didn’t speak with anyone outside of my family and my therapist for months.

  I had changed and people didn’t know what to make of me. All my life I’d been independent and now, I was needy but still shunning help. My medical colleagues in particular grappled with my decision to leave medicine. They didn’t know what to make of my affliction.

  I felt hurt by some friends. By those who I had expected would be there for me, but weren’t. By others who made no attempt to understand what was going on, or who vanished as soon as things got tough. The fact is that not everyone is capable of giving to others in that way. Besides, people are busy with their own lives. Personal dramas crop up and when they do, most people quickly forget the dramas of others, me included. At the time though, I felt abandoned and those feelings made me withdraw further from my friends and worse still; my family. Being so disconnected was dangerous. Thankfully Kate realised this and worked hard to keep me linked to them, even when they weren’t by my side.

  ‘Cathy, I want you to walk into your children’s bedrooms. Look around, inspect their things, feel the mood, experience the distinctive odours and think about what makes each of your children unique.’

  ‘Cathy, get out the photo albums and go through them. Look at your family and what you’ve created. Remember them and keep in touch.’

  I did follow Kate’s instructions, some of the time. But when I was at my neediest I couldn’t comply. I was drawn to my isolation like an alcoholic to the bottle. Being alone was a familiar space, but not a constructive one and I needed to be drawn out of it regularly. Kate urged me to make arrangements to get out of the house; to join a gym and get some exercise, or to take the dog for a walk. I tried. Some days I could, but on others I simply couldn’t and often those were the days on which I was at my lowest ebb and needed to most.

  Weeks passed with little to differentiate one day from the next. I would venture out only when it was absolutely necessary, but such trips came at a cost. With my first panic attack I was convinced that I was dying, despite medical training that knew better. Subsequent attacks felt no less debilitating. Each time I felt like I was going to die.

  Where a trip to the corner shop was nerve-wracking, supermarkets held a deadly threat. Just walking through the doors of the local Coles would make my heart race.

  ‘Help me! Please help me! Let me out!’ As the air closed in I would gasp my last.

  ‘Quick the exit! Leave the stupid trolley. Okay, come on. You’re okay. Steady now, slow deep breaths. Focus, breathe. You’re okay. You’re okay.’

  I was painfully aware of the risks of shopping but soon other tasks triggered panic attacks as well - a family picnic, a drive down a certain road. Eventually I became completely immobilised and the consequences were dire: our once well piled cupboards emptied out; the ‘to do’ pile of washing climbed to the ceiling; ironing became a relic of the past; and one meal after another went uncooked.

  Despite seeing Kate regularly my mood remained chaotic. She suggested I consult a psychiatrist colleague. I didn’t want to go; I didn’t like doctors, especially shrinks, but Kate insisted. Seeing him wasn’t near as bad as expected and I saw him a few times. He prescribed some antidepressants and monitored their effects. I took them begrudgingly; I still didn’t want to admit that I was sick or needy.

  The medication worked at first; however, once my mood went into free fall, nothing helped. By then my days had me trapped within a personal cave devoid of light, hope or connection, within a space full of nothingness. That nothingness inhabited me, making the walls of my cave close in a little more every day. At times I would search for a life beyond the darkness before surrendering to my panic, which in turn brought despair. I felt as though I deserved to be alone. As my isolation became a compulsion, I rotted within the deafening silence of my entrapment. For months, nothing but a fraying thread via Kate kept me connected to my family, and via my family, to the world at large.

  The only real relief I felt was when, for 50 minutes most days, I sat in an armchair in suburban Sydney, in the office of a therapist who gave me her all. But the moment I walked outside, the succour I had felt, minutes earlier, would dissolve. And on the five minute drive back home, I would sever my connection with Kate and quit my friends and family altogether. And when it all got too much to bear I would fantasise about ways to put an end to my misery.

  I toyed with the idea of suicide and soon crystallised my plan. The Gap is a convenient ten minutes’ drive from my home. Although it’s a notorious suicide destination for locals, American and Japanese tourists come there to sight-see. Tourist buses regularly disgorge camera-happy herds, while those contemplating suicide visit alone. I made regular pilgrimages to The Gap, in secret and alone.

  I’d frequented The Gap for some weeks before mentioning it to
Kate. She knew how depressed I was and may well have suspected that I was suicidal; however, I didn’t trust her enough to share my suicidal thoughts with her right away. Regardless, Kate gave me her unbridled support, urging me to call her at any time, even on weekends and nights. She saw me three, four and sometimes five times a week and her generous availability enabled me to trust her more.

  Gradually, ever so gradually, I began to drop hints about my suicidal thoughts. I didn’t reveal much at first and certainly didn’t talk about my visits to The Gap. When I gingerly flagged a couple of my darker thoughts, she responded calmly and without judgment, always working to strengthen my connections with constant reminders about the wonderful family I’d created, of the husband who loved me and of children who needed their mother.

  ‘Cathy, get some photos and put them in your wallet, photos of your family so that they’re always with you even when they’re not there in person.’

  Gradually over time I told Kate about some of my visits to The Gap.

  ‘Cathy, I want you to keep photos with you in the car, so that you can get them out to remind you of what you have in the present.’

  When I first disclosed my plans I felt some relief. Finally another human being knew how desperate I was feeling. However the moment I left Kate’s consulting room or we hung up the phone, I felt alone again. Kate was my lifeline, but only when I allowed her to enter my world.

  I severed all other emotional ties including those with my husband. My thinking had become so muddled I’d convinced myself that I shouldn’t worry him with my suicidal thoughts. As if anything would be more of a worry than losing one’s wife to suicide! Another part of me didn’t want to tell him anything, knowing that he would try to stop me. At that point I still needed to know that I had a way out of my pain should I need it.

  For weeks I was subsumed by suicidal thoughts. The initial relief I had felt on revealing my thoughts hadn’t lasted. Then came the day on which the pain had become so intolerable that I was driven past the point of desperation. Thank goodness that I’d followed Kate’s instructions and had my photos with me. Kate had achieved her goal and kept my family close by me under all circumstances.

  After replacing Angie’s photo I took another one out. It was of one of my daughters. I trailed my fingers around her mouth, circling them down and across her chin. I stroked her hair and drank in the softness of her lips and the fullness of her cheeks. In my head I wandered into her bedroom and picked up her hairbrush off her dresser. I rearranged the knick-knacks on her shelf. Connecting with her in that way helped breathe back in a little will to live. Feeling calmer I slipped her photo back to join the others.

  I traced the vibrancy of each of my children in similar vein: feeling, remembering, pausing and reminiscing. As each of my children rose out of their photos and their radiance embraced me, their zest for life replenished me. I thought of my family, of the four children we had created and our surrogate child, living overseas. I could not imagine any of my children feeling the ice.

  And so it was that on that occasion I stepped back from the white painted fence, with the wire coming away, retraced my steps down the path from my ‘spot’ and drove back home to my family.

  chapter 5

  A tangle of white silk is growing up the walls of the coffin. A body lies nestled inside. I can’t see the body properly, so I take a step forward. It’s not Angie. It looks like my father; except he’s grey.

  My first flashback scared the living daylights out of me. I didn’t know it was a flashback; I didn’t know what flashbacks were. Having always felt in control of my mind, I now felt as though my mind had taken control of me. I panicked as I was catapulted into a space which was familiar, and yet not, and into a time and place in which I appeared to be present, and yet wasn’t. I was subjected to sights and sounds, sensations and feelings which I couldn’t explain.

  The flashback wasn’t a once-off. They kept coming. One minute I’d be minding my own business and in the next, my equilibrium would be shattered. Fragments of memories from past eras would bombard me with a variety of scenes rumbling in and out of my consciousness, relegating what I knew as the present to the background. One minute I’d be fourteen and the next, forty-five before reverting to fourteen again… and then, eight. What was happening to me? Perhaps the pressure had finally got to me. Perhaps I really was going mad.

  As the scenes gained momentum, I described them to Kate. I was worried about what she’d say, but I shouldn’t have been concerned. Kate had heard of such phenomena and she labelled them for me; ‘flashbacks’. Perhaps I wasn’t going crazy after all.

  I searched the internet and found numerous articles documenting the experiences of soldiers who had suffered war trauma and subsequently ‘forgotten’ or ‘repressed’ any memory of those horrors. My reading described the process by which traumatic memories could return, even decades later, as flashbacks. The flashbacks described in the articles sounded just like the ones I’d been having. Further articles explained that serious trauma during one’s childhood could also cause ‘repressed memories’. I started to wonder about my childhood and what had actually happened to me.

  Soon a steady stream of flashbacks was sweeping me away in sights, sounds, emotions and sensations from long ago. Sometimes the flashbacks formed a core around which further memories returned. In particular I was transported back to the year my father died and found myself reliving key events. The sum total of those memories helped me construct a narrative of those times which included memories of my schoolgirl days but the events of one pivotal day and the days subsequent to it were featured time and again in a kaleidoscope of detail.

  Brisbane Grammar offered an academically elite education. In the Queensland of the sixties, it was the best non-denominational education that money could buy. My intellectually ambitious parents were thrilled to be able to send Simon and me there. Not that they could afford the fees, our family wasn’t well off; our fees were reduced because my father had been a master at the boys’ school and my mother was language mistress at the girls’ school across the way.

  In 1968, my second year at Grammar and Simon’s last, I was in year nine. I was fourteen years’ old and a faceless member of the black stockinged-gloved-boater-hatted tunic brigade. Conformity and discipline were the guiding principles of Brisbane Grammar and I, forever the ‘good’ girl, towed the line.

  I was a well filled-out adolescent with a no-nonsense sugar basin haircut and a face I would rather hide. Puberty was not kind to me; nor was I kind to myself. I had a sweet tooth and an indulgent appetite. Most afternoons after school, I would hoe into half a loaf of bread with lashings of cheese. Had I not been obsessed with tennis, my girth would have far been more expansive than it was. Mercifully, I played tennis daily - at home and at school. My position on the tennis team was a gift which guaranteed regular exercise while securing for me a crucial away-from-home pass for a large part of most weekends.

  I was a tomboy. I hated dressing up and shunned make-up, jewellery or any form of adornment. I didn’t display any of the usual adolescent enthusiasm for clothes; in fact I did what I could to not be noticed. Shorts and a T-shirt constituted my standard garb and I only succumbed to wearing a skirt when it was for tennis, and compulsory.

  October 1, 1968

  A few minutes after recess the headmistress’s secretary intrudes into our science class. I jump as she addresses me, ‘Cathy, go get your bag and come with me, will you?’

  ‘It must be something serious!’ I think to myself devastated at the thought of being in trouble. ‘Even the naughty kids don’t have to take their bags with them when they get a detention.’ I muse. I can’t imagine what I’ve done wrong. I never risk doing anything wrong at school.

  The secretary leads me to the benches out the front of the school.

  ‘Why don’t you sit here, Cathy dear? Your mother won’t be long.’

  ‘My mother? What could possibly make my mother leave class in the middle of a school d
ay?’ I wonder.

  I try to sit patiently but the butterflies in my stomach are making me nervous; I startle every time the bell sounds a change of period. With each lesson change, different girls scurry past. The occasional friend calls out to me, ‘Hey Cathy, what’s up? What are you doing out here? Maybe you’re in trouble!’ Maybe I am. Another half hour and I am still waiting for my mother. Perhaps the secretary has it wrong.

  The bell tolls announcing lunchtime.

  I reach into my schoolbag and take out my vegemite sandwich, finishing all bar the crust, and grab my granny smith. We always had granny smiths at our house. My mother preferred them. I chomp through it, toss the core in the bin and wait some more. It is well into lunchtime before my mother emerges from the car park. Mrs Carpenter, the headmistress has her arm around her.

  This is a surprise; there has been no love lost between my mother and Mrs Carpenter.

  My mother is clutching a scrunched up handkerchief. She hadn’t shown any sign of a cold that morning.

  My mother and Mrs Carpenter exchange a few words. Mrs Carpenter turns around and walks back towards her office. My mother stops an inch from my face and announces; ‘Your father is dead.’ Her breath scorches my cheeks.

  The fifteen-minute bell tolls. It is time to go and play.

  ‘Your father’s dead. I’ve just been to see him,’ my mother’s words toll.

  My mother isn’t making any sense. My father wasn’t dead. He couldn’t have been. I look up into her eyes, searching for a sign. She looks away.

  ‘What happened?’ I ask the back of her head.

  ‘Oh, some sort of attack.’

  My mother points to my bag. ‘Come on, Baba. Enough questions! Get your things. We’re going home.’

  ‘Hey Cathy, aren’t you playing with us today?’ A couple of my friends ask as I saunter past their game of elastics.