Becoming the Story (7 page)

But maybe just having been here, this one
time, was enough. Some people think you get a kind of immortality
by having kids. Bullshit!

Sorry. I have noticed that Dead Me cusses a
lot.

Okay, this is one of my pet peeves, so bear
with me here. I decided in college not to have kids. Babies are
super cute, but the world has enough people. I wanted to devote my
life to creative pursuits like writing.

But every time I would read a book on
biology, I would see the same irritating word repeated over and
over: “successful;” The successful organisms were the ones that
reproduced.

I am all for Charles Darwin, but that word
“successful” slaps a value judgment on a blind natural process.
According to this definition of success, Sir Isaac Newton, Emily
Dickinson, and Nikolai Tesla were unsuccessful.

After reading
The Selfish Gene
by
Richard Dawkins, I think this definition of success is all wrong.
According to him, the real winners in reproduction are the genes.
Genes only want one thing: to make copies of themselves. They do
not really care how they do it. In fact, the whole point of making
people at all is so that the genes will have a host that will fall
madly in love and send them marching out into a healthy new
host.

If the first host dies a horrible, agonizing
death afterward, that is all perfectly fine with the genes, as long
as they get to escape into a new person first. Wake up, people. Our
genes are farming us.

Richard Dawkins compares genes to viruses.
When you have a bad cold, the virus hijacks cells for the purpose
of copying itself and makes you sneeze. When you do that, you
spread the virus into the air where other people breathe it in. The
whole self-copying cycle begins again. Same with genes, except that
the genes create their own hosts, which includes you and me.

Genes are sketchy bastards. Never trust
them. If you ever see a gene coming at you, at night, in an empty
parking lot, run like hell!

In fact, I am pretty sure I know who made
the writers of the biology textbooks use the word “successful” when
it comes to reproducing: A gene made them write that. In fact, I
would not be surprised if a gene seized the pen from the writer and
wrote the whole thing itself.

If I could be really be immortal by
reproducing, I should be able to see the world through the eyes of
my far-future grandchildren. Through them, I should be able to eat
moon-rock ice cream and taste it. Through them I should be able to
skim the surface of Mars in a jetpack instead of being a dusty and
earth-bound remnant of the distant past.

But it seems silly to vent about that now.
Here I am. This really happened. The big “D.” I think I expected
more of it, but now that I am here and can see it for what it is,
it all seems very… disappointing. But not in the way you are
thinking. If I have any major complaint it is that it is not scary
enough. No pain. No irrational obsessions. No worries about what I
need to do next. Just a kind of sigh.

Still, it is hard to look back over my life
and wonder what it was all for. All of my petty jealousies, silly
compulsions, my fretting over bad hair days, and anxiety over
slights from other people, real or imagined.

I think about all the journals I kept
throughout my life, all part of my effort to make sense of the
relentless march of days. And I think about all of my stories,
conceived in great ambition or in a frenzied bid for fame or wealth
or admiration.

Would I have done anything differently if I
had truly believed this day would come? Really believed it down to
the core of me? I really cannot say. For the most part, I think I
did the best I could.

The actions that stand out gold-rimmed in my
memory are the ones where I was able to step outside my routine and
say, “What a strange and beautiful and horrible and fascinating
thing it is to be alive. Maybe I should look around. Maybe I should
enjoy this while it lasts” – not when I was rushing from one
frantic activity to the next.

Those were the times when I made the best
and most conscious decisions; the times I was most alive and most
acutely aware. Maybe that is also why I wrote in journals, to
recreate that state as often as I could, although I did not get to
write in my journal every day.

I never got to write a journal entry about
how it felt to be born because when it happened I barely knew. I
did not even know it was going to happen. It just did, and I was
stuck with the way things were.

Then, as soon as I got used to the idea of
being alive, someone told me that someday I would die. But in the
time between those two points, I had options. I had no say over my
destination, but I could create my own path. And my path has
brought me to this point where I have decided to take what I have
sought, and fought for, and longed for: the final word.

Maybe that is the real meaning of
everything: that in all the confusion, in all of my comings and
goings, in all of my stumbling progress, I was able to have some
say in how it all happened.

Enough ruminating. This Lite Brite pattern
is dimming fast. I feel like I should say goodbye. Adios. Au
revoir.

But those words are too boring, too
expected, too dull. I would rather select my own. So, what do I
want to be my final word? I have always loved the onomatopoeia
words like “moo” or “crash,” but those will not do.

If I am going to get a one-up on death, I
need to be more thoughtful. Maybe a longer word would be better,
like “sussuration,” meaning a soft murmur or a whisper. But no, it
is not quite right. An idea is whispering to me, like a breeze, a
sussuration that is getting louder.

Hey, I think I have it, the perfect final
word, eloquently succinct, unforgettable, and deeply felt. Hey
death: Thpppffffff!

Yeah, that one. I really like that one.

26 year old Katy stared at the “Pythagorean
playground” with mistrust, a yard full of soaring geometrical
structures leading to cube of a clinic. This was not like any
psychiatric office she had ever seen. But then, that was the whole
point. 

Normal psychiatrists had failed her, had
given her sedatives and asked her questions, which were pointless
since she had already answered those questions to herself many
times.

She needed therapy that could tell her
things she did not already know. She had been told that this was
the place for that. Here, she was told, therapy depended on
learning. What she would be learning, she did not know.

The Rational Therapy Institute was secretive
and reputed to be “experimental.” Patients could only enroll by
invitation, though visitors, attracted by the unusual park, could
explore the exterior grounds and take photographs.

The secrecy, some conjectured, was a
publicity stunt. The patients who had received treatment from the
institute had been forced to sign a contract promising not to
divulge the type of treatment they had received.

The media had a field day. The institute
stopped cars with its towering geometrical structures, its pyramids
and orbs of blue and red marble. Katy followed the stone path to
the rectangular door, went up a short set of stairs, latched onto a
circular door knocker, and banged.

A tall man opened the door, his hair
steel-gray, sideburns framing his face severely next to an
unsmiling face. “Ah. I see that you came,” his voice was deep and
flat, but his eyes were alert and appraising.

She had expected “hello” or “how are you
doing?” and had been prepared to answer accordingly. But what was
the answer to the non-question, “you came,” a simple and obvious
observation? She opened her mouth but nothing would come out.

She stepped inside, expecting soft lighting
and antique furniture to match the door knocker. Instead she found
an almost empty foyer with severe white walls and white marble
floors. The only furnishing was a small wooden table next to the
door stacked with papers. A mirror graced the wall across from her.
The lighting above it was harsh and revealed her every flaw. She
turned away.

“If you will come with me,” the man said.
The flatness of his tone unnerved Katy. The office at her previous
psychiatrist had been lushly furnished with puffy carpeting, soft
lighting from lamps, and bucolic landscape paintings.

But here, nothing had been done to comfort
patients. No flowers adorned the foyer, no magazines were displayed
on a coffee table, and her host reminded her of Dracula, except not
as charming. Still, Katy could do nothing else but follow.

Her sandals thumped self-consciously against
the hard surface of the marble floor. The marble tiles made Katy
anxious because tiles had lines and Katy did not like lines on
floors. She tried to never to step on any of them. She could not
explain why. But then, that was part of why she was here.

She expected to be taken to a waiting room,
doctors always had waiting rooms, but instead she was ushered
directly into a spare office with straight hard-back chairs, a
desk, and sedate bookshelves made of plain, unfinished wood next to
a whiteboard. The nameplate on the desk said “Maxmillion Elmsworth,
Logical Practitioner.”

There was a rustling sound from an adjoining
room. She tried peaking to see who it was, but before she could, a
man emerged, wearing the same kind of suit men wore at funerals. He
was younger than her original host. His hair was darker, a shoe
polish black. “Oh good,” he said. “You came.”

The same mild surprise, the same unwelcoming
greeting. This was like no medical facility she had ever visited.
Where was the friendly “customer service” she had been taught to
expect? She wondered if there was a manager she could complain
to.

As if reading her thoughts, the man forced
his lips to smile, though she could see little warmth in his
eyes.

“Um, hi,” she said. “Good to meet you.” She
held out her hand. The doctor only stared at it in mild amusement
until, suddenly self-conscious, she settled into one of the hard
wooden chairs.

Standing above her, he peered at her through
a set of wire-rimmed spectacles. “So tell me,” he said. “What
brings you here to Rational Therapy, Inc.?”

She stared at him. Though Katy remained
wary, the question had put her on more comfortable, familiar
ground. The truth was hard to say, but Katy made herself say it. “I
am neurotic and afraid of life,” she said. “I am afraid of cars,
water, and lines on the floor. Ever since my divorce, I have been
afraid to get up in the mornings, afraid to do anything.

“I have abandonment issues from when I was
little and my father left my mom, and my own divorce brought all
the bad feelings back. Since then, I have destroyed all of my
relationships. My friends said I was too needy and started avoiding
me. And when I step outside myself and see what I am doing, I can
see how awful I am acting, but I am unable to talk myself out of
it.”

“I see,” the man said, “Perhaps I can help
you.”

“Please,” Katy sighed. “I have tried
everything, the anti-depressants and tranquilizers, the talk
therapy, the group therapy, the self-therapy. I even read Freud,
who is supposed to be the expert on this kind of thing.” She
unsnapped her purse. Hoping to impress, she withdrew a dog-eared
copy of 
The Psychopathology of Everyday Life
 and
showed it to the doctor.

When she held the paperback out for
inspection, the doctor stared at the book. Then he took it by one
corner and dangled it as if holding a dirty sock. Sensing reproach,
she reached for the book, but he made no move to return it.
Instead he opened the book and tore out the first page, then
another.

“Hey, what are you doing?” she said. “I paid
money for that.”

“Treating it as the rubbish it is.” He
walked over to the paper shredder on his desk and fed the page into
a slot. The machine whirred on reception and clacked. It was the
loudest paper shredder Katy had ever heard.

Katy had stood without realizing it and
stared at the “doctor” in frozen horror. “What the hell?”

With relish, the doctor tore out a new page
and fed it into the slot, which clacked some more.

“You just 
ruined
 my book.
You…you owe me another.”

“I assure you,” the doctor said. “I am doing
you the biggest favor of your life.”

“Oh yeah? How do you figure that?”

He tossed the rest of the book into a wire
waste basket next to his desk. Then he sighed, pulled a chair from
behind his desk, and moved it forward to face Katy.

He sat down and studied her. “Despite its
claims, the history of psychiatry has been mostly the history of
human denial.

“Our society has done a terrible job of
treating mental illness: the talk therapies that encourage
emotional excess; the pills to alter unpleasant moods; the
self-help books that promise easy answers. One day people will look
back on all of it and think of our current methods the way we now
think of bloodletting to cure disease.

“The goal of modern psychiatry is, itself,
misguided. It seeks to create well-functioning and efficient
citizens who can hold a job, raise their kids, and fuel the economy
until they die. Our goal is different: to help you discover what
is 
true
. Psychiatry purports to do just that, but it
has been lacking an essential tool.

“The answer to mental illness has been
staring us in the face all along, but most of us have been unable –
or unwilling – to see it because learning it takes effort and
dedication.”

“Well? Go ahead, tell me,” Katy said. “What
is the answer? What do I need to learn?” She leaned forward,
propped her elbows on her knees, and stared beseechingly at him. “I
will try anything.”

The doctor stood, moved toward a bookshelf,
and selected a hardback before returning to Katy and handed the
book to her. She took it and scanned the title:
Principia
Mathematica
. “Math?” She shook her head. “Why are you giving me
this?”