Get Me Out of Here (22 page)

“But it's the past, Rachel. You got through it somehow, some way, intact. You aren't a drunk anymore. You're off the drugs. You've been faithful to your husband since the day you married him.

“Sure,” he said, “it's natural to regret some of your mistakes. But it's pointless to destroy yourself with them because you honestly, sincerely couldn't help them. You raised yourself, and you didn't do a perfect job. But you should never have had to do it in the first place. It's time to forgive yourself, Rachel. Your life is ahead of you. You can get what you need here, what you've always needed, and you can go on to have the peace of mind you never believed possible. This is your second chance. This is what counts from now on.”

At session's end I was completely drained, torn between utter exhaustion and fresh bursts of anger and pain as I revisited the past and saw what it had truly been like. As I mourned the loss of my childhood and what I thought it had been, I felt anguish over all the opportunities I'd missed.

It was an unseasonably damp and overcast November. I had no interest in dinner, either cooking or eating it. I was still consumed with the discoveries of the day's session.

Opening the damper to the fireplace, I decided it was time for the first fire of the year. I set up the logs and lit the Duraflame starter block, sitting back, feeling nothing but hollow emptiness as it began to flicker and then catch on. The burning fire and the dancing flames entranced me. Fire. The great power of warmth. The great power of destruction.

Sufficiently warmed, I decided to put away the essays and pictures I'd brought to session. I wondered why I was even keeping them.

Then I spotted another box with my mother's handwriting scrawled across it:
Rachel—Awards
.

Awards. That's all I was good for to them, I thought bitterly. The tokens of honor meant nothing to me now. Absolutely nothing. If anything, they were reminders of the bitter charade my childhood had been.

Opening the box, I looked through the mountains of blue, red, and white ribbons, the many certificates bearing my name. Sports play-offs. Math competitions. Foreign language contests. My high school diploma and National Honor Society certificates. A blur of accomplishments that were now worthless pieces of paper. Trash. As I dug my hands through the contents, I was overwhelmed with the desire to crumple them up and throw them away.

Looking at the fire in the hearth, I was seized by an idea. One by one I crumpled up the awards and threw them on the fire, a bittersweet sensation of remorse and revenge filling me as I watched them blacken and turn to ash in the roaring flames. The words were melted into oblivion as the fire consumed them. Ribbon after ribbon after ribbon. Certificate after certificate. My high school diploma. All up in flames.

I went into the basement to grab some more and burned them as well.

I was taking my college diploma off the wall and was in the process of removing it from its wooden frame when Tim walked in. He had been out in the garage, tinkering with the transmission of our car.

His face paled as he looked into the fire and saw the remnants of the ribbons and burning parchment.

“What in the hell are you doing, Rachel?” he asked, shocked.

“Burning this shit,” I mumbled angrily. “All of it. It's all shit!”

Tim ran to the fire just in time to see the flames swallow my high school diploma.

“My God! That's your diploma.” He turned to me, then noticed my college diploma in my hand, already removed from its frame, ready to be next.

“No! I'm not going to let you burn your college diploma too. No way! You've lost it, Rachel. You need to call the doctor. Something. Anything! But there's no way in hell I'm letting you burn your degree.”

“Why?” I pouted. “It doesn't mean anything. Doesn't mean shit! Nothing!”

“Look, Rachel,” he said firmly, grabbing the hand that held the parchment, physically restraining me from moving toward the fire. “I don't know what happened in your session today. I don't know what this is all about, or what's going on in your head right now. But you are out of control. Do you realize what you've just done? You've just burned your accomplishments away. You're going to regret this.”

“No, I'm not,” I lied. In reality I was already beginning to regret it. But the deed had been done. There was no way to take it back now.

“Give me the diploma, Rachel,” he insisted, still clutching my arm.

“No!” I sounded like a three-year-old.

“Give it to me
now
.”

Finally I did.

“I'm going to hide this, maybe take it to the office, until you get your shit together,” he said, irritated, and left the room.

Why was he so mad? This wasn't his shit; it was my shit! I earned it. I can burn it. God, what have I done? What came over me?

Tim was right. It was time to call the doctor.

“Is this an emergency?” The person at the other end of the phone was female.

God, I hated that question. It made me feel like I was really crazy. Maybe I
was
really crazy.

“Yes,” I answered in a small voice.

“The doctor should call you back shortly. If you don't hear from him in fifteen minutes, you can call us back.”

It was a ritual I'd come to know all too well. Locked up in the bedroom as Tim handled the kids' dinner downstairs. A pack of cigarettes, a glass of ice water. I'd done this too many times. Waiting desperately for the phone to ring, I kept my hand resting on the receiver. Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.

I picked it up on the second ring.

“Hello, this is Dr. Padgett.”

“Umm, yes, Dr. Padgett?”

Silence.

“Are you there?”

“Yes.”

“Umm,” I struggled for an explanation. Why had I called?

“I just lost control. I did something really, really stupid. Destructive.”

“What happened?”

“Well, I was looking through a bunch of awards. Ribbons, certificates, that kind of stuff. And I got pretty upset. You know, about all of it, what we talked about today. And, umm, I threw them in the fire and burned them.”

“You
what
?” he asked.

“I burned the ribbons and my diploma in the fire.”

“Why on earth did you do that?”

He wasn't making this easy. Surely he had to understand. He knew how meaningless those awards had seemed in light of everything.

“I was angry. They didn't mean anything to me. They don't. They're just worthless pieces of shit. Like me.”

Come on, Dr. Padgett. Comfort me. You know how awful I feel about this
.

“That was a completely self-destructive thing to do,” he reprimanded me sternly. “I can't believe you would do something like that. It's plain stupid, Rachel. Absolutely pointless and self-destructive.”

“I know that,” I whined. “Don't you think I know that? Don't you think I regret it? You know how upset I was. It took me over, just took me over!”

“There's no point in calling me now, Rachel. I can't help you now. What's done is done, and you're going to have to live with the consequences.”

This stunned me into pleading tears. “But can't we talk about it, Dr. Padgett? Please. I'm very upset. My whole childhood doesn't mean anything to me anymore. Can't you help me?”

“The time to call,” he said firmly, “was
before
you chose to burn everything. Then I could have helped. But there's nothing I can do once you've acted out. If calling me when you're really upset before you go off and do something can stop you from doing it, fine. But I'm not going to continue this conversation after you've already done it.”

“Is that all you have to say?” I shrieked into the phone, trying to buy more time, trying to eke out some words of comfort. “Can't we talk about this some more?”

“We can talk about it in session. Good-bye, Rachel.”

“But Dr. Padgett!”

“Good-bye, Rachel.”

I did not say good-bye, slamming the receiver down instead. Why had I called him anyway? I felt worse than I had before. I sat on the bed, staring at the phone, consumed with regret. Finally I went back downstairs to the living room. The fire had subsided, and the charred remains of the awards were scattered on the hearth. I rushed to the bathroom and proceeded to vomit.

I slept in late the next morning. By the time I went down the stairs, Jeffrey was already up, a mountain of Legos strewn across the living room floor as he fastidiously assembled an elaborate fort. Hearing my footsteps, he turned around.

“Hi, Mommy!” He smiled at me, then wrinkled his nose. “Something's smelly in here.”

Inhaling deeply, I discovered he was right. One of the drawbacks of a fireplace was the pervasive smell of logs burned to ash. It was delightful coming out of chimneys at the onset of winter but a bit rancid when confined to an enclosed room.

Jeffrey, of course, was accustomed to the usual fireplace smells. But this odor was more pungent. As I approached the hearth, the noxious fumes intensified.

Now that the logs had burned completely to ash, my impulsive act of destruction was far more apparent. The charred remains of the parchment were like blackened dried leaves resting on top of each other. The ribbons, made out of something synthetic, had melted into tarlike globs. A few hints of blue and red remained, traces of lettering here and there. A half-burned piece of fabric with the words “first place” stared at me with tarnished gold letters.

Before Jeffrey could take a closer look and start asking questions, I found a trash bag and started scooping up years' worth of mementos—destroyed forever by my own impulsive childishness.

Afterward, clutching a cup of fresh coffee as Jeffrey continued building his fort, I asked myself why?
Why had I done this?

Had it somehow inflicted revenge on my parents? No. The stuff had been in a box in my basement. How would they have ever known?

Had these awards really been meaningless to me? No. I had to admit that they had never lost their meaning, not even when I was frantically burning them.

I knew deep down the act had not been as uncontrolled as I'd made it appear. Selecting what I would destroy had not been an entirely random process. I had burned a number of blue ribbons from intramural events and activities that had not meant as much to me. But I had spared the ones from the championships, the seventh-grade free-throw contest, the science fair—the ones that had the most sentimental value. As I had grabbed the fistfuls of ribbons, frenzied though I was, I'd still had the presence of mind to scrutinize them.

I'd burned my high school diploma, but I'd spared my college parchment. I was relieved when Tim came in and commanded me to hand it over, but I never would have burned it. I was more interested in Tim seeing that I was about to do it than actually doing it.

The answers were ugly—but nonetheless true. Right out of the borderline personality disorder books. Manipulation. Testing the limits. I had not been content to merely share my sorrows in the confines of a session. Dr. Padgett had given me some support in session, but it hadn't been enough. I'd left greedy for more. Burning those awards had been sheer craziness. And I'd known that even while doing it.

Tim, of course, had reacted according to my expectations. He'd been visibly consumed with worry about me. He'd demanded that I call the doctor, which was exactly what I'd wanted to do.

But Tim's reaction was of secondary importance. The self-destruction was somewhat symbolic, contrived to get the reaction of the one who was now, unquestionably, the center of my life—Dr. Padgett.

Much to his credit, Dr. Padgett had known this the minute I'd called. So he had deliberately avoided the reactions I had most fervently desired to elicit: raw anger, pity, overwrought worry, or words of comfort. He decided not to discuss it on the phone at all. We both knew my act was a direct result of manipulative instinct. Whether or not I would ever be able to lose this consuming desire to manipulate to get what I needed was something I didn't know.

My hidden secrets were not well concealed. The psychological profile had been right, as had the books on BPD. I
was
manipulative, desperately clinging, and prone to tantrums, explosiveness, and frantic acts of desperation when I did not feel the intimacy connection was strong enough. The tough chick loner act of self-reliance was a complete facade and had always been so.

The facade had been my means to conceal those secrets from anyone else, to conceal them from myself. But it wasn't working with Dr. Padgett, as it had never fully worked for me.

I now forced myself to recognize that fact.

Other self-disclosures were easy fare compared to the one I knew I had to reveal in the next session—the confession, not of my action, but of the motives beneath it. For once I entered a session saying precisely what I had planned to say, what I had rehearsed over and over in my head—that I hadn't been completely out of control. That my absurd act had been contrived. And that, most critical of all, I had done it with the specific intention of manipulating Dr. Padgett's response.

For a man who had withstood all my insults, had countless evenings interrupted by my emergency calls—my attempts to stretch the limits and extend therapy beyond the three weekly sessions—this would have been an opportune time to say, “I told you so.”

Yet I now understood both him and the context of our relationship well enough that I didn't expect such a response, as warranted as it might be. And true to form, I did not get it.

Nor did I expect profuse words of praise for my willingness to admit that I was desperately ashamed. Not only did I not deserve praise, but I was beginning to realize what would and would not be of benefit to me. A reward for revealing the motives behind the act could be construed as indirectly condoning and encouraging it. So I was not disappointed when I did not receive that either.

Instead the blank screen was firmly in place as Dr. Padgett simply listened and let me develop my own perceptions and conclusions.

“How can you put up with me?” I asked him sincerely. “You know as well as I do that I've been trying to manipulate you, slinging everything at you that I can muster just to get a reaction. How come you tolerate it? How can you?”

I detected the trace of a smile.

“This,” he said, “is why the therapy relationship is structured differently than any other. This is why the limits are in place, why we only meet for three hours a week, and why I don't conduct therapy over the phone. It's not a miracle that I can do this. I can get angry, disgusted, hurt, and insulted just like anyone else.

“But I'm not with you twenty-four hours a day. I'm not distracted by anything else when I'm in here, and believe me, if I ever was, if something were going on in my life that would absorb me so that I couldn't fully focus on you, I'd cancel the session. This isn't like any other adult relationship. I'm here to meet
your
needs. Within these limits I can do that without getting hurt. You can irritate me sometimes. I'll grant you that. But that's about as far as it goes.”

An image popped in my head that brought a smile to my face.

Dr. Padgett's own grin broadened, “What are you thinking about?”

“Oh, I dunno. I can just see you right now, in line on the last day of the month at the motor vehicle bureau. Waiting for half an hour until you finally get to the counter and then some bureaucrat with an attitude tells you that you're in the wrong line and didn't bring the right stuff. And you getting pretty miffed about it and telling her a word or two about what you think of the state bureaucracy and the people who work for it.”

He chuckled. Obviously I was not the only one in that office who'd ever been ticked off by the motor vehicle bureau.

Laughter and smiles. They'd been absent from my life for such a long time now. It was a part of me that Dr. Padgett hadn't had much chance to see. I missed being able to laugh and smile. I sat back, watching his grin, drinking it in, observing every detail of it, every nuance.

“What are you thinking now?” he asked, still smiling.

“Just that you have a great smile,” I answered.

“So do you, Rachel. I like to see it.”

I blushed but beamed with satisfaction.

“You know,” he commented, “therapy can be very hard work. Very intense and painful. But that's not all it has to be. Sometimes it can be enjoyable.”

“But I'm supposed to be here because I'm sick, aren't I? I'm supposed to be working on things, getting into issues. This is supposed to be serious.” My smile faded, and soon I was intensely introspective, my brow furrowed once again.

Dr. Padgett's smile faded as well, an act of courtesy and respect for my feelings as much as anything else, I suspected.

“I have to tell you something else,” I finally spoke. “I know I'm supposed to be here to try to get better, to get healthier. But sometimes I'm scared to tell you when I feel good. Sometimes I even look back to the days when I was in the hospital going crazy with nostalgia or something. Like I wish I was that sick again. Pretty crazy, isn't it?”

All sorts of secrets were flowing out today.

“You're afraid that if you start to get better, aren't so sick, somehow I'll care about you less?”

“Yes,” I nodded. “It doesn't make any sense at all. I really, honestly want to do my best here. I want to make as much progress as I can. I want to do what I'm supposed to do. I want to be your best patient, your prized pupil. I want to do right.”

“You want to be my best patient or my worst patient. Because you're afraid that if you're anything in the middle, I might not care about you as much.”

“Yeah, I'm afraid some new patient will come along.” I was interrupted by the phone, an exceptionally rare event. Dr. Padgett always held his calls during sessions. I couldn't recall an interruption before.

“Could you hold that thought, please?” He smiled and went to his desk to pick up the phone. “Hmm … Uh-huh … Uh-huh … Well, you're going to have to tell her to get down from there…. Call security; use the restraints. Uh-huh … Go ahead and increase the dosage to fifty milligrams. I'll be by later for rounds…. Okay…. Good-bye.”

He hung up the phone and went back to his chair.

“So,” he said, “you were saying …”

“I have nothing to say!” I shot him an icy stare.

God, how juvenile. You're manipulating him again. You know he has other patients. You know he's the medical director of the psych ward
.

Still I couldn't go back to the point I'd been at just a few minutes ago. I felt abandoned and betrayed. Undoubtedly he'd been discussing another crazy in the psych ward, someone who was just like what I used to be. Once upon a time I'd been on the critical list. Now I was second priority. Session-interruptus.

I had a pretty clear notion of what had gone on. But I asked the question I knew damned well he wouldn't answer anyway.

“Who was that?” I asked, the scowl of a jealous lover on my face.

“You know I can't talk to you about other patients.”

“Why not?” I insisted, unwilling to back down. “If it's important enough to interrupt my session, then I have a right to know.”

“You don't have a right to know,” he said, slightly exasperated. “You're blowing this out of proportion. I took a short call, and now I'm back. You know I rarely ever do this.”

“You're thinking about her, aren't you?” I pouted. “You care about her more than me, don't you? Maybe you'd care if I went home and swallowed a whole bottle of Xanax, huh? Maybe you'd care if I somehow killed myself, and you had to go to my funeral, and it was too late!”

Get down on your knees, damnit, and apologize! Tell me how much you care about me. Tell me you care about me more than her, more than any of your patients
.

As always, he wasn't playing the game.

“I took a phone call, Rachel,” he said firmly. “That's all I did. You're making more out of this than there is, and you know it as well as I do. I can understand that it's upsetting to you, but you are blowing it way out of proportion. Anything I'd say right now isn't going to make a difference. You're going to have to look at our relationship, look at our history, and decide for yourself how much I care about you.”

“Boy,” I seethed, “you've got a helluva lot of nerve. Telling me how this is my time for you to focus on me, no distractions. Bullshit! Hypocritical bullshit! I've got to follow a gazillion of your stupid rules and limits, and you can do whatever you want. After all, it's only me. You are the biggest sonofabitchin' prick I've ever met in my life. You owe me a goddamned apology.”

“That's enough!” It was the closest I had ever heard him come to raising his voice. “I don't owe you an apology. I'm sorry if you feel inconvenienced, but I haven't done anything to deliberately hurt you. You, on the other hand, are deliberately trying to hurt me. You aren't expressing feelings; you are attacking me. And I don't deserve a single word of what you just said.”

It was hard to imagine the warmth of his smile that had been there only minutes ago. His eyes now opened wide, Dr. Padgett was sitting uncharacteristically forward, visibly irritated, more than a small hint of anger peeking through. It was enough to knock me right out of my tirade.

“I'm sorry, Dr. Padgett,” I uttered humbly. “You're right. I was attacking you. And you didn't deserve what I had to say. I honestly didn't mean to hurt you.”