“One of the saddest facts isn't that there is still a child within you but that you're so ashamed of that child. What's even sadder is that you have always been ashamed of that child, even when you were one. You can accept the childlike nature of your own children, but you can't accept it in yourself. Someday you will, Rachel. Someday you will.”
Chapter 11
A warm glow filled me on the way home, that of a child loved by her patient father. One who believed me to be not only lovable, but also courageous. Was I courageous? It was still hard to believe, and yet he wasn't the type to say things he didn't mean.
I'd verbally torn him to shreds more times than I could count. Yet I hadn't quit going to sessions. I hadn't given up. No matter how much I humiliated myself, he was there waiting for me.
Therapy was a bittersweet addiction. There were moments of catharsis, moments when I felt as if Dr. Padgett found a part of my soul that always ached for love and understanding. My need for him was vast, opened wide like the tiny beak of a baby bird awaiting a worm from its mother. I was in the nest alone.
How had I come to need him so much?
The constant transitions were painful—opening up, baring my soul, only to face the abrupt ending ritual: “That's about it for today.” From that point on, I had to bear the emptiness, the pain of missing him. Everything I did in between sessions was filler. A way to kill time. I silently marked the days until our next session. I went through the motions of being a wife, mother, accountant, church member. But I was living these days for therapy. It had become not only my lifeline, but my life.
My desperate need for him was limitless and almost embarrassing. Was it really worth those brief moments of feeling loved?
As much as I tried to savor the moments of warmth, they often left me as quickly as they came. By the next session the walls had been erected again. It was simply too exhausting and painful to keep needing Dr. Padgett as much as I did. I had stepped onto a high-speed train powered by my torrent of emotions on an endless journey with no destination. My only option was to jump from the moving train. Death seemed preferable to a life like this.
The session began in silence. There were plenty of thoughts running through my mind. But I chose not to share them. Instead I sat back, silently staring at the books on his shelves.
Go ahead, Dr. Padgett. Make my day! You take the lead for once. I'm not saying anything. I can be a blank screen too.
After ten minutes or so had passed this way, Dr. Padgett finally did say something.
“So what's on your mind?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“That's right. Absolutely nothing.”
More time passed.
“You're burying your feelings, Rachel. They are there, but we can't work on them unless you open up.”
“You're the damned expert,” I snapped back at him. “You seem to know everything that's on my mind. You seem to know all there is that makes me tick. Why don't you figure it out?”
“I'm not a mind reader.”
“Oh, really? You certainly seem to be able to put all kinds of words in my mouth and thoughts in my head that I've never said.”
“This isn't therapy,” he said firmly. “This is acting out. You aren't apathetic, and you aren't numb. You are deliberately withholding your feelings. You know how the process works.”
My tough chick persona was sitting back and calling the shots. She was making Dr. Padgett pursue me rather than the other way around. It was a powerful feeling of omnipotence that fed upon itself. Come on, Dr. Padgett. Beg for it. Get on your knees.
Dr. Padgett did not beg. For the next twenty minutes neither he nor I spoke a word. I glanced at my watch. Only fifteen minutes remained in the session. Fifteen more minutes before the dreaded words: “That's it for today.” I was squandering a session, and I could feel the self-recrimination for wasting our time together welling within me. Panic filled me, along with the anticipated resentment of the enforced end of session. The sonofabitch was going to let me do this to myself, sit back there and outlast me!
Suddenly it was his fault. I was determined not to let him get the better of me. I was determined to have the last word. He'd pay for this.
“You're right, Dr. Padgett,” I said coolly. “There are things on my mind. But I have no intention of sharing them with you. You know why? Because you're a manipulative bastard, that's why. A control freak. You want me to get down on my hands and knees, to strip my soul naked so you can exploit it. You want to see me grovel for your attention. Fuck you. I'm not doing it. You can have your rules, but I don't have to follow them. You can't make me talk, you bastard!”
It was projection plain as day. But he didn't point it out, and I didn't choose to see it.
“You're hurting yourself, Rachel. Not me. You need to release your feelings during sessions not afterward. And you've wasted a good amount of that opportunity today.”
“I don't need you, asshole,” I laughed haughtily. “Don't you see that? I don't need anybody. I'll feel whatever in the hell I want to feel whenever I want to feel it. And I'll say what I damned well please whenever I damned well want to say it. Are you worried I'll call you in between sessions? Infringe on your precious leisure time? Well, don't worry. I wouldn't call you if you were the last fucking person alive and I had a loaded gun pointed down my throat. I'd squeeze the trigger and lay there bloody on the floor with my brains blown out before I'd ever pick up the phone and call an asshole like you!”
Dr. Padgett was looking at the clock that faced him. Sonofabitch. He can't wait to get me out of here. He can't wait to toss me out of his office and onto the street.
“I don't need you, you asshole!” I was screaming desperately now, as aware as he was that only two minutes remained. “I don't fucking need you or anybody else! I may as well be dead! You'd like that, wouldn't you? Because then you wouldn't have to fuck with me anymore. I'd be out of your hair. I'd quit trying to suck you dry. You think I'm some kind of loser, some dependent, worthless little psycho. But I don't need you. I don't need a fucking soul.”
Dr. Padgett sat expressionless for a moment. Then he said the closing words.
“That's it for today.”
Before he had finished the sentence, I had jumped out of my chair, fumbled with my purse and car keys, cursing under my breath, and stalked out of his office without another word.
Sometimes the twenty-minute drive home was a calming transition, a time to collect my thoughts and prepare to reenter reality. Like an infant in a car seat, I could be soothed by the gentle vibrations and humming engine of a car ride.
Today was not one of those days.
The other drivers on the road exacerbated my anger as I pushed the speedometer needle to fifty-five miles per hour in the thirty-five zone, darting in and out of traffic, returning the angry honks and upturned middle fingers of those I'd tailgated or cut off. My emotions were spinning out of control, and I was riding them until I was in a frenzy.
I managed to get home without incident. Tim wasn't there yet, and I still had a half hour before I had to gather Jeffrey and Melissa from the sitter. The hell with it, I thought. Let Tim pick them up. Let Tim deal with them. I did, at least, call the babysitter and lie to her, telling her I was running late with a client and that Tim would pick up the kids. I then went immediately to the attic and locked myself in, ready to have it out with anyone who came near me.
I sat there, chain-smoking, steaming with rage. I was waiting to hear the front door open, the boisterous sounds of the kids, the sound of Tim's footsteps below. But I heard nothing. No one was home. Which made me even angrier.
How dare Tim just leave me up here alone? He doesn't give a shit either, the sonofabitch! No one cares how I feel.
I went into Jeffrey's room, grabbing a marker and some wide-lined tablet paper, and began to scrawl out terse notes that I taped throughout the house.
The note on the front door read: Tim. You need to pick up the kids. I'm
upstairs in the attic. Don't even think of going up there if you know what's good for you!
At the bottom of the stairs I taped another note: Stay away! Don't mess with me! You don't know what I might have up here!
The sign on the locked door to the attic said: I might die anyway, but if you dare come in here, you might all be dead! You don't know what I have up here!
The implication, of course, was that I had a loaded gun—which I didn't. I knew it was being manipulative when I wrote the notes, but I justified it because I hadn't actually lied. Besides, if there had been a gun around the house, I would have brought it up there. I could get a gun quite easily, and I just might do so.
Once I had taped up all the notes and locked myself back in the attic, I waited quietly for Tim to arrive. As I heard the front door slam, I could envision him reading these notes, the fear and panic in his eyes, tearing them down even though neither of the kids could read yet. The door slammed again twice, the second time accompanied by the sounds of Jeffrey and Melissa, who were busy bickering over something that had happened at the sitter's.
I was beginning to get bored. I was itching for confrontation, and yet Tim had heeded my words. I'd gotten what I'd claimed to want. To be left alone. But now I found myself resenting it. Doesn't he care?
A few minutes later I heard pounding on the attic door.
“Rachel!” Tim bellowed, fiddling with the door, trying to pop the lock.
“I told you to leave me the fuck alone!” I screamed back.
“Dr. Padgett is on the phone,” he insisted. “He wants to talk to you right now.”
“Tell the bastard I don't want to talk to him. I didn't call him.”
“Damnit, Rachel!” Tim was exasperated.
“I told you, tell the asshole I didn't call him, and I don't want to talk to him.” Even through the door, I could hear Tim sigh.
“Whatever,” he said.
That'll show Padgett! I thought. I'd kept my word, I hadn't called him. Either Tim had called Padgett, or Padgett had called me, but I hadn't made the call. I'll show that bastard that I don't need him.
Soon Tim was knocking at the door again.
“Please let me in, Rachel,” he pleaded gently.
“Did you tell Padgett I didn't want to talk to him?”
“Yes.”
“Is he still on the line?”
“No.”
Satisfied, I went down the steps and unlocked the door.
Tim's face was white and blotchy, his eyes watery, swollen, and red.
He had been crying. Clearly I had hurt him. However, I was still convinced that it was Padgett who had caused this all, not me.
“You don't have a gun up here, do you?” he asked weakly.
“Maybe I do, maybe I don't.”
“Please don't play games with me, all right, Rachel?” Tim sounded too exhausted to be angry.
“Why do you care, Tim? Why would it matter if I have a gun?”
Finally Tim had reached the breaking point and lost his patience.
“Damnit!” he exploded. “I haven't done a goddamned thing to you, and neither has Dr. Padgett! We've got two kids downstairs crying because they want to see you, and they can't understand why you won't let them up here. They've been upset and scared to death since you didn't pick them up at the babysitter's—”
“Why would they be scared? I called her and told her I was with a client. And how the hell did Padgett end up calling here. Did you call him?”
“Hell, yes, I called him! And he wants you to call him back within the next ten minutes, or he's sending the goddamned police.”
“Yeah, sure,” I rolled my eyes. “The police bullshit. The commitment crap. I've heard it all before. He won't really do it. I will not call that asshole back.”
“He will do it, Rachel. And let me tell you something: if the police show up at the front door, I'll let them know exactly where you are.”
“You backstabbing sonofabitch! You'd turn me in, wouldn't you? You're in on this with him, aren't you?”
“I don't know what the hell else to do. Look. I've tried to be patient with you. I really have. But you know what? Nothing I can say or do is right. I can't win with you. You think the whole world is out to get you.”
“You really hate me, don't you, Tim? You wish I were dead. You wish you could just get me out of your hair.”
“I don't hate you,” Tim's eyes were welling up with tears, “but let me tell you something. I know therapy's been hard for you, but it hasn't been a picnic for me either. You're not the only person in the world who has problems, Rachel. Everybody's got problems. And I tell you what, there's only so much of this I can take. Sometimes I wonder if I'm losing it. Sometimes I wonder if maybe I might not be better off dead.”
The last statement shocked me into reality. Had I really pushed Tim that far?
“Okay, I'll call Dr. Padgett. All right?”
“Thank you,” he said, crying hard by now and turning to go back down the steps.
He stopped midway. “Can you do something else for me? Would you please say hi to the kids? They're really upset.”
“Okay.”
Before I had the chance to make it downstairs to the telephone, Jeffrey and Melissa had bounded up the steps.
“Mommy!” Melissa shrieked happily, throwing her pudgy little toddler arms around me, squeezing me tight.
Jeffrey stood back for a moment, looking into my eyes.
“Mommy,” he said with great concern, “please don't cry, okay? Please don't cry. Everything's going to be okay, right? Everything's going to be okay. You don't have to cry.”
Four going on twenty-four. A child who needed comfort was instead comforting his mother.
What had I done?
Armed with a fresh glass of ice water and a full pack of cigarettes, I called Dr. Padgett's emergency number. I reminded myself that, technically, I wasn't calling him. I was simply returning his call. I knew the answering service routine well by now and wondered if the people at the service were beginning to recognize who I was.
“Dr. Padgett's service.”
“Uh, yes. I'm a patient of Dr. Padgett's. I need to talk to him.”
“Is this an emergency?”
Always that question. Why did it always have to be an emergency for me to be able to talk to the doctor after hours?
“Yes.”
I gave the woman my name and phone number and sat, waiting for the phone to ring. Five minutes passed. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. Twenty minutes. Is this another power play? He demands that I call him within ten minutes and then makes me sit here and wait for twenty minutes for him to call me back! Any inclination to be apologetic had passed.
Finally the phone rang. Although my hand rested on the receiver, I deliberately let it ring five times before I picked it up. I'd be damned if I was going to let him know that I was sitting and waiting by the phone for him.
“This is Dr. Padgett.”
A moment of cold silence.
“This is Rachel.”
Volleyed back into his court. Silence on the other end of the line.
“Tim said you wanted me to call you, so I'm calling you.”
“Tim was very upset. So were your kids. You hurt them when you do these things, you know.”
No, Dr. Padgett. You are the one who hurts them. You are the one who makes me do these things. “Well, everything's okay now, Dr. Padgett.”
“Do you have a gun?”
“Maybe I do, maybe I don't,” I answered with deliberate vagueness. “Maybe I could get one if I didn't.”
“No games, Rachel,” he said firmly. “You played games all session; you won't play them now. Either you tell me the truth about the gun, or I'll call the police.”
A tempting proposition. But then I remembered Melissa's desperate hug of relief and the fear in Jeffrey's eyes. I'd already put them through enough.
“No, I don't have a gun.”
I braced myself for a lecture on my sh
ameful manipulation, on having panicked everyone with the threat of a gun that didn't exist. No such lecture ensued.
“Are you in control?”
“Yes. I'm … in control.”
“Then I'll see you at tomorrow's session.”
Another pending good-bye. I couldn't take it. The need washed over me again. I couldn't let him go.
“I'm sorry, Dr. Padgett,” I sobbed into the receiver. “I'm so sorry. I'm such an asshole. I'm blowing it. I tried to scare you. I'm such a fuck-up.”
“I think you should be making your apologies to your husband and kids. We'll talk about this tomorrow.”
“But what if something happens?” I cried desperately. “What if I lose control again? I can't help it. The child just takes over. I'm scared. Please, can't we talk about this now?”
“You can control yourself when you chose to. No one can do it for you. You can ride these feelings out. We'll talk about them tomorrow in session.”
“But Dr. Padgett!”
“Tomorrow in session. Good-bye, Rachel.”
“Good-bye.”
I hung up the phone and sat numbly. Tim tapped at the door.
“Can I come in?”
Wordlessly, I unlocked it.
“Did you talk to the doctor?” he asked gently. “Are you feeling better?”
“I talked to him. I don't know if I feel any better, but I'll be okay. And I'm sorry for putting you and the kids through all of this. I really am.”
“You don't have to apologize for anything, Rachel.” His eyes were still swollen and red, dark circles forming beneath them. Worry lines had aged his face. “All of us just want you to get better.”
The tough chick threatened to emerge again at the next day's session. It was tempting to repeat the events of the day before. To say nothing, play the game. My pride made it difficult to admit that I had manipulated my family and Dr. Padgett as well. Thus I did not apologize, nor did I revert into the helpless little girl mode. I did, however, force myself to say what was on my mind.
“It isn't that I don't need you,” I began. “It's that I can't need you. It hurts too much to need you. It's dangerous to need you. I fall apart. I lose control. I turn into some kind of a madwoman, some kind of a crazed child. I managed for thirty years without you, and now look at me.
Get Me Out of Here Page 13