Ten thousand dollars worth of property, destroyed.
The End
Then there was this excerpt from an autobiographical essay, “My family's funniest moments”—kernels of family folklore as they had been told to me.
I hated everybody when I was two weeks to one year old. I wouldn't stop crying, and I wouldn't set foot in anyone else's house. I would sit in the doorway until we went home.
Packed with violence, conflict, and male self-identity, the pictures and the essays told the stark story. How could no one have noticed? How could no one have cared? The pain of those years revisited me, my eyes blurred with tears as I shuffled through them again and again in numb shock.
I brought several stories and pictures into the next session, reading and showing them to Dr. Padgett as he listened intently.
When I was done, I looked up into his saddened eyes.
“How did they let this go on, Dr. Padgett? How could they have just ignored it like nothing was happening? How could they?” My voice was breaking with tears.
He didn't have an answer to that one. How could I have expected one? I didn't have one either.
“You know,” I continued, flooded with memories, “I got straight Fs in behavior. Straight Fs! My teachers used to write novels on the back of my report cards. I never got in trouble at home for it. Never! My mom would tell me she wasn't going to show it to my dad, just sign it herself. Do you really think my dad went for years without seeing a report card? God, Dr. Padgett! I used to think it was so cool that I didn't get in trouble. Now I look at it, and I can't believe they just sat back and let it go by. If your daughter would have been getting those kinds of grades, those kind of comments, would you just let it go by?”
“No, I wouldn't,” he said gently.
“This is horrible! I was a completely rotten kid, disturbed as hell. It's so obvious now, and they didn't do a thing!”
I expounded on a host of recollections, tears streaming down my cheeks. The time my father hung over the fence at a third-grade softball game, screaming at me when I'd strike out or drop the ball. He yelled instructions that I was far too embarrassed and upset to follow. The other parents stared at him in shocked disgust, making me even more ashamed.
After the game I told him I didn't want him to come to any more games. He hadn't fought my request or even questioned it. For the next nine years, through Catholic league ball and high school varsity sports, through tournaments and championship games, all the other players looked up to the bleachers to see their cheering parents.
Mine never showed their faces again.
I rode my bike to practices and hitched a ride to games with someone else's parents. The orphan athlete.
For years I'd been convinced that this had been my doing, the result of a shamefully disrespectful ultimatum uttered by an eight-year-old after a particularly humiliating softball game.
“God, Dr. Padgett,” I cried. “That was fucked up! They completely ignored years of my life, something very important to me. People used to kid around that I didn't have parents at all. None of the other parents acted like that. And you know what? He never ever apologized for treating me that way, and my mom went right along with it.
“Would you have taken me literally, a little kid, and just quit going to games after that?”
“No, I wouldn't,” he said. “Then again, I never would have humiliated you to make you want to ban me in the first place.”
Memories like waves of raining bombs. Each one landed on me with a blast and a shudder. In high school I'd discovered Mogen David, also known as Mad Dog, a cheap but potent wine popular with teenagers. I had my first taste during the summer after my junior year. It had a nasty bite to it, but it gave me a warmth inside I'd never felt before.
During my senior year I'd been involved in theatrical productions, and I'd sneaked backstage with the props and lighting crews, taking swigs off the bottle of Mad Dog in between sets at weeknight rehearsals, getting high enough to forget my lines or to slur them at times. I'd drive home on these school nights, loaded to the gills. I deluded myself that a stick of Dentyne would somehow cover it up, although I was staggering and had wine spills on my clothing.
They never noticed. Or at least they never spoke a word about it.
I'd get drunker and drunker. They still said and did nothing. They mentioned it just once when I'd come home one night so drunk I'd thrown up in a flowerpot in front of the house. Even then there'd been no chastisement—just a few remarks about my killer hangover being punishment enough.
Back then I'd thought all of it was cool. My parents had been cool. As long as I kept to myself at home, did not openly disagree, followed the house rules, and showed up by curfew, it didn't matter what I did. Raising hell at school, getting loaded, getting high, screwing around—anything was fair play as long as I was a Stepford Child at home.
I'd solved that dilemma by simply never being home.
“They didn't give a shit, you know that?” I cried hysterically. “They just didn't give a shit. I was fucking up my whole life. I was crying for help, screaming for help, and they never did a goddamned thing. As long as my grades were top-notch, as long as I brought home the trophies and ribbons and plaques, they didn't give a shit what else happened. As long as I was gone, out of their hair.
“I used to think they were so proud of me. I really thought I was earning a place in their heart. But you know what, Dr. Padgett? They didn't give a shit about me. They only cared about how everything reflected on them. I could have ended up dead; I could have ended up pregnant; I could have ended up anything, and they wouldn't have given a shit about how much it might have hurt me. Only that it would look bad on them. Spoil the image of the perfect fucking all-American family!”
It was impossible to continue. I was so choked by tears that I could barely catch my breath to manage the words.
Dr. Padgett took over. “It hurts, I know,” he said, kindness in his eyes and voice. “They didn't care as much as you thought they did. They didn't love you as much as you thought they did. In many, many ways you raised yourself, Rachel.”
“And fucked up my life!” I nearly screamed. “I could've been anything in the world. But I took the easiest route I could. Skipped half my classes in college because I was hungover or high or so exhausted from sleeping around that I couldn't make it.
“Now look at me. I'm pretending to be an accountant, but I hardly have any clients. I'm a loser, Dr. Padgett. I've blown my whole life. What if I would have tried back then? What could I have been?”
“You raised yourself as best you could, Rachel. It's amazing what you accomplished under the circumstances. You could have been a high school dropout. You could have killed yourself years ago. You could be in prison now. You could have completely given up.
“But you never did. You kept on trying, and what you managed to accomplish is almost a miracle. You graduated from college and got that degree. You're married, and you've stuck with that. You're a good mother, and no matter how much hell you've been through, you've never walked away from those responsibilities.”
“But I blew it, Dr. Padgett! Can't you see that? I'll bet you showed up to all your classes; I'll bet your kids have. Everybody else buckled down and tried to learn something. But I wasted the biggest opportunity of my life, getting stoned, getting drunk, and getting laid, like it was some kind of game.”
“You had no other choice, Rachel. You had to do those things. There was too much going on inside of you that you couldn't handle. The drinking, the drugs, the sex, they were all ways of coping. Faulty ways? Yes. Self-destructive? Yes. But you were compelled to do those things.”
“I was sick, right? Are you going to pawn off all this shit on the borderline personality disorder again? I can't buy that. I wasn't a kid anymore, Dr. Padgett. And sick or not, disturbed or not, I am responsible for what I did. I can't lay it all on BPD.”
“You were responsible for what you did, Rachel. You've already paid the price. You
danced on the edge, and it's a miracle you survived. But you did. You could have died, but you didn't. If you'd have committed a crime, you might be in prison. But you've already paid for all of your actions. You've borne the consequences and driven yourself into the ground with them.
“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.
Chapter 17
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?
Get Me Out of Here Page 19