Get Me Out of Here

by Rachel Reiland

“Sometimes,” I replied, “I wish I could just go up to them and tell them about all of this. But I know they wouldn't accept it. I've dreamed sometimes of telling them off. I've even dreamed of … of … killing them—even though I'd never do it.”

  “Fantasies never hurt a soul,” he said, “unless you act on them. It's natural to be angry with all that you've discovered. But at this point holding on to the anger doesn't do you much good. Someday you've got to let it go.”

  “Let it go?” I shook my head in disgust. “Everything is always ‘let it go.’ I always have to do everything! What about them? What are they supposed to do? Maybe they deserve to be hated.”

  “You can't control them. The only person you can change is yourself. Holding on to the anger and hatred hurts you a lot more than it hurts them. It consumes you; it distracts you.”

  “They deserve revenge,” I snapped.

  “The best revenge is living well,” he finished.

  I'd heard the old saying before but had never really given it much thought. Was that wisdom or merely a consolation prize where justice is absent?

  I pondered it for a moment in silence.

  “Let me tell you a story,” he said, “about the politics of envy, of revenge. Maybe it might have some meaning here.

  “There was an American farmer and a Russian farmer, both living in their respective countries. The American was out plowing his field when he saw his neighbor driving past in a brand-new Cadillac. The American farmer looked at his rusty, old pickup, then at his neighbor's shiny, new car, and vowed, ‘Someday I'm going to have a shiny, new car just like his.’

  “Meanwhile the Russian farmer was plowing his field and saw his neighbor driving by in the fancy luxury car. He looked at his rusty, old pickup, then at his neighbor's Cadillac, and vowed, ‘Someday he's going to have a rusty, old pickup just like mine.’”

  “Hmm. Interesting philosophies.”

  “Any thoughts on what it might mean in the context of what we're discussing?”

  “That you're a capitalist?” I asked facetiously.

  He smiled. “And?”

  “The Russian farmer isn't going to be any better off himself just because his neighbor loses his nice car.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “The instinct for revenge is strong. But in the end it doesn't do a person much good.”

  Intellectually the philosophy made sense. Reaching that point emotionally, however, was an entirely different story.

  With the March winds sandwiched between the few remaining snowfalls of the season also came the season of Lent, a time of introspection and preparation for Easter. In church we sang melancholy songs about ashes and repentance, and the altar was stripped of plants and other decorations to represent the starkness of fasting.

  As a child, Lent had had simple meanings to me: fish sticks and macaroni in the school cafeteria on Fridays, shuffling into weekly stations-of-the-cross ceremonies to reflect on the story of the suffering Christ, and giving up chocolate. As I re-evaluated the whole notion of God and religion, however, so, too, had Lent taken on a deeper meaning. I couldn't listen to these readings about sin and repentance every Sunday without feeling the challenge within myself.

  My pastor, the choir director, and my fellow parishioners had accepted me despite my professed agnosticism and mental illness. Tim had stayed by my side despite the turbulence in our household, the burdens he endured, the unpredictable emotions, and the huge expenses that derailed our dreams. Undoubtedly I had been the beneficiary of forgiveness and compassion.

  God protects the fools and the children, and he had protected me when I was both, even when I pondered my atheism.

  Now, feeling stronger than I ever had in my life, I wondered if it were my time to return the love and unconditional acceptance I'd been given by granting a little forgiveness of my own. The issue of how to come to peace with my parents, knowing full well they would never be able to admit or accept what had happened, loomed larger than ever. It became harder to sit in church hearing the exhortations of challenge while still very much at odds with my parents and family. My conscience would not stop nagging me.

  Finally, on a blustery Saturday afternoon in late March, I decided to take the whole issue into the confessional.

  The sacrament of confession—now called reconciliation—had changed dramatically since my days in Catholic elementary school. While the darkened little cubicles with the small grilled windows still existed for those preferring the traditional method, one could also see the priest in a face-to-face setting in the same small room. I opted for the latter approach.

  Father Rick smiled and stood up to greet me when I opened the door to his small confessional office. Windowless, with a few religious poems thumbtacked to the corkboard walls and dated vinyl chairs of the vintage seventies, it was a far cry from Dr. Padgett's tasteful decor. Still it lacked the stark sackcloth-and-ashes theme I recalled from my youth.

  Perhaps this wasn't where I should be. After all I wasn't at all sure that I was willing to do what my conscience was telling me I should. Fortunately Father Rick, who knew the broad details of my childhood and therapy, wasn't the kind of priest to condemn. He was an excellent listener.

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” I started. It was the one piece of the ritual I still remembered. Like many Catholics, I'd been avoiding the confessional for years. “I confess I forget what I'm supposed to do now. It's been awhile, Father Rick.”

  “The first thing to do is relax,” he assured me, “and tell me what's on your mind.”

  I told him of my moral dilemma. I had recently discovered much of what had happened in the past, and I was still angry at my parents. I knew I should forgive them, but I wasn't sure what that entailed. Nor was I sure that forgiving them was something I wanted or was ready to do. Still it was eating at my conscience.

  “Not much of a confession if I'm not even sure I want to take the penance, is it?” I smiled sheepishly. “I guess it's not very Christian to be that angry at my own parents, is it?”

  “Whoever said Jesus didn't get angry?” he replied.

  Father Rick went on to recall some of the stories of Jesus. Jesus had indeed gotten so angry that he'd kicked over tables and hurled goods to the ground when he saw the money changers again hawking their wares on the temple steps.

  “Do you think Jesus just calmly sat back and accepted his fate?” Father Rick asked me. “He spent hours agonizing in the Garden of Gethsemane, literally begging God to ‘take the cup away’ from him and spare him the ugliness of his inevitable betrayal and death. Ultimately he did his Father's will—but not without experiencing the same reluctance, bitterness, and hurt as the rest of us.

  “Having human emotions isn't the sin, Rachel; it's what you do with them,” said Father Rick. Thoughts and fantasies never hurt anyone. It's the way someone chooses to act on them. For a man who steadfastly refused to reveal the slightest bit about his religious beliefs or nonbeliefs, Dr. Padgett's words were strangely similar to Father Rick's.

  “But you're missing something here, Father Rick,” I said, my conscience still unappeased. “Jesus did go up on that cross. He did forgive them. ‘Forgive them, Father; they know not what they do.’ Pretty amazing words. I don't know if I can do that with my parents. I just don't know. So much has happened. I'm thirty-three years old, and I'm still bearing the brunt of it. I don't know if I can let go of it all like that.”

  “Notice that you didn't hear him say ‘forget,’” Father Rick replied. “Jesus never said, ‘Father, forgive them; forget about what they did.’ He didn't say they hadn't done what they'd done to him. He didn't say they hadn't betrayed or hurt him. He forgave, but he didn't forget.

  “They know not what they do. He wasn't calling them innocent; he was calling them ignorant. And there's a world of distinction between those two words.”

  Father Rick was telling me I didn't have to forget everything that had happened. I didn't have to deny the past. I didn't have to pretend that everyth
ing was rosy. Forgiveness didn't mean I had to forget.

  Indeed, he told me, I shouldn't forget. To forget the past was to leave it wide open to be repeated. There was nothing wrong with being vigilant for an oncoming truck of destruction and to get the hell out of the way when I saw it coming. Because it very well could.

  There was nothing wrong with protecting myself. But I could still forgive, not only because it was the right thing to do, but because to do so would benefit me as well.

  “Forgiveness,” Father Rick told me, “isn't just healing for the trespasser. It can set you free to move on and live your life.”

  Clearly the physical setting was not the only change in the years since I'd taken the sacrament of confession. I was struck by the change in its emphasis as well. It was on healing rather than punishment. For many years I'd viewed Jesus's challenges to forgive and to love one's enemy as a call to sacrifice the instincts and pleasures of this life in order to be rewarded by a life hereafter. Perhaps, however, his instructions were a means to make this life better as well. Maybe, if all people actually did all the things Jesus called them to do, we wouldn't have to wait for heaven. It would be right here on earth.

  I looked at my watch. Father Rick and I had been in there for well over thirty minutes—most of his one-hour block of time allotted for confessions. Anyone else waiting to see him must have gone to the other priest. I felt a tinge of guilt for monopolizing his time, but Father Rick didn't appear to mind.

  “Well,” I concluded, “you've made some excellent points. I'm still not sure if I can forgive my parents right away. But at least I'm willing to consider it. I guess I need a penance then. Fifty Hail Marys maybe?”

  The priest smiled, “No, your penance is to take care of yourself, to forgive yourself first, and to spend some time every day in prayer thinking about what we've discussed here.”

  “That's it?” I smiled back. “You're pretty easy, Father Rick. No wonder the line to see you is always so long.”

  We stood as he laid his hands on my shoulders and said the ritual words of absolution. “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, I absolve you from your sins.”

  Afterward he gave me a warm hug.

  “I hope you're realizing that you're really a special person, Rachel,” he said as I walked out of the confessional.

  “I'm beginning to,” I answered sincerely. “I've got a ways to go, but I'm beginning to.”

  As was my penance, I spent a lot of time over the next few weeks thinking about all that Father Rick had said, trying to decide what forgiveness entailed. After all, how could a person say “I forgive you” to people who had never asked for forgiveness, had never apologized, most likely never would, and who failed to see or admit any wrongdoing at all?

  It would have to be a one-sided forgiveness, something within me that would in all likelihood never be recognized or appreciated. Any change of heart was going to have to be mine and mine alone.

  The more I thought about forgiving them, however, the more it made sense to me. Dr. Padgett was right. The hatred I had felt, while all-consuming, had not encompassed the full scope of my feelings. Despite it all, I did feel love for my parents. And in their own flawed way, they, too, had felt it for me. I could not remain in a distorted world of black and white. Sentencing myself to a powerful anger and desire for revenge would only hold me back.

  Forgiveness was not an overnight phenomenon. It happened slowly over time. I was less bitter toward them and more open. Still aware that they had not changed, I did not leave myself vulnerable to the kind of pain they were still capable of inflicting. But, as I let go of the anger, I could also see some of what was good about them, what had been right in my childhood.

  And even though the forgiveness remained unspoken, they must have sensed my change of heart. They, too, became more open, gentler, and seemed to be more loving.

  They would never be the first people I called in times of emotional crisis. Many parts of my life would remain unknown to them, including the raging anger I had felt at the revelations of what the past had really been. Visiting them, however, was no longer such a painful obligation, and in many ways I came to enjoy their company as adults.

  The spring of 1994 was a peaceful time for me. I was not nearly so harsh on myself, nor was I that way with others. For the first time in my life I realized I had few enemies; many people, despite their individual imperfections, were truly my friends.

  I had come to define an adult relationship with my parents, and I was comfortable with that, knowing what I could expect, knowing what I could never expect, and accepting the relationship for what it was.

  I was more relaxed with Tim and the kids, and the passion had slowly crept back into our sex life. Business was growing. I was handling more clients than ever, yet I was able to leave my work behind me at the end of the day.

  Sessions were increasingly less focused on events of the past as Dr. Padgett and I began to discuss my plans for the future. Sometimes we just shot the bull, enjoying each other's company, adult-to-adult. Like friends.

  Still I wasn't ready to think about leaving therapy yet. I was enjoying the time we had together. Dr. Padgett had assured me that the warm feelings of companionship, therapy as pleasure, were also part of the process.

  I'd succeeded in letting go of much of my anger, in defining my relationships, in accepting my femininity, in looking at the world in a completely new way, and in feeling a calm security I'd never dreamed of feeling. But a few matters still needed work. Foremost among them was the issue of termination, no longer just a far-off, “someday” prospect but an imminent reality.

  Although sexual desire had reappeared in our marriage, there was still a long way to go. And even though I was no longer emaciated, I couldn't quite look in the mirror and accept what I saw. The morning trips to the hidden scale had not stopped. Nor had the routine doses of multiple Ex-Lax to assuage my guilty feelings about having gained back the anorexic weight. I hadn't found a way to tell Dr. Padgett about that yet. Things were going so well I didn't want to disrupt them.

  Besides, a woman had to have a few secrets, didn't she?

  Chapter 29

  In many ways April and May had been the best months of my life.

  No major events or surprises came my way. I was content, enjoying the fresh delight of looking at the world in a way I never had before.

  I felt comfortable with myself. Things that used to worry me didn't concern me anymore. Like a blind person granted the gift of sight, I was astounded by the goodness in people despite their flaws. My reactions to circumstances were as different as they ever had been. My new ability to see the gray areas in life had opened my horizons and fueled my optimism.

  In short I was realizing that, incremental and painful as the process had been, I was a fundamentally different person than I had been when I first entered therapy. For all the doubts and second thoughts I'd had, it was clear to me that the time and money spent, the delays in reaching my primary goals, were worth the pain.

  Sometimes in the midst of discussing an issue with Dr. Padgett, I stopped midsentence, stunned by the stark difference in my reaction.

  “This is definitely where I would have picked a fight, isn't it?” I'd ask him. “But somehow I don't find myself needing to fight the way I used to.”

  Dr. Padgett would smile back at me. I could tell he was proud of me and my progress. I was too.

  So it was with surprise and dismay that I felt the tides of change roll in as I approached the three-year anniversary of my therapy. It was a subtle but steady shift as the sunny horizon began to fill with clouds; both my days and nights darkened.

  The fight instinct was gone. The new lessons were not lost, perhaps, but I could feel myself slipping back into the depths of depression.

  I knew the familiar symptoms. A decreased appetite. My newly emerging flickers of sexual passion dimmed. I was lifeless, listless, lacking in energy. Getting out of bed in the morning was a chore;
making the bed was almost impossible. I was finding excuses to get out of social events, crafting alibis to get out of dinner invitations, and canceling client appointments.

  I was retreating into my shell without any apparent clue as to why this was happening. Thoughts of suicide began to reappear and dominate my thoughts, the inner drumbeat of self-destruction softly tapping, growing to greater intensity, until it was a pounding roar and I could hear little else.

  Why was this happening? I racked my brain to find an issue that had remained undisclosed, a subconscious origin, a buried secret begging to be revealed. But I could find none.

  Knowing how pleased Tim and Dr. Padgett were with my progress, I didn't want to worry or disappoint them by revealing my feelings. Someday, I knew, I would have to handle these types of emotions on my own. Perhaps this was as good a time as any to try.

  Both in session and out of it, my life was on automatic pilot as I put on a facade of togetherness. I faked optimism and inner happiness that didn't exist. It was a pretty convincing act. If Dr. Padgett or Tim had any doubts about my state of mind, they didn't express them.

  In the privacy of my journal and my thoughts, however, I was thoroughly frustrated. What if my recovery had been simply an illusion, a brief respite in a life that was destined to be hell on earth? Once a borderline, always a borderline. Who was I to believe I could ever fundamentally change?

  Pessimism overshadowed me as I slipped back into the mode of all or nothing. My life was shrouded in darkness.

  The kids were in the backyard dousing each other with Super Soakers, but I couldn't find the energy to watch them or join in their antics. With the shades drawn and the air conditioner running, sealing myself inside, I flipped through the pages of a back issue of Time magazine. Kurt Cobain, the rock-and-roll icon, had killed himself, and suicide was a hot public issue. Was it a tragedy or a heroic exit? Speculation supporting both opinions filled the magazine.

  Maybe Cobain, whose music I had never heard, simply understood life better than most people. Maybe he had looked deeply enough into the mysteries of life to reveal The Truth: optimism was just a fairy tale people desperately clung to because reality was simply too hard to bear.