Were our decisions bad? Were we wrong to trust other people with our fortunes? Were we so focused on other things in our lives that we simply “didn’t pay attention”?
This is the kind of thinking that gets you into trouble, but it’s almost impossible to avoid. You start thinking backward and examining all the decisions you made, or didn’t make. You lament that you followed this path instead of that. You start with the “if only”s. Regret, to me, is a big waste of valuable time. It can’t turn back the clock and only serves to make you more anxious and upset. I slap it down whenever it rears its devious little head.
When I made the decision to give my money to the MF in 1999, I did my homework. I was wary after my experience with the financial adviser/insurance agent who was double-dipping with his fees, and then with the highly regarded fund that invested in Japan. I checked out the MF with smart money people who had also invested with him. Ditto financial advisers who seemed envious that I was in the elite Madoff club.
My novelist friend also did some background checking on the recommendation she had received: Her financial guy worked with many other writers, and the lawyer she’s depended on for years as a sounding board approved her decision. Does she regret putting her money with him?
No, she tells me, she doesn’t. And for the same reason I don’t regret my decision. Our judgment calls, based on the information we had at the time, were right at the time we made them.
“All the knowledge I had last year pointed to investing with him,” she tells me when we meet for an early dinner at our favorite place, EJ’s Luncheonette. “I have learned not to second-guess my past and hang out with my regrets. It’s a waste of emotional and mental energy that can be used for other things.”
“Like trying to stay thin,” I interject.
“Yes,” she says as she orders her usual: an egg white and basil omelet, “no butter on it, please, no bread, no potatoes.” She weighs all of 103 pounds including the black jeans she has on tonight.
We both laugh.
Usually we trade work stories and chat about what we’ve checked out on eBay, but tonight we’re in a philosophical mood. We’re “creative” people, we’ve been successful at what we do. And now, like everyone else, we suddenly find ourselves in a completely new world.
We start ruminating about “success” and what it is. Meanwhile, I am debating whether to order the carrot cake, which, at EJ’s, is incredibly delicious, especially the butter-cream frosting. Two warnings skitter across my mind: No, don’t do it, you’ve been “good” and had a boring but low-calorie egg white omelet like Marcy. No, you should not spend three more dollars. You just had all your money stolen!
I defiantly order the carrot cake and ask, “So what separates successful and not successful people?”
“We all face setbacks,” Marcy replies. “We’re all going to get jolted. Good or bad, something is going happen to you. It’s life and it happens to you. If you don’t accept what’s happened—like your thing with the MF—you’re just having a tantrum like a two-year-old, and what good will it do you? A ‘successful’ person adjusts to the situation and presses on.”
“Yes,” I say. “We’re talking here about being successful as a human being, not necessarily being ‘successful’ in Wall Street terms.”
“What other way would you want to be successful? Sure, it’s important to have money. I’m talking here about people who are not defeated by setbacks,” Marcy replies. “My guess is that those kind of people will also be financially comfortable, but not necessarily rich.”
The carrot cake is a dream. The calories are a nightmare. Wouldn’t it be great to order a second one—just this one time? I think.
“It’s about self-control and discipline,” I say, finally nixing the idea of more cake. “You just can’t allow yourself to wallow in your problems. You suck it up. Get on with it.”
“One other thing,” Marcy says. I am wildly envious she has left half of the egg white omelet on EJ’s beige oval plate. “If something bad happens I always think it’s ‘life’ or rotten luck. I don’t take it personally.”
“That’s the only attitude to have,” I agree.
We split the check, leaving a big tip because we’ve been there for hours and the waitress has been giving us nonstop free refills. I take a last look at my spotless plate. I’ve broken my diet, but “No regrets!” I remind myself sternly.
Nevertheless the next morning I wake up bemoaning my carrot cake indulgence and I begin thinking what would happen if I could never eat another peanut butter cookie or my all-time favorite, bread and butter. What could I live without?
It’s five thirty a.m., raining hard, too early to head to the studio, so I make a second cup of coffee and start jotting down lists on the back of an envelope that had contained a credit card solicitation:
CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT
Family and friends and a roof over my head
Health insurance
Regular mammograms and checkups
Work
A new computer every four to five years
BlackBerry
Cameras and printers
Regular teeth-cleanings
Kyle, my colorist
Brand-name vodka [I’m not a big drinker but I like to offer friends the best I can afford]
Diet Dr Pepper
Eating Japanese food once in a while
A clean and tidy space around me
Bread [crusty Italian] and butter
Seeing an ocean
The warmest goose-down jacket
Good, long-lasting soap
A party—once in a while
A good pedicure—once in a while
Books and probably Netflix
One no-iron white shirt a year from Lands’ End
CAN LIVE WITHOUT
Morning anxiety demons
Carrot cake
A getaway house
Luxury cosmetics
Premium TV
Blow-drys for special occasions
Cut flowers, although almost every time I pass the corner deli with its displays of tulips and roses I wish I could buy a bunch
Manicures
90 percent of dry-cleaning
Fax machine
Charge cards [except one for emergency use only]
Gourmet food shops
Prada et al.
FedEx [which I used a lot]
Impulse purchases, no matter how small
Exotic travel [but I’ll miss it a lot]
More shoes, bags, antique china, sheets
Shopping, except for necessities
Car
Overpriced coffee
Magazine subscriptions
eBay
Botox [this is last because I may relent]
CHAPTER 20
What the Bag Lady Really Fears
Dr. J was the first person I spoke openly with about my bag lady nightmares. In the months after I came out of the bag lady closet I compared notes with many other women who described their own losing-it-all dreads. Sufferers ranged from age twenty-five to upward of sixty, they were married or single, some were mothers or grandmothers, many were successful career women, some had remained home to take care of children and were intending to return to the workplace.
The visual images we all harbor were surprisingly similar and vivid. Only the details of living circumstances and physical condition differed individually. The majority of us agreed that our most deeply felt fear was that we would lose our autonomy and would forever live in utter poverty.
Here’s the full spectrum of bag lady anxieties that I listed for Dr. J. I feared that I would:
Lose my independence and control over my life
Lose my dignity
Be alone and abandoned
Lose my identity
Lose social status
Have people pity me
End up impoverished on cold and icy streets
Lose all hope
What causes these often-c
rippling anxieties? Since the fear of being a bag lady is, so far, not an authentic medical condition, the answers are speculative, but I spent a great deal of time and a lot of hard-earned money exploring the subject.
Some psychiatrists feel its origins are in abandonment, either by one’s father or mother or both. The desertion doesn’t have to be literal; most often it is an emotional distance or unavailability of a mother or, less commonly, a father.
As Dr. J pointed out, in my case, both my parents were distant. My mother’s breakdown and her year in the hospital, which caused me to live with my grandmother, who was caring for her own dying daughter, contributed greatly to my sense of isolation and abandonment—both feelings that I imagine a real bag lady has to endure. There was no one I could rely on and thus I had to rely on myself. This was too much for a child of six to cope with. With no one to pay attention to my needs, as a child I feared that I would be dumped out into the world with no one and no resources to help me survive.
I mentioned before that when my mother came home from the hospital, I happened to be walking with her and holding her hand when I saw a real bag lady. I imagined that this frightening-looking old woman had been left alone, out in the freezing winds, with no home to go to, no one to help her. My fear of that bag lady was extremely powerful, but of course I couldn’t articulate those feelings then. It was only with Dr. J that I began to see that I wasn’t a child anymore, and as a functioning and successful adult I could certainly take care of myself.
Although I experienced a physically absent mother and a distant father, Dr. J explained that you can feel abandonment and insecurity from parents who divorce, who are self-oriented, or who are withholding, controlling, and emotionally absent.
Another origin of the syndrome is the lack of a cohesive sense of self. The feeling of a wholesome healthy self comes mostly from childhood nurturing, which bag lady syndrome sufferers may not have had. Those of us who haven’t had this kind of unconditional loving background may feel a lack of self-worth, creating anxiety and depression in later years.
Tied to this lack of self-worth is a loss of or lack of an identity. If I’m not worth much to anybody, who am I? To put it in the plainest terms: A sense of self, an identity, means knowing who you are, what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are. If you don’t think you have value, it’s an easy step to imagine yourself on the streets with your tattered shopping bags. In actuality, as an adult you can have lots of money and success and a loving partner, but the irrational, childish fear is that you’re really a worthless person whom society might just as well forget.
Over the three years that I saw Dr. J, the fears abated as he extracted the root causes, such as my mother’s illness and the judgmental silent treatment that she indulged in when I had done something “wrong” as a child or “bad” as an adult, like writing a sex book.
I have always been grateful to both my parents for giving whatever love they were able to give, as they themselves had severely damaged childhoods. They gave me a college education and a comfortable life and instilled in me a love for learning, along with a love of fine things like silver and crystal. They believed absolutely in decency and honesty and charity and transmitted their solid values to me. I really didn’t like them—or love them. And I felt enormous guilt about this. But wise Dr. J helped to rout that guilt.
“You don’t have to like or to love your parents,” he said. “What is necessary is to respect the institution of parenthood. If you honor and respect your parents simply because they were parents, you will avoid guilt, a powerful and crippling emotion that can cause serious dysfunction. The actions you take toward your parents—visits, calls, time spent together—are a recognition of your respect for the institution of parenthood; they do not need to be made from love.”
As I continued to sit across from Dr. J every week, I felt myself growing stronger emotionally. On a practical level, I was more comfortable because I had a steady job and was saving every cent I could. Instead of feeling like the shattered glass I had described to him during one of our first sessions, at the end of our work together, I could portray myself as a filament of flexible steel, able to bend with the blows life might hammer me with, but not to break. Dr. J retired and I left Self and stable employment to return to freelancing and art. And slowly the bag lady nightmares began to intrude again.
I happened to be in Florida in 1999 on a magazine consulting job and decided to call Dr. J to say hello. It had been years since I’d seen him. He had long left his New York practice and was living in Florida. He was a serious golfer and world traveler but he continued to dispense his wisdom to his large group of friends, who constantly asked him for advice on problems. I knew of his doings because I’d kept up with him with a few phone calls each year, as I was so grateful to him. He was such an enormous part of my life that I still refer to him as “my father and my mother.” In strict psychiatric protocol, I should have never become friendly with him, but he often said that he loved his patients and that love was the key to the cure, so he had several of us who stayed in touch with him.
Now he was a hearty and fit eighty-nine years old and still hitting the golf course with his wife every day. “Why don’t you join me for lunch after my morning workout?” he suggested when I called. Over a tuna melt for him and a BLT for me at his golf club—I remember this meal most vividly—I mentioned that I was having bag lady dreams again.
“I’m not practicing anymore, as you know,” he replied, “but you could spend years on a couch reanalyzing the issues we talked about long ago. You built a strong and enduring self and you’ve had many successes. My advice is, save every dollar you can and put it in a safe place. Knowing you have the security of your savings is the most pragmatic way to deal with your concerns.”
We’d finished our sandwiches and were sipping iced coffee when he said, “I have a good idea for you. I have used the same investment man for thirty years. My daughters now have their money with him also. He makes a steady nine to eleven percent every year. He’s completely dependable and trustworthy. Many of my friends have had their entire savings with him for decades. His fund is closed, but I think I know a way that I can get you in.”
Thus, in what is my life’s most exquisite irony, the man who had saved my life, psychologically speaking, now suggested I entrust my life’s savings to a man named Bernard S. Madoff.
Do I bear Dr. J any ill will? Of course not! He was doing his best to help me. As he unfailingly did throughout the years that I was his patient. I still feel—and always will—that he is the most influential person in my life. And, of course, I am still in touch with him.
So in 1999, on the recommendation of Dr. J, I was “allowed” to open an account with Bernard Madoff. I never met him. I spoke to him once for less than thirty seconds, when I’d finally demanded to at least hear the voice of the man who would be investing my hard-earned savings.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “your money will be safe with me.” And that was the extent of our conversation.
CHAPTER 21
How to Look and Feel Good When Recently Broke
It is late February and I’m still in Florida, near the lavish lairs of the has-been billionaires, writing my book. I would prefer to be in my studio in New York working on my photographs, and mental claustrophobia is closing in as I try to write in a very small, very chilly kitchen. It’s an overcast silvery-gray morning here, an unusually cool sixty-two degrees, and I’m staring at the computer waiting for words and sentences to materialize.
Usually if I reach a work impasse, I leave the studio and walk around, idly looking into windows and sometimes stepping into stores. That kind of no-destination wandering is a visually stimulating activity that clears my mind, allowing it to regenerate.
The other kind of shopping that I used to adore occurred when Alex or Buffy or Sarah and I made a date for lunch and then played hooky from work for a few hours to check out the latest in Bergdorf or Barneys or to gaze—sometimes longin
gly—at the baubles at the jewelry market on Forty-seventh Street. I’ve always joked that shopping, whether you spend money or not, is female bonding at its highest, or lowest, level—and there’s some truth to it.
Down here, I have no friends and no desire to do that fun kind of shopping. Desire and hope desert me at times. Just as words have abandoned me this morning.
Maybe driving will coax the words out of my brain. I’ll take the old wagon out for a spin to clear my mind.
I’m cruising down Dixie Highway and feeling the need for a second jolt of coffee. I pull into a Guatemalan bakery–cum–coffee shop that is a favorite haunt of mine because the croissants are better than any I’ve ever had, including the ones at the Ritz in Paris. But an extra cup of java is not in my new budget. Nor will I ever see the Ritz again.
The hell with it, I say, and I am enjoying a double espresso and a warm-from-the-oven buttery croissant back in the driver’s seat. Next to the bakery is a thrift shop, one I’ve visited in BMF times when I was on the lookout for glamorous bargains. Palm Beach thrift shops and consignment stores are famous for fab buys, because they are where rich ladies discard their couture clothes like used Diet Coke cans.
I finish my croissant and wonder whether I should peruse the offerings at Almost New All for You. The store benefits geriatric causes. I’ll soon be geriatric myself so I should prepare to use their assistance.
Most likely because I can’t face going back to the computer so soon, I walk into the shop, which is jammed with the worst furniture, the most badly painted canvases, the most tacky china and glassware imaginable—I’m certain it’s all very costly stuff that tasteless owners cast off only to buy new gross and wasteful objects. But the treasure here is in the back: stacks of clothes that range from Gap workout gear to Valentino couture.
With the ingrained shopping habits of decades, I sort through the rusty old chrome racks. Nothing much of interest here today. The place is pretty well picked over. And on a scale of one to ten, my desire level is less than zero. I have not bought one thing since Madoff. As a Person of Reduced Circumstances, I feel that I will never buy anything again. However—
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