Miles To Go Before I Sleep

by Jackie Nink Pflug

  He urged me to learn a trade. I left his office feeling disturbed and confused. Somehow, it didn’t feel right.

  There has to be a better way, I thought to myself.

  I went ahead and applied to college anyway—and tried for one scholarship. Three months later, I got two letters in the mail. I was accepted at a junior college and awarded a scholarship by the Deer Park Cafeteria Workers Scholarship Fund! It wasn’t a lot of money—$120 for one year—but it was something.

  At the beginning of my junior year at Sam Houston State, I declared myself a sociology major. Taking an education class was one of the requirements. I wasn’t thrilled about it, but I signed up.

  Was I in for a surprise! A whole new world opened up to me. I was finally in a class where I was getting it. I decided to switch my major from sociology to education. I amazed myself by making all A’s. My self-esteem shot up and I finally felt that I belonged in school. My grade point average went from a C to an A. After that, I made the dean’s list every semester.

  I started thinking about becoming a teacher. Then the doubts crept in. I’d have to study and work harder to graduate on time. Who did I think I was? Me, a teacher? I saw teachers as being leaders, role models, the “good” students. In my mind, I didn’t fit the bill.

  I went to my academic advisor and asked, “Do you think I could be a teacher?” And he said, “Yeah, I think you could.”

  CHAPTER 11

  EXORCISING DEMONS

  THE U.S. ARMY PSYCHIATRIST I saw in Germany had hinted that I might have a delayed reaction to the tragedy. At the time, however, I didn’t really believe him. Me have a problem with anger? No way. I wasn’t ready to give up the image of myself as a happy, “together” person. I wanted to get to the other side of my pain without actually going through it. Going through it meant giving myself permission to feel all of my feelings, especially the ones I wasn’t “supposed” to have.

  Throughout the hijacking, I remember feeling very angry. I was furious that the hijackers had taken away my power to make decisions. I had worked so hard to take responsibility for my life and my choices, and now that was all yanked away from me with no questions asked.

  For the first time in my life, I felt powerless over the most basic aspect of my existence: whether I lived or died.

  Now that I was finally starting to slow down a year after the hijacking, the pain started coming out. I felt survivor’s guilt for a long time. I kept thinking, If I had taken the middle seat on the plane, Scarlett would have lived. The bullet in the gun that shot Scarlett was more powerful than mine. As for the children, I tortured myself with thoughts such as If I’d only kicked the gun out of the hijacker’s hands, maybe the troops wouldn’t have needed to storm the plane and the children would not have died. I had to really own and accept that Scarlett had died, that the children had died.

  I decided to call Brenda Schaeffer, a local psychotherapist who had been recommended by my chiropractor, to see if she could help me cope with the fear, pain, and rage I was feeling.

  Scott wanted us to go together to my first therapy appointment. Understandably, he was concerned about whom I might be opening up my life to. The therapy process was going to affect his life too. Yet I also sensed that Scott might be tempted to exercise a little too much control over my choice of a therapist. So I made the ground rules clear. He could come with me to check her out, but if I liked her, I was going to go.

  We both went to her office in Golden Valley. I felt safe with the counselor right away and sensed her authenticity. I knew she could help me heal and grow. I was learning to trust my intuition and feelings about people and situations. In addition to her private practice, Brenda was the best-selling author of several books.

  During the hijacking, I had to freeze my emotions in order to cope with the horror of what was happening around me. I numbed out. Now, to survive emotionally, I had to start thawing out.

  Psychotherapy helped me get in touch with all my anger toward the hijackers that I had stuffed. After I’d been in therapy a while, Brenda used a Gestalt method to help me get my feelings out. She had me sit in one chair and imagine the hijacker who shot me was sitting in another. She’d point to the other chair and say, “Jackie, why don’t you talk to the hijacker.”

  At first, I was a little embarrassed about talking to a chair. Brenda suggested that I not think of it as a chair but rather really imagine the hijacker. I’d start talking and saying what I felt. As I did, I got angrier and angrier. The rage started pouring out.

  After saying what I wanted to say, I’d sit in the other chair and become the hijacker. Now I’d be looking over at Jackie, from the hijacker’s point of view. I’d tell Jackie why I did it, everything I wanted to tell her but couldn’t.

  I kept going back and forth, taking turns being myself and the hijacker. It was so powerful. My blocked emotions were flowing again. It helped me—not to forgive, because I wasn’t ready for that yet—but to start to grieve. Grieving was hard work but, together, we were working through my pain.

  With Brenda’s help, I did a lot of visualization. I imagined my hatred, bitterness, and anger as a black cloud inside my body. Then, I released the cloud and replaced it with bright, healing energy. I saw healing light and energy flowing through my body, from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. As I breathed in, I continued to pull in white, healing light. As I exhaled, I breathed out the black cloud inside me.

  About three months after starting therapy, Brenda and I both sensed the positive changes taking place inside me. I don’t remember exactly when or how it happened, but I knew that much of the depression, bitterness, and anger had lifted.

  At the end of a therapy session, Brenda asked how I felt about completely reliving the hijacking from beginning to end. In therapy, we were always talking about the hijacking, but we hadn’t gone through it step by terrifying step. Brenda thought doing this “body work” would help release more feelings and allow me to move forward. She knew another psychologist who worked with Vietnam veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder who could be there to help.

  I said yes.

  I wanted to do it, but at the same time I was scared to go through the hijacking again. I called Barbara for support. “I’m really scared, Barb. I don’t know what it’s going to be like.”

  “I know, honey,” Barb said. “But you’re going to be okay. Wayne and I are praying for you. We both love you.”

  I felt stronger after talking to Barb. I was ready.

  At 9 A.M. one Saturday morning I pulled into Brenda Schaeffer’s driveway. Inside her office, I met Brenda’s colleague. We went into a room and Brenda had me lie down on a mattress so I wouldn’t get hurt as I replayed the hijacking. Brenda and the other counselor positioned themselves at either end of the mattress.

  I didn’t know what to expect. Would I freak out and start yelling and screaming? I didn’t know.

  I shut my eyes and Brenda slowly guided me back in time to the day of the hijacking. She talked me through the process of packing my suitcases at the hotel, hailing a cab to the airport, checking my bags, and waiting to board the plane.

  “What do you see now?” Brenda asked.

  “I’m talking to a Canadian woman who is traveling with her baby. I’m offering to carry her baby carriage down the stairs to where we’re boarding the plane.”

  “What are you doing now?” Brenda continued.

  “Well, I’m getting on the plane.”

  “Okay, look around the plane. Who’s there?”

  “I see the flight attendants…. There’s a man standing in the aisle….” I rattled off all the people I’d seen.

  Slowly but surely, I described talking to the Egyptian man sitting next to me, offering him some caramels, smelling the deli sandwiches being served for dinner. Then I got to the point where the curly-haired man suddenly stood up, holding a gun and a grenade. I felt the two sharp blows on my head and heard him say, “Are you scared, lady?”

  “Do w
hat you’d want to have done if you could have done it,” Brenda said.

  I got up and started yelling at him, and I knocked the gun and grenade out of his hand. I slapped him around for a while and yelled at him, “What are you doing?”

  I didn’t really hurt anyone, but I brought blood. I brought blood to those hijackers.

  Then Brenda came to the midair gun battle, the forced landing in Malta, and the torture of waiting to die. Brenda encouraged me to talk back to the hijackers, to say and do all the things I wanted to do at the time but couldn’t because my hands were tied behind my back and I had a gun to my head.

  This time when the hijackers came to me, I fought back. I slapped and punched and tore at them until they bled. I took the gun of the man who shot me and pistol-whipped him with a kind of savage glee. I described what I would gladly do to the men who had hurt me. I screamed and yelled and cussed up a storm that morning.

  I left Brenda’s office five hours later. The time had gone so fast! I thought I’d been inside for maybe an hour. As I walked to my car, I was a new woman. I felt lighter. I cleaned a lot of anger out of my system. I knew my life would never be the same.

  After that session, the terrorists never showed up in my mind again. I was in control, so they vanished.

  Now that I’d actually felt and expressed so much of my anger and rage toward the hijackers—really for the first time—I felt ready for the next step: forgiving them for what they’d done to me and the people who died on the plane. But how could I forgive people who had done such terrible things? It didn’t really seem possible. Was it realistic? Did they even deserve to be forgiven?

  Forgiving wouldn’t be easy, but it seemed like the only way I’d ever be able to get on with my life. To truly forgive the hijackers, I had to really want to forgive. And it couldn’t be for fear of being a bad person or going to hell if I didn’t.

  As long as I held on to bitterness and hatred, I wouldn’t heal. If I didn’t forgive, I’d continue to be angry and bitter for the rest of my life. And the bitterness and resentment would slowly eat me alive. If I held on to hatred, I’d remain a victim of my attackers for the rest of my life. To be a free person, I had to forgive.

  The choice was mine.

  As my feelings were released, I began to more clearly understand and heal other parts of my life too.

  When I first went into therapy, I thought I was there to deal with the hijacking. To an extent, that was certainly true. But the hijacking soon became a catalyst to work on other parts of my life—including relationships with my parents, with Scott, and with myself. I began to deal with years of accumulated feelings that I’d never named or expressed.

  I was learning how to be a whole person. I was learning that it’s okay to say no; it’s okay to speak my mind; it’s okay to do what I want in life. I needed the reminder.

  After years of stuffing my dreams, I’d finally found the courage to go after them by getting jobs in Norway and Egypt. Now, I felt a pull to shrink back into a more fearful stance toward life. Plenty of people in my life encouraged that.

  It was never said exactly this way, but I got the message from some people that I got what I asked for by choosing to live in Egypt. If I’d only stayed home, like my sisters and others in my small town, this never would have happened. In a way, I was to blame.

  With my therapist’s help, I sat imaginary people in chairs in front of me and explained to them how important it was to be myself and follow my own guidance.

  Brenda and I dug deep into my past to explore the messages I’d internalized in childhood. I was in for some surprises.

  I’d never realized it before, but feelings were rarely talked about or expressed at home. I believed that everything that happened in the family was supposed to stay in the family. I thought I was not supposed to talk about our problems or feelings with outsiders. I grew up thinking that all families were that way, that that’s how families were supposed to be.

  This insight helped me begin to understand why I had stuffed so many feelings about the hijackers.

  As a child, I learned to repress anger, sadness, and depression. The messages I heard were “Be strong. Don’t cry. Don’t ask for help. You can do it by yourself.” If I cried or was angry, I learned to push it down. I became invested in maintaining my good-little-girl image and learned not to have angry thoughts, and when I did, I sure kept them to myself.

  I was the one in our family who took care of everyone else’s pain. People came to me for advice and it was my job to please. I remember when my parents bought me a game called Sorry and how that became my friend’s favorite nickname for me, because I was always saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” As an adult, I kept saying “I’m sorry.” I often said this to Scott, because I thought I was always screwing up.

  To win my parents’ love and friends’ admiration, I thought I needed to make them proud. I knocked myself out playing softball, basketball, trying to get on the main line of the drill team—whether I wanted to be involved in these activities or not. I loved softball and the drill team, but the motivation for many of my actions was a strong need to win other people’s approval.

  Opening up emotionally was a completely new experience for me. Most of my life, I’d carefully hidden feelings of pain, sadness, anger, and fear. I got much of my identity and self-esteem from being the strong one, taking care of everyone else’s feelings. I feared that if I took off my mask of caretaking and competence, people would think I was bad, selfish, or weak and wouldn’t love me anymore. Revealing my own human frailty and vulnerability was a big blow to my ego. These feelings and fears surprised me. What was going on? How did I get this way? Why was I so hard on myself?

  Brenda helped me see how important it is to stop caretaking, to let people take care of themselves, even as I continue to love and care about them. Even though I have an effect on people, I learned that I am not responsible for other people’s feelings or lives, that I am only responsible for my own choices and behaviors. I learned new skills and techniques to express the real Jackie, not a cardboard cutout of what other people expect. I was learning to speak my mind and go for what I want in life—even if I don’t always get it and even if it doesn’t fit into what people expect of me.

  My work with Brenda was creating some exciting new possibilities. As I became more emotionally healthy, I had the guts and passion to stand up for myself, to change the rules, to say “yes” to my life and my healing. One of the affirmations I used to help me cope with the strains in my life was “I have joy and happiness in my life today.” I didn’t have it at the time, but I wrote the goal as if I already did. It took a while, but I noticed that I did start to feel better.

  I noticed something else too. As I started to act as if I had joy in my life, some of my “friends” stopped calling. I started to realize that I had chosen some very negative relationships in my life. Before I was shot, I was very negative. I had to let go of old beliefs and unhealthy relationships to make room for the new. But how?

  It all happened slowly, one day at a time.

  As I felt stronger and more in control, I looked forward to the exciting possibilities in my life.

  Dr. Leppik had changed my seizure medication from Dilantin to Tegretol, and it seemed to be working. Months went by without having a seizure and I felt less depressed than when I was on Dilantin.

  I continued seeing Mark Lyso three times a week and felt major relief from my symptoms. My neck was getting better; my jaw was starting to loosen up. He was fixing what other doctors said could never be fixed.

  My spirits lifted, and I became tired of lying around the house. I felt ready to get out and start living again.

  I wanted to go back to work. But this time, I decided to look for a teaching job. It seemed more my style than the big-shot corporate job with IBM. Mike Pflug, my brother-in-law, saw an ad in the local paper for a part-time special education teacher at an elementary school in Wayzata. I called to set up an interview with the school’s princ
ipal.

  The principal, Louis Benko, was sitting behind his desk, reading my résumé, when I walked into his office. As he began asking questions, I could tell he was impressed with my education and teaching background.

  But was it all a lie?

  The person on my résumé didn’t exist anymore. I could never have earned a bachelors degree—much less a masters—with the learning disability I now had. I was reading at about a third-grade level.

  What should I say? I had already toyed with the idea of shading the truth about my medical history and faking my way through job interviews. I’d probably stand a better chance of getting hired. But what about my seizures? How honest did I want to be? Should I admit that, if I had a seizure, I’d need downtime to recover? Wouldn’t it be smarter to say, “I haven’t had a seizure in a long time, and if I do, I just bounce back on my feet again”?

  The application form asked for a description of any health problems that might affect job performance. What should I write?

  During the interview, the principal explained that he wanted to hire someone who could stay in the position for a while. Four or five teachers had been hired for that job in the past year, and the high turnover undermined the stability the children needed. He looked down at my application, then shot straight to the point: “How would your seizures affect your ability to stay in the job?”

  All I heard from my Inner Voice was “tell the truth.”

  “They are under control as far as I know,” I said. “But if something happens, if I have a seizure, I’ll need to be off for three or four days. It takes that long to get my memory back and to get back on my feet again.”

  “Well, we really need someone who can be here all the time,” Benko stressed. “We really need stability.”

  What do I do now? Minimize the possibility of having a seizure, or the time it takes to recover? Or? …