Crazy Enough

by Storm Large

  “I’m fine. I think there’s been a mistake.” She sounded nervous, but nice enough.

  “Oh?”

  “My mother couldn’t have possibly given up a child for any reason.”

  “Oh. Okay. Well, I’m only going on what the agency told me, so . . .”

  “Of course, absolutely. It’s just, well, I’m sure she would have told somebody, that’s all. And this is the first any of us have ever heard of this.”

  “You have brothers and sisters?” I asked.

  “Three.”

  “Wow, big family.”

  “Mom was the oldest of five, so . . .”

  “Jeez. Have you talked to any of your aunts and uncles about this?”

  “They’re all gone. Passed.”

  “Your dad?”

  “He passed away a year before Mom did.”

  “I’m sorry. So, nobody ever mentioned . . . ?”Mom was a dirty little secret?

  “Nobody. Ever.” She was being really sweet and sounded genuinely confused. And though she was not convinced we were related, she still had taken the time to call me. “I’m not sure why the agency thinks my mother . . . I mean, it doesn’t make any sense. She loved kids and was the best mother and grandmother any child could ever hope for.”

  “She sounds wonderful.”

  “She was, truly. But I wanted to call you because your mother died and, well, you’re probably just looking for answers, which I completely understand. I feel certain that this is an honest mistake, I’m sorry.”

  “Well I’m really glad you called.”

  “My family thinks you might want money.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t really know, but when they heard about all this they all got in a tizzy thinking, well, I don’t know. You seem very nice to me.”

  It was clear to me that this woman was the kind and level-headed one in her family. And, after talking with me for a few minutes, knew that I was not after anything but answers. She seemed to suddenly need some as well. I told her I was just looking for closure, and maybe a little medical history.

  We chatted lightly awhile longer and decided to check in later after she talked with her family again, told them about our conversation, and showed them my website.

  Meanwhile, I researched the family name. And drank and drank and drank.

  I started a mighty Chardonnay habit after my mom died. Of course out of grief, and grief is a crazy thing in and of itself. But I have a natural aversion to losing it, so I medicated with white wine and work. No matter how much I drank or gigged, however, I couldn’t stop the voices reminding me over and over, that I was glad she was gone. Relieved. And that struck me as the reaction of a deeply flawed and terrible human being, somebody who, if they weren’t totally crazy, they were, simply, fucked in the head.

  I still hated the idea of therapy, but I knew I needed help. I couldn’t sleep and, my drinking? Well, despite the dainty glass and the smooth oak finish, I might as well have been funneling Pabst down my open throat hole while doing a keg stand.

  I had done therapy before after getting away from Billy and the demons. But she was just this nice hippie mom with a sliding scale and a dream catcher next to her diploma. One hour, once a week. At the end of which I would ask her, “Am I crazy?” She would smile kindly and say no. I would look at her, look at her diploma, then smile and say, “You oughta know!” Then I’d give her my thirty bucks and go about my day.

  In my search for another person with a diploma, I saw, in the back of an alternative weekly, an ad for some weird therapy that was meant specifically for posttraumatic stress disorder. The ad didn’t look at all hokey, with the usual picture of glowing, open hands or some smiling hippie mom with empty nest syndrome. It looked scientific. It sounded pretty cool, too.

  RET, rapid eye therapy. “Combat soldiers, accident victims, victims of violent crime, and other traumatizing events have been cured by this therapy. Ideal for post-traumatic stress, grief and depression.”

  Perfect! Sign me up. I hadn’t been in a war or a crash, but I figured I was enough of a train wreck to justify going to see this lady.

  Her little waiting room was nice, not too hippyish other than the vegetarian cooking magazines and an abundance of plants to the point where it seemed it was their house. She came out and greeted me in a soft but clipped voice darted with a German or Austrian accent. She was small and serious, very focused and not a lot of flowery welcome spiel, but she still had a warm and calm presence. She struck me as a super-left-brain scientist who’d been well marinated in the woo-woo world of alternative medicine.

  We talked for awhile about what was going on with me, and I let her in on a bit of my mother’s history. She told me a bit about what we were going to do, the basic ideas behind RET and how it all worked. All I had to do was relax, and let my eyes follow her little penlight and let the healing begin.

  She also said that I would be done after twelve sessions.

  Done? There exists a done in the world of therapy? A therapist who wants you to get better to the point of not coming back? I then knew I had made the right decision.

  “Ah you warm enough? He-ah.” She put a blanket over me as I reclined in the plush, wide chair in her treatment room.

  “I want you to do exactly as I say, all right? Ah you ready?” I was warm and comfy and totally ready to drift into whatever she suggested twelve more times. Booya. Here I come, health!

  “Breeeathe deeply, all ze way into you-uh tail bone. Good.”

  She had a cartoon psychoanalyst Teutonic clink to her speech, with a sprig of Zsa Zsa Gabor. Low, rhythmic, foreign, and it was lulling me into a stupor. My brain usually rebels at being told to shut up and relax by yammering insults at itself for not being able to shut up and relax, but I was sinking, and all was quiet upstairs.

  “Good, now send your energy, like a finger of light, down from your tailbone into ze chair, doown through ze floor, through ze rock ze sand ze soil . . . good, all ze way down, down, down, until you are connecting yourself to ze source, ze molten core of ze Earth. Feel ze heat and ze weight, yes. Now bring zat energy up. Up . . . up . . . up . . . Good. Nice and rooted. Now . . . Open you-uh eyes.”

  I was completely still, my skin felt weighted across my face and body. So comfortable, had she stopped there and said, “Well done, that’ll be fifty bucks,” I would have felt just ducky about it. My breathing was smooth, my head and neck were relaxed for the first time in weeks. Not a trace of the ache that had parked on the back of my skull from all the drinking and crying and struggling to control both. Projectile sobs had been blasting out of me randomly, with little or no warning, with alarming frequency, and terrible timing. A first birthday, family gathering, in line at the bank, on stage, giving a blowjob. In the mooshy chair with little Dr. Zsa Zsa, I felt, for the first time in weeks, total calm.

  Then I opened my eyes. She had her pen light on, shining in my face, interrogation style, then began barking orders at my pupils. “Left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right. Up, left, up, down, down, down. Right, right, all the way to the upper left. Upper left, around, around. Now, blink very fast. Blinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblink. Aaaaaand relax.” Slowing down, all soft and cloudy, she said, “You are whole. You are complete. The world welcomes and loves you. You are loved.”

  She was reading a laundry list of positive affirmations into my open brain.

  Despite the calisthenics she ran my eyeballs through, I was enjoying all the lovely things she was saying about me. And I was still so relaxed, maybe it was the affirmations, but I began to think that this was really going to work. My heart tickled with hope.

  “Up, down. Up, down. All ze way upupupupupupup.” And so on for nearly an hour.

  My eyes were really achy as I left her office, but I felt amazing, almost as though I were medicated, in some mild barbiturate fluffy puff. I drove home and swore at no one, not even the hippies who insisted on riding their bikes side by si
de so that I couldn’t pass them. I mused at the old me who would have quick-style fantasized some terrible end to their lives, involving being forced to eat a baby harp seal and making them swear allegiance to George W. Bush before I beat them to death with a bat made out of rare, rainforest wood. Nope. I was actually happy. I had found the thing that would fix me. And not just the grief part, maybe everything: the voices, the sadness, the addictive behavior, and general lameness that had kept me low down and fairly useless feeling for most of my life. This was session one of twelve and I already felt completely changed.

  That night, I only had two glasses of wine with dinner and didn’t cry myself to sleep. It was amazing. I looked forward to my next visit where I would be eleven hours away from being better. I was going to be normal. Fixed.

  The next three sessions were just as stellar, inspiring, a bit soporific, but really incredible. I was on my way, imbued with hope and trembling excitement for the new me to burst out, phoenixlike, until the fourth session.

  “Up. Down. Up. Down. All the way to the upper left . . . Upper left. Upper left. Good. Aaand . . .”

  “OW! Fuck! OW!”

  Out of nowhere a cramp clenched in my throat, everything constricting around the tight ball of ache. I couldn’t get a full breath and I lurched forward, grabbing at my chest and throat. It was like I had been woken from a nap by getting punched in the collarbone. “Ugh . . . ow . . . wait. Wait . . . ow, I can’t breathe. I can’t . . . Mom?”

  My eyes were open. The therapist was leaning toward me. The room was the same. I felt the pain in my throat and chest. I was awake. And my mother sat cowering in the corner, weeping. “I’m so sorry, Stormy. I’m so sorry.”

  She was in a gray hospital gown, she shook and stared at me, toothlessly mouthing pitiful apologies. I struggled to breathe. “Mom! What! I see my mother.”

  “Storm! I want you to bring your energy back up through ze earth, up through ze floor into zis room. You are in zis room and you are in zis chair and I (clap) want (clap) you (clap) here (clap) now!” She stood up in front of me, looking hard into my face. She looked concerned but not at all panicked. “Is she still there?”

  My chest loosened up and I felt a wave of heat spread outwards from where the knot had been. My eyes instantly flooded. As the tears poured hotly down my face I searched the room through their blur. She was gone. “No. She’s . . . Oh, my God, am I okay?”

  The therapist smiled, I imagine, as warmly as someone that superclinical ever could. “Storm. Zis is wonderful. What a breakthrough we’ve had here today.” She sat back down and shook her head. “Such a breakthrough for so few sessions. I know we’re only halfway through with today, but I think you are done, yes?”

  “Yes, yes, please.” I would have run screaming from the building had I not been so completely exhausted. “Is this normal? I mean, does this happen to everyone?”

  “No, no. Everybody is different. Be happy, Storm. Zis was a good thing that happened here, today. I want you to go home, and think about it.”

  Think about it.

  A breakthrough. I hallucinated my dead mother. The diamond-hard completeness of all my pain around her shoved into my throat and throttled my heart to the bursting point. Zis is wonderful.

  That night, thinking about it, I felt that my heart must have burst. I had held on to all this guilt and pain, as if I was supposed to endlessly experience it. My addiction to suffering and hurting was finally giving up, and getting the heave-ho by the new positive responses my brain was learning. So, instead of the volley between head and heart and hate, hate, hate, my heart hit its sad ball against a wall while the brain just whistled a happy tune, looking at pretty flowers, or something. And the heart, left alone with its old pain swelling up inside it, burst open like a plum in a microwave and it puked up the crap it had held on to for so long.

  It was like that one time I nearly came to death. I called him “the Professor.” The Professor was great because he was insanely smart, well read, and a dirty, dangerous bastard in the sack. He was built like a linebacker, but with dark blue hair and tattoos. He was one of the few lovers in my life who could physically overpower me, and loved to do just that. He also loved to bite. He told me once that he fantasized now and again about eating human flesh. Just tearing out a tricep or chomping the goo out of someone’s thigh muscle.

  He was so great.

  One day, he had me pinned like a dead frog in biology class. On my back, legs cranked open, my wrists under the small of my back, bound with one of those curly cords you use to charge your cell phone in the car. The cord was in his one hand behind my back, his other hand rubbing, tickling, and tucking in and out of me. His mouth would softly assist the one friendly hand until he felt me start to lose it. Then, he would immediately stop all niceties, twist and tighten the cord in his mean hand, then push my legs open farther and sink his teeth into my groin. Slowly chomping into the flesh deeper and deeper, all the while making a sweet, yummy sound in complete contrast to the murderous pain he was causing. He could sense the exact moment that I might kick or scream, cry uncle, or just fucking black out, and he would instantly let go his pit bull grip, kiss the sore, purple indentations he had left, trace his tongue around where it hurt, eventually finding his way back to where it ached and begged and pouted for more.

  The French call orgasm the little death. When the Professor finally let me come, I died, but, maybe because I’m American, I died a big death, or a freedom death . . . whatever. I’m sure I died.

  Every gut in my torso grew legs and thundered upward through the sparkling hot-pepper fizz of the big red booming yesyesYES, screaming bloody stars blasting up my spine, punching behind my face to explode. Tremors flapped in my muscles like towels snapping off sand, my eyes strobed, dimmed, and a whoosh roared in my ears, then falling, hot dead heavy, dissolving like a mouthful of raspberry sugar . . . and gone.

  It could have been hours or ages later, but I realized only moments had passed when I heard him say, “Why are you crying?”

  Shit.

  It’s near impossible to look cool when you come, anyway, let alone when you start weeping like a jerk. Much better to just stare at the other person, come spattered and panting, and say, “Yeah . . . and?”

  But some old wound had dislodged from my subconscious and shook me. I was crying, hard, and I felt like an idiot. “I . . . I’m sorry.”

  “No, no, what’s going on?” He was really a great guy despite the rough exterior and cannibalistic tendencies. “Did I . . . ?”

  No, you didn’t hurt me, you egomaniac. It’s bad enough I’m crying here but I’m not going to let you think you hurt or scared me in any way; put the macho bullshit down. “I’m sorry . . . I, no, you’re great, I . . .” Fuck. No matter how you sliced it, he was going to leave here a superhero and me the weeping soft damsel. Fuckfuckfuck.

  “Hey, shhh, it’s cool, just breathe. C’mere.” He scooped me up and held me as I wound down, still shaking and crying. Finally, smoothing out and calming my breath, I said, “I saw it.”

  “Saw what?” he purred into my hair.

  “A broken heart. I know what it is.” He lay me back down and wiped the tears still leaking down my cheeks into my ears. He was sitting up on the couch now; my legs were stretched around his hips. “It doesn’t break because it’s broken, or damaged, it bursts open with everything you’ve ever wanted, hoped for, hurt over, loved. It bursts open because it’s full.”

  “Uh-huh.” He was stroking my throat and I felt him growing hard again.

  What is it with guys and the weak, injured girl thing? “It bursts,” he said to the temperature of my skin.

  I wiped my face with both hands and curled my hips up to meet his. Yes.

  Yes.

  I decided to go back for my fifth session of RET. I was convinced that I had experienced a major heart-burst moment. That, combined with my semiconscious, near dreamlike state, I must have concocted the image out of the feeling
s, and then panic did the rest. My heart had burst, and drained like an abscess. This time I would fill it with positive affirmations and swell that sucker up with some hope.

  The worst was over. The rest will be cake. Seven more.

  “Right, left . . . Right, left . . . All ze way around. Around. Around. Up. Up. Up. UP. And relax . . . You are complete, the world welcomes and loves you. You are pure love.”

  “OW! Fuck! GODDAMMIT!” I lunged forward again, gulping in a panic. “No!”

  “Iz it your mother?”

  “No . . . ugh . . . no.” The fist in my chest throbbed as I stared to my right. “If my mother had multiple personalities in life, would she have them in death, too?” I kept staring, struggling for a full breath.

  “No. I think zat can only be for a living person.”

  “No? Okay . . . ugh . . . then . . . who’s that!” She looked wide-eyed where my eyes were fixed. To my right was a scrawny man, dressed in seventies work clothes; he had brown hair and thick mustache. I knew what had happened to him the moment I saw him.

  “What’s going on?” he asked me. He seemed a little upset, agitated, like he’d been waiting for a long time

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” I said to him. “I think you’re dead, I’m really sorry. Maybe you, um, should go to the light?”

  “I want you he-ah now!” The therapist clapped me back again.

  I could not get out of there fast enough. I paid her, thanked her, and ran to my car crying.

  Great. Fantastic. Mom dies and the crazy jumps out of her and into me like a fucking ghost. This is it. I’ve fucking lost it.

  “You’re fine,” Delta said. Delta was a psychic counselor, and the first person I called. “Now, tell me what you were doing when you saw all this.”

  I went back over the how cool the therapy was, how it was really working, all the great feelings of simultaneous hope and calm, all leading up to the nosedive into seeing dead people. “Jesus, honey,” she said.

  “Am I going to be haunted forever?”

  “Oh, honey, no, no, no.” Delta laughed. She was a former model. A stunning, willowy blonde monument and she had the beer-soaked chuckle of a pure blue-collar broad. “You’re fine, but, seriously? No more RET. That shit’s too intense for you, honey. You’re way too sensitive.”