Get Me Out of Here (28 page)

The magnificent facades, the stunning turrets, and intricate wrought iron were the socially acceptable faces I put forth to those around me. The tough chick. The grinning joker. Streetwise, smart, and savvy. The “life of the party.” In order to cope, every image had been carefully crafted to make it appear that everything was okay.

But the old means of coping, the flawed thinking and perceptions, were no longer serving the purpose—because, underneath the structure, the very foundation was flawed. The house, built on shifting sands, was crumbling before my eyes. Therapy had not done this. It had begun to happen long ago, almost the moment it was built. The plaster in the walls was cracking badly, the roof was leaking, the floor tiles cracking. The signs of deterioration and perhaps, someday, inevitable collapse.

For years I'd tinkered at the edges. Patchwork repairs. Stopgap measures. If the walls were cracking, I'd plastered the surface back to smoothness. If the floor tiles were crumbling, I'd replaced them. If the roof was leaking, I'd patched the leaks. I'd pretended that, because the “house” still
appeared
okay, all was okay. Nothing had changed; all had been fixed. Nothing else needed to change.

But as long as the house had been built on shifting ground and a faulty foundation, the cracks would unfailingly reappear, and the roof would start leaking again. No matter how many patchwork repairs I made, the house would continue to slide and settle badly. A home on a faulty foundation simply cannot last forever.

There was only one solution of any lasting permanence. No matter how much effort I had put into keeping it intact, the structure was going to have to come down. The walls, the beams, the roof, the facade—every bit of it. Right down to the bare earth. And
I
would have to be the one to tear it down alone until what once had been my only home would be a gaping hole in the dirt. Nothingness. A frightening task—but only half the job.

From that nothingness I would have to build a new house. A sturdy foundation would have to be poured. I would need to erect a new shell, new walls, new roof, new everything. Then, and only then, would my home be truly safe. I would be sturdy and secure.

I shared this interpretation of my dreams and the therapy process with Dr. Padgett, who agreed with it. It was satisfying, perhaps, to have developed such insight on my own. Obviously I was understanding myself and the process more. I was able to hear the message from within.

But it is one thing to understand what I needed to do and another to actually do it. For the first two years of therapy, all I had been doing was slowly tearing down my old ways of thinking. I'd been tinkering around the edges, hoping that there could be an easier solution, some way of changing without demolishing everything I had worked so hard to build and preserve. Surely there was a way to avoid the awful face of nothingness.

The borderline personality disorder books and descriptions had all mentioned the borderline's fear of having no identity. Up until this point it had been a nebulous concept at best. Now, reality confronted me. Even if I were able to let go and tear down the framework of my feelings and perceptions, what would take its place? If I could not rely on the familiar, what could I rely on? Certainly some things needed to go. But if I tore the whole thing down, what else might I lose forever? My sense of humor? My assertiveness? The fighter attitude that had kept me alive for so many years? Who would I be? What would I be like?

Then again, how could I continue to live in a framework that was on the verge of collapse?

I thought of the movie
A Clockwork Orange
. The central character had been a despicable rogue, boldly raping, robbing, pillaging, and committing crimes of violence with a sinister smile. Once he'd finally been apprehended and incarcerated, the corrections officials decided to conduct a rehabilitation experiment on him. Classical conditioning. For hour after hour they had forced him to watch scenes of violence, securing his eyelids open so he could not look away, using the method of negative reinforcement until the man could no longer bear to witness the slightest act of aggression.

But the man who emerged was a shell, incapable of surviving, unable to muster even the smallest acts of assertion or self-defense. By stripping him of his violence, they had stripped him of his humanity, his essence. By the end of the movie I'd wished that the despicable rogue I had so hated could have his life back.

Is this what would happen to me? If the borderline rage that had fueled me for so long was torn down and taken away, would there be anything left? Or would it take the life, the spirit, right out of me?

I was daunted by the prospect of letting go without a clear idea of what would emerge in the old framework's place. It would be demolition without the blueprints for reconstruction, with no guarantees. The only possible way I could do this was to place all of my trust in Dr. Padgett, to trust that the hole of nothingness would lead to something better. I was not sure that I could do this. But at this point I wasn't certain I had a choice anymore.

The framework was half torn down anyway. I was like a heart surgery patient lying on the table, my chest already cut open and exposed. I could not simply walk away at this point. The thing I knew I needed to let go of most was anger. I would have to take on faith that something else would come in its place.

Spring passed into an exceptionally hot summer. City dwellers took refuge in their air-conditioned homes and offices. Emergency heat alerts and the sad plight of those who couldn't even afford fans dominated the newscasts. Spring fever turned to cabin fever. The sticky heat was so oppressive that by noon most people were indoors for the day. A combination of the weather and vacation season translated into a slow period for Tim's business. As it always seemed to be, business was slow for me as well.

After my morning ritual of watering the lawn and bushes, I headed indoors, already woozy from the heat. As if the confinement were not disconcerting enough, it was also the two-year anniversary of the day I'd started therapy with Dr. Padgett. Two anguishing years had passed, and yet here I was—bummed and broke. Would this be the story of the rest of my life?

My thoughts were interrupted by the footsteps of the mail carrier on the porch as Jeffrey and Melissa bickered over who would get to the mailbox first. The arrival of the mail still signified hope for them; there might be a
Highlights
magazine or a postcard from Grandma and Grandpa.

I had long since abandoned a child's delight in receiving mail. The bills seemed to arrive daily. The credit card balances I had once paid in full each month now reached such astronomical levels that even meeting minimum payments was a struggle. The insurance company no longer covered the therapy bills of $360 a week. We'd kept up with them as long as we could, but lately they, too, had accumulated an outstanding balance. I could not stomach asking my parents for another handout. They believed the doctor's visits were a waste of money, which led to an unspoken agreement that none of us would mention the issue of therapy at all.

Melissa had won the day's battle over who got the mail and handed me a stack of envelopes. Junk mail and bills.

At the bottom of the stack was an ivory bond envelope addressed to me and bearing the insignia of my college alma mater. I opened it. It was an invitation to my ten-year class reunion.

My mind flashed back to the vows my friends and I made to each other on that tear-filled graduation day, in our caps and gowns, high on champagne. We knew that all of us would be going our own separate ways; the idyllic life of academia was over now.

We'd promised that no matter where our adult responsibilities brought us, we would never lose contact with each other and would meet at the university pub on the first day of our ten-year reunion. In the early years of weddings and birth announcements, we'd kept our promise of staying in touch. But now, a decade later, calls and letters had become increasingly less frequent. Since I'd gone in the hospital and started therapy, I'd not made contact with anyone. How could I possibly explain what was going on?

Quarterly issues of the alumni magazine were now the only way I kept up with any of them. Many of my fellow accounting majors were highly placed on the corporate ladder of Big Eight accounting firms; others were comptrollers and chief financial officers of large corporations. The “Class News” pages never failed to depress me, but I always read them anyway, just in case there was news of anyone I knew. Of course, with my barely part-time freelance business, I had not dared to write in. I'd wondered if my classmates were as universally successful as the news tidbits I read or if there were others like me, trapped in a dead end, who wouldn't dare to write in either. How could I possibly go to this reunion and expose myself as the failure I had become?

Digging through the literature and itinerary, I was stunned by the price. It was $250 for the weekend. This revelation buried me even deeper in miserable self-pity. Not only couldn't I face the thought of going to the ten-year reunion as promised, I couldn't even afford it. I gathered all the paperwork and promptly threw it in the trash.

My goddamned career consists of going to a shrink! Even that sonofabitch is successful, the rich bastard. And I have to scrape to pay the goddamned electric bill
.

Once upon a time, before therapy, I'd been an achiever, with promise and potential. Now I was a nobody, who could barely make it from one session to the next without seeing Dr. Padgett. Pathetic.

Who was Dr. Padgett to tell me I needed to tear myself down just to build myself back up? Who was he to tell me what I needed and what I didn't? Granted, at one time I had been clearly distressed and had really needed him, but what about now? At $120 per fifty-minute hour, three days a week? Maybe if I were some kind of a rich bitch, I could afford the luxury of fine-tuned self-improvement. But the fact was that I wasn't. I was flat broke. It was about time I started making a bona fide financial contribution to my family.

It was time to leave the nest and grow up.

I did not meet Dr. Padgett's greeting smile with one of my own. I had business to discuss. Despite the pain I'd endured in getting there, I'd come to peace with my decision. The best way to end this business was to end it quickly and cleanly.

“This is my last session,” I announced.

The raised eyebrows again.

You don't believe me, do you? Well, you won't convince me this time. I've got a mind of my own. I'm doing what I need to do. This is an adult decision
.

“The decision to continue therapy has always been yours, Rachel,” he said. “But, as we've discussed before, the usual way to end therapy is to set a termination date a few months away so we can deal with your feelings about leaving.”

“I don't have that kind of time, Dr. Padgett. And I don't have that kind of money.”

“What made you reach this conclusion?”

I went on to outline my financial situation and the fact that the time involved in sessions and the time spent getting over the emotional effects of them was making it nearly impossible to pursue my career and to bring in some sorely needed income.

“I'm just not rich,” I concluded. “I'm not even middle class right now. With the medical bills, we're in debt up to our eyeballs. You've been a great guy. You've helped me out a lot, and I appreciate it. But I've got responsibilities. It's time to move on.”

“This isn't just about money, is it?”

“I knew you'd say that; $360 a week might be nothing to you, with your fancy car and your luxury home. But I don't have your silver spoon. Can't you get that?”

“Do you honestly feel you've met your goals?”

“Goals?” I scoffed. “What goals? All this psychobabble crap about letting go, getting in touch with my inner child—what kind of goals are those? I've got news for you, Dr. Padgett. There are all kinds of people dealing with much worse shit than I am who have never seen a psychiatrist and never will because there's no way in hell they could afford it. Just how in the hell do you think all of those people managed to survive before Sigmund Freud came along?”

“They felt a helluva lot of pain,” he replied. “Mental illness has been around for all of time, way before people began to find ways to treat it. Those people just suffered.”

“But they survived, didn't they?”

“Not always.”

“Let me tell you something,” I leaned forward with an air of authority. “I'm a businesswoman. I pay you; you are my employee, my advisor. I am your client. But part of what you advise me to do is to stick around here, that somehow I need you. You're basically advising me to keep paying you. Psychiatry may be a bunch of psychobabble crap as a science, but it's sure as hell a cash cow of an industry, making your repeat business dependent on you. What a fucking marketing coup!”

“You know the way that therapy is structured, and you know the reasons why it is. And deep down, you know that this issue runs deeper than money. It taps into fear.”

“Fear? You think I'm afraid? You think I'm a chicken shit? Listen. I'm not afraid of anything! This is a financial decision, a practical decision. Period. You're the one who's afraid because there's 360 bucks a week sitting across from you about ready to walk out the door.”

You're losing your cool. Get a grip on yourself, Rachel. This fear crap is just a ploy. He's trying to lure you in again. You made a decision. You've got to stick to it—even if it kills you. Who gives a damn if you're dead anyway?

Suicidal ideation. Was it back? I was flooded with second thoughts, my resolve weakening by the second.

“My concern for you is based on a lot more than my fees, and deep down, you know that. You can't buy compassion and love for any amount of money.”

I broke into sobs, my cool business facade shattered.

Look at the mess you've gotten yourself into now, Rachel. You can't quit; you don't want to quit; you aren't ready to quit. You're wishing yourself dead now, aren't you? You've made an idiot of yourself
.

“Whatever,” I mumbled.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, whatever. I don't care anymore, okay? Stay here. Leave. Live. Die. I just don't give a damn.”

“I sincerely doubt that leaving right now would be in your best interests, Rachel.”

My eyes were filled with tears. “The money is killing us. I can't focus on things if I'm paranoid about money. I just can't afford this anymore, and that's the honest truth.”

“I have a suggestion, a possible solution to ease the financial pressures, which I agree can be distracting, and still let you get the help you need.”

Could there be hope? My ears perked up.

“I think at the phase you're in, you could manage with two sessions a week instead of three. That should ease the financial burden a little bit and give you more time to devote to other things.”

The tears swelled in hysterical panic.

“You're throwing me out, aren't you? Pushing me out the door. You want to get rid of me. I'd rather be dead!”

Twenty minutes ago you were ready to quit all together. Now you'd rather be dead than cut back a session. Grow up!

“You aren't ready to terminate today, are you, Rachel?” he asked gently.

I shook my head, unable to speak, stinging with shame at my outburst and wild contradictions. My eyes were cast downward, staring at my shoelaces.

“Cutting to two sessions a week is part of the solution. I'm also willing to slide my scale and cut my fee in half, to sixty dollars an hour.”

I looked up.

“You'd really do that for me?”

“I told you, Rachel. You mean a lot more to me than the money. You aren't the only one committed to this therapy. I am too.”

“There's something else too,” I said meekly. “I'm already behind on my therapy bills. About two months behind actually.”

“This has been bothering you for a while, hasn't it? Why haven't you told me sooner?”

“Well,” I felt sheepish, “I was afraid if you knew, you might not see me anymore.”

“I promised you from the very beginning that I wouldn't abandon you. We've been through a lot together. There's nothing that we can't work out somehow. I tell you what. You can pay me when you have the money to pay me. It's okay.”

“But your invoices say ‘due at session.’ Things are really tight right now. Tim's in a slump, and I'm not bringing in any money. It might be awhile before I can catch up.”

“That's all right. Pay when you can. As long as it takes.”

“You're really serious, aren't you? I mean, I appreciate it, but you've got a business here. Why would you do this for me?”

“Because I care about you. And I trust you. You'll pay me when you can. You aren't the type to take advantage of me.”

“No, I'm not. I promise. I'll pay you every dime as soon as I can pay it.”

“I know,” he smiled. “Well, time's about up for the day.”

I started to reach for my purse and get up, then stopped.

“Dr. Padgett?

“Yes.”

“Would it be okay if we eased into the reduced sessions too? Like a termination—not right away?”

“Sure. We can set a date for reducing sessions in the next session or so. That's a good idea. We can discuss your feelings about seeing me less often.”

I started to get up and halted once again.

“Dr. Padgett?”

“Yes?”

“I really appreciate this. Sometimes I've said some pretty raunchy things about you, your motives, and everything, but deep down, I've always known you really do care. You really are a wonderful man.”

“I thank you for the compliment, Rachel. I know that's how you've felt. And, by the way, you're a pretty wonderful person yourself.”

I left his office beaming, warm all over. For yet another time I felt the pleasant surprise and relief of having navigated safely through what I had sworn to be an inescapable trap—and was more confident than ever that, whatever might come up in the future, the two of us could manage it together.