TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 80

Tue Dec 5 07:44:27 PST 2006

December 5, 2000006

Dear Folkpeople,

	Today escrow closes on the house.  I had 
to go there one final time yesterday to turn off 
the alarm which was evidently ringing loudly. 
There are no phones in the house, so the alarm 
company was getting no signal, and my realtors 
had stopped by to check on things only to find 
the alarm going off.  I dragged myself over there 
to the empty house and poked in the code.  The 
alarm stopped ringing to my surprise.  Because I 
was fully prepared that it wouldn't work and I'd 
have to go wrestle with the circuit breaker. 
There had been a power outrage the day before, 
and that can trip the alarm.  I looked around the 
place to say goodbye, but my heart wasn't in it. 
It's empty and the workers changed things.  None 
of our home is left there, really.  Right now, I 
don't know where home is.  When people ask where 
I live, I don't know what to say.  I'm being 
carried away on an ice floe.  That must be it.

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How to select a therapist

	My second suicide attempt landed me at 
Highland Hospital.  Highland was the county 
hospital, financed by our government, where 
anyone could go who is not insured.  Naturally, 
the quality of care was low, and the resemblances 
to a snake pit were high.  I don't know why I 
wound up there, just that's where the ambulance 
took me.

	I'd been staying with William Godsoe at 
the time ("And Godsoe loved the world . . ." he 
used to say, smiling between drinks), and we were 
having troubles.  Namely, his ex girlfriend, 
Andra Dunn.  They'd broken up a year at least 
before I met Willie, and Willie had already 
formally asked my mother for my hand in marriage, 
so his allegiances should have been clear.  But 
when Andra came to visit, the scales seemed to 
tip.  We all got stoned, of course.  While we 
were milling around feeling the effects, Andra, 
in a hurry to get past some people and out the 
front door, weaved a wavy line between the crowd 
standing at the door, shouted, "Beep Beep!" like 
the Roadrunner, and parted us for her exit. 
Willie looked at her and smiled blissfully, then 
turned to me and instructed, "Now THAT'S love." 
Whatever it meant to him, it floored me.  So one 
day, he could be asking for my hand in marriage 
and a few days later, he could be cooing for his 
ex girlfriend, Andra.  Someone drove me back to 
my apartment and I called Willie, but Andra 
answered the phone.  She said Willie couldn't 
come to the phone right then.  So, I asked her if 
Willie had treated her well, and she said he'd 
treated her like a queen.

	"What went wrong?"  I asked.

	"It was my decision," she said.  She 
offered to talk about it and said she'd drive up 
to my place and pick me up.  I went down to the 
street and stood there for twenty five minutes in 
the cold and dark, waiting for Andra to show up, 
but she didn't.  I went back inside and called 
down at Willie's place again, this time to talk 
to Andra, but Willie answered the phone.

	"Just leave her alone," he sighed, exasperated with me.

	No, it isn't a good reason to swallow a 
whole bottle of pills, but my life was going 
wrong in general with the no direction, and at 
loose ends of it all.  My expectations of myself 
were not being reached.  And then there was my 
miserable upbringing.  It all added up to opting 
out.  I was nineteen, a bad age for stability. 
I'm not sure I understood exactly why I was so 
damn miserable.  I was still confused from the 
craziness I grew up with, and hadn't seen enough 
of the world outside of my family to compare 
them.  I knew something was wrong.  Wrong with 
the world and wrong with me.  I saw no hope in 
it.  I was deeply frightened and saw no way 
forward.  I was blind to the future, and 
conjoined to the past.  Guilt and shame kept me 
from experiencing the present.

	So I wound up at Highland Hospital where 
the nurse in charge of issuing me my ipecac syrup 
told me I was going to be very sick and I 
deserved it.

	"You selfish thing!  All you're 
interested in is yourself.  Oh, I know, you think 
I'm that nasty old nurse who isn't giving poor 
you enough attention for her terrible desperate 
act.  But there it is."  and she released me from 
her grasp after watching me drink the viscous 
syrup.  "You're going to be very sick," she 
grunted and released my arm abruptly.  "You've 
got a lot of growing up to do."

	Willie had come to the hospital, probably 
urged by my mother who was standing around 
looking worried.  Willie came up to me and said, 
"You're just loving this.  You look like the cat 
that swallowed the canary."  Bewildered and just 
a little broken, I went to the facility supplied 
and retched up everything I'd swallowed for the 
last three years.  Every naughty candy bar, every 
tablespoon of soup and every pill were 
represented.  There was nothing left in me. And 
yet I retched again.  I was afraid they'd store 
me in a lock-up like they did in Cowell Hospital 
half a year before, but all they did was hand me 
a list of shrinks and make me promise to see one 
of them.

	"Who's good?" I asked.

	"They're all good."

	So I scanned up and down the list and 
found a doctor William W. Foote.  I thought, 
"Foote for my head.  Why not?" and I called him.

	For the first few sessions I brought him 
a present.  I can't remember what.  Something 
nominal.  But I wanted him to like me, be 
protective of me, understand me and my very 
selfish desperate act.  That was all I hoped for 
in therapy.  I didn't think anyone could cure me. 
I felt beyond help, in fact.  The world seemed to 
me determined to destroy me.  I took the words of 
the nurse seriously, and wept over them.  Could I 
be that bad?  And the answer, of course, is no. 
I could not have been that bad.  I'm just not the 
stuff that bad is made of.  But I believed I must 
be that bad.  And your beliefs pretty much trump 
everything else.

                         ©©©©©©©©©©©©©©©©©©©©©©©©©©©©©©©©©©©©©

-- 

Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net