by Restin Wells
Chapter Eight
Dr. Pash granted my request to be discharged from the hospital, about a week after my discoveries about my illness. It wasn't because I felt better, yet. I had more to learn before my feelings could change. And I wasn't at all confident I had found a significant answer. But perhaps my demeanor had changed. Perhaps I appeared more focused to those trained in that respect. I was also pretty good at getting discharged when I wanted to go. I had learned what to say, and how to act, for the ten minutes it took to do it in the doctor's presence.
I only knew I had to be alone to work on the new contact I had made with some "faction" or "childishness" deep within myself. I believed my newfound anger could be my shield. I had to have more time than an occasional pass from the hospital. I had to go into the anger more, where I wouldn't scare people, and have them trying to turn it off. I felt I might be able to get a good handle on my illness if only I could express and understand the anger a lot more. But I had to get home to do it.
Dr. Pash let me go, with his blessing.
I walked out of the hospital into the bright light and shrill haste of city life. I had my car keys in my hand, and walked a bit giddily across the parking lot. I needed to get my "land legs" back. I was always glad to be out, but with mixed feelings also. When you don't know for sure what to do about an unbearable feeling, any change is welcome for the momentary distraction, if nothing else. I was always desperate to get into the hospital, and soon just as desperate to get out. The agony of the mysterious anxiety was there just the same.
But I did have something to try.
It took a few minutes, after I started the car, to get my bearings and get sharp in traffic again. The light out there, compared to the hospital, was so bright I had to squint my eyes almost shut. But I did okay. I checked my purse and saw I had a few dollars. I pulled into the nearest McDonald's and got the most sinful hamburger they had. And french fries! You would think I had been in prison for years.
Then I drove the twenty-three miles home, and pulled into the driveway, to the greeting of the three cats, Speedy, Sparky, and Felina, strolling forth with tails up high, as if to say, "Hi, so glad ta see ya!" Ben was still at work. It was all old-hat by then. Ambivalent as I felt about him, I was glad for the security of my home. Somehow, I didn't connect him much with the source of my illness, though we had our resentments. He somehow didn't seem nearly as important as my hang-ups about the therapists. My husband, quiet man that he was, never had anything much to say about my situation after the usual clichés to "get hold of yourself" and "quit acting like a baby". I would always try to act normal in front of him. That was partly to protect him, but also because it was too distressing to deal with his guilt-provoking comment. He was an average person acting like an average person would. It was even difficult for me to learn the complexities and the "language" of clinical psychology in college. Few people do understand the dynamics mental patients are really up against. So, I didn't want to be unbearable trouble for Ben.
The last thing I wanted was to go through a divorce just then. That prospect haunted me sometimes, anyway. I needed him much more than loved him. I didn't know how much our age difference had influenced my mental problems. I knew it was abnormal for him to take me as a child, and have sex with me as hardly an adolescent. There was something wrong with him to do that--but something wrong with me for letting him, also. I recalled that I had a deep horror-fear when I walked into his house the day of our wedding. Even the marriage that day, a private meeting with just a minister and a witness, was more like something I was lead into on an invisible leash, not the result of my joyous planning. For someone who had a history of being rebellious with teachers and relatives, I was a total wimp in the aura of a pedophiliac man.
Yet, I needed a parent type of person. He was the only person in all my life who took a personal interest in me. Letting him do sex on me was just the price I paid for feeling loved. The doctors always thought this was all a big deal. I was always having to defend my situation. It probably was a big deal, but also an impossible situation for me. Ben gave me support and a home. It was more like the way a man would take a young girl to marry in the old Bible times, or in some foreign cultures. It is always so easy to see things in simple black&white when you don't know about all the details.
So, it was okay to drive myself home from the hospital that day, and to be alone for a time. First thing I did, after stepping into the house and pouring the cats a snack, was to take a long shower. It was always the best, most wonderful shower ever--the one I always took immediately after I returned from the hospital. The shower sprayed just right, was just the right temperature, and there was also plenty of room. I had everything I needed and just how I was used to doing it. After that, I lay down on my own bed, in my own room. Every inch of my body responded to the familiar contours of my own bed. And it was quiet! Blessed quiet!
I choked back a few unexpected tears, that suddenly came up, at the irony of it all. I wished so much that things could just be as they used to be... when I was an artist, worked with the horses, and was a housekeeper who read the Reader's Digest at lunch in the kitchen. I couldn't see how some strange pain with no name, impossible even to describe, could be such a major illness. I couldn't see how I could be a practicing Christian and have something God wouldn't heal. But I would only get into a whirlpool of despair when I got into the religious reasoning's about why He couldn't seem to answer my prayers. In fact, I had temporarily given up on religion some time ago. I quit going to church. I couldn't endure the additional anxiety of what was, or wasn't, the right way to think about it.
My rest after my shower I just took, didn't last long either. The anxiety/terror which had been more endurable while I was busy with discharge proceedings, came against me again harshly.
I tried to recall the steps I took back at the hospital, when I seemed to communicate with that part which was causing the symptoms. It had a special need of some sort, a different way of perceiving things, than I did. It appeared to be the part that emanated the fear pain, almost as if it were brandishing it at me. I wondered what it required that was so urgent. If only I could find just the right offering, or deal, it might relent. I might assume it could need some help, or care, that a child would need. .. but a desperate, life-and-death kind of need, not just any little minor need. It seemed to be related to having appointments with the therapist, to be in her presence and hear reassuring words. I recalled how I felt such relief to be with any understanding therapist, but that seemed normal when a person is sick. Then I speculated on various ways I might get Dr. Tilden to have more appointments. I suddenly felt embarrassed that I sounded like a stalker. But, as I went further into thought about what a little child could want, I created a dialogue that went something like this:
"I hear you down there, and I want you to know that I'm going to do whatever I can to help. Is it a blanket you need... something warm and cozy?"
The response seemed to be:
"Okay, but no big deal"
The fear remained severe. I got no response from imagining my own mother. Ditto for thinking of my aunts or grandmother. I knew Dr. Tilden was probably the main concern, but simply had no idea of what I could do to provide her. But one thing I could do was stop ridiculing, and start allowing new possibilities. Meanwhile, as I tuned in and let my mind drift with the deep inner current, I suddenly came up with the suggestion:
"What if a lion mother stepped out of the grass and to came over to say hello?"
I almost laughed at my own self, but curiously perceived a positive reaction to that. Then I imagined a scene of a lioness approaching from a thicket, into a clearing, to greet her cub, which in a curious way stood for the baby creature inside of me. I knew I had a special softness for animals, especially baby animals. I also remembered then that I used to call my father "Lion" when I was a toddler.
And I actually got what seemed a nonverbal "yes" to that fantasy, and a definite bit of relief from the anxiety. After all, that's what I was really searching for...ANYTHING that could bring even a hint of relief from the symptoms, so I could learn what road to start on, in all this mess!
I thought I didn't feel so much fear, as if a topic of some special interest were being addressed. But I didn't want to get too weird, either. I just thought it strange that I would get more response from thinking of an animal mother rather than my real mother. Then I recalled that I learned to hate the word "mommy", as early as I could remember. And by the time I was six years old I despised all the words around "family" and "society", and reunions and holidays. Most of all, I hated the word "Love", and didn't want to be touched.
But to carry on, I also tried presenting my Aunt Mary, who was my most motherly aunt. She took me to live with her and my uncle, on their farm in Ohio, soon after my mother's death. But, when she had her first baby, when I was about two, she sent me back to my father, back in Washington D.C. He then asked another of his sisters, my Aunt Matilda, to live with us, as he had to work every day. There were my sister and my aunt's daughter in the family too. But I new better than to suggest Aunt Matilda to anything like a child in my unconscious, because she was mean and domineering, a bitter divorcee, I learned later. I harbored a long-term resentment of her. I lived in that family until I was eight. Then we all moved to Central Florida, to a rural church school community. My grandparents owned a poultry farm nearby; and when I was eight, my father, sister, and I lived with them for a time, where my Dad managed the farm. I adored my father, who was permissive with me, and just seemed to be a regular fellow who worked hard all the time. I especially loved the times we could live in the same house together. At eleven, I returned to the original Aunt Mary, who had moved to the small town nearby. Then I spent short durations of living with various aunts and uncles, in other cities and states, and ended up with the grandparents again in my teens. It was there I got my first horses, met Ben, and graduated from high school. Then I went to live with him on the ranchette he had built in the next county... which was the end of the shuffling around, and the beginning of a quasi-normal life until my breakdown six years later.
Finally, as I still lay on the bed after my shower, I turned to the subject where I knew I would get a response, but didn't want to: I thought of Dr. Tilden. What could I do about Dr. T? I listened carefully.
At that, I felt a strong interest, as if the child inside were threatening me with a weapon, and saying:
"Yes, that's it. Do something, or else!"
So, what could I do? I wasn't about to call Dr. T and ask for more of her time.
Then I recalled that I had received a flyer in the mail, inviting everyone to attend a mental health seminar. I suggested we could go to that, and the response was really dramatic! Suddenly the fear went down. I realized that offering was acceptable to my adult self, too, which was the knot in all this problem... What could I do to help the little child which would not be impossible for the adult part of me?
Realizing I was on the right track, I imagined being at the meeting. I imagined raising my hand to answer a question she asked... but that brought no response from inside. I then imagined her serving cookies on a tray after the meeting...and that brought a surge of relief. But just for a moment. Then I imagined her offering me an extra cookie, and that brought fear. I back off from that...it seemed too close. And then I imagined shaking her hand in line after the speech, and that brought relief. And then I felt a warning come up. It seemed I was supposed to shut up the imagining. I recalled that I could turn to a siege of anger when the fear got too much. And it was building fast from the detailed interaction. I was become exhausted too. I began to turn to the anger as my anti-dote. It was only because of my discovery of this anger that I could dare go into any of this at all. It would be my shield. So, I imagined Dr. T criticizing us for coming to the meeting, when she had told us to be more self-reliant. I knew I had to imagine her doing something really mean, to get the anger going, because I couldn't just turn it on like a switch...yet.
So, I got into rageful yelling, and beat on the bedstead (I'm there after my shower, remember) But I was still miserable with half-vented emotion. So, I got up and went outside, and started running up and down the driveway to the house, until I was breathing very hard. Then I fell to my hands and knees on the ground, and screamed out rage with every huge, paroxymal breath, until I actually vomited. Then I went back into the house, lay down on the bed again, and went to sleep until Ben came home from work. Then I got up, feeling okay, and fixed us a good supper. While I was standing there at the stove, steaming the veggies, I realized I had done something good for myself that day ...something ! really good... like I had not felt in years. My head actually felt a health and peace in it.
Then, next day, I was forced back on the roller coaster again. But I was finding a way. I was learning what works. I was starting up a dialogue. I also realized that I had a huge reservoir of old anger that was cracking a giant dam, to finally get relief from its backlog of malignant poison.
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Restin Wells