Earning It

My therapist thinks I have difficulty in allowing myself to be nourished. He thinks, whether it come from food or people, I resist any kind of personal restoration because, he tells me, “You seem to feel that life has to be earned.” He’s superficially right but letting him know would do more for his mental health than for mine.

Young and slightly soft bellied, with a dark face-engulfing beard that lends him a distinguished appearance, he’s annoyingly cautious. Smugly demure. I’ve never liked people like that. People should be allowed one deficit; be fat or subdued. But not both.

Because he’s still an intern, he’s hyper-vigilant, constantly aware his words might tip a patient over the edge. And unfortunately, he’s the parroting sort. Rather than unethically doling out advice — for which we all visit these folks — he practices paraphrasing skills, rewording everything I tell him, as if I’m deaf to my own voice. “So what you’re saying is…” Yeah, sure, that’s what I’m saying, but I said it better. Asshole.

When he isn’t regurgitating my thoughts, he’s unreasonably silent. Smugly silent. Holier-than-thou silent. It makes me mad and I begin to wonder what kind of mental injuries he houses — and if he’s earned them.

It isn’t that I think life must be earned — clearly it isn’t, as we have no say in our making — it’s that success and reward have to be earned. And simply put, I am not successful. My contribution to society has been so slight that I believe I really have been suitably rewarded — with nothing.

“Don’t you think everyone deserves life?” He asks, a deviation from routine rephrasing.

“As in everyone not yet born?” I press him.

He stares at me with strained concentration and the same pensive countenance one has while waiting on the toilet.

“I mean, don’t you think you shouldn’t have to earn the life you have?” He adds.

What the hell does this mean? I’m apprehended. I feel like he’s fucking with me. Isn’t hard work part of the American Dream? Is he telling me that shitty lives are giveaways — no sale necessary?

I recognize my therapist’s attempts at kindness and perceived responsibility to fix me, but his uniform approach unravels any progress we’ve made.

Relationships are built and maintained through nurturing; sustenance is acquired through working and foraging; homes are constructed with effort and purchased after concentrated saving. What matters in life are things we must earn. He knows this but employs careful language to obfuscate the issue.

“It sounds as though you feel inadequate. We don’t need approval to be good enough,” he says. I suppose part of healing requires a bit of lying to yourself.

Appreciating the cost-free entrance to life is not a satisfactory excuse for the damage one incurs from living it. To my therapist, my holes need filling. “Maybe you could try focusing on traits like being nice — see how that changes things,” he says this with proud authority, and I hate him for it.

Such behavioral patchwork usually results in inauthentic displays of what makes other people more comfortable, rather than act as a salubrious sealant, boosting functioning and reappraisal. Smile more because it will make you feel happier. Try volunteering. Anti-depressants will take the edge off. Being “born this way” seems to only be an anthem for having differences other people like. And who likes depression?

My therapist also thinks I’m damaged but assures me that, “in some way, everyone is,” yet he offers little encouragement when I confess fear of being more damaged than others. In our last session, I served this complaint again, hoping he’d identify something unique about my personality that could turn down the volume of my insecurities. Instead, a bored hush befell him, and I took his silence as an attempt to conceal agreement.

He thinks I’m hyper-fractured too, I told myself. I wasn’t embarrassed, just pissed off that I was the one who chose this aloof, judgmental guy in the first place. I sought him out to be my guide on the journey to feeling more positive. That’s the story I was offering anyway. In truth, making an appointment with a psychologist was my only ticket out of a 4-day stay at the state-run psychiatric facility after I’d intentionally crashed my car. I had been going through an ugly drawn-out divorce and was abruptly introduced to single-parenthood with two young kids, though what really pushed me toward collapse were forces I’d been fighting for some time.

The breakdown should have been predictable, and I suppose it was, but I had no way of stopping it. I wanted to escape for a while — just not there. I was alone as an adult for the first time in my life, having paired up with boyfriends since I left home at seventeen, and I hadn’t learned to sufficiently take care of myself. I somehow knew how to nurture my children without extending the ability to myself. But motherhood had always come easily. I had had quite a lot of practice due to the oppressive parentification thrust upon me as soon as I could pour myself a bowl of cereal.

My mother was emotionally unstable and prone to angry, violent rages. But when she wasn’t in a fit, she was magical. Beautiful and fun, unconventional and smart, young and spunky. I slept in her bed until I was fourteen, because it was during the nighttime and early morning hours where I felt protected, when I had a mother. She’d hug me and make me laugh as we played silly word games or wax philosophical about the state of our world, gushing with praise when I’d demonstrate notable insight. “You’re wise beyond your years — you know that? How’d you get so smart?”

She was my favorite person in the world, but I was terrified of her. Once out of bed my mother seemed to evaporate into the light of day, and in her place something wicked took shape. It was anxious, mean, punitive and relentless. She was explosive and accusatory, unconcerned with anyone else’s needs or intentions, and desperate for attention. Her overexcitability made me nervous to be in her presence, but I needed her, or I needed what I wanted her to be.

My dad shared my fear, but to our detriment, there couldn’t have been a better person to trigger the psychological terrorism. Tired of dodging beer bottles and the non-stop emotional assailment, my dad would leave for a few days, forgetting to take me with him. And when he was around, he was in his own mood. He was never violent or cruel, just grumpy or drunk.

My parents were in their early twenties when they had me. I wasn’t born out of romantic love or even because my parents desired the experience of parenthood. Plain and simple, I was born to supply the love my mom was lacking. It was a tall order, as there wasn’t enough love in the world to satisfy her need.

My father never wanted children. He was an artist and musician who wanted to make it as a jazz percussionist, but he was ruled by my mother’s despotism. Highly introverted and sensitive, his instinct was to bolt when he sensed adversity. The cycle of belligerence and subsequent abandonment was dizzying, until the day my dad never returned, and I realized how much I relied on the predictability of their pendulum to keep me from spinning out.

When I was in elementary school, my mom took up a part-time job at a Swedish bakery in the posh side of town. It would become her stage, and eventually, her brothel. Never one to restrain her flirtatious side, she performed and was courted by co-workers and patrons, many of them married. Her dates would run late, and it would take years before I stopped worrying whether she’d come home or not.

“It’s just that I had you when I was so young that I never got to date! It’s like I’m finally living my early twenties again — you know I missed them because I had you.” She’d explain, as though I’d delightfully condone her life choices.

We lived in filth with dirty dishes scattered about our apartment, piles of unwashed laundry in the hallway, and several bins overflowing with garbage cluttering up the kitchen. It was always my fault, even when it wasn’t.

“You’re such a selfish brat! You never help out! You’re good to nobody!” She’d scream as she chased me around the house, intent on pinning me to the ground for a spanking. I often managed to make it to my room in time to quickly shut the door and sit on the other side, using my weight to keep her from opening it. I never knew how long she’d try, but I recall how much effort it took to hold onto those moments of safety as the door pushed against my back. They were better than being stuck in the car with her when she was in one of her moods.

Our car was as disgusting as our apartment, and yet my mom took issue with anything happening to it that wasn’t her fault. Eating in it was forbidden, yet most of the trash inside was fast food wrappings and stains of grease, and for a while, cigarette butts. One particularly warm day, I was sitting in the passenger seat chewing a piece of bubble gum a friend had given me. The bubbles I was busy blowing were entertaining and I was working on improving my form.

“You better not get that on the car.” My mom said with more severity than was warranted. How would I get it on the car? I thought. I was old enough to know how to keep food in my mouth. And then the wet, sticky pink wad fell onto the seat belt. Panic set in. I didn’t want her to notice, but it was getting in my hair, and my motor skills weren’t quite as precise as a surgeon’s. It was getting messier and messier. Please don’t see, please don’t see!

“Did you get it on the car? Did you get it on the fucking car?” The shrillness of her voice was the cue. I knew what was coming.

“I’m sorry, mom! I’m sorry — I didn’t mean to!” I cried.

“Why the fuck — I told you not to — I knew this would happen!” She was shrieking.

It was time to cover my head.

My mom’s sinewy arm gained unusual strength, clobbering me from all angles, trying to get the best shot.

I cut my hair that night. The mirror reflected a small frame with a few discolorations. The boyish cut was appalling, but the bruises didn’t interest me anymore.

“I’m really sorry.” My mom always apologized after an attack, and I never refused to accept it.

“It’s okay. I understand.” I’d say. She depended on her apologies, and she depended on my forgiveness.

I would just wait for sleep, so that I’d be anesthetized to the witch, and for the morning, so that my real mom would visit me again.

How one person could house two strikingly different people seemed strange to my younger self, but what’s not there to begin with doesn’t demand repair. I had no way of diagnosing my mother’s mental illness when it was all around me, the only existence I knew.

The worst of it wasn’t getting battered with a hairbrush or being taken to the Emergency Room for a black eye because she tried sending our car off a cliff but mistakenly hit a tree. It wasn’t the toast and cereal I subsisted on while my mom napped for three hours or the blindness to the outfit I’d worn six days in a row. It was the endless consoling and therapy that was demanded of me.

Deeply afraid of abandonment but exceptionally talented at pushing away everyone with the potential to harm her, my mother would exhaust herself with all the hysterics. And she’d come to me to make it better.

“He doesn’t love me anymore! He says he doesn’t want to see me anymore. All I wanted was for him to care about me!” She’d wail.

“He’s just flooded right now, Mom. He should tell you he needs a break and negotiate a time to talk again. I know it hurts, but he doesn’t mean the things he says.” I did my best to omit anything that might further upset her.

“He said I was mean! I’m not mean! I told him I wasn’t blaming him, I just wanted him to know that he was wrong! I just want to feel appreciated!”

“So what would that look like? Maybe he just doesn’t know.”

“It’s fine. I’m just going to fuck somebody else to get back at him.” If my mom could hurt someone, it meant that she mattered after all.

Talking her out of suicide took even more composure, well beyond anything ever modeled to me, and it was there, in dreamlike suspension, that I found any semblance of worth.

My dad was still around the first time my mom was taken to a mental ward. He didn’t bother delivering the news gently, “Your crazy mom tried to kill herself and needed to be locked up.” He then handed me the phone and I listened to a familiar sweet lyrical voice, slightly muffled by the crackling of a pay phone. “Hi, sweetheart! Don’t worry about me. I just needed a little break, but I’ll be home in a couple of days.” I would make sure no one ever took my mom away from me again.

***

Realizing I couldn’t persuade my therapist out of seeing me as just another fucked up client, and that he’d never propose reasonable advice, I had a prickling urge to dismantle his character, but I settled for a sanctimonious lecture. Life is fucking hard, and to make it better, we have to earn it, motherfucker.

“You know, my definition of success is a very conventional one, and it isn’t going to change just because you think I’ll be happier if I did. The only way for me to feel adequate is if I do things that demonstrate competence. We’re a social species, it’s normal to seek approval. And right now, I am a mess — and not the fun kind.” I was proud of my candor, but he looked irritated.

He was trying and I knew he wanted the final word for the sake of authority, but it was showing too much. He paused long enough for discomfort to sour the air.

“I think we have found what we need to work on.” He said finally.

“No, you have found what you need to work on. I know what my issues are. I know what my weaknesses are, and what I need to do to improve myself, or feel good, or whatever. Sitting here and talking to you about it doesn’t change my depression.”

My resentment was misplaced, but I enjoyed the moment of control.

“I think you could really benefit from this process if you just give it time and stick with it.” His patience had waned but the fear of failing a client restrained him.

“Why? So I can hear myself with your voice, and tell you everything I already know so you can get paid for fifty minutes of sitting on your ass and taking notes just so you can have something to gossip about with your wife or your colleagues?” Now I was embarrassed. The words leaving my mouth revealed my commitment to victimhood. I was a broken girl, angry at my mom, and possibly carrying some of the genes that made her so scary.

I didn’t return to his practice. The following few months were spent teaching my kids how to cook and taking them to get bubble gum. Then either because he was reluctant to expose incompetence to his superiors, or because he hadn’t yet learned how to cope with patient loss, my therapist sent me a letter. I threw it away, unopened. It was enough that I had earned his 46-cents and words that I can imagine on my own.