Teresa - It Was My Fault, Wasn't it? (Part One)

"Ninety-nine loaves of bread and a hundred and six pies. I’ll always remember that figure! I’d come home and there would be a note [from my mother] saying she needed some time for herself. She’d be gone for weeks, to some resort or someplace to recover. I’d skip school to take care of the restaurant and bake past midnight for the next morning’s customers.  I was twelve."

Teresa was still a young teen when she bought a one-way ticket to Prescott and fled home.  She had to leave. Her father was killed when she was three, and for many years, she was molested by her step-dad. Her mother divorced him, but everyone blamed Teresa for breaking up the family.

My older brother ran away. My younger brother got into drugs and was sent back to our stepfather. My mom became addicted to Valium and tranquilizers. I felt responsible and guilty for everything.

The losses a child endures are rendered more ruinous when compounded with parental neglect and exploitation. In the absence of someone to provide understanding and comfort, Teresa alone attempted to make some sense of what was happening to her. Yet she was still very much a child, and a child’s world is bound by limited insight. So she crafted a set of explanations for her troubles in which she was the central protagonist and the one to blame.

It was my fault. I shouldn’t have told my mother I was being molested. I’m responsible for the family falling apart. That’s what I told myself.

Our desire for a sense of order—for explanation amidst patently irrational and cruel circumstances is so powerful that children, as well as adults, will create reasonable explanations for unreasonable events.  Teresa found that there was only one adult who would understand her despair.  Unfortunately, he was no longer alive.

I used to fantasize constantly about him. We didn’t have pictures of my dad around after my mother remarried. One day I stole this picture of him from my grandmother’s house.  I used to talk out loud when no one was around. I remember telling him, “I don’t understand why you’re not here.” It was really painful. I also couldn’t understand why he didn’t come and save me.  I thought that for sure I’d see my dad if I died.

Just as children create magical friends in which to confide, Teresa imagined her dead father's ever-available ear. It provided comfort and at least a marginal experience of belonging to a family. But these fantasies provided only an illusory sense of connection, and the more she entertained the conversations with her father, the further they pulled her from the living. At fourteen, her losses were sizable, her disappointment great, and she was quickly losing faith that this world held any promise at all. Slowly but progressively, Teresa withdrew from life by entertaining the possibility of her death. She had constructed and nourished a lethal equation: that in death there is solace and connection; in life, there is only despair.

One day, when babysitting a neighbor’s infant, Teresa looked away, just as the baby fell from low counter top. Although the baby was fine, Teresa was badly shaken.  To compound matters, she glanced out the kitchen window to spy her mother having sex in their car, with the deliveryman. The surreality of having a private view of her mother’s sexual activities served to shatter all remaining hope. Immediately thereafter, Teresa attempted suicide.

Tomorrow - Teresa – Part Two:  Leaving home, and dissolving the family trance.

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Chris - The First Steps (Part Two)

"In the profile of every recovery from attempted suicide, there is a moment on which one’s entire fate balances." R. A. Heckler, PhD

*        *        *

-I know your little girl. She’s the most beautiful creature I’ve ever met.  You know your husband.  Do you really want him to raise her?-

(Continued from March 26th Blog)

‘I don’t even want you to tell me [how you feel] right now, [said the attending physician]. Then he said, ‘and I’m gonna tell you a secret. You see, in this state, it’s illegal to attempt suicide, and they send you to the state hospital for a month if you try, plus you have to pay a fine. You have to handle all the legal ramifications and it’s nasty. So I admitted you under a diagnosis of food poisoning, and you should know that my career’s on the line and you are holding it in your hands’—and he squeezed my hand. [He said] ‘I’m gonna have to trust you that you’re gonna act differently than I expect you want to right now.’

In minutes, the years of isolation that surrounded Chris were gently pierced.

As he’s talking, I realize that my actions are going to affect him. He says, ‘I don’t expect you to want to live for a while. I know how you are feeling, but I also know your husband and your little girl. She’s the most beautiful creature I’ve ever met. He lets that sink in a little, and then he says, “You know your husband. Do you really want him to raise her?” The question had never entered my mind! I knew this was the voice of reason.

Patient and gentle, her admitting physician seemed to be the very archetype of the Good Doctor. Skillfully, undemonstratively, he empathized with her dilemma while challenging her to poke through her suffering and grasp a wider perspective.

The doctor was right. I still felt I wanted to die. I knew I still wanted to die, but I was also angry. I realized there was no way in hell that I wanted my husband to raise my daughter. I didn’t want her to feel as powerless and abandoned as I felt. It felt like he was giving me a task I could accomplish even though I felt so bad.

I knew nothing about psychological innards at that point, but two things had happened all of a sudden that were new. First of all, he didn’t put me down for wanting to leave my husband. Most everyone else seemed to think I was a bad person for wanting to leave him. And then, even though I still felt real dead inside, there was this other thing out here, separate from myself, which was a task worth trying to accomplish.

In the profile of every recovery from attempted suicide, there is a moment on which one’s entire fate balances. It is the first step, a hesitant and humble, but palpable beginning. First steps are critically important, because they reflect the birth of a nascent feeling that life can somehow unfold in a new and different way.

I still felt like ‘I don’t want to live’” but at the same time, I thought, ‘if I’m gonna raise my daughter, I’m gonna have to live. That means I’m gonna have to get through these feelings.’ It was so early, though, and I didn’t trust my thoughts, and I didn’t trust myself being alone. So I did the hardest thing of all.

In such a small town, there was only one place where she felt she might get through the day. Chris was nervous how she’d be received, but there was no alternative. Years later, she could still feel how fearful she had been.

There was this hardware store in the center of town where everybody came. It had a potbelly stove and tables, you know, and you could go in and have tea. That’s where I’d hang out a lot of the time, and so did everybody else. Everyone would come in, have lunch together, and talk. I knew everybody in that town and I knew that everyone heard what I had done the night before. But in spite of that, I knew that I had to have people around me if I was going to make it through that day, and so I took my daughter with me. God, I can feel the fear as I talk about it.

I went into the store and I talked to the woman who owned it. I told her I needed to hang out all day. 'Could I do that? Will that be okay?'

She said, ‘Yes.’ And then she said, ‘And if anybody says anything, I’ll kick them out!’

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Chris - The First Steps

"We can do no great things, only small things with great love.”

                                                                            Mother Teresa.

"The doctor was right. I still felt I wanted to die. I knew I still wanted to die, but I was also angry. I realized there was no way in hell that I wanted my husband to raise my daughter. I didn’t want her to feel as powerless and abandoned as I felt. It felt like he was giving me a task I could accomplish even though I felt so bad."

Chris, now a therapist herself, met me in her office. It was summer in Santa Rosa, California, dry and hot. The indoors provided a welcomed relief from the sun. We sat down, registering our initial impressions, and I was immediately intrigued. Chris is a large woman, big-boned and a little heavy. Her arms were muscular, her hands veined and rough-hewn. Her story took place some years before, in a small town in rural southern Oregon. Chris is a woman who has worked the land, canned her own food, found a way to make things work in difficult times. She is not afraid to be physical. She isn’t averse to hard work. She has a ready smile and a hearty laugh.  When she speaks about her life, and her first days in the hospital after her suicide attempt, she is straightforward and candid.  
 
I just felt really hopeless, like just not wanting to live. I had no idea what was happening to me. I was very angry. I was simmering underneath. The doctor came in. He was clearly very tired from being on all night.
 
Chris had been braced for condescension and reproach, and stiffened when the attending physician walked in.  She was surprised what happened next.
 
He sat down and took my hand in his: he just picked up my hand and held it! He seemed very loving. I was dumbfounded! He held my hand and brushed the hair from my face and said, “I’m not even gonna ask you how you feel. I know you feel miserable.

In times of crisis, simple acts of caring are often pushed aside in favor of intricate technical interventions, both medical and psychological. For those who spoke about early moments in the hospital after their attempt, however, it was the simple acts of kindness and the desire to understand that were most treasured. Sometimes they proved powerful enough to ignite the first spark of life, the first steps, after years of courting death. The night before, Chris had to endure the disdain of her new hospital roommates.
 
I was in a room with two other women. I could overhear them: it wasn’t hard; they were talking pretty loud. They were very angry that I was put in “their” room.
 
Chris suffered not only a profound loss of privacy, but also reproach for what she had done. This time, it didn’t come from the hospital staff, but from the patients, as if there was a hierarchy of illnesses, an unspoken caste, with suicide at the bottom. Somehow, her story quickly became public knowledge and she was exposed to derisive and malicious commentary. Hours after the attempt, Chris lay awake in her hospital bed, separated from her fellow patients by only a curtain. Both hyped from the drugs and exhausted by her ordeal, she could see their silhouettes as they spoke.
 
They seemed to know why I was there, and thought I was horrible for wanting to kill myself. I remember them saying, ‘She should be ashamed of herself, when she has everything to live for,’ and ‘Why did the doctor put her in here?’
 
Understandably, the following morning, Chris expected the worst when the attending physician walked in, haggard from a long shift.  What happened next was unexpected and startling.

(End of Part One. Read Part Two, tomorrow.)

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Ed - The Heart of the Attempt

“What I really wanted was a part of me to die. [All of] life didn’t stink, but that situation did, and it was a huge bruise that I had to heal and couldn’t. I didn't want to throw away the whole thing, but I did not know how to heal the bruise at the time. The only way I knew was to throw away the whole apple.”

Ed’s is a cautionary tale about our cultural heroes and who we need them to be. No one is uni-dimensional, but attempting to be so, can be life threatening. And, in itself, being gay is not a cause of suicide, but because of ignorance and societal pressures, the façade that one must create to hide in plain site, can be. Ed's is also a story of tremendous heart and courage as he returns to life, becomes a public figure and inspires others, but before that, we can see how lost he became in what I call the 'suicidal trance', and how deeply he plummeted.

"When John Lennon was murdered in 1980, it sounds strange, but that inspired me to…[realize] that maybe I have a talent. I thought, ‘If I can do one one-thousandth of what Lennon did, maybe I can accomplish something in this world.’ To my thinking, then, it seemed all the great ones—Lennon, Martin Luther King, Kennedy—they go out with a boom. Something about that turned me on. Something about how they went out and how they were loved afterwards. Maybe one day I’ll spring a hit on everyone and they’ll look back and realize that Gallagher just didn’t play football and physical things—that he had some kind of brain."

Secretly, Ed began to romance death…as a means for his truer self to be seen. As the disparity between his inner and more public selves grew, Ed became both more clandestine and impulsive. Early one morning, about three A.M., he stole into New York City to hire a prostitute. He was afraid of what he felt inside. He desperately wanted to affirm that he wasn’t gay.

"I was glad afterward. I was thinking, 'Wow, I can really do this. Maybe I’m not gay. Maybe my friends won’t suspect I am.' I was still playing the jockish part of my nature in public. [Privately], I said to myself, “Let me write these songs in secret.”

Ed began to study songwriting formally and it bore unexpected side effects. As he received encouragement from his teachers, he stretched beyond the cloak of  'Big Ed'.  Combining visits to music classes with explorations in Manhattan, Ed ventured into Greenwich Village, specifically the West Village, where the gay community lived in high concentration. It was there he had his first encounter with the life he’d so surreptitiously fantasized about for over a decade.

"I was curious, but I acted disinterested. Very guarded, very intrigued. I’d start to hang out more frequently, still not even entering one of the gay bars—just walking past; looking in but acting nonchalant. I did that many times—eat by myself, walk past a bar, going to Washington Square. Finally one evening, I said, “Fuck, man, I’m twenty-seven years old! I can do what I want!” and after having a bite to eat, and getting a little bit tanked—not too much, but I feel good—I go into this bar—I won’t tell you the name of it—and I feel different. I can talk with guys and feel good about it. I can be myself ! I was gonna leave, but this guy asked me to his place. I’m thinking, “He’s really good looking, and I say to him, “I never really did this stuff before.” He said, “It’s okay, I’ll help you—I’ll show you.” He was coming on to me, I know, but he was also nice, not pushy. I’d never even kissed a guy, let alone done anything else. I felt so comfortable to be myself. I had a real nice time. It also helped I was a little tanked!"

That night, Ed embraced his longing for a man, and for a few precious hours he felt whole. Yet at some deeper level, the binary construction of his psyche, the sharp division of self that he’d been living with for so many years, became inflamed. Driving home the next day, Ed was consumed with fear.

"I started thinking, “Now what? You can’t go back to your old lifestyle! How can I look my friends in the eye, my friends who think I’m straight as an arrow? You never told anyone and then just because you walk down Greenwich Village, you get involved with someone!”

The intensity of his self-flagellation increased, and Ed, alone more than ever, grew frightened and more savage with himself.

"Then I started thinking of AIDS, of which I knew next to nothing. “Was I careful? Was I not? What did you do! You stepped into this new world and then you get AIDS! You’re gonna kill anybody you come near.” I remember going to work and not wanting to breathe near anyone.”

One might think that Ed’s first encounter caused his suicide attempt. It didn’t. One must look deeper.  The now longstanding pattern of hiding, secreting himself away with no support, no friend or mentor to offer perspective, created a fault-line so deep, that he couldn’t withstand the internal pressure.

“I never had an experience opening up to anyone and I couldn’t do it now.”

THE HEART OF THE ATTEMPT

What drives someone, in these final moments, to carry out his or her plan rather than interrupt it? What is the nature of the momentum that continues one forward, often despite consider- able obstacles? The answer to these questions lies in at least one of the following desires:

    • To escape a dilemma that feels inescapable

    • To gain control of uncontrollable confusion

    • To send a message when all others means of communication have failed

There’s a dam in upstate New York near the small town where Ed had been a high school all-star and hero. He drove to the top knowing that in its seventy year history, none of the forty people who jumped from it had survived. Ed couldn’t imagine living life as a gay man, nor could he endure one more day of the vicious and corrosive self-hatred which was consuming him. He paused for a half-hour or so, then tumbled.

Someone witnessed the fall…a medical student, taking a walk nearby.  When he reached Ed at the bottom, Ed asked:

“Did I do it?”

“Yes,” the young man replied.

“Am I gonna die?”

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“Shit.”

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Ed

Ed:

Most of the problems started when I was fourteen. My dad’s business started going downhill. He had emphysema and he’d smoke all the time. I was preoccupied with him, because I never knew how long he was gonna live. I was six-feet-four and 170 pounds. I started to get all these sexual feelings. They were homosexual feelings.

In adolescence, it’s common for one’s self-esteem to be shaky, but Ed’s problems were compounded. Searching for some validation as ‘normal’, amidst considerable internal doubts, Ed took the advice of friends and teachers and tried out for football. By his senior year, he grew to an imposing six-feet-five, 233-pound eighteen-year-old, relieved to be winning the approval of family and friends and happy that he could excel at the most popular sport in town. As Ed’s popularity soared,  the adulation provided the opportunity for him to hide—in plain sight.

I thought, “What is this shit!” When I’d fantasize, the gay stuff would come up. I’d like it [but] I’d be scared at the same time, and I’d say to God, “Please don’t let anybody find out.”

I can’t appreciate enough how forthright and unflinchingly honest Ed was during the many hours we spoke. Ed is a large man, but one would be mistaken to attribute the effect of his presence to size alone. Rather, it’s the breath of his spirit, the passion with which he approaches nearly everything in life. He speaks graphically. Holding a listener in the powerful beam of his attention, he says precisely what he feels to be true. He may apologize later for startling one’s sensibilities, but he will not dilute or sidestep the facts of his life.

There is so much in his story that is illustrative of being caught in suicide’s dangerous cross-currents. This part vividly portrays how people begin to withdraw, hide in plain site, as I mentioned, and create a mask or façade to prevent others from seeing in and sensing the deeper, more tender, authentic aspects of one’s makeup.

I started having these conflicting feelings. I started being attracted to some of my friends. Some were girls, but some were boys. It was all normal, but I didn’t know. I didn’t tell anybody. That’s when a lot of it started. I started getting [withdrawn]. I couldn’t speak in front of the class without turning into a radish.

Withdrawal may begin in small increments, and from the outside it may not be easy to detect: little things left unsaid, eyes that don’t look up to meet your gaze, a faraway expression. A loved one may seem preoccupied—it seems s/he is somewhere else—or for a moment she shows a flash of irritation or anger, sadness or frustration, and then it’s gone, buried in silence. Speaking to him, you might get the sense that your words aren’t heard—that they fall flat or seem not to impact—or his words seem slightly out of sync, absent of feeling, not about what’s really going on. Often, one spends considerable effort to make things appear okay:

“I was just trying so hard to pass for normal.”

The “Withdrawal” is an identifiable stage as one descends into feeling suicidal. It’s complex process, with two complementary mechanisms. It offers protection, a cloak in which one can disappear, take refuge from overwhelming stress. Clinicians who are specialists in the field of trauma understand this to be a natural response. In a sense, it is nature caring for itself. On the other hand, the withdrawal often becomes generalized—a habitual posture of retreat from the world, which insidiously becomes a lifestyle and then a trap.

I made all-county and then all-state. I had a pretty good year, but it also put a lot of pressure on me. I’d imagine people wondering: “Why doesn’t he have girlfriends?” I put all my energy into sports. Not wanting to face my inner feelings, pretending I was too busy to do other things with friends. I actually took a girl to the prom. I knew she liked me, and I did have attractions to certain women, but toward the end of that year, the guilt of it all started really hanging on me. “Oh shit, man, how is this ever gonna work out?”

Ed was offered numerous football scholarships and chose the University of Pittsburgh, one of the best teams in the country. Almost, but never quite, outrunning his fears and anxieties, he entered into a near-Faustian bargain with the world:

I can play football. I can do that. And I can pretend, but please don’t let them see underneath. Looming over me was the big question: “Are they gonna know I’m gay?” I tried to live up to the beer commercials. I can remember my dad and his friend’s saying-—“faggot” this or “faggot” that.

Ed entered the ultra masculine world of collegiate football, with its rabid fans, intrusive alumni, and its single-minded obsession with victory. He was a young Adonis—strong, carefree, and sexually attractive. He represented heroic America at its best, and he did his best to throw himself into the role.

I played the game. I got tanked up and fooled around with some of the co-eds, and I enjoyed it, and I’d say to myself, “This was okay. I must not be gay. I’m not a fag!” I really hated those words and I really hated feeling this. Underneath, I was just very lonely. I wasn’t preoccupied with it all the time, but a lot, because it clashed with what I thought I should be. I wanted to be so much like others. I started communicating less and less. I [was afraid] it was like dominoes: if I ever communicated even some of my intimate feelings, it would [all] unravel and people would hate me.

The pattern had been established. Ed projected only the thoughts and actions that supported his idea of what he wanted other people to see. Everything else was censored.

I hated myself in many ways because I didn’t like this—this double life I was trying to lead. I liked to write poetry I liked to write things like that and be sensitive, and whenever a damn teardrop hit me, I’d say, “You fucking chump! What are you feeling that way for?”

He was celebrated on campus as one of the better football players, and when Pitt won the national championship, he was invited by the New York Jets to their tryout camp. His prospects soared and friends and family were pulling for the Ed they thought they knew. The adulation and his inner torment built to a near equal pitch.

Never in my life had I known such uncontrolled fear. Did I tip anyone off as to how I was feeling? No, of course not! At six-feet-six and 240 pounds, could Big Ed admit to anyone, even himself, that he was going under? I mean, totally losing it, and only partially being aware of the fact?

Each day Ed battled to resist his urge to relieve the tension and tell someone. He would not permit himself to divulge his secret to friends, but he felt he was about to explode. Agitated and confused, Ed made an anonymous phone call late one night to the university crisis center.

I remember going to a phone booth, looking up the counseling center number, and talking a little bit, saying, “Hey, I don’t want you to know who I am, but there’s a little problem. I think I’m a little bit queer or something. “ We talked just a few minutes—I don’t even remember what was said—and then I hung up. I remember it felt so good just to say it. And that she didn’t know who I was and didn’t care that I was well known or not. It felt so good knowing that somebody somewhere knows a little bit about me, even if they don’t know my name. It felt like it popped this internal balloon, relieved the pressure just to talk about it. I felt pleasure for months after that, but I didn’t realize and look closely that this was the way to go—talking about it. I didn’t capitalize on it and use it as a learning experience. I went back to football—back to the same stuff, the same old thing...(to be continued...)

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