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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The Mask

There will be time, there will be time, to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet. -    T.S. Eliot

“Nobody could tell that anything was going on. The [suicide] notes gave me something to focus on [at my desk] so that I could do my job without thinking about it and be really occupied with it. I was able to do [my job] by rote, going through my role but not being there…” - Deborah

With the news of the probable suicide of L’Wren Scott, noted fashion designer and partner to The Rolling Stone’s, Mick Jagger, we read messages from around the world attesting both to understandable sadness and shock.  Quite often, we hear smart, caring, well-intentioned people say, “I had no idea, he seemed so happy”, or “Her life seemed so together…”

 
How does this happen?
 
As someone withdraws into the idea of suicide, what I’ve termed the suicidal trance, he or she becomes increasingly trapped within a closed system of corrosive thoughts and emotions.  It prevents others from seeing their anguish and one misses the opportunity to receive much needed understanding and compassion. Ones inner turmoil, and in large measure his or her humanity, becomes concealed. As the withdrawal continues, a pernicious belief encamps within them – that no one will understand the dilemma they are in or even if they did, would not be able to help.
 
As a result, people create a façade, designed to mask their pain, and that mask is often nearly impenetrable. So much so, that when others don’t recognize the façade, isn’t an indication of their lack of attention or love, but a testament to how powerfully someone who is suicidal can withdraw into a tight spiral of emotional pain and hide it.
 
What happens inside this closed system?  People who descend into suicide become their own judges and juries. They privately decide that their concerns are either:
 

•     pathological
•     impossible to grasp
•     impossible to remedy, or
•     not worthy of another’s attention.

 
They pull further away from genuine interpersonal exchange and, over time, lose a sense of who or what could be helpful. It is as if someone has become lost in the forest and finds a cave for shelter. The territory is foreign and the sounds, alien. Every rustle of leaves or crack of a twig is interpreted as a sign that something alive and dangerous is drawing nearer, and one pulls back into the cave, withdrawing deeper and deeper. The further he or she retreats from the cave’s mouth, the less the possibility of distinguishing fact from fear, help from danger.
 
 Some forms the façade can take:
 

“…everybody thought I was happy and normal and well-adjusted and I got straight A’s. I was a good person, you know? I was just trying to pass for normal."  - Mattie

 
As inner turmoil remains unaddressed, the chasm widens between one’s silent suffering and the image one projects.  Emotional pain – most often fear– continues unabated and the perceived need for the façade increases. Unfortunately and frighteningly, people can mask themselves so skillfully, it fools friends and loved ones alike.  Some forms of the façade may include:
 

•      extroverted – happy and smiling; life of the party and friend to all.
•      robotic – cloaked in plain sight, methodically going through one’s day
•      hostile – combative, defiant but underneath, terrified.

 
 
Here are some examples…

Extroverted:

In the roughest times, Mattie could always call on her wit, her joie de vivre, and her considerable intelligence. People naturally gravitated to her, as she was attractive, genuinely caring, and unpretentious. Her most frequent complaint was that she didn’t have enough time for all her friends. No one knew the self-loathing she carried, or that she was bulimic and often contemplated suicide.

“There was something inside me that [felt] just horrible or bad or needy or painful, and  it didn’t match the outside, because I’d always been so extroverted.”
 

Methodical and Robotic:

"Nobody seemed to notice, except one. When I came back from lunch, one woman asked me if I’d been crying. I went to the bathroom and washed my face and I did not talk to anyone again the rest of the day. No one bothered me!"
 

Deborah is a medical secretary who lives in Colorado Springs. She spent the day of her suicide attempt calmly and unobtrusively sitting at her desk in the office, writing suicide notes. The mask she wore was virtually impenetrable.
 

Defiant & Hostile:

"James Dean was one of my biggest heroes—Rebel Without a Cause, The Outsiders, Indiana Jones, Fonzie. I grew up on Rambo films and Playboy. Tough guys were my idols.  Smokin’ cigarettes, stealing shit, comin’ in the next morning all hung over. Living on the streets, sleeping in newspaper bins—these were my battle scars.
I started realizing how much pain there is in the world, how much loneliness, and although I don’t want to kill myself anymore, it still frustrates me how many kids feel like shit. – Jason, 19
 

Withdrawn:

"I acted out for years—didn’t communicate with my parents, hung around the university bars uptown, and sexually acted out a lot too. I was pretty promiscuous and I drank a lot. I didn’t talk to anyone. No one. I got into the blues and listened to Billie Holiday records." - Cynthia
 

Next Blog:  What Can Someone Do?

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