The Broken Spring November 13, 2007

During the latter part of my senior year in college, I began to see a woman named Wendy once a week.
 
My father had begun calling every morning at 6 a.m. that spring. Pressing Talk unleashed his voice  into my bedroom, and even though he was many hundreds of miles away, my mind instantly ran back to the nights he’d yell at me for hours in the study of our house, keeping me awake to listen to things that no child of any parent who brought them into existence should have to hear.  To the mornings I’d wake up with eyes swollen shut from uncontrollably crying once I was allowed the safety of my own room, my own bed. To the breakfasts I’d have to endure with my mother and my sisters, pretending to be the perfect family we appeared to be to everyone else. To the night I got fed up and left after having to listen for hours about how the sight of me disgusted him and how he chased after me and punished me for having the audacity to walk out on him while he was talking to me. And then my mind would eventually bring me back to my present, and I would think about how easy it would be to just click End. And I would think about how I knew that I could never do that.
 
He began every conversation as though he was already in the middle of it. You get accepted into Harvard Law yet? What about Yale? Daughter, you hear me? What about Yale Law! You get letter yet? Why you so quiet? You not just wake up right now, do you? And he had a point. I was quiet during these morning conversations that sometimes lasted for hours, normally preoccupied with lighting cigarettes or mixing drinks. It may have only been 6 a.m., but to me, it beat the uncontrollable crying.   
 
As early as the orientation week before freshman year even officially begins at my university, students are informed that our school allows us a certain number of free psychological counseling sessions at the campus health center to be used at any time during our four years. It’s a valid attempt to stave off suicides at a prestigious school that employs a demanding quarter schedule and is located in a climate that knows harsh weather and long dark nights once October comes and lasts until April, sometimes even May, leaves. 
 
I had dealt with his demands all throughout college. Booze, friends, and distance had always been enough to take the sting away from his ranting phone calls.
 
But something changed that spring of my senior year. He had finally broken me. Really, really broken me.
 
After years of verbal and, sometimes, physical torment; after years of being the best and hearing it wasn’t enough; after 3 1/2 years of intense collegiate learning; and after the previous two months of going out and getting fucktastically trashed six nights a week to run away from the demons, I had nothing left.
 
So without telling anyone, I went to the health center, tagged in my free counseling sessions, and began to see Wendy.
 
It’s not that seeing a therapist hadn’t crossed my mind before. But in my family, sprained ankles were told to be “walked off.” And ibuprofen or other painkillers? For far too fucking long did I think women actually had to feel like knives were being thrashed around the insides of their uteri once a month. If my body dared get sick, my father blamed my “poor character”. Physical pain was hardly allowed to be recognized; mental health didn’t have a chance. You were fine, and that was it.
 
My friends in college were the type of people that loved how fucking crazy we were. There was no time to worry about what life may bring after graduation, no time to worry about moving away or falling apart; we were too fucking busy having too much fucking fun. Racking up stories to tell the next day at brunch. And I loved it, too. We did too many fucking crazy things, but we were taking advantage of the unique situation we’d never be in again - old enough to get anything we wanted, but young enough to not really have a fucking care in the world.
 
Then the daily phone calls from my father began. And the precarious balance I was walking between sanity and that other side quickly became no balance at all.
 
Wendy may have saved me that quarter. I had my hesitations entering the sessions. I had walls. I came in skeptical. I didn’t want to be fed self-help book crap or mantras I should repeat to myself every morning while looking in the mirror. But Wendy just listened. No judgment. And it wasn’t until then that I realized that was the one thing I was desperately missing from my life. One thing that wasn’t judging me. Or competing against me. Or talking about me. Or loving me. Or hating me. Or pushing me down. One thing that would let me just be. Wendy gave me that.
 
After several weekly meetings had passed and we had gained a comfort level with one another, she suggested I meet once with the health center’s shrink. And I dutifully agreed. But I didn’t get to sleep the night before the appointment – pulling an all-nighter to finish a paper that was due that same morning - and seconds before my meeting with the shrink, knowing I looked off, knowing I felt off, I decided to see how crazy I could make her think I am.
 
I know this is a fucking awful approach to seeing someone who was trying to help me, but with a few choice answers, she had prescribed me sleeping pills, anti-depressants, and Adderal after a 35-minute session. Prescription medicine can be a beautiful thing, but thank God I knew, for me, this wasn’t about chemical imbalances that needed to be rebalanced. I never took the pills continuously. The sleeping pills made me feel too drowsy all the time, and what the fuck is the point of life if you can’t just be on? And the anti-depressants? I knew I was going through something incredibly rough that made me hurt every waking moment, but I knew that my spirit, my will to live, my soul, was not depressed. That probably sounds like a lunatic saying that they know they’re not crazy and I’m certainly not suggesting that there aren’t people who do need this type of help and do need this type of medication and there is nothing wrong with that and everything great about it if that is what that individual needs. But I knew what I needed, and what I needed was to talk and have someone listen.
 
(Oh – I forgot to mention the aftermath of the Adderal, didn’t I? Well, with both my best friend and I having senior honors history theses due that quarter, I think you can safely assume where those went.)
 
A part of me will always hold on to denial, that weapon that was my best friend through a lot of painful times when I was younger. Writing about these kinds of memories forces me to remember, to think, to ask myself if I’m a better person now. I think having these memories, in some way, makes me a better person now.
 
There’s a lack of anxiety and nerves now. No feeling in the pit of my stomach that gnaws at me constantly. But oddly enough, Wendy popped into my mind the other day. The woman who may have saved me my senior year in college. It may sound cheesy, but I thought about how happy she would be for me to hear that I am doing better, if not well. To hear that things with my father, while not perfect, are improving.
 
I think I’m going to buy a card for her during my lunch break tomorrow. Write a message with subtle reminders of who I am in the chance she may not remember me. Emphasize how much she helped me. Remind her that what she does - on a campus full of students who appear to care more about their high-end drugs, fashion and BMWs than their mental health - is important.
 
Thank her for meeting with me, the skeptical brat, once a week during the spring of my senior year, and just listening.