I’ve mentioned the breakdown in Davis more than once, but never told the whole story. \u00a0My good friend Kathi moved to Davis to go to Nursing School, and I followed her.\u00a0 The environmental movement was just gearing up \u2014 it was 1970 \u2014 and I was invited to be part of a team that was exploring computer modeling of biological systems. \u00a0I could have had a career in the growing environmental movement.\u00a0 I remember Dr. Watt saying of my Wellesley degree, \u201cThey taught you how to think.\u201d \u00a0He also saw that I was admitted to the University of California at Davis.<\/p>\n
It was all too much for me.\u00a0 I got overwhelmed, got into another bad relationship in my desperate search for security, and finally had a breakdown that landed me in the University Health Center.<\/p>\n
That breakdown actually happened because I was seeing a psychiatrist.\u00a0 He asked me about my childhood.\u00a0 He said \u201cYou must have been very frightened.\u201d\u00a0 That blew something wide open.<\/p>\n
Journal entry January 25, 1970<\/p>\n
work with Dr. Asher: realized that from a very early age i was somehow given the message that I was not to trouble my parents with my problems but was expected to hide them, weep in secret, somehow solve them myself.\u00a0 His questions brought out my own role as mother in the family, as parent to myself and to my brothers and sisters.\u00a0 Then he said a strange thing “You must have been very frightened.”<\/p>\n
When I left his office I was exhausted, as though i had spent an hour of hard physical labor.\u00a0 i slept for nearly 24 hours after that \u2014 a sign of a breakthrough.\u00a0 strong feelings of confession and absolution. what was it? perhaps for the first time having real pride in my real accomplishments \u2014 somehow having been a parent without parental example \u2014 and it was real pride instead of inflated-ego-neurotic-martyr-pride.\u00a0 His statement about being frightened:\u2014 i had paid the price for my “pride” in daring to assume my parents role; and it was all right to be frightened \u2014 it was all right to be frightened!\u00a0 it wasn’t a great sin, it was a perfectly normal childhood reaction to such a responsibility. \u00a0 had always put myself down for being frightened, and let my life be largely controlled by fear because i never learned that it was a normal reaction which could be faced and dealt with.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Reading this now, I’m a little amused at my adolescent language. \u00a0One thing I notice, though, is that I say “daring to assume my parents’ role” \u00a0No, I didn’t “dare” or “assume,” the role of parent was dropped on me by their failure to be parents. \u00a0My astonishment finding out that it was “all right to be frightened” tells me how many times I was made wrong for being afraid. \u00a0Or else it was just ignored instead of dealt with.<\/p>\n
I think up to that point I had been in denial of my fear.\u00a0 The \u201cfear\u201d I said controlled me was fear of making a mistake.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t anything like the cold terror I experienced the next winter in Maine.\u00a0 Possibly I was in denial of all my feelings.\u00a0 I had been mostly living in my head. \u00a0The first thing I felt after my fear was validated was anger.\u00a0 Giving expression to the anger opened me wide up.\u00a0 I was scared enough to put myself in the Health Center and take the tranquilizers they offered me to try to close myself down again.<\/p>\n
The rest of the story. \u00a0Dr. Asher said \u201cYou must have been very frightened.\u201d\u00a0 I remember feeling absolved.\u00a0 I wrote \u201cIt was OK to be frightened!\u201d\u00a0 I slept almost a whole day.\u00a0 Then I decided to put my life back together without David, but I wanted to borrow his truck to get a door to make a desktop.\u00a0 When I got to his apartment, he wouldn\u2019t let me in, and I could see another girl.\u00a0 So I got my car jack and started smashing his windows.\u00a0 Then the cops came.\u00a0 I knew David wouldn\u2019t want them involved.\u00a0 He was dealing drugs, which I carefully stayed in denial of, so he told the cops he wouldn\u2019t press charges.\u00a0 Feeling totally lost, I went to my friend Kathi and told her what I\u2019d done.\u00a0 She said \u201cBut Jenny, you can\u2019t do that.\u201d \u00a0So I went to the student Health Center and turned myself in.\u00a0 I was exploding with rage at being abandoned, but I had no idea and neither did the staff or anyone around me.\u00a0 I must have appeared manic.\u00a0 I know I wrote and wrote in my journal \u2014 there was something I called \u201cNotes from the Hospital\u201d and my regular journal which I had named Ondine, following Ana\u00efs Nin, my current role model.\u00a0 They were giving me Mellaril, a powerful tranquilizer, 300mg a day.\u00a0 Later, working on a crisis hot line, I found out that 600mg was the minimum lethal dose.\u00a0 It was a good thing I didn\u2019t know that.\u00a0 I had heard a story about someone who tried to kill himself with tranquilizers and didn\u2019t die, just was very tranquil for a while.\u00a0 I hated the way Mellaril made me feel.\u00a0 Very slow and sort of blurred.\u00a0 When I got out of the hospital, I got off it as quickly as I could.\u00a0 Withdrawal was very uncomfortable.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t see \u201cpink elephants\u201d but I understood what they meant.<\/p>\n
After that, I never experienced the rage again.\u00a0 I wish there had been someone at the time who knew something about trauma.\u00a0 But Peter Levine\u2019s book was 30 years in the future.\u00a0 I did, however, start to feel fear which I don\u2019t remember feeling that intensely before.\u00a0 It was as though Dr. Asher had given me permission to feel fear.<\/p>\n
UPDATE from 2019: \u00a0I looked up Mellaril<\/a> only to find out that it is an anti-psychotic, not a tranquilizer. \u00a0It was a good thing I didn’t know that. \u00a0I actually had a lethal amount in my possession for several years after I stopped taking it. \u00a0But I had heard of someone who took a whole bottle of tranquilizers, and didn’t die, just got very tranquil. \u00a0I only found out that twice the dose I was taking was the minimum lethal dose when I was working on a suicide hotline in 1974, and I’d gotten rid of it long ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve mentioned the breakdown in Davis more than once, but never told the whole story. \u00a0My good friend Kathi moved to Davis to go to Nursing School, and I followed her.\u00a0 The environmental movement was just gearing up \u2014 it … Continue reading