That Silly Overdose

“He ignored your overdose because you were faking all of the other times!”

There was a tone in her voice that could make the most tolerant person wince, and this was what the girl tried to focus on, since the words were the equivalent of daggers.

I love the timbre of your voice…

This suddenly came to her mind out of nowhere – a line from a scene she did in an acting class in college. A line from a play called “Beyond Therapy,” which was as appropriate then as it is now.

It was from the first scene of the play and a blind date in a restaurant and absolutely hilarious and completely absurd. She had gotten to throw a full glass of water in the man’s face at the end of that scene. Her teacher had taught Robin Williams at Juilliard and suggested she audition for Juilliard.

Like everything since her professional ballet training days, she had scoffed at the suggestion, her confidence more than demolished, after years living at home with her family – years between the ballet dorm and now a college dorm – years that stole away her promise.

Was the shriek of this woman’s voice – this woman with the blond bob hairdo and the large breasts – was this what ‘timbre’ meant? This tone that might pierce her eardrum if another syllable was uttered?

“He ignored your overdose because you were faking all of the other times!”

All of the ‘other times.’

The ‘other times.’

And who was “he”?

The girl moved her head, which felt like a block of cement, from the large-breasted shrieking woman with the blond bob hairdo who thought she was so smart, to the man sitting at the table.

The man was her father, and the only way for the screeching woman to think the way she was thinking.

About the girl – his daughter.

About ME – a human who became so traumatized, that she began talking about herself in the third person, either as “the girl,” or sometimes if the piece permitted, as “that broken writer girl.”

--

“So – why do you even want to reconcile?”

The words were spoken by a new therapist on session three, two months after the event that had turned into four days of such extreme distress, that the girl thought she might never recover.

It must be noted however, that this woman with the blond bob haircut and the large breasts – (i.e. the “girlfriend”) – that she had essentially let the cat out of the bag with this damaging and scarring phrase.

She had blown her father’s cover after just shy of five years, as until this horrific sentence was screamed in that dog-whistle pitch, the girl had loved her father and trusted that he had her back.

But to think that the girl hadn’t wanted to go to that lady’s house for the holidays – to think that every cell in her body had screamed DANGEROUS.

The avalanche of catastrophe that had begun with the death of the girl’s mother four years ago had already included three years of Rosh Hashanahs and Christmases without her family. The trauma had already been endured and perfected – so why this “invite” now?

The girl had taken every precaution to avoid such suffering, too. She had had three-way calls with her father and therapists, expressing her concerns. Her fears. Coming up with “safety plans,” should blondie bob-lady pull a freak-out of sorts.

And what had been her fears?

“I’m worried that you’ve said bad things about me to her. She seems to sort of – hate me, which doesn’t make sense. I worry that if I get upset about mom being gone or –…or anything really…and leave the room calmly…that she – that you have set it up that she will sort of…judge me or something.”

Her fears had been dismissed as always, as ludicrous. Not even worth a conversation.

“The things that you come up with,” her father had said, first on the phone and then in person.

So, it was all in her head – her fears that this woman might say something cruel.

Imagine.

Imagine!

“Meghan?” said the new therapist. “Why do you even want to reconcile?”

The girl had no energy as she looked back at him, as at this point, she really didn’t want to reconcile.

“He is my father – what the hell am I supposed to do? If I don’t – he will never “understand” why. He will act the way he is acting…he will contact and contact with this ‘old man’ routine and…

…what the hell am I supposed to do?”

The new therapist barely knew her – yet seemed to know her, and to agree with her.

Validation. The thing she lacked…

He seemed to know her and understand her better than her own family ever had.

Now just how was something like that possible?

---

She tried to focus on the walk home.

The leaves crunched under her feet and several literally “fell” during this gorgeous fall season, her favorite season, the smells of growing up….in all those different places…

And here we go – even the happy memories, perhaps especially the happy memories, were now a recipe for nausea, because what was it all for? This “family” of hers…who were they? In all those different cities and towns, all those Christmases and Hanukkahs that had seemed so “happy happy.”

“He ignored your overdose because you were faking all of the other times!”

This woman’s kitchen – a kitchen she didn’t want to be in on Christmas number four since her mother died.

She had told her father she didn’t feel comfortable going there and asked if they could please meet up elsewhere just the two of them.

“And what are we going to do? Stare at each other in a hotel room?”

So, this was how he saw their relationship. This was how he saw her now, his daughter, how he regarded her, how he valued time with her.

He didn’t value it.

Yet we used to meet up before. In New York City for special weekends…

Faking all of the other times…

Faking…

Wasn’t it bad enough that there had been ‘other times’?

And the doctor had called him! The very first time…one of these “other times.”

The doctor had said… “If any of my colleagues had lost their mom, their brother, their niece and their nephew in one shot…had no extended family and no home base and support system – any of my colleagues would be having a nervous breakdown.”

Validation. The thing she so craved…

Was that not clear enough?

And what did he do?

Did he not know her own history?

He didn’t travel to me…

Faking.

All of the other times.

So…was he the mouthpiece? Telling all to ignore me?

And then the girl eventually fell for it – this abuse.

“Okay – I’ll give it to you. What if I had been faking? After all that loss and being alone all that time? What the hell does that have to do with an overdose two years later?”

Meghan said this to the woman with the blond bob, and to her father, who had joined in – two on one, and no, not in defense of his daughter as he had sworn he would do on the counseling calls preparing for this nonsensical trip, (safety plan!) – but two on one - against his daughter.

This was absurd – and she knew it. She knew not to get sucked in, but she was in the woman’s house! Her things were all over the place – upstairs and downstairs and all over…so…in the moment to escape the “two on one,” Meghan went to the basement, and this allowed the two of them to come downstairs and corner her.

More yelling. More blame.

That screaming…

For days…

She would forever be in that basement.

--

“And I covered my ears and begged them to stop.

But how was I going to get out of that house?

And a flight home at Christmas?

And why had I come? When my gut had screamed DANGER?

Because had I not there’d be guilt – that he had “tried” and I had rejected, yet now look!

Every promise had been a lie, and the things I’d worried about had been dead on – in fact I hadn’t worried enough!

Yelling at someone else’s child about a suicide attempt the year before!

And the worst part hasn’t happened yet!

The worst part is he’s going to make me explain to him again and again why it isn’t safe for me to be around them – and it will be done in a way like he is a sweet old man who loves me, and why am I – his daughter – breaking his heart like this?”

Her therapist watched her, speaking rapidly for the first time, sentences pouring out of her, not only eloquently depicting the traumatic scenes she had just lived through, but predicting a hell with such precise detail – that he found himself feeling her fury, her desperation, and even her rage.

“It will be like all of this never happened. Can you even imagine that? Like dog amnesia…”

“Oh pfff…. the things that you come up with,” she said, imitating her father, “show how crazy you are,” she added for the first time.

“Did I tell you that he said that? He said that about things he had already done, and things I feared he was going to do – all of which – every single one – he then did.”

"He says everything in a condescending way mixed with arrogance mixed with…cruelty...

...And if you’re going to treat me like that – then at least go away. RIGHT?”

But she knew he wouldn’t. He would put her in the position to reject him for the rest of her life, or live with this sort of dynamic.

She left her therapist’s office and walked through the park, seemingly cutting through the thick air.

She did not notice the gorgeous hues of golds and reds this time. She did not take in the intense smells of bark and oak and chimney smoke that she normally cherished.

There was nothing she could do about this problem in her family.

Nobody she could call. Noone who would understand.

There was nobody who cared – she knew that after the past few years.

There weren’t enough people who knew her family – there were too many moves. They were essentially strangers to people their entire lives, just “passing through,” a year here and a year there.

So – what do you do in an emergency when you lose your entire family?

Where is the manual for this?

It’s like they made me dependent on them, and though I found independence elsewhere, I came back to them…for this.

She walked and she wondered, what on earth she was going to do.

I’m like a battered woman in a movie. I’m an expert on that issue. What would I advise them?

And round and round it went, her unsolvable problem, a problem

nobody should have to “solve.”

“He ignored your overdose because you were faking all of the other times!”

But it was my first overdose, my first suicide attempt, Meghan thought – at least the first he knew about, (because now she was actually considering if her father ignoring her overdose for any reason at all, was actually a sensible thing to do…)

(…Because when dysfunction was this bad, finding an excuse for the inexcusable might at least allow her to reconcile it, or justify it, or…)

But this one was too big.

He left her to die and that was a fact – and then his main concern was making sure the new woman in his life – and her entire family – knew his “side” of the story.

Which wasn’t that he was a shitty father and a selfish man.

Of course, it wasn’t that - and therefore – his daughter was a “faker," and her first suicide attempt deserved to be ignored – and to be screamed about at the kitchen table at the “safe” Christmas trip he invited his daughter to, “doth she protest.”

--

Meghan had made it out of that house.

But it would take her seven years to truly understand that her suicide attempt had not only been ignored, but had been ridiculed.

The therapist had turned into a few hospital stays the following year, trying to remove this sentence from where it had stowed itself in her brain – but nobody could remove it.

The best they could do was finally get through to her about how blocking her family was necessary for her survival.

This had been said to her for five long years, yet she had refused to hear it or even consider it.

But now she had to look back at her five years, and it was undeniable that it had been nothing but heartbreak and not only that. It had been five years of sabotaging her every time she nearly got something started. Every time she had started to put one foot in front of the other, her dad or her brother had interrupted with an invite – an invite that would not come through – and this would destroy the progress she was making.

In one case this prevented her move to New York City, and in another it caused more overdoses.

There was now no choice but to listen to the harsh words of the hospital therapist.

“You have two choices,” he said. “You can kill yourself – or you can move forward in your life without them, knowing that it will be very, very hard.”

The pain in Meghan had been so intense for so many years that she thought nothing else could pierce her soul, yet hearing these words impaled what remained of her heart.

The blank future that lay ahead of her had already seemed bleak, yet now she could envision the doom of social interactions, of trying to meet people – of trying to connect – already her biggest struggle – but after losing her entire family and five years trying to get them back – and all for nothing - to now having to block them – to now having to have them be dead to her.

How to explain this going forward? How to answer questions? How to converse? To connect?

How to find validation.

The exhaustion of her future took over, yet she watched her therapist and listened as he continued, speaking logically of an impossible task – her life – going it alone after all this mess – her only option.

--

The blocking of them had improved things for Meghan – somewhat, but it hadn’t stopped the tape.

The tape was a problem.

He ignored your overdose…

It just wouldn’t stop.

Because you were faking…

And this was bad.

All of the other times.

Because it told her she should be dead. It told her he had left her for dead “because she deserved it.”

It told her so many things, as did his lack of effort to see her under her “safety terms” for the four years following this traumatic event.

Yes.

She hadn’t blocked him immediately.

She had given him a chance to respect her boundaries and repair the relationship safely, in order to have one.

No interest.

Better off dead.

And this was not a recipe for confidence and meeting people – and so she didn’t. Not really.

Meghan got through life. She worked if she had to, and could still pull off her entertaining ways, but she knew it was waning.

She knew after an hour her problems would start to rise to the surface.

She knew she was damaged – and knew the “professionals” couldn’t help.

As that last therapist had stated, and she believed he was correct, this wasn’t a therapy issue. Talking about it at length wouldn’t help.

She would need a new family – she would need a new life.

And she could do this, by returning to her life of travel, by connecting to her languages and her identity and people in other countries. She could at least improve her chances this way…

But even after she did this and had some success…her dad wrote a letter…

A snail mail letter and she felt herself slide down the staircase back to the black.

He didn’t care – and he never would.

After all, he ignored an overdose, because she was “faking all of the other times.”

And he had been told, that very first night, that any of the psychiatrist’s colleagues – if they were dealing with the identical circumstances that Meghan was dealing with – would be having a nervous breakdown.

Meghan would find understanding, here and there, and one day she might find more than that.

But so far, she was the girl that therapist predicted she would be, the girl having the “very, very hard life,” trying to connect but not to overwhelm, trying to make friends…just trying, trying, trying.

But she was definitely still riding solo, a wreck from the tapes in her head, occasionally writing the stellar piece that made people cry…

Because what the girl at least discovered after years inside her dark dungeons and caves, was that when others were in their darkest hour – she could write about it.

She could latch onto that pain in others and disappear into it for awhile, and no matter how horrific it was, it was the only thing that allowed her an escape…and once she felt this anguish of another, she could write it up beautifully…tragically…all her own tears on the page with those of whomever she wrote about.

And so, in the end, the broken girl began to think – that if she could use her trauma to write about trauma…that at least it wouldn’t be wasted.

And this thought allowed a pin prick of light into the dark and dingy cave of the broken writer girl, about seven years after this sentence was screamed at her.

In that high pitched voice that would make even the calmest person squeal.