The Outsider

 “I told my Mom I wasn’t coming come for Christmas,” Doug says, adopting a calm, matter-of-fact tone. “It didn’t go over well. She kept telling me I couldn’t split the family over politics, that family was more important. And I kept telling her nothing was more important than what’s happening to our country and, besides, as she might have noticed at Thanksgiving, our family was already split. Then she told me she didn’t know how I got so brainwashed, that I was brought up in a good, solid Republican family and how did I end up being so liberal. Unlike my brother’s reaction, she didn’t call me crazy or a Communist, so at least she hasn’t painted me as evil incarnate.”

“So how do you feel, Doug? How do you feel not going home for Christmas? How do you feel being the odd person out in your family?”

“Hmm. I didn’t think I was feeling much about it, but when you just asked, I don’t know, I guess it made me feel sad, like maybe even lonely. I mean my girlfriend and most of my friends think like I do, but still, my family is my family. I wouldn’t want to lose them. That’s really why I came to see you to begin with, feeling separate, apart, isolated even when I’m with a bunch of people.”

“Yes, you said you didn’t know why you should feel so alienated, when so many people obviously cared about you.”

“Yeah.” Pause. “But maybe I never felt really cared about in my own family.” Pause. “I mean, I was always different. My family is really into sports, group games, tossing around a football. That’s never been me. I was always the stereotypical shy kid who had my head in a book or, which I loved most of all, drawing, painting, looking to see how I could capture the essence of the world on a piece of paper.”

“No wonder you’re an artist,” I say, smiling.

“Well, I’m trying. But meanwhile I’m sort of making a living giving art lessons.” Pause. “My father keeps trying to talk me into being a financial planner like him, going into his firm, but that’s absolutely the last thing I want to do. I can’t imagine staring at numbers all day and trying to make more and more money. There’s so much more beauty in life.” Pause. “But that’s the problem, I’m different, always have been.”

“I guess my question is, why is being different a problem? Are you saying that in your family being different was automatically seen as bad?”

“Defective. I think that’s the word. There was something wrong with me. There was something wrong that I’d want to try to draw a perfect rose, to get the color absolutely right, rather than screaming at a football game. My Dad used to call me a sissy. I think he worried I’d turn out gay. That would have been a nightmare, gay in my family! When I was younger, I worried about it a bit too, but once I hit adolescence there was no question I was into girls. It was a relief actually. And I never had problems with girls. Girls liked me. Probably because I was sensitive and cared about them. And all that helped. But it still didn’t take away the feeling of being different.”

“Feeling different and feeling defective aren’t the same.”

“That’s true. I guess sometimes I feel one and sometimes the other. But the defective feeling doesn’t go away.”

“What about your mother? How did she see you?”

“Hmm. This might sound strange, but I guess kind of neutrally. I mean I know my mother loves me, and she never saw me as negatively as my Dad, but I don’t know. I think I was just sort of there for her and she knew she had to take care of me and she did what she had to do.” Pause. “This is a little embarrassing, but you know earlier when you smiled at me and said, ‘no wonder you’re an artist,’?”

I nod.

“Well, that’s not a response I ever would have gotten from my Mom. It’s like you were pleased with me, validating me. I never felt that in my family.”

“That’s really sad, Doug,” I say, feeling both his sadness and my own. “Thank you for telling me.”

Tears fill his eyes. “There you go again, giving me something I would never have received in my family.”

I smile. “It sounds as though you’re going to be able to take in my validating words and, as you do, I suspect you’ll come to feel less defective and less lonely.”

 

Unmoored

“You’re sure you don’t know my husband?” Francis Browning asks again.

“Yes, I’m sure,” I reply. “You made it very clear on the phone that your husband is a psychologist in town and I definitely wouldn’t have agreed to see you if I knew him in any way.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just so hard to trust anyone anymore. I can’t even believe I’m willing to see a psychologist myself, but I have to talk to someone or I’ll go crazy. Sometimes I can’t stop crying. Other times I walk around the house screaming. I can’t believe he’d do this. Why drag me all the way here only to dump me?” Francis digs her fingernails into her hands, her face contorted with rage.

I remain silent.

“I’m from Kansas,” she says. “A Kansas farm girl. People in south Florida laugh at me. They don’t think anyone lives in Kansas. And they don’t believe anyone works a farm. I don’t know where they think their meat and produce come from. Just magically appear in the grocery store I suppose. I hate it here. People are incredibly rude, unfriendly. I never wanted to come here. But Richard loved it when we vacationed here, the sun, the manicured lawns, year-round golf. He kept saying as soon as the girls went off to college we’d move. I thought he was just talking. I went on with my life. It wasn’t a very exciting life, but it was my life. I kept busy with my friends and volunteer work. I never finished college. I thought I was so lucky that someone like Richard would want me. Ha! Guess that’s a joke.”




As Francis talks, I think about how painful my move from Ann Arbor, Michigan to south Florida was, how gut-wrenching it felt to leave my friends, my practice and my home, how alien south Florida seemed. I, too, left because of my husband, but we had a warm, loving relationship and although I sometimes felt angry, I knew the move was necessary. Francis’ story obviously has a different trajectory.

“So the girls went off to college,” Francis continues, “and Richard started making plans to move. I kept asking him if he was sure he wanted to start over again in his fifties, but I

guess I never gave him much of an argument.”

“Did you tell him you didn’t want to move?”

“He knew. But I always did what he wanted. He didn’t expect much opposition from me. So we moved and I hated it as much as I thought I would. Moving into a country club community was my idea of a nightmare. I don’t play golf or tennis. I don’t play cards, which kind of eliminates everything women do in those places. Richard was happy as a clam – working hard, I have to give him that – involved in all kinds of stuff at the club. He started watching his weight, coloring his hair. Wanted me to do all that too. Said I looked dowdy. I should have known. I should have realized he’d start looking elsewhere. I should have tried harder, done what he said.”

“You seem to go from being really angry with your husband to blaming yourself.”

“Yeah. Maybe if I’d done the things he’d asked we’d still be together. But too late now. Moved in with another woman. In the same club of course. Talk about being laughed at. I keep asking myself why I don’t move back to Kansas.”

“That’s a good question. Why don’t you?”

“Partly it’s shame. Not too many people back home know what’s happened. The girls of course, but I haven’t wanted to tell my friends. And I don’t know. I guess it’s silly, but I like Richard to know I’m still around, still watching what he’s doing, like I’m here and you can’t get rid of me so easily.”

“You know, Francis, I’m left wondering what you want for your life. What you’ve ever wanted for your life. You’ve spent your life wrapped around your husband and what he wants. What about you?”

Francis glares at me. “Typical career woman! You sit there talking down to me and telling me about my choices.”

I’m taken aback by Francis’ venom. Am I a stand-in for her husband? For the other woman? 

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I just don’t know what to do with my rage.”

“You never have to apologize for your feelings here, Francis.”

“I never wanted to be a career woman. I wanted to be a wife and mother and look where that got me. I’m being punished for getting what I wanted. You’re not supposed to want. You’re just supposed to accept whatever God gives you.”

“It’s hard not to want, Francis.”

“Maybe. But wanting and getting burned is no better.”