Endless Despair

 “I don’t understand,” Amber wails over the phone. “I was doing fine. I had a good day. I took my dog for a long walk. And then with one phone call I’m a wreck. I can’t stop crying. I feel as though I want to beat my head against the wall,” she says sobbing.

“Can you tell me what happened during the phone call?”

“Nothing! I mean nothing that would lead me to feel awful. I don’t understand. Why doesn’t it stop? Why do I always, always feel so awful?”

Having seen Amber for several years, I realize nothing I say at this point is likely to be of help. Still, I reply, “You don’t always feel awful. You were just telling me you were having a really good day.”

“But it always comes back! Why does it always come back?”

“Part of the problem for you is that when you feel awful, the feeling takes you over completely and you can’t remember that you felt really good yesterday or the day before.”

“But why does it always come back?”

“What’s the ‘it’ that always comes back?”

“The bad feelings. They always come back.”

“You know, that’s a really good question. Why do your bad feelings always come back? Like today, you said you didn’t think the phone call should have triggered your bad feelings, but it did. And perhaps I should ask what specifically you mean by bad feelings.”

“Sad feelings. Depression. Feeling everything’s pointless.”

“Okay. So why do your sad, depressed feelings always come back?”

“I don’t know!”

“Well, what did happen on the phone call?”

“My boss told me I did a really good job on the marketing project. She had a few minor corrections, but basically complimented me on a job well done.”

“And you felt how about that?”

“While I was on the phone with her I felt good, pleased. But then, I don’t know. It just washed over me and I felt like shit.”

“What washed over you?”

“Despair. Like what does it matter anyway. It’s just a stupid marketing job, for some stupid liquor company that’s just going to turn people into alcoholics.”

“Whose voice is that, Amber?”

“It’s mine.”

“Yes, but isn’t it also someone else’s voice? You’ve certainly told me that your mother was always critical of you, always telling you what a failure you were, how you couldn’t do anything right.”

She sighs. “Yup. That’s my mother.”

“So when you were talking to your boss you could take in your her voice, you could take in the compliment. But when you got off the phone, your mother’s voice returned with a vengeance.”

“I guess so.” Pause. “But why?”

“What are your thoughts?”

“I certainly heard her voice a lot longer. It’s louder, telling me how stupid I was and that I’d never amount to anything. And she still does. Why did I go into marketing? Why couldn’t at least have been a teacher? Why aren’t I married? Why am I such a bad daughter, etc., etc.”

“Yes, her voice is louder. And I also wonder if you’re invested in staying attached to your mother’s negative voice.”

“Why?”

“If you move away from your mother’s voice, maybe it’s like moving away from her, leaving her behind. And she is, after all, the only mother you ever had.”

Amber starts sobbing. “I can’t leave her. I can’t. I’d feel way too guilty.”

“Plus, if you take in more positive voices and leave your mother behind, you’d also have to mourn never having the mother you wanted or deserved, not as a child and not as an adult.”

Amber continues sobbing. “I can’t! I can’t! You can’t make me! Oh my God, I’m being swallowed up by those bad feelings again!”

“No, Amber, I can’t make you. I neither could nor would force you to do anything. But I think you can see how terrifying the thought is for you, the thought of moving away from your mother, of mourning who she isn’t and wasn’t.”

More sobbing. “But maybe she’s right. Maybe I am bad and stupid and incompetent, maybe that’s why she couldn’t be nice to me.”

Softly I say, “I understand that it feels safer to take the badness inside you, to take it away from your mother, so that as long as it’s inside you you can hold onto the hope that if only you were different she would treat you differently, would love you more.”

“Wouldn’t she?”

“Only you can answer that, Amber, but from what you’ve said, it sounds as though your mother was rejecting of you from the moment you were born, for her own reasons, stemming from her own problems, but extraordinarily destructive and painful for you.”

“I can’t. I just can’t.”

“I understand. You can only do what you can do. And we’ll keep working, working at a pace that you can tolerate, that isn’t unbearable to you.”

Home

“I’ve never done this before,” Susan says anxiously. “But I think my husband will divorce me if I don’t get myself together. Not really, after 40 years of marriage he’s not likely to divorce me, but he’s certainly getting tired of me. Gosh, I’m getting tired of me. I’m sorry, I realize I’m rambling and you don’t even know what I’m talking about.”

“That’s fine,” I say reassuringly to this attractive, well groomed woman who I guess to be in her sixties. “You can tell your story in whatever way feels best to you.”

“Well, we’re originally from Philadelphia. I taught school there, my husband was a successful businessman. We’d been coming down to Florida for several years during the winters – after I retired from teaching – but then two years ago my husband decided he wanted to move down here permanently. I couldn’t believe it! He was willing to leave our children, our grandchildren and our beautiful home, to come to this place! I don’t know. It’s never appealed to me that much. Too plastic. I hope I’m not offending you.”

I am flooded with more thoughts and feelings than Susan could ever know. I have heard variations of this story countless times since moving to south Florida 20 years ago. Almost invariably the man of the couple wants to move and the woman doesn’t. Almost invariably the husband loves it and has adjusted very well, while the wife continues to long for home. 

Those of you who have read my book, Love and Loss, will also know that it is my story, with the added complication of my husband’s health problems pushing us towards a warmer climate. Still, it was definitely not a decision I came to easily. For four consecutive winters I flew weekly between Ann Arbor, Michigan and Key Largo, Florida, continuing to maintain my full-time practice in Ann Arbor. I obsessed and obsessed until my husband’s heart attack when I realized I didn’t want to be separated from him more than absolutely necessary. And so we moved. And I started my practice over in Boca Raton.

Susan continues. “My husband says that it’s been over a year already, that we’ve already gone back several times to visit the children and that my daughter and her family have come to visit us. He wants me to stop moping around. He wants me to start enjoying my retirement, to get out there and make friends. But all the women do here is play cards or golf and I don’t do either. But he’s right, I know I should start making a life for myself here, get involved in politics, volunteer work, something! But I’m not motivated. I feel too sad.”

As Susan speaks I feel myself going back to the time shortly after my move. It was awful. I longed for the friends, patients, and, most especially, my home on the lake that I had left behind. I felt as though I had a wall around me, protecting me from the intensity of the losses, but also disconnecting me from being fully involved in my present life. I had the advantage of my work and a network of professional colleagues, but the wall limited my ability to take in the good that existed around me.     

“Tell me about your home in Philadelphia,” I say to Susan.

Tears immediately run down her cheeks. Speaking is difficult. “It was perfect. My son built it for us. He’s an architect. He built it exactly as we wanted: wood floors, cathedral ceilings, glass everywhere. There were woods all around us. It was like living in the trees, like a tree house.”

I am back in my own pain, thinking about the house that my husband built for us, visualizing sitting at the breakfast table looking through the leaves of the graceful elm tree to the lake beyond. 

With more empathy than Susan can ever know, I say, “You’re talking about giving up ‘home,’ Susan, giving up a place of peace and safety. That’s a tremendous loss. It’s not something that can easily be forgotten. Or replaced.”   

“Oh!” she exclaims. “You understand! And you don’t think I’m being foolish. That’s such a relief. Now I can cry. I can cry without feeling silly.”

I sit with Susan as she cries, fighting back my own tears.