I'm Afraid

Jennifer sits in the chair across from me and cries. Tall and thin, with straight blonde hair, at 18 years old she is younger than most of the patients I see. I suspect her distress is about the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Valentine’s Day.

“Did you lose friends in the shooting, Jennifer?”

She shakes her head.

“Are you scared it will happen in your school?”

She shakes her head.

“You know, Jennifer, I saw your Mom a number of years ago and she called and asked that I see you. Does the fact that I saw your Mom feel all right to you?

She nods, then startles. “But what I say here is just between us, right?”

“Your Mom said you just turned 18, so yes, what we say here is confidential, unless I’m afraid you’re going to hurt yourself.”

“I won’t. I’m too much of a coward to do anything like that,” she adds sobbing.

“I lot of people are really scared right now, Jennifer. That doesn’t make you a coward.”

“No, they’re not. They’re marching. They’re going to Tallahassee. To Washington. They’re confronting the NRA, the President.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“I can’t,” she says sobbing. “I can’t do it. I’m a coward. A coward!” she says with clenched teeth, her fists covering her tightly closed eyes. “Why can’t I do it? They can.”

I immediately flash on my younger self. I so admired my grandmother, willing to fight for what she believed, while I fearfully hung back. I don’t know that I saw myself as a coward, but I did feel disappointed in myself and wished I could be different. It was a wish that was at least partially fulfilled when I was able to confront my demons from the past. But none of this will help Jennifer right now.

“That’s actually a very good question, Jennifer,  especially if you could ask it without beating yourself up. What do you think makes it so frightening for you to think about protesting like some of the other students?”

Jennifer stops crying. She looks up at me like a deer caught in the headlights. She pauses then shakes her head and says, “I can’t. I can’t say.”

“Can you tell me why you can’t?”

“I’m scared. And… and I don’t want to make it a big deal.”

“Anything that scares you so much is a big deal.”

Silence.

“Can you tell me a little about your life, Jennifer? You’re an only child, right? Do you live with both your parents?”

“Yeah, it’s just me. My parents divorced. It must be a long time since you saw my Mom. They’ve been divorced since I’m nine. They had joint custody. But now that I’m 18 I’ll live with my Mom until I go to college.”

“So you prefer living with your Mom?”

“Oh yeah.”

“What’s your relationship like with each of your parents?”

“I’m real close with my Mom. My Dad, not so much.”

“Can you say why?”

“He always criticizes me. Nothing I do is ever good enough.” She hangs her head.

“Anything else?” I ask.

“He has PTSD. He was in Vietnam.”

I had forgotten that, but I remember now that Jennifer’s Mom said he could be explosive and erratic.

“Are you afraid of your Dad?” I ask gently.

“I didn’t say that!” she says, sounding panicked. “Besides, what does my Dad have to do with my being afraid to stand up for what I believe?”

“And what do you believe, Jennifer?”

“That guns kill. That we should have way more restrictions on who can get guns and what kind of guns are available.”

“What does your father believe?”

“He believes people have the right to have guns, but he doesn’t think a 19 year old should have an assault rifle.”

“What does he think about the protests?”

“He hates them. Reminds him of the Vietnam protests.”

“How would he feel if you participated?”   

“He wouldn’t allow it.”

“And what would he do if you participated anyway?”

Jennifer looks down and keeps shaking her head. “He’d scream and scream and scream. But not like normal people scream, like way, way out of control. He might also slap me or lock me in my room. He’s really scary,” she says, her words coming out in a rush.

“And you’ve been living with this all your life, Jennifer?”

“Yeah, although it got worse after the divorce. Before my mother could protect me a little. Afterwards he just got meaner. I never wanted my Mom to know. I didn’t want to upset her.”  

“Well, Jennifer, I think we know why you can’t protest as many of your friends do. But I don’t think it’s only because your father disapproves of the protests. He’s scared you your whole life, so to stand up to any authority is terrifying, just like standing up to him as a little girl was terrifying.”

“Really? You think that’s true?”

“Yes, I definitely think that’s true.”

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

The pick for my book club last month was Carson McCullers’ The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. I had never read the book before. I am only thankful to have read it now.

This was Carson McCullers’ first novel. She was 23 years old

when she wrote it. Set in rural Georgia in the late 1930s, it brilliantly captures the conditions that existed in a poor mill town where ruin was just around the corner and everyone struggled to survive, whites marginally better off than “Negroes” who were forced to deal with constant humiliation and degradation.

The novel’s sociological portrayal is superb. But, as a psychologist, I prefer to focus on the five major characters and their interaction.

The pivotal character of the book is John Singer, a deaf mute, who all the other characters depend on to listen to them, hear them, and understand them, while projecting onto him all their needs and wishes. For me, John Singer is the book’s analyst. The reader knows Mister Singer to be an isolated, lonely person, whose only friend, Antonapoulos, is sent away to a mental hospital and even when he is present, Singer creates this friend to fill his needs, just as the other characters do to Mister Singer himself. Although it is never clear what Singer does understand, he is portrayed as a caring, generous human being.

Biff Brannon is the owner of the town’s café, a café he keeps open all-night to diminish his own loneliness and those of his possible patrons.  He is in a loveless marriage, but still grieves for his wife when she dies: “… when there is love, the widowed must stay, for the resurrection of the beloved – so that the one who has gone is not really dead, but grows and is created for a second time in the soul of the living …” There is no one who is a regular reader of these blogs or, even more so, of my book, Love and Loss, who would wonder why I vibrate to those words.

Jake Blount, an angry, misshapen drunk, who talks constantly of his Communist principles, is consumed by loneliness. His incessant talking and drinking is an attempt to escape his isolation; his anger a way to distance himself from his despair and sadness. Both Singer and Biff are invariably kind to Jake, giving of themselves both personally and financially.

Doctor Copeland is the town’s “Negro” doctor, another disappointed, angry, embittered man who is both difficult to like, and impossible not to sympathize with. Educated and scholarly, he has put all his hope in his four children and the capacity of the Negro people to raise themselves above their lowly status. He is bitterly disappointed in both. His behavior towards his children was often hard to read, at least for me, who knew first-hand the rage and expectations of an angry father. And, yet, who could not feel for this man who had spent his life trying to better himself, his offspring, and his people, only to be faced with repeated contempt and horror.

I have left Mick Kelly for last, because she my most favorite character, a 13 year old tomboy at the beginning of the book who has tremendous spunk and an obvious artistic and musical talent. She dreams of something more than the overcrowded rooming-house in which she lives. She has her inside room - the room of her own thoughts and her capacity to recall and hear music in her head – and the outside room where she exists in her squalid, everyday world. Only Mister Singer exists in both worlds, again an example of my understanding of him as the book’s therapist. Life works against Mick and by the end of the novel she is a sale’s girl at Woolworth’s. At least to this reader, escape doesn’t seem very likely.

The night of our book club, seven bright, articulate women were present. Most of us loved the book and marveled at McCullers’ artistry capacity to create such a rich novel at so early an age. But the difficulty arose for some of the women who found the book too dismal, too lacking in hope. Those women felt that the message of the book was only that you lived, struggled, despaired, and then died, with nothing positive ever resulting.    

I awoke in the middle of the night after our meeting and thought that we had missed something important in talking about the hope in the novel. First, there is much love, generosity, and compassion that is evident throughout the book in many of the characters, an important aspect of hope when we look at the human condition. Secondly, the book epitomizes the indomitable human spirit: To fight, despite insurmountable difficulties; to struggle, even when the outcome is bleak. To me, that is hope, providing for the eventual possibility of something better, and demonstrating humankind’s capacity for courage, strength and determination that perseveres despite all adversity.