I sat in Dr. McColloch's office, trying to explain what it was I felt.
"I don't want to write anymore - my story. I thought I wanted to write it and I think I still want to write it, but when I start to write, it's distasteful to me. But how can I just throw away my past, like it never happened?"
We sat for a few moments in quiet while I searched for words.
"Maybe it's distasteful to me because it reminds me of John Knapp. He was instrumental in my beginning to go public with my story, in me being able to speak up. So now when I write, maybe it's distasteful because it reminds me of what happened with him."
I sighed, feeling a consternation at not being able to express or grasp what it was I'd been struggling with - this inability, non-desire to continue writing my story. It bothered me.
My creativity feels stifled, muted, like something that gurgles words in water that are incomprehensible.
"I can't explain what I feel. Maybe I'm in kind of a limbo...or neutral."
But it's not limbo or neutral. Distaste is not neutral.
Dr. McColloch replied with something, but I wasn't paying attention. I was still searching my head, searching my heart, grasping for something substantial.
"I think I need to categorize what happened with Knapp as separate from my past that was prior to Knapp. The stuff with him is miniscule in comparison to the rest of my life."
As I spoke I made a fist with my right hand, uncurling my knuckles enough to leave an opening as I put it up to my right eye like I was looking through a tiny telescope, a short fisted telescope with no lenses.
I lowered my arm and opened my hand.
"I mean time wise, it was only a couple years," I continued. "And it wasn't like I was married to the man or something."
My face contorted as my stomach felt knotted. I swallowed, took a deep breath, and exhaled. Yuck. Sigh.
"I think of Mia and her ex-husband. She told me that when she watches youtube videos of him, she just shakes her head in disbelief. Her ex is a self-help guru and best selling author. Apparently her ex is different behind closed doors from what he expounds in the spotlight.
I shake my head when I read Knapp's online activity and articles, or see the names coming onto the advisory board."
It's like Mom. I was in my mid-thirties before I realized how she would twist situations.
Like when my siblings and I were children she'd ask if we wanted more green beans and we would answer no; she'd then get offended because we didn't pass the green bean bowl to her. What she really wanted was a serving of green beans; we were supposed to figure that out by her asking us if we wanted more green beans.
In my past counseling sessions when I shared that example with Knapp, he had called it 'crazy making.'
The poor, scapegoated apple is the forbidden fruit in the traditional story of the Garden of Eden. I guess green beans are my forbidden vegetable. Yet Mom cooked the best green beans I've ever eaten. She could have gotten wealthy off those green beans.
In my forties I finally realized that Mom believed her lies. She didn't think of them as lies; in her mind she was telling the truth. It was twisted only slightly, but there was something artful about it. Like an MC Escher painting. A distortion of reality. Yet within that distortion was her reality.
Once I saw Mom's distortions for what they were, it took me a couple years to feel compassion toward her, to put myself in her shoes and try to grasp her logic.
In the 1960s when Mom was in her late thirties and early forties, she underwent multiple shock treatments while she was institutionalized in a mental hospital. God only knows how many times she endured the induced seizures. She received shock treatments again in the 2000s, but by then the procedure was monitored better.
I wonder what kind of drug cocktail she got in the 1960s. I guess I'll never know.
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Note: In June/July, 2011, I changed John Knapp's pseudonym in this piece to his real name. To access an ongoing index regarding my experiences with Knapp, click here and scroll down to the section entitled June 26, 2011.
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