Sometimes the Extremes are Real

I deal with a lot of shit that goes on in people's lives: illness, trauma, loss, loneliness, conflict, stress, and more things that don't really fall into categories,  just the amazing things that people mange to do to each other. Most of that stuff gets worse over time, as it continually takes up more space in people's minds.

But sometimes awful things happen out side of their mind; just plain awful things that they then have to deal with.  Most often it happens to people who already have had awful things happen to them.

This week's example is Marla, a woman I have been seeing for a long time.  I began a few years a go with Marla because she had a terrible drinking problem.  Her family, who helped create the problem by having a mother who would often promise her that she would amount to nothing, and a father who would occasionally get drunk and try to fondle her.

Marla found that when she drank she didn't feel so bad.  Her parents, realizing she had a problem with alcohol, responding by going to court and taking custody of her son.  They presented a huge, elaborately exaggerated case, mostly so they could get the child support checks that came for the boy.  Marla was send out to find her own way to sobriety and self-reliance.

Once away from her family however, Marla has begun to do quite well.  She has been sober for two years and she is now back in college, doing well.  Fighting to maintain her low self-esteem she tells me that she knows she is not smart, but she has this quirky thing she does:  If she reads the books and goes to class, she does very well on tests.  She can't explain it.

Having grown up learning to distrust the people whom you should be able to trust the most, it is not surprising that she has few friends and generally stays away from people.  But, over time she met a guy at her all night job, and they became involved. This relationship was in-place when I met her, and it had been going on for years. He seemed to be genuinely caring and committed to her, despite his being married to someone else, and the father to children whom he also cared about.  But when Marla was upset he would call me to alert me, or he would bring her to my office when he felt she was in danger of becoming too depressed and isolated.

After years of this, this man, whom we shall call Harvey, began to have an increasing amount of trouble in his own family.  His affair with Marla had been known and tolerated, but as his kids grew-up the tensions with them and the rest of the family, and probably others, all seemed to mount.  Harvey had once called me but we agreed that since I was Marla's therapist it would be better if he had his own. So I never knew the real details of the stress he was under.

Two weeks ago Marla came to my office, and after talking about her visits with her son she became even more silent then usual.  When pushed, she said she had heard from Harvey and he had said that it seemed a good time for them to not see each other for a while.  She said that when she questioned him, he then said he was just having a bad day, and things would be fine.  But she had not heard from him for four days now and didn't know if she should call him.  She knew he was stressed out and she didn't want to bother him, and make his life even more difficult.

Yesterday Marla showed up, a day before he scheduled appointment.  The appointment I was waiting for  was late so Marla came in, sat down and stared at the floor. "You're not going to believe this."she said.
"Harvey is dead. He was dead last week, that's why he never called.  He was dead three hours after I spoke to him."

"How did he die?"

No one is saying. My son is the one who found it in the paper.  The obituary only said that he died suddenly.

That can mean all kinds of things.  It certainly makes one wonder, but I don't actually know.

Marla said that she knew his father had died early of a heart attack.  Maybe that was it.

Maybe.

Marla left the office.  She said she was going for a long walk.  She has been known to walk twenty- seven miles to deal with her depression.

She called in today to say she was OK.  Going to walk in the other direction.