Just One Bad Decision: A Memoir Of Overcoming Brain Injury
Table Of Contents Chapter II
I lay on a couch in my father’s living room, my mouth pounding with ache from the recent removal of wisdom teeth. But my heart was on wings: I was in love. Recently returned from a summer’s vacation in Germany, I had studied language during the day and pursued nearly the first woman I had met with tender devotion. I was 20, but she was big-hearted and older, in fact a little overweight, and we had put off consummating our romance until my final evening in the country. In my pain, I thought only of her.
Then steps marched across the porch. Some paper shuffled, the front door’s mail-slot clicked, and the steps faded away. What could this be? Our mail had already arrived. I scurried to my feet, wearing only bed-clothes, and investigated the mystery. Perhaps my love had sent a telegram?
On the letter was scrawled: “To Tom”. The handwriting was distinctively my mother’s. I tore it open. “I can not deal with you any more,” it began. “I am divorcing you...”
I felt the rug being pulled out from under me. She was capable of this. She had divorced my father fifteen years earlier in a failed attempt to win legal ownership of the house where I lay, leaving him to raise me and my sister on his own. After she left, she had taken a six-month “sabbatical from motherhood”, cutting off all contact with him and her children.
My teeth now really began to hurt, and tears welled up. “What’s the matter, Thomas?” my father asked, having just come up from the basement. I thrust the letter into his hands and heaved myself on the couch, holding my shaking head.
“Oh, Tomchen...” my father said gently, using the affectionate German name he had used with me as a child. He sat down next to me and put his arm around my shoulder. “Give her time. She’s just in a bad mood.”
But I thought I could outsmart her. Psychologists set crazy people straight, and any woman who wants to divorce her son is crazy by definition. I would call her bluff, taking her to a see a shrink. This would not be the first time I underestimated my mother.
When I called later, she said “OK” very measuredly. From the way she said it, I thought something might be fishy. “Let’s go to a therapist. Only I choose. And I pay.” She had me there: of course it cost money. I hadn’t even thought of that. Then the line clicked dead.
My father, in the meantime, was cooking. I sat in my usual spot at the kitchen table. “What’s for dinner?” I asked.
“How about peeling some potatoes, Thomas?”
“Dad, I’m sorry, I don’t really feel like it. My teeth hurt. How could Mom be that mean?” I said.
“She’s just not functioning very well as a mother.”
Hans took the potatoes from the fridge himself and began peeling them. Just then the telephone rang. I hopped up and took notes.
“OK, 5:30, Independence Mall, Dr. ___.” Again the curious dead telephone.
“Save some dinner for me, Dad. I’m sure a doctor can figure this out. Can I borrow your car?”
He nodded, concentrating on the food. I grabbed the keys and ran out, inadvertently slamming the door behind me.
A light rain was falling when I turned off Concord Pike into the office building’s parking spot. My mother stood in front of one of its entrances, glancing at her watch. “You’re two minutes late.”
“Sorry, Mom”. She had asked me in tenth grade to call her by her first name, Helga. Not only did I hate the foreignness of the name, but out of a certain longing for intimacy I had never picked up the habit.
This was my first visit to a psychologist. As we ascended narrow stairs to the office, I felt slightly uneasy. My mother seemed so sure of what she was doing.
It felt stuffy sitting wordless with her in the waiting room in front of Time and Good Housekeeping magazines and a closed door. Suddenly a 40-something woman emerged and smiled at us. “Ms. Hartmann and your son?” she asked. “Which of you would like to come in first?”
Before I could even think to answer, my mother volunteered and I was alone. Why the haste? Surely the doctor would vindicate me, I thought. I glanced through headlines, trying to put myself at ease.
I had finished off Time Magazine and was beginning to start in on Good Housekeeping when finally the door opened. Caught off guard by their friendliness, I suddenly realized that my gambit might have failed. “Mr. Hartmann?” the therapist said, smiling.
My mother and I passed each other without exchanging glances. The doctor closed the door behind me. “So,” I mustered, sitting across from her in a chair. “What do you make of all this?”
The therapist looked me straight in the eye. “She doesn’t want to be your mother anymore.”
I had no backup plan. As her words sunk in, I suddenly felt completely out of place in the sterile office. Longing for human contact, I excused myself and burst out of her two office doors, skipping down the steps to see if I could catch my mother before I was alone.
Her car was idling in the pouring rain, headlights on. As she pulled away, I ran up to her driver’s side door. “You can’t do this!” I yelled. She buzzed down her window.
“Watch me”, she said, scrolling it back up and easing out of her parking spot.
As she drove away, I could feel my heart tightening. I resolved to shut her out. Alright then: I would prove that I could get by just fine without her. Indeed, I would thrive without a sense of my mother's love. Or would I?
Remembering her half a year of silence after the divorce, I figured I would give her a dose of her own medicine. It didn’t occur to me then that this might leave lasting scars on my own heart.
Had I been less needy, my project might have worked. As it was, my life turned into an emotional desert. I desperately thirsted for water, but instead of putting down roots – maybe nurturing my recent love in Germany – I decided to proceed to hike through my Sahara, figuring that an oasis would always appear when I needed it.
Just One Bad Decision: A Memoir Of Brain Injury And Bipolar Disorder
Just One Bad Decision: A Memoir Of Brain Injury And Bipolar Disorder
