Maggie

Her Story

Maggie’s story began for me years before I ever met Maggie. Her dad had been a student of mine when I taught at a Midwestern university. I remembered him and I liked him. Adam was, in fact, the kind of student every college professor loves: an adult, a husband, a father, a successful businessman. He was in college to learn and to earn a degree. He never missed a class, had every assignment done on time and to the letter, and he made friends with other students, not just the smart or popular ones. He liked everyone, and everyone liked him. He owned a well-respected catering business and frequently came to class with cookies or sandwiches or something that he professed would go to waste if we didn’t all help out by eating them.

When class was over and his well-earned A was history, Adam would show up during my office hours with two cups of coffee and something for me to take home to my family. The something was usually some delectable food he was experimenting with or sometimes tickets to a local event. He’d hang out for a few minutes and talk and then take off. He never overstayed his welcome, nor did he ever overstep any boundaries.

I did learn during these visits that Adam had an unhappy marriage but two daughters he adored. The older girl was the golden child. The younger was a screw-up and a cold fish. Since she was a baby, he told me, Maggie had hated to be held and touched. She’d stiffen when anyone picked her up. We brainstormed a little on how to help this child, and then, slowly, Adam disappeared from my life.

After I had transitioned completely from teacher to therapist, I got a phone call from him. Maggie had just turned eighteen and Adam wondered if I’d see her as a client. She was confused about what to do after high school. Oh, and also, she had run away from home and was staying with a girlfriend’s family. Adam was enlisting my help to get her back home.

I’ve provided this introduction of Maggie because I want you to share my incredulity when she comes into my office and tells me her story. The reason she even agreed to come was tied to the fact that she had a car for which her dad made the payments and bought the gas. Coming to see me was the price for keeping and driving the car.

Maggie was a hard shell of a girl, petite, blonde, blue-eyed and frighteningly thin. She wore no makeup and no smile. She was dwarfed inside her clothes. The first promise she extracted from me was in response to a threat. If I ever told her father anything, she said, she’d stop coming. She was over eighteen, I assured her. As long as she wasn’t planning to kill him or herself, or anyone else for that matter, anything she told me was strictly between us.

It still took Maggie a few weeks and a few tests of me before she trusted me enough to get down to business. First, she told me about Barbara, the golden girl. Barbara was at a prestigious east coast college studying pre-med. Barbara was perfect. She was the high school valedictorian. Maggie was getting one of those high school diplomas which admitted merely that you’d attended school. She joked that Barbara was the “good twin” and she was the “evil twin,” even though they weren’t twins.

Then Maggie told me about her mother. Her mother detested her, criticized her,

told her she wished Maggie had never been born and knew that Maggie was a conniving bitch. She would warn any man Maggie brought home never to marry her. Her mother absolutely, positively hated Maggie. Maggie could remember no happy moments. None.

Then we talked about the wonderful, loving grandma, her father’s mother, and the dirty old man who was her grandfather. She said that her grandfather was constantly trying to stick his tongue in her mouth. She remembered sitting on his lap as a little girl and feeling his erect penis against her bottom. Everyone in the room was acting like all was well as tears slid down her face. She remembers her grandma bringing her a cookie so she’d stop crying. No one thought to remove her from grandpa’s lap.

Maggie adored her grandma, but every time she went to visit she had to outwit and outmaneuver her grandfather. Luckily, she added casually, she didn’t even remember all the things he had tried, and she had no idea how many had been successful before she became clever enough to start eluding him. Maggie added that Barbara, the golden child, would have nothing to do with the grandparents, which upset her father, so it was a chance for Maggie to shine if she succumbed and went to see them.

Maggie was one of a handful of clients I’ve had over the years who has been unable to tolerate sitting for the therapeutic hour, actually about fifty minutes. She’d sit for a while and then get up and walk around and then sit back down. I asked her if she thought she was anxious. “Oh, sure,” she answered. “I’m on Xanax for the anxiety.”

She had acquaintances, she reported, but no friends. She partied with lots of different people. Just pot and beer, she assured me. We talked about the pot being illegal and she being underage for legal drinking. They were all careful, she insisted. And so what if they got caught? Their parents all knew. It was their parents who bought them the beer.

“Your dad buys you beer?” I asked.

“Sure.”

It finally occurred to me to say, “So, let’s talk about your dad.”

“My father has sexually abused me as far back as I can remember, and he continues to rape me to this day, which is why I’m not living at home.” She said all this in a voice devoid of emotion.

I sat stunned.

I’ve encountered this dichotomy before, but it had never before been personal. This perpetrator was a man I liked and admired. He had hugged me and we had laughed together. He had always been completely appropriate and totally respectful. I would have trusted my children with this man. I thought I knew him. I wondered how many other people had trusted this baseball coach and Sunday schoolteacher.

It is not uncommon for pedophiles to be attractive and charming. For some, it is how they lure their prey. It is also not uncommon for those who abuse children to have a snow-white cover. The dad who climbed the stairs and then went either left or right to rape one of his daughters was a church deacon. We’ve all read about priests and ministers who have harmed those under their protection. But this was someone whose cover I had bought.

I’m sure I sat and stared at Maggie for an interminable amount of time. My mind couldn’t find any words to send to my mouth. And then I remember saying to her, “Maggie, I am so dreadfully, horribly sorry. That is so reprehensible. I hope you know there is nothing you ever did to make that happen. That is all him, Maggie. He’s the adult. You’re the child.” And then it hit me. That bastard had waited until she was eighteen to send her into therapy. Had she still been underage, I could have called Children’s Services and they could have investigated and prosecuted. Now, at eighteen, it was up to her.

Maggie would need to prosecute this man who had sexually abused her all her life with the despicable help of her mother’s complicit, critical hatred, her sister’s inexplicably, untouchable exclusion from the abuse, her grandfather’s lecherous abuse of his own, and her grandmother’s benign, stupid, inexcusable neglect. Yeah. That seemed like a great plan. Dad had everyone on the dole, even Maggie. Who was going to blow that whistle? Plus, he was Mr. Congeniality. Who’d believe the evil twin?

Maggie stayed out of the house and came to therapy religiously. She appreciated the irony of Adam’s paying for what she was saying. She worked at this job and that and tried to get her head on straight. It was like watching someone swim in wet cement. Then her grandmother died, and that seemed to free her. She announced she had joined the Army. She was leaving for boot camp. I was half thrilled, half terrified. Maggie hated authority, had lost a couple jobs because the bosses were jerks, and she was still a painfully thin, painfully vulnerable little girl. She just happened to be twenty-one. I wasn’t sure I could trust the United States Army to protect her.

We wrote letters back and forth during the two years Maggie was away. I encouraged and supported her in every way I could. And then she was back. She went back on dad’s paycheck but not back to his bed. She found a job in a nursing home that she really liked. She called to tell me this news and to say that she’d make an appointment soon. She was ready to start really putting some work into therapy. It seemed as if she had finally turned the corner and there might be some light in her future. I imagined briefly that this was Maggie’s tipping point, her chance to get down to it and recreate herself. A chance to begin healing. I was to find out that that was not so. Not for Maggie.

Her Signs

Her anxiety was the worst symptom she displayed. Maggie’s mind would simply not settle down and neither would her body. The chemical rushes inside this poor girl played havoc with her concentration and her focus. I wondered if she had attention deficit disorder and would have investigated that had time permitted. She was a bright young woman, but she could never slow down enough to pay attention. She was rarely in the present, always watching the radar for potential disasters. It was a lesson that she had learned well because of her parents.

Drugs, Xanax in particular, were Maggie’s major coping mechanism and self-soothing technique. When I asked her how much Xanax she was prescribed, she told me one milligram. That’s a powerful prescription. Many people take .25 or .50 milligrams and sometimes cut the pills in halves or quarters. It slowly came out that she had Xanax prescriptions from more than one doctor which she had filled at more than one pharmacy. The cold truth of the matter: Maggie was addicted to Xanax. At her highest level of consumption, she was taking thirty-one pills a day. Obviously, she’d run out before her prescriptions were due to be refilled. Then she would do whatever she had to do to get more. Xanax is available on the street for either money or sex. Maggie paid with both.

Maggie was an adrenalin junkie, too. She simply couldn’t get enough thrills to calm her down. Promiscuity, random partying, going home with different guys she had just met to places she had never been to engage in things she would be coerced to try, like homemade pornography tapes, were simply a part of life for Maggie. She sought danger constantly and she sought new and more challenging highs. She drove frequently while under the influence. In the time I knew her she totaled three cars and walked away from each accident. Thankfully, she never hurt anyone else in her thoughtless and compulsive search for thrills.

Maggie had no boyfriend ever in her life. She had no girlfriend either. She seemed not to care whether she had sex with a man, multiple men, a woman, or some combination. She had Alan’s confusion about sexual preference, but she didn’t have his restraint about experimenting. She had a first abortion at fifteen, a second at twenty. The last time I heard from Maggie, she told me she would get the results of an AIDS test the following week. I never knew what the test showed, and neither did she.

Maggie hated her life and hated herself. She was careless because she could care less. She walked out on people who tried to help her, walked away from promising jobs and deserted anyone who got too close. I walked on egg shells. She finally left me, but not by her own choice.

Her Steps

Maggie tried something that not too many of my clients have tried. She moved.

If we cannot figure out how to distance ourselves from toxic people emotionally, by setting boundaries and establishing our own empowered control, the next best thing to do is to distance ourselves physically. Move. Move out of town, out of state, out of the country, if need be. Maggie had no where to go and no one with whom to go, so she enlisted in the Army. It was a guarantee for movement.

When I meet a new client for the first time, I always do a genogram. This is a picture of a client’s family of origin, including parents and grandparents and, if the client is married, the parents and grandparents of the spouse. When I get to siblings, I’m always amused to find that this brother is in California and this brother lives in Louisiana and this sister settled in Wisconsin and my client is still here with the toxic parents. I always want to say, “That’s why you’re the client and they’re enjoying a phone call home every Sunday evening from 8:00 - 8:15.” Wyoming, I’m always suggesting. Or, go west. Or south. They always have excuses, typically jobs and kids in school. See, that’s what happens when you’re the responsible one.

My mother was the responsible one. She took her mother and her sister into her home and her brothers headed for California. Literally. And then, when the boys came home, they were greeted with ticker tape parades and my mother got to cook for everybody. My dad was usually allowed to buy the food and take out the garbage. Both of my parents were resentful. But they were stuck with their responsible personalities. Having such parents has made it possible for me to understand people acting out of responsibility. It’s always the good stewards, the loyal, dedicated ones who stick it out and try to learn to move emotionally, since their consciences won’t let them desert the ship. (Please understand, those who move do nothing wrong. They are not morally inferior. They simply prioritize their lives differently.)

Maggie wasn’t the responsible type. She got out of Dodge. Unfortunately, she returned to Dodge. The toxicity she left behind had fermented while she was gone and turned more toxic still. Moving had been a good idea for her. She was simply ill-equipped to make it on her own. She had no coping skills except endurance and no way to self-soothe except Xanax. We were working on both, but it was too little too late.

Maggie tried to tune down her self-medicating and work with her addiction. Although she realized she was addicted, she wouldn’t join Narcotics Anonymous or go into rehab. She simply stopped taking drugs and went cold turkey when she enlisted in the Army. That lasted for six months. And then life got too tough. She had substituted exercise and pushing her body and building her strength in boot camp. Then she was given an office job with a lot of time on her hands and the need to face the anxiety of never being able to concentrate. She went back to the tried and true. She somehow managed an honorable discharge while addicted to the pills. I’ll never know how.

She tried therapy, of course, and she did learn to trust me somewhat as I proved myself over time. Our letter writing helped, since it was clearly not something I had to do and showed her I really did care for her and about her. I do believe she would have come back to therapy. I am unconvinced that it would have been much help, but she could have had an ally and someone who believed her.

Ultimately, Maggie fell into that conundrum where one has a choice of being either bad or stupid. Bad or uncooperative. Bad or unable. Bad or incapable. I think this is why so many kids in school are “bad.” It’s preferable to admitting they can’t read, can’t calm their brains down enough to think, or can’t pass a test. Perhaps the letters of the words swim or the letters of the words reverse themselves or the words on the page don’t make sense in their heads. What kid is going to admit something like this? I’d rather be bad. My other choice is to admit that I have been so wounded and tarnished that I cannot pass among the civilized and seem like one of them. “I choose bad. I am a bad girl. What are you going do about it?” I can almost hear Maggie saying the words.

My Story

Maggie had to be included in this book because her story was such a learning curve for me. Over and over my thoughts of her remind me that things are not what they seem. Perpetrators do not have a certain look or a certain smell and they may be your best friends or your husband or your neighbor or the soccer coach or the gym teacher, even the therapist. Knowing that I could not rely on my own intuition, my own education, my own powers of observation was a painful lesson. Now, when people like my daughter-in-law suspect everyone, I admit that she has a point. We simply cannot tell. And I don’t believe this has changed over the centuries. I think it has always been so. The good and the not-so-good or even the downright evil pass on the street and tip their hats or smile sweetly and even seductively at each other. We cannot know. This is one of life’s greatest anxieties. Those who were abused as children, who endured what are now called “adverse childhood experiences,” learned early what those of us whose parents protected us must come to learn late. Things are not what they seem.

The adverse childhood experiences (ACE) study is available online at “http://www.acestudy.org/”. This study delineates children who grew up with any of the following household dysfunctions: substance abuse, parental separation and divorce, mental illness, battered mothers, or criminal behavior. Children who suffered psychological, physical or sexual abuse and emotional or physical neglect were included, obviously, in the group of children who endured adverse childhood experiences. Such experiences were predictive of obesity, attempted suicide, depression, violent victimization, victimization of domestic violence, drug abuse, HIV risk, smoking and lung disease, ischemic heart disease, adolescent illnesses, reproductive illnesses, alcohol abuse, dangerous sexual behavior, the instability of relationships, homelessness, and poor performance in the workplace. See the link for much more on this.

Maggie could have been the poster child for adverse childhood experiences. She endured it all. And she suffered so profoundly because of it. When I think about Maggie now, only The Serenity Prayer gives me any peace.

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God, grant me the serenity

To accept the things I cannot change

Courage to change those things I can

And wisdom to know the difference.

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I couldn’t help her. I didn’t like the feeling. I didn’t like the powerlessness. I also didn’t like the realization that I couldn’t change what had happened to her. I couldn’t forgive her father for what he had done and for the lie he was living and promoting, and I hated her mother for betraying all of us as mothers with our inherent obligation and privilege to protect. In the womb and beyond. I had then and have had since a difficult time finding serenity when I think of Maggie. Typically, I feel like saddling Silver and whistling for Tonto and setting off to avenge the wrongs.

It is a very profound Buddhist learning to know that injustice exists and I must open my heart and mind and let things flow as they will.

There is no closure in this case. There is no way to ever let go because there are unanswered questions and unquestioned answers. Maggie, at the age of twenty-three, was on her way to work at the nursing home early one morning when she passed a slow moving vehicle on a hill and rammed head first into a garbage truck. She was killed instantly. Was she under the influence of her Xanax? Did she mean to die that spring morning or was it, as the police ruled it to be, an accident? And how do we accept that this child never had a chance in life? How do I accept what I cannot change?

I guess for me the answer which has slowly evolved is to do in Maggie’s honor what I can for everyone else who enters my realm of being. To silently dedicate to Maggie my efforts, my awareness, and my belief. Because she never had a chance, I try to constantly recommit myself to helping the new Maggies, the girls and guys and women and men, who come in battered and feeling crazy, to as much serenity as I can muster on any given day.