ODYSSEY: A MEMOIR - CHAPTER 1 - POST # 15 - PART E

{ODYSSEY: A MEMOIR  - CHAPTER 1 - POST 15 -}

                        A DREAM COMES TRUE {PART E}

After the shock of the attempted coup wore off Judi concluded that the addicts' major problem was not only that they suffered from a lack of the ability to trust but that as a result addicts generally were not trustable.

At the time, Judi's analysis {its sweeping generalities included} made sense to me. Although I had some strong reservations concerning Judi's requirement that all residents fully answer what ever was questioned – glad I wasn't a resident – it soon seemed a relatively small price to pay if the goal resulted in a person emerging from the Odyssey therapeutic cocoon whole and integrated.

An assignment for a graduate course in counseling required me to interview a patient recording verbatim what we said to each other. Judi said it would be all right to interview David, one of three recently admitted brothers. She added: but, according to the new policy – a rule she seemed to be making as she talked – I could only see him on a 'one to one' just this one time.

 It was probably no coincidence that I had chosen David to interview. He was lean, wiry, and charming. He was also fifteen years old, white, and from an upper middle class background. His surface appearance made him look and sound like a sweet, harmless, fetching little boy who, as soon as he spoke, revealed himself as exceedingly pre­cocious. He had been known in the house for his 'weirdly' intense abstract paintings. His manner struck me as the bi product of a sensitive, intelligent, but deeply troubled young man, not unlike what I had thought of myself at fifteen years of age.

We went into a small room, sat across from each other, and started talking. He said that he was flattered that I had chosen him. As we proceeded, I was nervous that I would forget something that either he or I said. Worse, I was petrified that I would say something to him that would sound absurdly unprofessional. As fearful as I was of appearing inadequate, I was struck by how much in control he seemed to be compared to me. He had what sounded like a ready-made impressive answer for every question I asked.

At one point, he boasted about having turned the Pearl River community onto pot. This was back in 1968 when marijuana had the equivalent meaning for most people as heroin or cocaine has today. When I asked him how he felt about his claimed exploits he began to cry. He mentioned being punished in the house for some infraction and was confined to his room and how guilty he felt. I made some glib interpretation connecting his present guilt feelings with his self-confessed guilt about turning on 'hundreds of kids.'  His tears genuinely moved me.

The next day, in the morning staff meeting, just as I finished reporting the substance of my interview with David, Judi and an ex-addict staff member exploded in laughter. I was mortified. With an air of absolute certainty they explained that David was only 'gaming' me by playing on my sympathies. They called him a 'manipulator par excellence' – in short, a phony-baloney adding that he had as much contrition about either supposed guilt-laden event as the Sahara has swimming pools.

I was swept with confusion as I had felt genuinely impacted by his tears. But now I wondered if I had been taken in. I began questioning what his tears had really meant and what had really motivated him to cry. This event threw me off track but it had the positive effect of reinforcing my determination to get to the truth. I redoubled my efforts to learn all I could so I could be a true professional who was objective.

For a while Odyssey and I settled down to a relatively smooth-sailing routine. This state of affairs lasted until one Monday morning staff meeting when Judi uncharacteristically erupted at Walter. As Judi glowered at him no one spoke for an unbearably long time. Clearly something was seriously wrong but I was at a loss to fathom what the answer was to this unexpected riddle. The tension filled room evoked a feeling of witnessing an historic volcanic eruption.                                                                     

 I remembered myself a young child overhearing my father screaming in his room. He was as angry as this often angry man had ever sounded when suddenly he burst out of his bedroom, ran down the stairs, and stormed around the living room. Tension built. Just as I feared an explosion, I heard a loud crash as he kicked over a large glass coffee table, breaking it into smithereens.  Similarly, just as I was experiencing the same level of potential violence building between Judi and Walter, she suddenly ripped into him, encountering him as if he was one of the lowest of the low. "You're not using the method!" - (implying he was a bumble-head). She further accused him of being manipulated by the addicts. She said that he had acted as if he was emasculated and she was furious that he hadn't assumed leadership and had left all the hard work up to her.

 I was stunned attempting to figure what outrageous thing Walter had done or not done to deserve such blame. The humiliating punishment Judi was dumping on him didn't seem to fit his unclear crime. I felt uncomfortable and embarrassed for him. He said nothing but sat still rigidly staring back at her. I wondered why he wasn't defending himself. Then I realized it must be because Judi was right in her analysis of him. He was passive, wasn't he? Come to think of it, I said to myself, he was a bit odd and eccentric. I recalled wondering why he had chosen to live at Odyssey by himself in a little room. He was always something of a mystery. As I was thinking, Walter, acting radically out of character, let loose a torrent of abuse directed at Judi.

What was said was less important than the fact that it was said at all.                                                                                                                                              A few days later Walter was either fired or he resigned. In the next staff meeting Judi sarcastically made fun of him. I didn't quite know what to make of it. I had liked Walter but in the end he was a disappointment, his being so passive. Additionally his hostility towards Judi revealed a hidden hatred of her. It was no wonder she was so mad at him. But even as I rationalized why it was probably good for Odyssey that Walter was leaving I was bothered by my radical shift of my previously admiring feelings of him. 

The next day I began taking copious notes in the staff meeting. I recalled that once before I begun taking notes with such vigor closely following the death of my mother. At that time I had begun to retreat both privately and publicly withdrawing into myself like a clam seeking a safe, private place, free of external intrusion. My note taking was my equivalent of retreating into a protective shell.

I was particularly attuned to the resident's developmental histories, finding it easy to identify with their pain, as each resident revealed similar childhood traumas not unlike my own. Without knowing it then, I was half asleep desperately needing to be inspired by some unnamed, unknown spark.                                                                       

At Odyssey, I was living in a near constant altered state of consciousness perhaps best described as a transcendent 'peak' experience. It felt as if I was connected to a force or energy I thought of as spiritual. I felt elected by Fate to perform a special mission and, as a bonus, in helping to liberate others from their vicious psychic circles, I might be able to obliterate once and for all, the intense internal suffering I had been enduring for years and years. This is how I felt at Odyssey House for a short but deliciously joyful period of time in the early days.

                                             {the end of Chapter 1}