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Chapter 5

1980

I went to see the shrink like I promised. She was this fat German lady with a thick accent. And I went in alone while my parents waited in the waiting room. I was such a smart-ass and didn’t think she could tell my parents anything I told her. (I didn’t know client patient confidentiality doesn’t pertain to minors.)

I answered every question she asked me honestly, and I was proud of it at the time.

Q: Have you had sex?

A: Of course, lots of times.

Q: Have you done drugs?

A: Tons.

Q: Shoplifted?

A: Every day.

And so on.

I was mortified when she called my parents in and divulged all my secrets. My dad called me a whore and walked out. That was the first time I felt bad for what I had been doing to them. I loved them so much, I didn’t show it, but I did, and I broke my dad’s heart. I know I broke it several times before that, but hearing that lady tell him his little girl wasn’t a virgin and the look on his face, it kills me today just writing about it forty years later.

Then she asked me to leave the room to talk with my parents.

They were in there for a while then asked me to come back in. At this point, I was super angry, not scared but so upset, she would disclose that stuff to my parents that would break them even more.

They talked about a short stay at a place for adolescence—a psychiatric ward. It didn’t scare me, I said okay. It sounded like an adventure and was only supposed to be a couple months.

We went home and talked about it. I know my parents were very sad, and already assuming a lot of my acting out could be attributed to feeling abandoned by being put up for adoption. They didn’t want me to feel like they were abandoning me either.

I assured them I didn’t and would try for them to get help. So they pulled me out of school, and I packed a couple bags. They said they would be there every week. On the way there, I asked my dad if we could stop and get me some cigarettes. They had already known for a long time now that I had been smoking. My mom even started buying me cigarettes at home because I just kept stealing money from her purse to buy them. My dad stopped and bought me a carton.