That is why I am with you now: because I’ve been there. I’ve been in that sunken, wretched, sad place. I worked like hell to climb out and bathe myself in the sunlight of healing. I spent years creating a blueprint for emotional recovery, and now I believe I can offer you lifesaving tips on self-care and how not to treat your mind and body like a flaming human garbage can. I think it would help if you knew a little more about me, though, so, as briefly as I can, let me explain where I began.
Things Came to My House to Die
When I was growing up, a family of deer died in our lap pool. Since we lived in a canyon full of wildlife (or as much wildlife as Los Angeles has to offer), it was not unusual to see a deer, a coyote, or a rattlesnake in the backyard. The assumption—with the dead deer—was that the papa deer put his head down to drink some water, lost his balance, and fell in. The mama deer probably tried to help him, and the baby deer followed suit. They couldn’t find a way out of the pool, so they all drowned. My dad made the unhappy discovery the next morning while stepping into the pool to swim his daily laps. As a four-year-old, I remember seeing the waterlogged deer laid out on a blue tarp as animal control services tried to figure out how to get them out of our backyard.
Coco the Himalayan cat died. Light, our next Himalayan cat, died and so did her litter of three kittens. Iggy the iguana died just days after we brought him back from Petco. It took us a while to notice, though; we thought iguanas were just really still. My parakeet “disappeared” the way a dissident might in a South American country. One day she was there squawking too loudly and the next, my parents told me she had “gone to a better place.” The mice from my science experiment died. All of the plants died: the fig tree, the bougainvillea, the nursery of orchids that had come free with purchase of the house. The home was not under some mysterious hex—plants, animals, and children alike were shamefully neglected, unloved, and undernourished. My sister, Diana, and I somehow made it out alive.
Our house was built on a literally shaky foundation. An earthquake-prone, landslide-endangered foundation. There was always some construction project to “save the house” under way—some new retaining wall that needed to be installed or a new pylon to erect. The roof had been built too flat and without proper drainage, so whenever it rained, there was the threat of the whole ceiling collapsing. A thick, water-buckled crack in the middle of the white plaster above our heads served as a daily reminder that the seams of the house were vulnerable.
My mom and dad, a busy doctor and lawyer, never really noticed how dire the condition of the house was because they were rarely home. They only made visits to HQ long enough to drag my little sister and me into the fog of war that was their marriage. Much like Vietnam, no one was really sure why they were in it or what victory would mean, but for thirteen years they soldiered on.
Let me paint you a picture: Saturday nights were reserved for “family” outings to see a movie. Deciding what movie to watch was a grueling process. “Richard, Goodfellas isn’t APPROPRIATE; it’s TOO VIOLENT. YOU HAVE NO BOUNDARIES!” my mother would scream. “Oh, but MISERY is a good choice?!” he would retort. “YOU’RE CRAZY!” At the age of five, I would sit with my arms folded, watching the verbal assault, wondering if maybe there was a way to hurry this up so we could all get on with our lives. After the adults finally landed on Misery, an R-rated film in which Kathy Bates traps and abuses an injured and recovering James Caan, my parents would then proceed to viciously attack each other in the car about how late we were going to be. “CAROL, why can’t you be on time for anything?” “FUCK YOU, RICHARD! FUCK YOU! I’M NEVER LATE; YOU’RE SUCH A LIAR!” my mom would volley back. I would sit in the backseat attempting to melt away.
By the time we’d make it to the movie theater, fifteen to twenty minutes late, we would shimmy into our seats in front of the other Misery enthusiasts. I would sit between my parents as a buffer zone/holder of the popcorn, which had also, of course, been a fight to select. My dad would shout at my mom, “YOU DON’T NEED BUTTER ADDED TO THE POPCORN, CAROL; YOU’RE ALREADY FAT!” Unbuttered it would be. Once we were settled, my mom would whip out her Toshiba laptop, which in the 1990s was the size of a large briefcase, and begin to do work. What work did she need to do during the movie she had selected and brought her family to, you ask? No clue. But as the people around hissed that the screen was too bright and the typing obnoxious, she would loudly whisper back, “I’m a doctor; I have important work to do.”
I never really thought of myself as a “child” to my parents. I thought of myself more as their disempowered supervisor, a put-upon boss in charge of underqualified nepotism hires. I couldn’t fire them, so I had to find work-arounds. Sometimes, after school, I would be dropped off at my mom’s gynecology office. Instead of coloring or doing whatever it is children at the age of eight do (I would not know), I would arrive ready to take control. I’d kick the receptionist out of her swivel chair and answer the phones. I would take appointments, console women who were nervous about their upcoming surgeries, run circles around the staff demanding that they “work harder and better.” I would admonish anyone who seemed like they weren’t pulling their own weight. “That was a pretty long cigarette break, Kathleen. And while we’re at it…smoking isn’t exactly healthy. You should think about what that choice looks like for this office.” I thought I was in control. I thought it was my job to fix my parents’ lives, which, even to an eight-year-old, were clearly unraveling.
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But the truth was, I wasn’t doing so hot myself. I was constantly inundated with messages that something was “wrong” with me. For instance, my mother relentlessly told me I was dyslexic. “There’s just something not right in your brain, or you’re just lazy. I’m not sure, but it’s awful and a huge problem and you’re going to have to repeat the third grade,” she would tell me. These words would not be followed by caring action or investigation or perhaps even a visit to the doctor to find out if indeed I was dyslexic. Instead, the accusations were just left there for me to absorb as unassailable fact. While I was never actually held back in school, I believed my mom that there was something intrinsically wrong with me, and I lived my life on edge that other people would find out and, somehow, I’d be punished for it. Would this be the year I’d be condemned, kicked out of school? Would this be the spelling lesson in which it’d finally be revealed how stupid I was?
All of the disorder I felt in my own life, I enacted on anything smaller than me. I was mean to Diana and cruel toward pets, and for as long as I could remember, I had been in therapy for “acting out.” By the age of ten, I had become so used to the school intercom blaring the words “Tara Schuster, please come to the front office” that I began to have a sixth sense for when I might be called to confess my sins. On these visits, I would be met by a school counselor or social worker who would ask me questions about my family. In a small, private room, they would ask in a hushed, super-serious tone, “So, how are things with your mom and dad?” People could see the chaos of our home, I guess, and they would leave anonymous tips for Child Protective Services to investigate. “Are you eating enough?” Yes, I have a stash of candy under my bed if you wanna take a look. “Does anyone hit or physically assault anyone in your house?” Not that I know of, but I mostly lock myself in my room and turn on the TV to max volume to drown out the screaming. “Do your parents fight more than average?” Well, what’s average? They just fight all the time. I hated these meetings. They felt like a condemnation, further evidence that there was something fundamentally unacceptable about me. The social worker’s questions danced around the core of the problem: My parents simply did not know, or have the capacity to learn, how to take care of children. Sure, we ate, but were we nurtured? It was more like we were fed a steady diet of neglect, instability, and shouting. It never once occurred to me that the social worker might be able to help me, or that maybe things actually were bad at home. This was just my life: surviving my time in my falling-apart, death-ridden house and evading questions from the authorities at school.