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Dr. Celia Banting
Copyright © 2006 by Dr. Celia BantingAll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, in-cluding photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be mailed to the following address: Wighita PressP.O. Box 30399Little Rock, Arkansas, 72260-0399www.wighitapress.comThis is a work of ction. Names of characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and are used ctitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, lo-cales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataBanting, CeliaI Only Said I Had No Choice/Dr. Celia Banting – 1st Editionp. cm. ISBN 0-9786648-0-9 (paperback)1. Therapeutic novel 2. Suicide prevention 3. Anger management 4. CodependenceLibrary of Congress Control Number: 2006928583Layout by Michelle VanGeestCover production by Luke JohnsonPrinted by Dickinson Press, Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Issues addressed in this book:Suicide preventionAnger managementBehavioral choices and their consequencesPersonal responsibilityThe biological aspects of feelingsFight and ight responseThe effects of anger upon cognitive processes and communicationThe impact of aggressive non-verbal communication upon the self and others Relaxation techniquesAdult co-dependenceCoping with abusive stepparents Two-chair technique to explore empathyGuided imagery techniquesSymbolismCoping with blame and injustice
Also by Dr. Celia Banting…I Only Said “Yes” So That They’d Like MeI Only Said I Couldn’t CopeI Only Said I Didn’t Want You Because I Was TerriedI Only Said I Was Telling the Truth• • • •Available after April 2007…I Only Said I Wanted To Kill Myself; I Didn’t Really Mean ItI Only Said I Wasn’t HungryI Only Said It Didn’t HurtI Only Said I Could Handle It, But I Was WrongI Only Said Leave Me Out of It
Dedicated to Erica Elsie and Luke.
AcknowledgmentsMy grateful thanks go to my proofreader and typesetter, Michelle VanGeest, who frees me from my dyslexic brain, and replaces my mother’s voice. Thanks to Bev, my stray-word spotter, too. I thank my dear brother, Steve, for his computer ex-pertise, and my wonderful husband, Des, for the inspiration and support he gives me. Thank you to Luke and Sam for their faith, inspiration and talent. Thank you to my dear friend Vicki for her guiding sense of style.Thank you to all my psychotherapy tutors and colleagues at the Metanoia Institute, London, for teaching me about human na-ture, psychopathology, growth and recovery. I thank the good Lord for giving me a lively imagination, and I also thank my parents for moving to the Isle of Wight, “the land that bobs in and out of view, depending upon the sea mist.”
11 Chapter One “Shane, stop it, son,” a female guard shouts at me, as two male guards slam me to the oor; my face smarts as the carpet skins a layer off my cheek. “He ain’t gonna stop it; get the nurse to draw up a shot,” one of the men growls as he lies across me. “I’ve got him; get his legs.” I feel my ankles being grabbed and no matter how hard I buck and struggle, I can’t move. Moments lat-er my pants are yanked down over my buttocks and a needle res into me. I want to scream out in pain but I grit my teeth and hiss every cuss word I can think of to let out the agony of being violated and lying spread-eagled on the oor beneath two guards who tell me I’m a worthless piece of rubbish. I nally lie stock-still and they get off me ginger-ly, and as they do I leap to my feet and swing at them,
12 my anger ablaze. I hate them; I hate everybody, and most of all, my mom. I howl as they grab me and wrench my arms back-wards, pushing me towards the segregation unit. I don’t care anymore; no one can hurt me anymore, even though my arms are dropping off and my ass hurts like hell. I fall in a heap as they throw me through the door and slam it shut, but despite every part of me hurting I leap up and kick at the door, try-ing to open it as they fumble with the lock. There’s nothing I can do and the powerlessness twists my guts, so I spit at the Perspex window where they’re laughing at me and shouting. “You’ll stay in there until you learn to behave yourself. You’re not at home now kid, this is juvenile detention and you will follow directions.” I spit again as they leave, laughing. I hammer on the door and yell every foul word I’ve ever heard until my throat is hoarse, yet it does no good. I’m stuck in here and they’re outside sitting around a table drinking soda and laughing about me, loud enough so that I can hear. My sts are raw from hammering on the door, and my toes hurt where I’ve been kicking. There’s nothing I can do but stop, and as the medication starts to dull my senses, although not the pain in my ass, I fall away from the door and slump to the oor. There’s a camera in the ceiling and I know they’re watching me, so I turn onto my side and curl up into
13 a ball so that they can’t see my face; I’d rather die than let them see the tears pouring down my face. I’m lled with fear and shame; I can’t cry in here, I can’t cry anywhere, I don’t dare. And yet I can’t help it—tears roll down my cheeks, and as my face rests against the cold hard oor, they roll down into my ear and plop onto the oor. I can barely breathe from the sobs that shudder through me as I try desperately to still my body so that the guards won’t guess that I’m crying, as they watch me on the camera yards away beyond the locked door. The medication swamps the desperation that rages through me. My stomach curdles with longing for the mother I detest. The thought of her releases a wave of sobs that wrack their way through my body, and I clamp my hand over my mouth so that no sound escapes from me to seep under the door and let the guards hear my pain. Yet as I try desperately to con-trol myself, my thoughts let me down, and try as I might to rid myself of her, she sits in my head and ravages my heart. It hasn’t always been this way, with me hating her with more venom than is found in a snake-pit, and as the medication creeps through me, tugging at my angst, my anger, my hatred, and wills a calm to come over me, I nd that she slips past the fortress I’ve built to protect myself from her betrayal. I lie on my back, my tears spent, as her violet eyes bore into my soul, and a part of me that is un-
14 aware of the pain in my body longs for her, for the comfort of her arms. Something awful has happened between me and my mom; it never used to be this way; there was only us, no one else. I don’t know how to live without my life being the way it was, the only way I had ever known until he turned up. It’s all his fault; none of this would have happened and I wouldn’t be in jail if she hadn’t married him. I don’t remember my dad; he left when I was a baby, telling Mom that he didn’t want to be tied down with a screaming brat, and you know, I don’t miss him, I don’t even care that he left, although I know that Mom cried a lot as I grew up because she was alone. Other kids ask about my dad, kids who have a dad, not kids who don’t—we seem to know that it’s something we guys just don’t talk about. It’s more than that for me, though; I really don’t care. I’m glad he left, because me and my mom spent every minute together, every minute. Some people might think that’s weird but I don’t care, it was won-derful…I was hers and she was mine and there wasn’t anyone else. We didn’t need anyone else, well, I didn’t, but she obviously did. A jet of pain and anger ashes through me as her betrayal edges next to thoughts of him. I hate him. It surely can’t be right to hate someone that much; our pastor tells us hate is bad, so I must be damned for all time because I hate him with every ber of my being. If it weren’t for him my mom and I would still
15 be happy…we didn’t need anyone else. Why did she have to go and marry him? Why? There’s a pain in my jaw where my teeth are so tightly clenched together as thoughts of him lter through me, even though I don’t want them to. I don’t want to think of anything, nothing, not him and not my mom, and as my tears dry upon my grimy, raw face, while I lie on my back with my muscles soft and slack, oblivion creeps over me. I’m nestling next to her, her arm rmly around me and she’s squealing with fear and delight. I can feel my sts taught around the bar in front of us as the fairground Ferris wheel soars high into the sky, the music churning out beneath us. The lights of the town twinkle in a golden carpet for as far as I can see, and I know that I’m yelling with excitement, while my mom is squealing, her eyes wide. I had jumped up and down until she’d agreed to take me to the fair, and I know that she didn’t really want to go, but I did. Everyone at school had been and I just had to go as well, so she let me pull her down the street and across the park. She even gave in when I nagged her to go on the rides with me. The Ferris wheel stopped when we were hanging from the top and it seemed to swing there for ages as more people sat in the seats far beneath us. Mom even stopped squealing as the swinging slowed and she looked out at our town and the lights far below us. As the wheel cranked up and we began our descent she laughed,
16 and the grip of her arm around me made me feel safe, protected, and as if I were a king; as if I were the only thing that mattered to her. She let me drag her onto every ride and, even though she was pale and giddy, she laughed, and we laughed together. She carried the goldsh swimming lazily around in a plastic bag, and I had a stuffed dog under my arm, and we ate corn-dogs on the way home. I couldn’t wait to get to school the next day to tell my friends and my teacher about everything that had happened, about the lights, the smells, the thrill of the rides. The thrill of winning, the thrill of being with my mom and knowing that no one, any-where, could share in what we had between us. I can’t feel my body and my thoughts are jum-bled; I’m completely unable to stop them from cas-cading in upon me, even though I long for them to stop. The memories of the days when my mom and I were the only thing that mattered in the universe are sweet yet devastating, for to have loved and lost is far more painful than to never have loved at all. The oor jars my hipbone as my troubled dreams ow through me. We’re lying on the sofa watching the television, my homework done after she’d sat painstakingly help-ing me to nd the right answers and write them neatly in my book. My head nestled into her as she shook, laughing at the images on the television and, although I didn’t understand the joke, I laughed too.
17 My school friends constantly asked me if I missed my dad, so did my school counselor, but how could I possibly miss my dad when I had such a great mom…there was no room for him…there was no room for anyone other than me and my mom. The cold, hard oor bites into my hip and I’m vaguely aware of turning over. If there was no room for anyone other than me and my mom, how come she invited him into our lives? I’m vaguely aware that a moan escapes my lips, a moan whose origins rest with the pain in my ass from my shot, from the hatred I feel towards him, and for the awful emptiness I feel without the mom I used to know. The pain inside me is worse than the pain of the oor jarring against my shot site…it’s more than I can stand, so I shut it out as I pull myself to my feet. My head hurts and it feels woozy, as if it belongs to someone else, and right now I wish it did. I wish that every part of me belonged to someone else, in fact I wish that I was someone else. I’d even rather be one of these guys in here that has never had a relationship with their moms, for surely their pain would be less than mine. I mean, if you’ve never had something, how do you know what you’re miss-ing? But for me, I’ve had it all, I was everything to my mom yet she took it away from me when she met him, and so I know the pain of losing what you once had. Right now I wish I’d never had it, never known
18 such love, for to lose it has to be harder than never having had it; well, that’s what I think, anyway. I look through the Perspex window and the guards are still sitting at their table playing cards. One of them notices me and then they all look around. One walks towards the door with the key in his hand and he shouts through the door, “You gonna hold it together if I open the door?” I nod, not having the energy to argue with him. He jams his body against the door, while trying to turn the key, then it opens, and I feel a rush of cool air upon my face. “Go to bed, son,” he says kindly, and I stumble past him along the hall to my cell, and as I fall onto my bed, I can hear him locking my door. He looks through the small window and says, “Have a better day tomorrow, okay?” I turn to face the wall, grateful for the relative softness of the mattress on my ass. All too soon it’s morning and my door’s being un-locked. “Get up! Get into the shower and get dressed, now!” My head and ass hurt like hell but I sit on the side of my bed and take in my surroundings. I’ve never been to jail before and my stomach’s in shreds. I can hear kids calling out, cuss words ying through the air and guards yelling, “Keep it down.” I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to leave my room be-cause I don’t know what’s waiting for me outside my
19 cell door. There are kids everywhere and the noise is intimidating, but I have no choice because if I’ve learned anything, it’s that if you don’t appear to be strong and unafraid you’ll get picked on. I can’t let that happen, so I grab the towel at my open door and follow the other boys to the shower. There are kids milling everywhere and I try to ignore them as best I can, but it’s difcult because they start on me as soon as I walk into the shower with my towel over my shoulder. “Hey! Fresh meat on the line,” a kid shouts and everyone turns to stare at me. My stomach turns to jelly and I need the bathroom urgently. I don’t know what to do. My head tells me to front it out and walk past them, make a witty or caustic comment that’ll put them in their place, and show them that I’m not afraid. Only I am afraid, very afraid, and they can see it in my face, or maybe they can smell it…I don’t know. I only know that they know, and they advance towards me. I stand still, terried, the contents of my stomach turning to liquid, threatening to roll down my leg if I should move. As they step towards me, their bodies naked and glistening with water droplets, the kid in the front leers at me and I feel sick. “So, fresh meat, what’s for breakfast then?” He holds his penis in his hand and begins to rub it. The others are edging their way around me. There’s a scream inside me that longs to echo around
20 the shower; a scream that is mingled with terror at the threatening crowd before me and the anger to-wards my mom, for if it weren’t for her marrying him, I’d never be in this place. I try desperately to remember the Tae Kwon Do I learned as a kid and snap into a defensive pose, praying that my bluff will make them back off, but although they falter for a second, they laugh and then begin to edge toward me. Terror rages through me and at this moment I’m prepared to kill. No one is going to violate me. Last night, when I got a shot, will be the last time that I’ll let anyone hurt me or leave me powerless. I can feel the muscles in my arms tense and I re-member everything my teachers taught me about frightening an aggressor off by making lots of noise, so I roar. My fear is beyond my control and it sits in my clenched teeth, ready to bite anyone or anything that comes anywhere near me. My sts are so tight that I can feel my nails biting into the palms of my hands as I brace myself for the ght of my life, but it doesn’t happen. “Stop! Right now! Stop! Get out of the shower now, and get dressed. You’re to be in the cafeteria in ve minutes.” The voice comes from a huge black man, bald, muscular and formidable, yet there’s something in his face that reassures me, slightly, just slightly, for I don’t know if I’ll ever trust anyone again in my life,
21 ever. Yet suddenly all the kids have disappeared to their own cells to get dressed. I’m so grateful to him for saving me that I long to throw my arms around him and thank him over and over again, but I don’t. I just follow his directions and hope that the compli-ance I’m showing lets him know that I’m more grate-ful than he’ll ever know. There’s no mirror in my cell; I guess they think I’ll cut myself with it, so we’re not allowed one. I don’t care though, my hair’s short and I just run my ngers through it and throw my clothes on. I stand in my cell doorway ready to go to the cafeteria. I don’t feel hungry, in fact I feel really sick. Several boys ip me off when the guard isn’t watching and others ash gang signs at me, signs that let me know they’re gonna get me when they get the opportu-nity. I pray that they can’t see the fear I feel deep inside of me. I grit my teeth and try to set my face in an aggressive, dangerous pose, one that tells them I’m not frightened of them, even though I’m terri-ed. I can’t let them see that I’m scared or they’ll have me. Is it this hard being a girl? It seems that for boys you have to be tough or else the other kids will rip you to pieces, and sometimes even the toughest kids get ripped to pieces. Do girls have to go through this? Do they? “Move on, and no talking,” the guard shouts, and we shufe in a line along the hall to the cafeteria.
22 A miserable looking man with dirty ngernails slops some scrambled eggs onto a paper plate and gives me a plastic spoon. I feel sick, but not as sick as I feel when I sit down and a kid walks behind me and spits over my shoulder. A glob of spittle lands on the clumps of yellow powered egg. Even though I feel nauseated and scared I dart out of my seat and jump on the kid’s back, punching him in the head. I have to because everyone’s watching to see what I’ll do. He shoots around and slams his st into my face; pain numbs my senses, and tears spring into my eyes. I’m horried that my eyes are leaking, and so an an-ger borne out of fear of ridicule courses through my body like a trapped wild animal, and ignoring the agony in my face, and the salty blood in my mouth, I hammer my sts into his body. I’m roaring but I can hardly hear myself as all the kids are on their feet, yelling, and I’m barely aware of the guards plowing through the kids to separate us. I only really notice when two of them slam me to the cafeteria oor and my head collides with the stone-cold tiles, and when the pain in my shoulders hits me as my arms are wrenched behind my back. They yank me up and haul me out of the cafeteria kicking and screaming. Although I’m in agony I’m not going to let any of them know; all they’ll see of me is my anger. My anger is my truth and my anger is my protector.
23 They throw me into my cell and lock the door. I’m on twenty-four hour lockdown and they say that if I don’t shape up I’ll be on another twenty-four hour lockdown tomorrow. Can’t they see that’s what I want? I’m safe in my cell, safe from all the kids that are like animals in a place where the survival of the ttest rules. I’ll do whatever I have to in order to be separated from them, and if that means acting out, then that’s what I’ll do. The only problem with being on lockdown is that there’s nothing to do and too much time to think. At least last night when I was given a shot the medica-tion deadened my senses and it was hard to think, but right now all I have is me, four walls and my thoughts. I curse my brain, I don’t want to think. Thinking is dangerous—it takes me to a place where I can’t be sure that I can control myself. Something insidious happens when I think, as if my thoughts are connect-ed to tentacles, like octopus tentacles, that search and creep, seeking to connect with my feelings. I don’t want to feel…I never want to feel again, it’s too painful, and yet my thoughts seek my feelings and pounce upon them.. I punch the cold stark wall and barely wince as blood trickles from my knuckles. The pain is a dis-traction, one that hopefully will sever the connec-tion between my thoughts and my feelings…I’ll do anything to stop myself from feeling. If I go cra-
24 zy maybe they’ll give me another shot, and then I won’t have to think or feel anything. Yes, that’s what I’ll do, because I can’t stand the pain inside me. I start screaming and smashing my head on the door; they’ll have to come and stop me soon. My mouth is lthy and I cuss every foul word I know and hammer on the door with my sts, even when I fear that I’ll pass out with the pain. I don’t have to wait long before I hear the key turn in the lock and two huge men armed with a mattress in front of them slam into me, knocking me clean across the room. I’m pinned against the oppo-site wall with the mattress threatening to suffocate me. There’s nowhere for me to ail my arms and legs and the frustration soars within me so that when they pull the mattress off me I lash out at them, but it’s no good. They’re ready for me, and again I’m smashed down on the oor, but this time it’s a welcomed re-lief when the needle slams into my buttock. I pray they’ve given me enough to make the pain in my face, and the pain in my heart, go away. I’m instantly still and silent, having got what I wanted…oblivion. “He’s drug seeking,” a guard says. “Don’t give him anymore, you’ll turn him into an addict.” I want to tell him to shut up but the drugs are speeding through my body and my mouth won’t work.
25 “You’re right,” another guard says. He lowers his face so that he’s down on my level and hisses into my face, “Well, next time you pull a stunt like this, hurt-ing yourself, you’ll be strapped to a wooden bed. They’ll be no more medication, no more drugs. Do you hear me?” But I barely hear him as the medication slices all the sharp edges off my consciousness. It’s ages later when I wake up. I know that be-cause the sun casts shadows in my cell and they’re long and dim. I wish that I hadn’t woken up because the pain in my face is excruciating; not only is there a carpet burn on my cheek from last night but my face feels like jelly where that creep pummeled his sts into me. Not to mention the pain in my forehead where I smashed my head onto the cell door to get attention. I can’t help it, a tear rolls down my burning cheek. I don’t dare brush it away for fear it’ll hurt too much, so I just let it slide down my face and pool in my ear. I’m only fourteen; how can I be in such a place? I’ve never been in trouble before, ever. I don’t under-stand how things can change so quickly and so dra-matically. Am I supposed to know these things when I’m just fourteen? I’m supposed to be old enough to cope with changes in my life that I didn’t ask for, sup-posed to be grown up and accept a new man into my life and call him “Dad.” Damn my thoughts…I don’t want to think about
26 him, or Mom, but they ow over me like a tide rac-ing over a seashore. It’s always been just Mom and me, always, and we’ve never needed anybody else, well, that’s what I thought. A wave of sickness ows through me as I re-alize that I’m wrong and that my mom didn’t care as much about me as I cared about her. I feel betrayed. I’ll never love again, not anyone. How can you recov-er from betrayal by your mother? And yet just think-ing about her hurts so badly that I long for her, for the cozy, fun times we had…times that were snuffed out the moment he walked through the door. I don’t understand it. Why did she even want to nd a man? I heard her over and over saying that af-ter my dad left she’d never go with another man, so why did she change her mind? Wasn’t what we had enough? I thought it was. I’ve listened to my friends at school say terrible things about their moms and it shocked me because I thought that everyone had a relationship like I had with my mom; we played, we talked, we hugged and watched TV together on the sofa after stufng as much pizza into our mouths as we could possibly manage. Didn’t every kid have that kind of relation-ship with their moms? I learned that they didn’t, and part of me felt lucky, but a part of me felt sad for them. I felt like I had a relationship with my mom that I couldn’t share; it was too precious to me, yet sometimes I felt a bit embarrassed because I thought
27 it could be misunderstood by others who obviously didn’t know how wonderful such a relationship could be. At times I felt alone because I couldn’t talk to anyone about my relationship with my mom, as no one I know has ever described the same spark with their moms that I feel with mine – well, felt. I don’t feel it anymore, and that’s what I mean about it be-ing easier to have never loved before; then you don’t know what you’re missing. I certainly know what I’m missing, and I wish I didn’t. A key turning in the lock jolts me from my thoughts and I’m glad; I don’t want to think about anything. “Get up, now!” I don’t know what to do, whether to be belliger-ent and lie here just to piss him off, or whether to stop this act and do what he says so that I don’t have to pretend anymore. He makes up my mind for me by walking over to my hard, unrelentless bed, and pulling at my arm. “I said, get up!” Immediately the bile in my throat rises, and I yank my arm away from him. “Oh, so we’ve still got an attitude, have we? Well, that’s easy to deal with. You can stay in here for the rest of the night. Whatever,” and he walks away. Moments later the door opens again, only I can’t be bothered to get off my bed to put up a ght, and a tray of cold food is slid across the oor, landing with
28 a bump against my bed. I’m not eating that, it’s dis-gusting. Despite the biting hunger in my belly I resist, damn them, damn my mom, and most of all, damn him; I will not succumb. Resistance is the only pow-er I have right now; they’ve taken everything away from me, and while I’m in my cell, safe from the ani-mals outside who want blood from the “fresh meat on the line,” I can vent my anger safely. I don’t care, and as the tension ows through me, I turn on to my side, my sts clenched, my teeth jammed together and my knees locked under my chin, and I face the wall. I wish that my mind and heart were as bare as the wall before me. I’ve no idea how long I lie facing the wall, my body tense, my hatred acute and raw, and my stomach knotted with hunger, before I nally fall asleep.