A Really Good Day(14)

The problem with self-blame is that it launches a vicious cycle. It makes me despondent, and when I am despondent I lash out at my husband. Which makes me feel worse. Which makes me lash out. Which makes me feel worse. And so on and so forth, with the sharp threads of my shame spiral screwing a hole right through our relationship.

The cognitive behavioral therapist I have lately been seeing tells me that conflict is a dynamic. Couples react to one another in an infinite, closed loop, and thus one person is no more culpable than another. She insists that my self-reproach is a barrier to happiness, both my own and ours as a couple. Even though I trust her insight, I cannot seem to change my behavior or my thought patterns. Just articulating the thought that blaming myself is bad for my relationship is really nothing more than another round of self-reproach. If my self-flagellation is the source of our conflict, isn’t it necessarily true that I am the problem lurking at the heart of my family, like a flaw in the center of a diamond?





* * *




*1 ?As if I have the faintest idea what the difference between a normal and an abnormal pulse is.

*2 ?The morning-after pill for medieval women who preferred a gangrenous, raving demise to a baby. There are days when I can totally empathize.

*3 ?Michael W. Shannon et al., Haddad and Winchester’s Clinical Management of Poisoning and Drug Overdose.

*4 ?Rick J. Strassman, “Adverse Reactions to Psychedelic Drugs. A Review of the Literature.”

*5 ?Peter S. Hendricks et al., “Classic Psychedelic Use Is Associated with Reduced Psychological Distress and Suicidality in the United States Adult Population.”





Day 4


Microdose Day

Physical Sensations: Energized and activated.

Mood: Terrific.

Conflict: None.

Sleep: Better, though I woke early.

Work: Found myself so effortlessly in the flow I didn’t even notice time passing.

Pain: Significantly less than in days past.





I was so very glad to wake up this morning. First of all, I slept better than I have over the last couple of days, perhaps because by last night the LSD was completely out of my system. Most important, however, today is once again Day 1 of the protocol cycle: Microdose Day! I don’t know if it was my eagerness or the LSD that made me so cheerful, but, one way or another, today was an absolute delight. A series of annoyances did nothing more than make me shrug. My kids dawdled over breakfast and were late to school. I missed the deadline for booking a flight, and ended up having to pay a higher fare. Then the dog knocked my arm while I was sipping from my teacup, causing me to splash Earl Grey all over the pages of the book I was reading. She looked at me guiltily, waiting, I expect, for me to scold her. Instead, I scratched her ear.

“It’s all right, Mabel,” I said. “Shit happens.”

Shit happens? When have I ever uttered those words in a tone other than ironic?

I decided to call my mother and spread some of my good cheer around. Poor Mom. She’s been going through her own hell. She lost four close friends this year, and had a knee replacement that went horribly awry, made worse by an incompetent wound specialist whose unnecessary and traumatic surgery resulted in her being infected with MRSA. Add this to an unsatisfying marriage, and it’s a wonder she can get up in the morning.

The specter of my mother’s unhappiness, even when uncomplicated by health issues or grief, haunts me. I wonder how much my search for contentment is motivated by fear of her example? I certainly have no fear that my marriage will be as painful as hers has been. My husband is loyal, loving, and expressive. My husband and I fight, but not with the same fervor as my parents, or anywhere near as frequently, even during this last, terrible year.

My mother’s work, too, has been a series of compromises and intermittent disappointments, from the moment my father encouraged her to drop out of graduate school and marry him. The tragedy of her life is that she abandoned a field that gave her joy. My mother is so obsessed with art and architecture that visiting Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater is for her a pilgrimage as spiritually uplifting as the Hajj. My mother has always said that her decision to leave school was a function of the times. In 1963, at age twenty-three, she felt like an old maid, she cared for my father, and she believed that her only choice was to give up her career aspirations and become a wife and mother. In recent years, she has wondered to me whether there was more to it than that. My father’s proposal, delivered as a joke in a telegram—“I’m pregnant. Come marry me”—came at a moment of vulnerability. Newly enrolled in school, and living with her brother and his wife, who had only recently married, she was feeling like a third wheel, but too nervous to strike out on her own. Had that telegram arrived only a few months later, once she was better established, she doubts she would have married my father.

When I was in high school, my mother made the decision to go back to graduate school, but not in art history. She is sensible, fiscally responsible. She chose a professional degree that was more likely to lead to reliable employment. Unfortunately, though she was a skillful hospital administrator and excelled at her job, I know she found it less satisfying than architecture, her first academic and professional love.

I am in many ways like my mother. Like her, I am competent and reliable. Like her, I’m a little bossy.* Like her, I do my best to help, even when that requires sticking my nose someplace it doesn’t belong.