Breakfast At Tiffany's

Shrink Day!

My shrink, Don, is in the city. For me to get there, I have to leave the house at 9:30 for an appointment at 12:30. Then I have to come home, with luck, before traffic gets bad. It's a lot of work and costly. Gas is about $20. Parking is around $36 just for two hours. The worst part is he's on 56th between Fifth and Sixth. Right in the heart of midtown and the traffic on 56th is just unbelievable. Last week when I drove in the guy behind me got out of his car and started shouting at me because I had stopped at a red light and while there was a little old lady with a cane walking in front of me in the crosswalk. NYC drivers are generally excellent but they do get heated and this guy was just off his nut.

"So fuck that," I said, and took the bus from the Park 'n Ride here in town. The bus made it in late by 10 minutes which gave me 20 minutes to get from 42nd to 56th. I hopped the subway and got to the 53rd and Fifth station then walked quickly to Don's office. 53rd and Fifth is the New York you frequently see in movies. Tiffany's, Trump Tower, Cartier, Saks, Central Park, Rockefeller Center-- it's all right there and very posh. Gucci has enormous banners up showing beautiful models dripping with expensive jewelry and clothing. Harry Winston's display is equally impressive if more exquisite. The effect is completely over-the-top.

So I fly into Don's office and immediately begin apologizing for being late and telling him how frustrating it is to be late when it seems like the world conspires to take control away from you. I get blamed for trusting the bus company to get me into Manhattan when they said they would. I failed to keep my word and that made me angry.

I told him I tried to surrender myself to the situation but, yet again, I failed. I'm not good at releasing control. In fact I suck at it completely. So Don asks me why I was upset and felt the need to apologize when the lateness wasn't my fault and I told him it was because I had promised to be on time yet I wasn't. He then said he understood that getting around Manhattan on time isn't easy and it's not a big deal. He wasn't upset that I was late so why should I be?

Why should I?

I'm a perfectionist? Maybe I was Swiss in a past life? And he asks which is more likely. Guess it's that I'm a perfectionist. I set unattainable goals and then get discouraged the minute I find I can't reach them easily or quickly. To most of my school teachers and employers that has meant I was lazy and I told my shrink this. Then he asked me what I thought it meant. I do work hard if I know I can attain something and do the best at it, but if I'm unsure of the result, it's more likely that I'll give-up for fear that the result will be imperfect. That's something to think about but then, and this is why I wanted somebody good, he pointed out that this isn't so far from my disgust with myself for being late. Why did I feel the need to be perfect and the need to apologize when I wasn't?

So Don went back to something we talked about the previous week and that was my father's unpredictable behavior and how fearful I was of making him angry. To cope, I was on my guard all the time, always needing to know what the "right" thing to do was so I didn't make him angry. If I knew what the rules were, and followed them perfectly, then he would never be angry with me. Naturally that didn't work because it really wasn't me making him angry, it was himself. Every time my father hit or shouted at me when he was scary-angry I thought it was because I had done something wrong; hadn't followed some explicit or implicit rule. I had, in my mind, behaved imperfectly and paid a price for it. Never did I question that I didn't deserve what happened to me when I was the recipient of his rage. In my mind, something I had done was my fault.

For some reason, I didn't realize until today that this was the heart of the pattern.

I can be very hard on myself. If I disappoint myself or fuck-up in some obvious manner, make a stupid mistake, I will hit myself for doing it and I will hit myself hard. Too, my superego's voice will pop into my head admonishing me for being so airheaded or biting off more than I can chew. I want that behavior to stop and now, armed with the knowledge of where it comes from, maybe I can halt the thought process that leads to it.

Then Don tied something else into it that illuminated things even more. What did I expect on Fifth Avenue? This is one of the richest, most glamorous living and shopping places in the world; certainly New York's, and therefore the country's, premier shopping venue. People in Zambia know what Fifth Avenue is and what it means. I've lived outside of New York my whole life. I like window shopping at some of these places. WHY did it upset me today to see such obvious displays of wealth? What did I associate with those displays?

I thought about it and had to reply that right now all of that seemed very superfluous to me. It was if the perfection of others was being thrown in my face. Perfect model bodies, perfect hair, clothes, and jewels. These were things I couldn't have because I wasn't as perfect as the people who were buying these expensive items. In truth that's ridiculous because I know a lot of very rich people and not one of them is remotely perfect in any way. So why then would I imagine something I knew not to be true?

Don had to lead me to the answer because it was difficult for me to see. It seems that if I fail to achieve something I have to lessen its importance in my mind, even scoffing at it or those who do it successfully to minimize the importance of achieving that thing. It's yet another setup for failure because it guarantees I won't go back and try again. I've been unemployed for a year now. Living off savings has been difficult and now, with the 6 figure baubles in the windows of Harry Winston, I was trying to convince myself that financial success, which in my terms means being comfortable if not obscenely rich, wasn't important.

Now I know financial security is important and it's OK to acknowledge that importance and it's also OK to know whatever I do next to earn money may mean Harry Winston will be off the map for a while and maybe forever.

I told Don that's fine by me because I always found Harry Winston to be too gaudy. I prefer Tiffany anyway. Marilyn Monroe or Audrey Hepburn, I'll take Audrey every time.