Introduction

It began with the Head Click. At least that is how I described it in my book.

I was finished, depleted. I had no idea how far down the rabbit hole I had gone until I came up the backstairs from my office, exhausted, giving him ‘the look’ when he met me at the door to our bedroom, asking for a neck massage.

I had worked steadily seeing patients for six hours. I had not eaten. He had languished on our bed, playing with his computer, pretending himself to be a victim; a mentally ill patient filing for disability from his law firm, a lucrative endeavor indeed.

My life was turning upside down. Nothing was as it seemed. He had promised us protection and love but instead became a volatile and terrifying tyrant. We dared not look at him sideways.

He never raised his voice. He never hit us. He was sinister and pernicious. He was capable of inflicting great harm.

I had developed a “learned helplessness, “previously unknown to me. I acquiesced myself to everything, having lost touch with my innermost self. My ego-syntonic boundaries had been shredded, and I became someone easy to bully, easy to control, and easy to manipulate.

And easy to leave.

My daughter became defiant and rageful as she saw her once-strong mother become a shrew. Knowing she was better off with her rebellion, but collapsing at the weight of the knowledge that her stepfather was abandoning her, just as her own father had done, I was driven to incomprehensible rage and guilt.

I felt powerless. Completely devoid of choice and opinion. I was crushed into a weak, whiny, people- pleasing woman.

Eli’s two girls who were living with us most weekends fared better, existing in a limbo of fear and resolve. They ultimately could return to their mother.

Now, the three girls were cowering in their rooms. They were afraid of him, of us. They were afraid of the insanity and instability of a family gone mad. They were unregulated and wild.

As I climbed the back stairs into our room off the porch, I gave him the “look,” and before I could replace my corneas to their rightful position, he picked up a hammer and flew at me, like a crazy bird, hysterical, as if to take the hammer in his hand and hit me with it. But he veered off, as usual, hissing and cackling.

I backed up from the doorway and fell against the wall in the hallway. And then I heard it: the click. My head clicked.

Then I screamed and screamed and screamed until I became the scream. The last memory I have is of the terrified face of my daughter rushing to my aid.

And this is where memory ends. This is where traumatic memory loosens its stranglehold on me, and I am given the gift of amnesia. The gift is still with me today, twenty years later. A retrograde amnesia, they call it.

Why do good things go bad? How can a life of devotion and loyalty, a life of principles, turn dark?

How can innocent children be ruined by their parents’ inability to hold their childhood traumas at bay?

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Chapter I

It was 1989. I was pushing my daughter in her pram up Third Avenue. It was beginning to snow. I had a cold.

Suddenly, unbidden, I disappeared into a state wherein my mind joined my heart in an ecstasy that almost caused me to dissolve.

The “I” that was the “me” vanished. It was replaced with a pure energy of love; where everyone I encountered was a dear, doting
grandmother.

I offered kindness to all beings. I existed in an unimaginable bliss.

This state was to last for many years. It took me to my teacher…