Almost Lost (14 page)

“Well, it had been a while since I'd seen you, and I was feeling pretty good about myself and everything else. I'd apologized to all my old teachers, and Dr. Davidson and I were pretty tight, and Marv and Tommy and I were solid. I really thought I was making it big time and then…it'll probably seem like a little thing to you.”

“Not if it's big to you.”

“I'd seen Harmony in the halls a few times, and it was like I was being butchered inside. I wanted so much to do something…fall at her feet and grovel for her forgiveness…hold her close like I'd never let her go…kidnap her…all sorts of crazy things ran through my mind. I knew sometime I'd have to
face her. I dreaded it in a way, but I couldn't wait for it just as much.” Sammy stopped for a long time and agonized.

“Tuesday, as I was coming out of Mrs. Procter's class, I saw Mo walking down the hall looking like springtime and flowers and sunshine and all the other good things in life rolled up together in the most beautiful package in the world. I loved her so much I couldn't breathe. She was like something spiritual, an angel or something coming toward me.

“Then suddenly my head almost collapsed with the unbelievable memory of the day under the bleachers when, for absolutely no reason except pent-up hostility, I'd hit her, not once, but three times, hard. My right hand felt black and evil. I wanted to cut it off to show how mistaken I'd been and how sorry I was. Then I recalled every good thing that had ever happened between me and her. I don't know how so much stuff could pass through my mind in such a short time.

“I was about ready to smile when Chick Laddel, the guy the gang used to call ‘Chicken Little,' rounded the corner and put his arm possessively around her. ‘Glad you're back, Sammy,' he said, in a way that seemed sincere. He turned to Mo. ‘Aren't we glad he's back, babe?' Mo looked right through me as though I wasn't even there. ‘Who? Where? I don't see anybody, anybody at all.' She put her arm tightly through his and pulled him away.”

“How painful that must have been.”

“It was like the bottom dropped out of my world right there, and I was sucked down into my old black, airless hole in one quick swoosh, down into eternal darkness. All the new lightness and the brightness were zapped, and my old bitter past entrapped me
completely, strangling me in its black, musty, dirty, escape-proof net. I turned and walked out of school, and went home to my room, where I've stayed for the past few days, swallowed up by blackness and hostility and evil. Each feeding the other and multiplying and enlarging and devouring my body and my soul and my mind.

“Mom thought I had the flu, and I gladly took anything and everything she gave me, looking for any kind of relief at all. I wished like everything that I had done the deed when I had had the chance. Mom had a little pistol hidden on the top shelf in her closet, but I couldn't find where she had put the clip. I looked in the medicine cabinet, but there wasn't anything there that would do the job. The black pain was excruciating.”

“What else might you have done about it?”

“Nothing. I was so defeated and deflated, I…”

“Think carefully and slowly now. At that time
what were you
doing?”

“I was…giving complete control of my thinking to…”

“To what?”

“To all the
NEGATIVE POWERS
that surrounded me.”

“They had forcefully overcome you or
YOU
had willingly handed over to them
your
remote control power?”

“I'm such a ratty, bratty boob tube.”

“No! No, you're just a normal person who hasn't quite learned the secret of
staying in charge
of your life! Have you noticed that once you let a negative in,
it
becomes magnetic and attracts multitudes of other negatives which become even bigger and stronger and blacker and more malignant and canni
balistic? And the negatives come from every conceivable direction: up, down, north, south, east, west, over, under, and sideways.”

“And it seems all the negatives a person has kept hidden or semicontrolled inside explode out as well.”

“
That
is right on! Once you even move toward the NEGATIVITY TRAP—”

Sammy interrupted. “Everything bad in the universe, both inside and outside, comes tumbling down around you. But what could I have done, both times when it seemed the world literally did come crashing in on my head?”

“Each of us should, actually
must
, have an
enormous retaliating positive arsenal
safely tucked away in some remote place in our brains so that no negative mental monster will ever have the slightest chance of
taking over!
You've heard the old saying, ‘you can't keep birds from flying over your head, but you
can
keep them from making nests in your hair.' That's exactly the way it is with negatives.”

“Sounds good, but at this point I feel like dead meat.”

I pinched his arm. “Oh, no, you're not. See?”

Sammy winced and let out a little squeak. “Okay, so the experience didn't kill me!” He became very serious. “But it did completely cripple and defeat me emotionally.” He hesitated for a few seconds. “Now
you're
going to say, What could
I
have done about it, right?”

“Probably. What could you, what should you, have done immediately after the incident?”

“Well, I could have called you.”

“Yes, you know very well that you can call me any hour of the day or night. Or?”

“I could have gone home and sat under my relight
ing-myself bright-light, because believe me, at that time every light in my life had gone out. I'd seen the look on Mo's face. I knew she knew she'd mortally wounded me, and she liked it!”

“Wait a minute. Let's go over that one more time. Are you trying to
justify putting the responsibility for your descent into depression on Mo?
”

“Of course not! It's just that she'd
wanted
to humiliate me, hurt me, break me, so…Whoa…I can feel the enemy attacking. Where's my arsenal? Okay,
only positives
can defeat negatives and drive away the darkness. POSITIVES! POSITIVES! POSITIVES! Mo was totally innocent! I was the one who hit her! I was the one who became hostile and impossible to be with. I was the jerk, the pit, the irresponsible…”

“Hey, wait a minute. Are you in some irrational way trying to rationalize that
negatives used on yourself
don't count?”

“Umm, I guess I was trying to do that, wasn't I? I need you around all the time to set me straight.”

“No, you don't! Tell me what you really need.”

“To have more confidence in myself and my own judgments and to take a little more time and thought about what I think and say before I say and do!”

“Have you ever tried talking to yourself?”

“No, way! I used to see my grandpa do it, and old men who sit on park benches.”

“Don't laugh. Discussing things rationally with yourself can be therapeutic. If you had started a comprehensive conversation with yourself, like you and I have, you could have come to practically the same conclusions we came to.”

“Is that really true?”

“Yes. It's really true.”

“Are you saying that if I'd gone home after the Mo incident and I'd, say, sat under my bright-white-light and I'd tried to rationally and verbally sort things out, that I could have kept myself, through my own sort of self-therapy, from falling into the deep, black, funky pit that I'd dug and redug for myself?”

“Almost surely! It's better to talk to someone else if you can: your family, a friend, someone on a crisis hot line, a counselor, whatever. But if you can't contact anyone else, make mental and verbal contact with yourself. We human beings are all a lot smarter and deeper than we give ourselves credit for being.”

“It's strange to think that I might have kept myself out of the depression party I invited all my old negative, mental monster friends to, and maybe not been tempted to go the suicide route. But that wouldn't have helped me figure out how I could have handled the Mo thing.”

“You were maybe expecting
me
to do that?”

He halfheartedly laughed. “No, knowing you, I know
you're
expecting
me
to do it by my poor, little, innocent, crushed, hurting self.”

“Poor baby.”

“
Big baby!
But I wouldn't admit that to anyone else in the world if my life depended on it.”

“You life
doesn't
depend on it, so what might you do to get yourself out of the black corner you have painted yourself into?”

“I could blow out…”

“That's
not
acceptable to
you
, I hope.”

“No. Maybe I could beat up on Chicken Little.”

“What would that get you?”

“A few bangs and bruises and maybe I'd release some hostility.”

“Would it change anything or solve anything?”

“No, and even the thought is kind of childish. Let's see, I could phone Mo, but I'm sure she'd hang up on me. Maybe I could have my mom talk to her mom. Oops! That idea is straight out of the cracker crock. I guess I could write her…maybe a long, long letter telling her the absolute truth about how I used to feel about things and then how I went through the dark times and now how I want so very, very, very much to be forgiven and to start over, just as friends. I don't deserve to be more than a friend because how could she possibly trust me after…you know. Do you think that might work?”

“Do you think it might?”

“Maybe. At least it would clear my conscience a little and make me feel better in that regard. In fact, I feel a lot better just having talked it over with you. I mean myself! I'm going to try that crisis hot line thing sometime, too, to see if it works, and I may even try talking to my mom.” He grinned. “It's a sure thing she'd be nicer to me than you are sometimes.”

“You mean the times when I make
you
take responsibility for your own mistakes, and have
you
make your own good decisions?”

“When did I ever do the good decision part?”

“Super Sam, stop beating up on yourself! Remember, you've got to be your own best friend, coach, mentor, advisor, therapist, minister, promoter, agent, ego-inflater, booster, cheerleader, and everything else that is up-building and positive, all the things that will make
YOU
your best
YOU!
”

“That sounds kind of egotistical and vain.”

“Or does it sound like you want to make the best and happiest of yourself so that you can, in turn, help others make the best and happiest of themselves?”

“Okay, so I'm a good guy, a bright guy, a guy who has made some major mistakes, but one that desperately wants to start over, with a new 'tude, a POS 'TUDE ALL THE WAY! ALL THE TIME! Does that satisfy you?”

“It satisfies me if it satisfies you! All I want is for you to be physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually healthy and well balanced.”

Sammy smiled lamely. “You're sure you don't want me to be translated, too?”

I gave him a hard noogie. “No. But I do think sometime you should unload your ‘beginning thing.'”

“I intend to do that—next never-day! But thanks for seeing me in a hurry. I think I've got at least Plan A sort of lined up in my mind. I really do appreciate you.”

“Don't appreciate me. Appreciate the girl who had your appointment. When I called and told her you, no name, had a
right now problem
and that you were in an extremely hurtful situation, she gladly gave up her time, remembering when she had been in a like place herself.”

“I'm sorry.”

“You needn't be. It was good for her. Part of her healing. She was given the pleasure of helping someone else to heal himself, and that puts a different spin on it for both of you.”

“Well, thank her and think luck to me.”

“I'd rather think
pos thoughts
for you.”

“Pos thoughts for you, too. Bye.”

I raised my hand to wave good-bye and bit my lip, I wanted so much to ask him to call and let me know what happened.

Sammy looked at me knowingly. We were kindred
spirits, as all people would be if they would just allow it.

“I know what you're thinking, brain unscrambler. You want me to let you know what happens.”

“I'm trapped. The student has now become the all-knowing teacher. The client has become the therapist.”

He sighed deeply. “I wish.”

I
wished
all my clients could be as intuitive and open and anxious to learn and change and heal themselves. If he knew the resistance that the girl who had given up her time had encountered along her way back, he probably would have appreciated her magnanimous gesture a hundred times more.

As Sammy left I handed him my standard exercise on Distorted Thinking.

 

DISTORTED THINKING EVALUATION

QUESTION: How can I tell when my thoughts are distorted?

ANSWER:
When you sense they are negative
.

 

Everyone has negative
things
happen in their lives, but
the mentally healthy person looks for positive solutions, positive coping skills, and even positive standing stills!
The Alcoholics Anonymous' Serenity Creed is an inspired example of the above.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Grade yourself from A to F on the following test.

Retake the test once a week, grading yourself each time. You'll love watching your positive progression!