I Hate You--Don't Leave Me - Jerold J. Kreisman [27]
She often wondered why Roger had married her. He was a handsome man; from the beginning she could not understand why he wanted her. After a while it was obvious he didn’t want her: he simply stopped coming home at night.
Dixie was the one bright spot in Margaret’s life. Her other daughter, Julie, was already obese at age five and seemed a lost cause. But Margaret would do anything for Dixie. She clung to her daughter like a lifeline. But the more Margaret clung, the more Dixie resented it. She became more demanding, throwing tantrums and screaming about her mother’s weight. The doctors could do nothing to help Margaret; they said she was manic-depressive and addicted to alcohol and amphetamines. The last time Margaret was in the hospital they gave her electroshock treatment. And now with Roger gone and Dixie always running away, the world was closing in.
After a few frantic months in Vegas, Dixie took off for Los Angeles, which was the same story as Vegas: she was promised cars and money and good times. Well, she had ridden in a lot of cars, but the good times were few and far between. Her friends were losers and sometimes she had to sleep with a guy to “borrow” a few bucks. Finally, with nothing but a few dollars in her jeans, she went back home.
Dixie arrived to find Roger gone and her mother in a thick fog of depression and drug-induced numbness. In all this bleakness at home, it wasn’t long before Dixie fell back into her alcohol and drug habits. At fifteen she had been hospitalized twice for chemical abuse and was treated by a number of therapists. At sixteen, she became pregnant by a man she had met only a few weeks before. She married him soon after the pregnancy tests.
Seven months later, when Kim was born, the marriage began to fall apart. Dixie’s husband was a weak and passive oaf who could not get his own life together, much less provide a solid home environment for their child.
By the time the baby was six months old, the marriage was over, and Dixie and Kim moved in with Margaret. It was then that Dixie became obsessed with her weight. She would go entire days without eating, and then eat frantically and voluminously only to vomit it all up in the toilet. What she couldn’t get rid of by vomiting she eliminated in other ways: she ate squares of Ex-Lax as if they were candy. She exercised until sweat drenched her clothes and she was too exhausted to move. The pounds dropped off—but so did her health and her mood. Her periods stopped; her energy waned; her capacity to concentrate weakened. She became very depressed about her life, and for the first time suicide seemed like a real alternative.
Initially she felt safe and comfortable when she was readmitted to the hospital, but soon her old self returned. By the fourth day, she was trying to seduce her doctor; when he didn’t respond, she threatened him with all sorts of retaliation. She demanded extra privileges and special attention from the nurses and refused to participate in unit activities.
As abruptly as she had gone into the hospital, she pronounced herself cured and demanded discharge, days after admission. Over the next year, she would be readmitted to the hospital several times. She would also see several psychotherapists, none of whom seemed to understand or know how to treat her dramatic mood shifts, her depression, her loneliness, her impulsiveness with men and drugs. She began to doubt that she could ever be happy.
It wasn’t long before Margaret and Dixie were again fighting and screaming at each other. For Margaret it was like seeing herself growing up all over again and making the same mistakes. She couldn’t bear to watch it any longer.
Margaret’s father had been just like Roger, a lonely, unhappy man who had little to do with his family. Her mother ran the family much like Margaret ran hers. And just as Margaret clung to Dixie, so had her mother clung to Margaret, trying desperately to mold her every step of the way. Margaret was fed her mother’s ideas and feelings