Reviving Ophelia - Mary Bray Pipher [82]
She ran her hands through her glossy brown hair. “Mom gets back at Dad for being gone so much. When he was away last Thanksgiving, she bought herself a diamond bracelet.”
Penelope seemed to be following in her mother’s footsteps. She was investing her emotions in objects, not people, and settling for merchandise instead of love. She had not learned to value relationships and was using money to keep score. With the storms of adolescence, this superficial way of processing reality wasn’t adequate. Penelope needed more support and a new way of viewing her own experiences. Nice clothes and cars don’t get girls through adolescence. I wanted to help Penelope find some more sustaining values.
Mother Teresa says that Americans suffer a greater poverty than the people of India. Americans suffer the poverty of loneliness. Penelope was a good example of that kind of poverty. She’s caught between parents who dislike each other in a home without nourishing values. She lived her life without any real emotional connections to others and lacked many of the qualities that are necessary to any abiding happiness. Not getting what she wanted made her utterly miserable. She had no appreciation of others and she was self-centered. Penelope hadn’t learned that happiness comes not from using others, but from being useful.
We ended our first session by talking about her goals. True to form, she wanted to be a corporate lawyer like her dad and make a lot of money. She wanted a Swiss chalet, closets full of designer clothes and a yacht.
Surprisingly, Penelope was willing to reschedule. I asked her, “Why are you coming back?”
She said, “You listen to what I have to say. It’s sort of interesting.” I said, “Think what you would want on your epitaph and tell me next time.”
Penelope arrived with an epitaph that she’d heard her dad quote. “The girl with the most toys wins in the end.”
I laughed and told her I suspected that underneath she was deeper and more caring than she pretended. In fact, I even suspected that she was looking for love.
Her carefully arranged face fell and she was quiet.
I pressed on. “What are you feeling?”
“Why are you asking me these corny questions?”
“I want to understand what’s important to you.”
“Fame,” she said. “No, I was kidding. I really meant to say getting rich. No, not that either. I don’t know.”
I gently told Penelope that while she had many using relationships, she didn’t appear to have any caring ones. She agreed. “I’m cynical. Guys just want sex. Girls want to be seen with me. Even my parents like me because I make good grades and bring glory to the family. You’re seeing me for the money. Everyone’s a user.”
I was humbled by my inclusion in the user category and pondered what to say next. Protest seemed useless; only time might help her see that relationships might be about something other than money.
Fortunately Penelope moved on to another topic—her parents. Her father couldn’t understand why Penelope wasn’t happy. He’d been poor as a kid and thought that Penelope was lucky. He couldn’t believe that all her luxury wasn’t enough. He expected a happy child, and instead he had a daughter who’d attempted suicide.
Like most adolescent girls, she was critical of her mother, who she felt was a chump. She told me that her mom did whatever her dad wanted because she was dependent on him for money. She said, “Mom is even lazier and more screwed-up than I am. I would never stay with a man for money.”
I asked Penelope what she’d learned about relationships from watching her parents. She thought for a while. “That nobody really loves anybody. That you’d better take what you can get.”
Even though she was popular, she had no close friends. Real friends require honesty, openness and even vulnerability. They also require attention and simple acts of kindness. I encouraged Penelope to work on developing one honest relationship with a person her age.
We discussed the suicide. Penelope admitted that she couldn