She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [68]
The following morning Tracey was called in for a meeting with Celeste and Melissa Caldwell, the art therapist. During the session, Celeste told her that she didn’t want to room with her during outpatient treatment. Tracey was devastated.
That afternoon with Susan Milholland, Tracey bared her heart.
“Where did you see this relationship with Celeste going?” Milholland asked.
“My dream was only to have an affair with her,” Tracey said. “Right now, I want to drink a bottle of beer, break the bottle, and kill myself with the glass.”
As they talked, Tracey admitted she was reenacting an old pattern, falling in love with a straight married woman. Eventually, Tracey did something to end the relationships, drinking or acting out. “I force them to leave me,” she told Milholland.
In her journal the next day, April 7, Tracey wrote:
“Celeste has decided to leave me. She had a meeting with her doctor and has already been moved to her new room. She will not room with me, and she will say only that I am too pushy. She wants to take the relationship one day at a time, but I can see she will not be interested in me. I believe that she is strongly attracted to me, and it has a whole tremendous lot of confusion for her.”
In a session with Milholland, Tracey grumbled, “Her husband did this. He has money and influence and he wants me away from Celeste.” The therapist disagreed, saying Steve wasn’t behind Celeste’s change of plans, but Tracey didn’t believe her. Then Tracey said something that forced Milholland to take her very seriously: “My problems would all be solved if a certain person met an untimely death.”
“Are you referring to Celeste’s husband?” Milholland asked.
“I’m not homicidal now. I never have been,” Tracey said.
Still, Milholland worried. Despite Tracey laughing it off as a joke, Milholland judged the statement a threat. She argued with Tracey, telling her Steve wasn’t involved, but she couldn’t shake her conviction. “I believed Celeste, and that’s what she’d told me,” says Tracey.
Frightened by Tracey’s comment, Milholland called a meeting to inform the staff, including Dr. Miller. It was decided that the two women would be separated, and Tracey was immediately transferred out of the PTSD unit and into the adult program, for the chronically mentally ill. There, she felt as if she were back in Menninger, surrounded by shuffling, empty shells. By the next day Tracey had worked the transfer over in her mind, until she saw it as further proof of her lack of self-worth.
In between sessions, Tracey pulled Celeste to the side. “If you just want friendship without any sexual overtones, that’s all right with me,” she said.
“Sure,” Celeste said.
But later Tracey wrote in her journal: “Was Celeste just saying that because Celeste didn’t want to say no?”
The rest of the day, Tracey interpreted the actions of patients and staff at the clinic as if they were conspiring to keep Celeste from her. She watched Celeste through a glass door that separated the units and saw her with Steve. Tracey thought Celeste appeared sad, and she wondered if she missed her. “I think it must be about losing me. But if it hurts that bad, why does she want to stay away?” she wrote.
The next day, Tracey checked out of the inpatient program and into room 213 of the Red Roof Inn, across the street, to attend day sessions. Tormented by Celeste’s absence and unable to stabilize her medications, on the pages of her journal she chastised herself for enmeshing herself with Celeste and squandering the time at Timberlawn. She vowed to use the final weeks to straighten out her life, and wrote in her journal: “Dr. Montgomery wants me to realize that I am carved from the same stone as my mother …obviously my mother was very emotional & delusional. How am I delusional? I believe people will always leave me. I have known loneliness and sadness since I was a baby; I know how to live and thrive with these feelings.