Epiphanies

A series of devastating losses, however--a renegade son, a lovely daughter, a beloved pet and a broken romance with a man without whom I felt I could not live--had plunged me into a deep pit of depression, out of which I did not seem to be able to climb.

I determined to be miserable and let nothing distract me from my agony. I refused to mingle socially. At night and on weekends, I locked myself in my apartment, ignored the telephone and drank vodka while writing bad poetry, until I was able to achieve the relief of sleep. I still have some of those verses and am including them at the end of this chapter so you, the reader, may see how really awful they were.

When I felt I could bear my pain no longer, I resolved to jump from the roof of my apartment building. With tears streaming down my face and a glass of vodka in my hand, I took the elevator to the seventeenth floor, then climbed the flight of stairs to the roof garden.

A young couple was sitting on a love seat conversing in quiet tones. I huddled in a chair as far away from them as I could get as I waited for them to leave. I didn’t want them to notice me and possibly disrupt my plan.

It was a spectacular night. The air was crisp, but not quite cold, with a slight breeze. Even today, thirty-five years later, I can close my eyes and almost feel that breeze caressing my cheeks and drying my salty tears. Millions of stars glittered in the cloudless ebon sky, which was lighted in the distance by the reflection of the myriad lights from the city of Washington. Headlights on the endless stream of cars traveling the highway below created a gleaming necklace.

Every couple of minutes, a plane homed in on Washington National Airport, bringing its cargo of people into the city for business or pleasure, while another rose majestically into the air, carrying others to exotic destinations. The planes passed over the sprawling Pentagon office building, where lighted windows attested to the dedication of many late-night workers.

As I observed these signs of hosts of people going in so many directions bent on their diverse activities, I looked outside myself for the first time in many months. The clarity of my thought was a revelation, Seeing myself objectively, forced me to study what was within. And it wasn’t much.

I had to ask myself the tough questions: "If I jump from this roof, what will I accomplish? Who will care?" I might get a line or two in the Washington Post, but within a week, I’d probably be forgotten.

There was a world right there in front of me. There must be something in that world that could make me feel better. I just had to find out what it was and how I could use it to rid myself of the destructive mindset in which I seemed to be stuck.

I abandoned my plan to jump and slunk back to my apartment, leaving my vodka glass behind, I didn’t think I would be needing it anymore. The drying tears on my cheeks made my skin feel taut and itchy, but I didn’t mind. I felt euphoric. I had at last faced my irrational behavior and I vowed to do something about it.

I decided to spend an hour talking to a psychologist I happened to know. As it turned out, I spent almost two years talking to that wonderful man.

In the beginning, I was in my "poor little me" mode, wallowing in self-pity. I shed many tears into countless boxes of the good doctor’s tissues. I never divulged to him that I had been a lousy wife, a rotten mother and a poor friend, that I had been driven by lust for material goods and personal recognition. Had I revealed these failings, I probably would have explained them away by saying that I had no role models and to further justify my behavior by stressing that people don’t come with instruction manuals.

Nevertheless, I am sure the doctor was perceptive enough to ascertain the root of most of my pain. I did tell him enough to enable him to recognize my low self-esteem. I even let him read my poetry. He said those were some of the saddest verses he had ever read. I was never sure how he meant that word "saddest."

The most important thing I learned from him was a simple phrase, "This, too, shall pass." I began to live by those words and I continue to live by them today. Nothing is so dire that I cannot find humor in it, often to the consternation and, sometimes the disgust, of my friends.

I have often wondered if that psychologist suspected that I was never completely aboveboard with him. I never exposed the depths of my being where my real secrets were hidden--the secrets that I am only now courageous enough to reveal through this book.

This is not, however, intended as a biography. It is, instead, a compendium of some of my life experiences, related as honestly as possible, according to my best recollections. Of course, at my age, some recollections have tended to dim! Which might not be a bad thing!

In my life, there have been good, bad, amusing and sad experiences and I intend to show a few of each.

I have also included some anecdotes about others, people who have touched my life in one way or another. In some cases, I have changed names to protect the guilty, who may still be alive. Since I am now nearing eighty and most of the people I know are dead, I didn’t have to resort to this subterfuge too often.

I have included a few stories just for the hell of it, because I think they are great and, at my age, how many books do I have time left to write?

I once asked an associate if more unusual things happened to me than happened to other people. She answered, "No, June, you just tell a better story." I hope when you finish this book, you will think that I have told "a better story."

Perhaps I can put it better poetically: (I don’t remember whether I wrote this or found it somewhere.)

      Happily ever after--
      O no, I can’t say that.
      For happily ever
      As an ending is old hat.

      It’s not the words I use
      That make a story new,
      But how they’re put together
      That will sell my tale to you!