Postcards From the Edge

It’s hard not to feel like an outcast in a drug clinic, but then it’s hard not to feel like an outcast, period.

“My mood is lifting,” she said, “like a small, heavy plane.” She was wearing her combat shopping outfit: a blue cotton dress with slits up the sides, and under it, black slacks with a blue belt. Suzanne only wore black and blue clothes. Her fashion statement was Bruised.

“You underestimate the power of food allergies,” said her mother confidently. “I told Dr. Feldman you’d be calling him.”

“Just imagine,” Suzanne said. “Here I’ve spent all these years in therapy, and it could have been tuna all along.”

“The only way to become intimate for me is repeated exposure,” she said. “My route to intimacy is routine. I establish a pattern with somebody, and then I notice when they’re not there.

So, I’m a drug addict. I guess we’re allowed just so many drugs in one lifetime, and I’ve used up my coupon. From here on out, there’s just reality. I think that’s what maturity is: a stoic response to endless reality. But then, what do I know?

The idea is to get old with them, not because of them.

She wanted so to be tranquil, to be someone who took walks in the late-afternoon sun, listening to the birds and crickets and feeling the whole world breathe. Instead, she lived in her head like a madwoman locked in a tower, hearing the wind howling through her hair and waiting for someone to come and rescue her from feeling things so deeply that her bones burned.

Describing herself was Suzanne’s way of being herself.

Your generation thinks that if you don’t like something, you can do this or do that, take a drug or whatever, but that’s not my generation. We make a choice and we stick with it, and I think you could learn something from that.

You talk big and you think fancy, but you’re just like other people. You act all rough and tough, but you’re a pushover. You just think too much and you talk too loud.