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Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.

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This episode contains discussion of sexual

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abuse, substance abuse, and self harm.

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Listener discretion is advised.

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I went to sleep that night, hoping unconsciousness

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would reverse the horrifying depletion

0:22

that had taken place. But

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I awoke the next morning and fell

0:26

breathless into a room I could

0:28

barely recognize, a body

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I could barely feel, and

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a mind I could barely follow into

0:35

perception. The

0:37

unmistakable arrhythmia of the

0:39

disconnect, as I had begun to call

0:42

it, that had been disrupting my life

0:44

was now louder, more

0:46

insistent, A second heart

0:49

that beat along with my original heart.

0:51

Out of time, out of body.

0:57

That's Alice Carrier, author of

0:59

the recent memo Are Everything Nothing

1:02

Someone. Alice's

1:04

is a story of a childhood of profound

1:06

extremes. Her mother, the

1:09

painter Jennifer Bartlett, was

1:11

one of the most famous and critically acclaimed

1:13

artists of her time. Alice

1:16

grew up in a world filled with access

1:18

an enormous privilege. But

1:20

access and privilege mean nothing

1:23

to a child. A child wants

1:25

only love, safety,

1:28

boundaries, support, protection.

1:31

A child wants to be seen.

1:45

I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is

1:48

family secrets, the secrets

1:50

that are kept from us, the secrets we keep

1:52

from others, and the secrets we keep

1:54

from ourselves. Tell

1:59

me about the land of your childhood.

2:01

You have two different landscapes. Do you remember anything

2:04

about Paris before you were

2:06

four?

2:07

Yes? The Paris apartment is

2:10

still in my life. It's a time capsule.

2:12

It's been preserved exactly

2:14

as it was when my parents lived there.

2:17

So I do have a lot of memories

2:19

there, and I get to inhabit those memories

2:21

physically whenever I visit, which is really

2:24

powerful because it

2:26

was the only location

2:29

where my parents were truly

2:32

together. I'm

2:34

grateful to have that place because

2:36

every time I go there, it readheres

2:38

me to myself in a really powerful

2:41

way. And you know, these places,

2:44

the houses that my mom created, were

2:46

like characters, were like family members.

2:49

They were just as grandiose

2:53

and outlandish and sometimes

2:55

sinister as the people who populated

2:58

them.

3:00

Me about one thirty four Charles Street, which

3:02

was the backdrop to most

3:05

of your childhood and teenage

3:07

years.

3:08

So one thirty four Charles Street started

3:11

out as a

3:13

place not intended to be lived in.

3:16

It was a factory for manufacturing train

3:18

parts. It was a seventeen

3:20

thousand square foot building in

3:23

downtown Manhattan in the West Village,

3:26

and my mom purchased

3:28

it and turned it into

3:31

a fortress. She added

3:33

an indoor swimming pool

3:36

next to which she put her bed. She

3:38

loved to sleep next to water. She was

3:40

a California girl, lived by

3:42

the ocean. She added two

3:45

floors of gardens. She

3:47

loved to be surrounded by things

3:50

that were growing, because she always

3:52

felt like she was killing things, that anything

3:55

she touched would die. She

3:57

loved to nurture her

4:00

spaces. She loved to

4:02

gardens. She loved to

4:04

create these spectacular spaces. So

4:07

that's I think where a lot of the intimacy

4:09

that was lacking in most of her other aspects

4:11

of her life. That's where it went. This

4:14

massive building. She had two

4:16

floors of studios where she painted

4:19

from seven o'clock in the morning

4:21

until seven o'clock at night, with a two hour and after

4:23

day. And that's where we lived

4:26

from when I was about five years old to when

4:29

I was about twenty three. I remember

4:31

the glowing exit signs, you

4:33

know, all of these remnants from when it was a

4:35

factory and had

4:37

industrial The toilets

4:39

would flush with this ferocity

4:42

that would make you jump every time. It

4:45

had its own rhythms

4:47

and rules. The taps were marked with

4:49

C and F, which is show and fought,

4:51

which is hot and cold and French, so

4:54

of course people would scald themselves when they

4:56

tried to wash their hands. It

4:58

was an extraordinary extra in a place.

5:01

I was raised by

5:04

a British nanny named Dennis.

5:07

Her real name was Eileen Dennis Maynard,

5:09

but we only ever called her nanny, and

5:12

she was

5:14

my constant. She read

5:17

to me at night, she brought me to school. She

5:20

was hired before I was

5:22

born for her

5:24

quote unquote ability to handle unconventional

5:27

problems, which was some

5:29

impressive self diagnosis and self

5:32

awareness on my parents' part that

5:34

they identified our problems as unconventional.

5:37

So she lived in Charles

5:39

Street. I just remember it being

5:42

nanny and I on the second floor, and

5:44

my mom up in the pool

5:46

room, drinking her white wine,

5:48

smoking her cigarettes and reading her books,

5:50

and then summoning me on

5:53

the intercom that bodilessly connected

5:55

us through the seventeen thousand square feet so

5:57

I would be in my room and sometimes

5:59

the only contact I'd had

6:01

with my mom throughout the day would be her

6:04

disembodied voice calling

6:06

me over the intercom, and

6:08

then I would go to pick it up, and she would

6:11

sometimes be really impatient to hang up, and then

6:13

I couldn't call her back because she'd have her phone

6:15

on privacy setting. So

6:18

it was this sort of surreal way

6:21

we moved through each other's lives.

6:26

As a girl, as she tried to fall asleep

6:28

at night, Alice would imagine

6:30

the swimming pool directly above

6:33

her bed. She would picture

6:35

the ceiling caving and tons

6:37

and tons of water crashing over her.

6:40

It was both a reality there really

6:43

was a massive swimming pool above her, and

6:45

a metaphor for the vast and

6:47

consuming chaos surrounding

6:49

her.

6:52

The word I used to describe my mother

6:55

is the process by which mountains are made,

6:57

origenic, and that

6:59

four that's captured in the

7:02

threat of tons of water collapsing

7:05

over your head, my head, or the

7:08

process by which mountains are made. That's

7:10

what I think of when I think of my mom. And

7:13

she was known for the scale

7:15

of her work, the scale of her grandiosity,

7:18

but in equal measure was the

7:20

scale of her remoteness,

7:23

of her fear, the

7:25

threat of what

7:28

she imagined had happened to

7:30

her, loomed so

7:32

large over her life and of course

7:34

mine. I think of natural

7:37

forces that are so monumental,

7:40

they change the

7:42

landscape, they're so massive,

7:45

and I think that metaphor extends

7:48

to the way she lived her life

7:50

to She was also she was

7:52

very funny. She was a ravenous

7:55

reader. She had these

7:57

sort of enormous appetites. She

7:59

loved good food, she loved good boothe

8:02

she loved to smoke, she loved good books,

8:04

she loved expensive clothing.

8:07

She loved having confrontational

8:10

conversations. She was very

8:12

glamorous. My father was

8:15

this German film star and

8:17

intellectual. He had

8:20

grown up in a mental

8:22

institution in Germany, so

8:26

you know a very gothic tale.

8:28

His babysitters were the patients

8:31

of a hospital at which his

8:33

father, a psychiatrist, worked, and

8:36

one of them had attempted to

8:38

burn her two children alive. One

8:41

of them believed that God

8:43

was transforming him into a woman so

8:45

he could have a child with him. So

8:47

my father lived in these mental institutions,

8:50

and dad experience created

8:53

this porousness of boundaries

8:56

that extended throughout my life. He

8:58

couldn't really tell who

9:00

was sick and who was saying what

9:02

the difference between those two things was.

9:06

And after that experience he never really

9:08

found anything in human nature strange.

9:11

Then he was discovered at the age of thirteen

9:14

by a German film director and

9:17

started making movies, and then he moved

9:19

to Paris in his twenties, where

9:22

he fell in with the

9:24

Gille de Laus crowd. He was a famous

9:26

philosopher who was known for

9:28

his rather anarcic thinking, and

9:31

my father was his potage. So

9:33

he started to espouse these

9:35

pretty radical theories

9:38

and this approach to life

9:40

as a grand experiment. And

9:43

he met my mother, I

9:46

think the first week he moved to New York

9:48

and they were at a dinner party together and

9:50

she was chainsmoking cigarettes

9:53

and eating smoked salmon, and he

9:55

approached her and she was

9:58

with another man named Matthew. His name is matt and

10:00

he announced at the table, who's it going

10:03

to be? Which Matthew are you going to take home him or

10:05

me? And she picked him, so

10:07

that's how they met. They moved to Paris

10:09

when I was

10:12

born, and he

10:14

spent his time making films,

10:16

playing speed chess and doing cocaine, and

10:18

my mom would just work and drink and to

10:21

hear him categorize it. She was

10:24

completely in her own world. She

10:26

dictated all the rules, and he felt

10:29

kind of like a puppy dog, and I

10:31

think he felt rather unmoored.

10:34

So, in keeping with the

10:37

self mythologizing tactic

10:39

of my family, he made an

10:42

autobiographical film about

10:45

a pianist, a German pianist

10:48

married to a successful American architect

10:51

who is addicted to cocaine and speed

10:53

chess and ruins his life.

10:55

So he kind of used art, I think,

10:58

as an act of defiance, but also as

11:00

a prophylactic, which I found very

11:02

interesting. And it's exactly how my mom

11:04

negotiated what had happened

11:07

to her and her life. So they had

11:09

a very intense relationship. It

11:11

started out as sort of always being in crisis

11:14

in the sense, and then he in

11:16

this movie, he cast

11:18

the woman he was having an affair with

11:21

as the woman the main character has an affair

11:24

in the film. My mom was doing the costumes

11:26

and she had to dress his

11:28

mistress in the movie and in real

11:30

life. So this kind of

11:33

musing life in

11:36

an almost careless, reckless,

11:38

callous way in the service

11:41

always of art and intellectualizing

11:46

the softest, most delicate

11:48

parts of ourselves was

11:51

an established pattern in my family.

11:58

We'll be right back. Alice's

12:12

mother begins to see a renowned psychiatrist

12:15

named doctor Viola Bernard. At

12:17

first, she discusses relatively mundane

12:20

issues, but doctor Bernard begins

12:22

introducing other methods, including

12:24

hypnosis, as a way of probing

12:26

deeper into her psyche for what might

12:29

be buried there. Eventually,

12:31

Alice's mother comes away from therapy with

12:33

the belief that she has recovered memories

12:35

from her childhood that reveal that she'd

12:38

been used in a Satanic sex cult.

12:42

I discovered her story

12:45

when I was eleven years old, and

12:47

my father had given me

12:50

the mission of looking

12:52

through my mom's things to find out

12:55

who was being called as a witness in their

12:57

very acrimonious divorce that lasted seven

13:00

years. And I was snooping

13:02

her stuff and I found these journals

13:05

and I read them, and

13:08

one of the entries described how

13:10

she was giving my father a blowjob and

13:12

had a flashback, and

13:15

that the flashback was of her on

13:17

a boat having

13:19

her head held underwater while she

13:21

vomited while a man said, you're feeding

13:23

the fishes. And I

13:26

confronted her about what I had found.

13:28

She was on her way from the studio up

13:31

to the pool room where she was going to take her nap,

13:34

and she sat in my room

13:37

and very matter of factly told

13:39

me the following story. She told

13:42

me that a

13:44

married couple, Bertie and Russell, who were friends

13:46

of the family, had used

13:49

her and her one and a half year old sibling

13:51

in a sex cult. That

13:54

they recruited the

13:56

children of all of the maids in

13:58

the neighborhood, and you then and ritualize

14:01

sex games. And that

14:04

she had witnessed the murder of a

14:06

seven year old black boy that had

14:08

murdered him through erotic asphyxiation and

14:11

had made my mother bury the body

14:13

on the beach and told her never to tell

14:15

or she would go to prison forever. And

14:19

she told me this, I could

14:21

detect no emotion. She

14:24

didn't tell me how she felt about it. She didn't ask

14:26

me how I felt. It was the equivalent

14:29

of listening to an audiobook,

14:31

one of the many audiobooks that I listened

14:33

to all of the time. And

14:36

then she left to take

14:38

her nap, leaving me wondering

14:40

how to spell erotic asshixiation and

14:43

picturing my dad getting a blowjob. I

14:45

would later find out that

14:48

she was most likely a victim of

14:50

the Satanic panic, which was a

14:53

moral hysteria that swept

14:55

the nation in the eighties and nineties, where

14:58

one aspect of it was that overzelle therapists

15:01

and psychiatrists would

15:04

implant false memories

15:06

of ritualized sexual abuse

15:09

and murder into their patients.

15:11

I don't think it was nefarious. It was

15:14

motivated by a genuine desire

15:16

to help people. I think that trauma

15:19

was starting to be understood and

15:22

credence was starting to be given to

15:25

let's say, trauma beyond the trauma of war

15:28

or you know, for instance, sexual trauma.

15:30

So I think there was a genuine

15:32

desire to help people

15:35

and to learn and be curious

15:38

about very real

15:40

emotion states of being. The

15:43

way that trauma reverberates through a life

15:47

is very complicated. So

15:49

I struggle with speculating what

15:51

these doctors were thinking. But

15:54

maybe it's the allure of a story.

15:58

But until the end of her life,

16:00

she believed with her

16:02

whole heart that this had happened, and

16:06

because of that, she really

16:08

felt that she would do irreparable

16:11

harm to me that I

16:13

think if she showed affection

16:16

or tried to be tender

16:19

or intimate with me, it would

16:21

somehow damage me as irrevocably

16:23

as she had been damaged. So

16:25

in a way, her remoteness was an

16:27

act of tremendous love. But

16:30

that distortion came from

16:33

this imaginary secret

16:35

that her mind had allegedly been keeping

16:38

from herself. From her I

16:40

think my mom found

16:43

having this outrageous

16:46

story it excused the fact

16:48

that she couldn't move beyond it. Once

16:50

the villain is Satan,

16:53

then you know, I think that

16:55

can't be topped. She

16:58

also created massive

17:00

oil paintings in response to

17:04

these recovered memories. Her reaction

17:07

was to make one hundred and

17:09

eight versions of these

17:11

scenes of abuse. So in her

17:14

paintings, there's a naked person wielding

17:16

an axe, and they were hanging in

17:18

the hallways of my home. So

17:21

as she went off to take her nap

17:24

and she left me behind to kind of process

17:26

everything she had told me, I wandered out

17:28

into the hallway and just stared

17:31

at these scenes of

17:34

abuse. And I

17:36

would get very confused because

17:38

I started not knowing where I ended and

17:41

she began. I started getting confused

17:43

about what had happened to whom, and

17:45

I almost believed that what she had

17:47

endured had also happened to

17:49

me, which made the confusing

17:52

things that were happening in my life almost

17:55

secondary, and they kind

17:58

of evaporated and des and

18:00

were supplanted by these

18:02

extreme scenes that

18:05

she had fabricated. So

18:07

it's another example of how my

18:10

parents turned their

18:12

damage into beautiful

18:17

stories. And I learned

18:19

at a young age that

18:21

what we experienced and how we felt

18:23

about those experiences were

18:26

meant to be thought about and spectated.

18:32

Part of the spectacle is the six year

18:35

custody battle that follows Alice's

18:37

parents divorce. For

18:39

some of this time, Alice's father remains

18:41

living at one three four Charles Street,

18:44

and eventually he moves out.

18:46

As Alice moves between her parents' two worlds,

18:49

her own world is fraught and fractured

18:52

as she oscillates between slippery landscapes,

18:55

one where her relationship with her father is

18:57

exceedingly blurry and without boundaries,

19:00

and the other in the shadowy corners

19:03

of her mother's presence. With

19:05

the huge and notable exception of Nanny,

19:08

there isn't an adult in Alice's life

19:10

who isn't somehow spiraling.

19:13

So my father treated

19:16

parenthood as a radical experiment

19:18

in the annihilation of boundaries. He was

19:20

also during the divorce

19:24

very lonely, very desperate,

19:27

So that combination

19:31

resulted in this

19:33

erosion of boundaries

19:35

and this confusion of roles

19:38

where I didn't know what

19:41

or who I was to him. I didn't know if I was

19:44

his daughter, his wife, his mother,

19:46

his confidant, his collaborator,

19:49

and I'm just going back to Charles

19:51

Street. There were no locks on the

19:53

doors. There were no locks

19:56

emotionally either. When I'm

19:58

seven years old, he told that one

20:00

of his girlfriends could only orgasm

20:03

on her own with a showerhead. And

20:06

later on he would take

20:08

my underwear with him on trips to

20:11

remember me by he would ask

20:13

the premiere pimp of Hamburg how much he would

20:15

charge for me. He had

20:18

this idea to revolutionize

20:21

the world of cinema by

20:23

starring in the first film

20:26

to star a father and daughter in the

20:29

role of the lovers and have them have a

20:32

sex scene. And he presented this

20:34

idea to me as if we were

20:36

going to do that together. So there

20:38

was repeatedly this sense

20:41

that the things that

20:43

should have remained secret,

20:46

or at least the things that should have been

20:48

treated with the

20:51

delicacy or the

20:53

apprehension, or the

20:56

reverence or the protectiveness

20:58

of a secret, not

21:00

they were shared. So

21:04

it was this diffusion

21:06

of roles and boundaries

21:09

that led to this profound

21:11

diffusion of identity for me. My

21:14

father was also He

21:16

loved to play games. He taught me about

21:18

philosophy, he taught me about history, He made

21:21

up stories, he told me about Greek mythology.

21:24

He was very interactive, and

21:27

that contrasted with

21:30

my mother, who couldn't play

21:32

games with me because, according to her, she was too

21:34

competitive. So my

21:36

father rushed in to fill this vacuum.

21:39

So this sense of excitement

21:41

and almost titillation from

21:44

parental engagement got

21:46

very confused and tumbled

21:49

around with the salacious

21:52

tamera of the information he was sharing

21:54

with me. So it was

21:56

hard to differentiate or

21:58

to even notice that some that shouldn't

22:00

be shared, something that should have been kept

22:03

to himself, was being

22:05

shared. There was a transmission that was happening

22:07

that shouldn't have happened, but I

22:09

didn't notice. I thought it was normal. And

22:11

I also thought that it

22:14

was almost like a calling that I

22:16

had to be the perfect confidant. I

22:18

had to be someone who could

22:21

be the receptacle for my

22:24

mother's story about burying

22:27

a child on the beach, or

22:30

the sexual exploits of my father.

22:34

Herein we have the difference between secrecy

22:37

and privacy between

22:39

parents and children. There certainly

22:41

can be secrets that are destructive, and

22:43

we spend a lot of time on this show

22:45

talking about those kinds of secrets.

22:48

But here are matters that have to do with two

22:51

adults, internal lives. No

22:53

one's business, most certainly

22:55

not their child. What happens

22:58

when there are no boundaries, no can, no

23:00

edges. Secrets are about

23:03

borders and edges, but in Alice's

23:05

family there are none.

23:08

So where is a secret when you need

23:10

one? This undifferentiated

23:12

quality was unbelievably destructive,

23:15

and I think also another thing

23:18

that was obscured or concealed were

23:21

the basic sort of physics

23:24

of living. There was this one incident

23:26

where I had seven pet rats. My

23:29

father gave me a pet rat

23:31

and it was pregnant and it had a bunch of babies.

23:33

So I had seven pet rats,

23:36

and he sat on one accidentally

23:38

and it died. But he assured

23:41

me he could bring it back to life

23:43

by putting it in the freezer next

23:46

to the pop tarts, and then when it

23:48

didn't come back to life, he promised

23:50

me that it would reanimate

23:53

if you just put it on the heater. And

23:56

that's what it was like being the child of

23:58

my parents, This denial

24:01

of reality, this belief

24:03

that the power of our minds could shape

24:05

reality and could defy even

24:08

the laws of death. So it's

24:10

sort of this obfuscation of

24:13

the rules and the borders define

24:16

reality, and it's almost like reality was

24:18

its own secret that

24:20

we were all trying to We didn't

24:22

want to know. That's the secret we were keeping from

24:24

ourselves, that we were just

24:27

a couple of human beings moving

24:30

through the world and moving through time, but

24:33

we wanted to deny that as long as we could.

24:37

Alice's behavior begins to feed into

24:39

this notion of defying the laws of death.

24:42

She finds herself exiting reality,

24:45

secreting herself, as it were, by

24:48

cutting and self harming at a very

24:50

young age. Such practices

24:52

reinforce the fragmentation she feels

24:55

up against the backdrop of her fragmented

24:57

family life. At some point,

25:00

reality is obstructed even further when

25:02

Alice begins to believe that surely

25:05

everyone must live like this with so

25:07

much pain, and secrecy. How

25:09

could they not? And yet not

25:11

all families do. Not all

25:14

seven year old girls cut themselves while

25:16

also trying to fulfill all the basic

25:18

milestones of growing up. And

25:21

even when Alice tries to unsecret

25:23

herself and show her mom

25:25

how she's been hurting herself, her

25:28

mom's reply is not one of distress,

25:30

but one of unsettling advice to

25:33

use makeup to cover the scars.

25:36

So in one three fourth trial

25:39

street, my mom upstairs drinking

25:41

and reading her downstairs painting. I'm

25:44

by myself, listening

25:46

to audiobooks constantly,

25:49

NonStop stories, other people's

25:51

stories, and I'm also thinking

25:54

about myself and the third person. So

25:56

I would walk down the street

25:59

and I would say, she is walking down the

26:01

street, the rainfalls on her jacket, turning

26:03

myself into a story, narrating

26:06

myself into existence, turning

26:08

myself into a character. And those

26:10

were the first signs of

26:13

me distancing from myself, this

26:16

sort of abstraction that would get

26:18

more and more visceral. And then I started

26:20

cutting when I was seven years old, and

26:23

I don't know how I knew to do it. It

26:25

was in a moment where I was unbelievably

26:27

overwhelmed I couldn't tell the difference between

26:30

anger and sadness. I

26:33

couldn't safely fit any

26:36

of those emotions inside of me, so

26:38

I cut. It was sort

26:40

of this orienting horizon that

26:43

kind of folded me into these clean

26:45

origami lines. Just

26:47

made me feel better, and it worked, and

26:50

I continued to do that through

26:53

adolescence, and in adolescence

26:55

I developed what I'd later

26:58

learned was a dissociative just order

27:00

called depersonalization derealization.

27:03

I couldn't recognize

27:05

my face in the mirror. I didn't know where my voice

27:08

was coming from. I felt no connection

27:11

to my body, my feelings,

27:13

my history. I was convinced

27:15

I didn't exist. It

27:17

was like my identity

27:20

was an alka seltzer tab dipped in water and

27:23

it had sort of dissolved into

27:25

the unnameable, unending

27:27

nothingness. It was the most

27:30

terrifying thing I'd ever experienced, and

27:33

I would cut and

27:35

then later burn, first of all

27:37

to mark time because time stopped

27:39

making sense, because every

27:42

single moment felt like the first moment

27:44

in history. But also there was this perpetual

27:46

sense of deja vu. So

27:49

I had no sense

27:51

of consequences or like I was a body

27:53

moving through time, So every time I cut,

27:56

it reinstated causality. I

27:59

would cut, and the next day

28:01

I would heal, and then the next day I would heal more.

28:04

So it gave me this sense that one I

28:06

had a body, because I really didn't think

28:08

I had a body. I was outside of myself

28:11

watching myself, but that thing

28:13

that was outside was also outside of itself,

28:15

watching itself. So cutting made

28:17

me feel like time existed and that I

28:19

existed. And I also used

28:21

it to punish myself.

28:24

I used it to reward myself,

28:27

so I never kept it a secret.

28:30

I would even intentionally

28:33

wear a short sleeve shirt

28:35

with a huge gash down my arm

28:37

to see how long it would take for my mom to notice

28:40

or comment on it. And the

28:42

cutting really felt like a

28:44

communication with my body.

28:46

And your mother doesn't notice, your mother doesn't

28:49

comment on it only reinforces

28:52

your feeling of not being

28:54

real because you're not being seen right

28:56

exactly.

28:57

And also I think the cutting was

29:00

also a way to try

29:03

and get my body to reveal

29:05

its secrets to me. And as I

29:07

said before, the things that were kept secret

29:09

from us were reality

29:12

consequences, and that was

29:14

obscured by dissociation. Dissociation

29:18

was like I was being kept secret from

29:20

myself because I could no

29:22

longer access who I was,

29:25

how I felt that view

29:27

of myself was completely obscured. So

29:30

by cutting, it was a revelatory

29:33

act, or an attempt at revelation, an

29:36

attempt to sort of dig

29:39

myself out of myself.

29:43

It works until it doesn't. Alice

29:46

valiantly tries to hit all the marks,

29:48

check all the boxes. She goes

29:50

on college tours. She begins college

29:53

at Vassar, but once there she

29:55

falls apart in a deeper way. The

29:58

unreality really takes hold, and

30:00

she reaches a point where she can't stop

30:02

cutting.

30:04

I admitted myself to the hospital,

30:07

and I was there for one week,

30:10

and I would have these

30:14

terrifying dissociative episodes. One

30:17

of them found me hiding

30:19

under the sink, banging my

30:21

head against the wall, screaming

30:24

my name and address over and over again, trying

30:26

to remind

30:29

myself at least of the semantic information of

30:31

who I was. And it

30:34

ended by me just screaming my own name over

30:36

and over again. So the

30:38

nurse comes in or the tech comes

30:40

in and says, what's happening

30:43

or frightening on the other patients, and I

30:47

told her what I was experiencing, and

30:50

dissociation is notoriously difficult

30:52

to describe, which is also why it

30:54

felt so alienating,

30:56

Because I had been seeing a therapist, and the

30:58

more I described what I was experiencing,

31:01

the more she thought I was schizophrenic. The

31:04

more ineffective the treatment

31:06

became, the therapy became. So

31:08

I tell this nurse what I'm

31:10

experiencing, and she very casually says,

31:12

oh, it sounds like you're associating. And I had

31:14

never heard that word before,

31:17

and I immediately did

31:19

all the research I could, and I started reading

31:22

the scant literature about it, which

31:24

was The Passion according to gh by Clarice

31:26

the Specter. Many people call it a

31:29

mystical book, but it's actually

31:31

a very realistic rendering of the dissociative

31:34

experience. It's just this woman thinking

31:36

about her own thinking, thinking about killing

31:38

a cockroach, and then

31:40

Saltla's Nausea, Octavia

31:43

Butler's short story about a

31:45

dissociative disorder in the context of

31:47

speculative fiction. So I read everything

31:50

I could, and having that

31:52

word for one second made me

31:54

feel like I wasn't falling through infinite space.

31:57

So that was a turning point for me, and

31:59

he was essentially had to diagnose

32:02

yourself, the nurse said the word.

32:04

But then there you are valiantly

32:07

trying to like, you know, sort of do your research,

32:10

and you know, name what's going

32:12

on with you, because the people who are

32:14

treating you aren't getting it right.

32:16

And all of the research that I'm turning to is

32:19

fiction, right, you know, it's

32:21

not even a medical

32:23

text. It's just the art

32:25

based on the pathology.

32:30

We'll be back in a moment with more family

32:32

secrets.

32:48

Alice stays on the psych word for a

32:50

week, but when she returns

32:52

home, the cutting resumes and only

32:55

grows worse. One night,

32:57

Nanny walks in on her cutting. Nanny

33:00

witnesses Alice in a way she's

33:03

never been witnessed before, in

33:05

a way that she's wanted for

33:07

her pain to be seen, known, understood.

33:12

She refuses to leave me alone, and

33:18

she sits with me all night. And by

33:20

the time I wake up, my

33:22

cutting kit the razor blades

33:24

that i'd pried, you know, the blades i'd

33:27

pried out of shaving razors, my

33:30

lighter, my Swiss army knife. My dad

33:32

had given me. The blades

33:34

of exact ownives from my mom's studio.

33:36

All of that had been removed. And

33:39

after that experience, I'm floating around

33:41

one through before Charles Street, I

33:44

have no purpose I'm writing. I

33:47

had known since I was five years old that I wanted

33:49

to be a writer, and I was

33:51

writing all the time. But the two

33:53

jobs I looked up were stripping

33:56

jobs or writing death row convicts.

33:59

And for some reason, I thought the only things I

34:01

was qualified to do was to essentially

34:03

entertain dying

34:05

men, whether you know, on

34:07

a semen's like sofa or in a prison cell.

34:10

So I was looking for this

34:14

specialness that I

34:17

could only access through it

34:19

seemed pathology. And this was the

34:21

beginning of kind of my career

34:24

as a patient, as a professional

34:27

sick person, as a virtuosic

34:30

infirm mentally infirmed like

34:32

a virtuosic patient. So

34:35

this was really the beginning where I

34:38

started constructing what

34:40

little identity I had around

34:43

my madness. I was reading

34:46

all of this fiction about my

34:48

disorder, and I

34:50

ended up taking my

34:53

dead uncle's hydromorphone

34:56

pills, drinking vodka,

34:59

and cutting a in my arm four times, and

35:01

I almost killed myself in three different

35:04

ways, and my psychiatrist

35:06

at the time, said that she would

35:08

convince them to release me if I agreed

35:11

to admit myself

35:14

to a residential treatment center called Austin

35:16

Riggs in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. And

35:18

Austin Riggs had

35:21

this illustrious pedigree. Judy Garland

35:24

had had installed a pink sink

35:26

in her room. James Taylor had written fire

35:28

and rain while he was there, so

35:31

I agreed. I showed up

35:33

there with my mom and

35:37

it was this bizarre place.

35:39

It was this white mansion in

35:42

the middle of Stockbridge, Massachusetts that

35:45

was sort of its

35:47

glory was faded, and it

35:49

was a bunch of really rich

35:51

people. The recommended stay

35:54

was indefinite, or at least until

35:56

your money ran out, and there

35:58

were no rules. There

36:01

was a bridge full

36:03

of smoothies and

36:05

yogurts, and we had fireplaces

36:08

in our room, and there

36:10

were no consequences. The only

36:13

requirement, which was not even a requirement,

36:15

was to sit in community meeting and talk

36:18

about whatever conflicts or whatever,

36:20

even illegal behavior happened. And

36:23

while I was there, I

36:28

one evening was in the bathroom and

36:31

I was wiping myself and I

36:33

thought, wait, what's happening

36:36

down there? And I pulled my hand

36:38

away to reveal

36:42

a very long, still

36:45

alive worm. And

36:48

I walked to the sink and

36:50

I very neatly folded it into a paper towel

36:52

and put it into my pocket. I

36:55

checked my reflection in the mirror, and I walked

36:57

to the nurses station. They didn't believe me,

37:00

so I withdrew

37:02

it from my pocket and laid it on

37:04

the partition between us and unwrapped

37:07

it and presented

37:10

them with my worm and asked

37:12

to go to the hospital. And they said, we've

37:14

never seen anything like this before, but this is not an emergency.

37:17

And it was this extraordinary

37:19

moment where it

37:23

was like being told a secret.

37:26

It was a secret my body was keeping for me,

37:28

and that secret was that I had a body,

37:31

that there was something alive

37:34

in me still, even though

37:38

I thought I was dead or

37:40

I thought there was no difference between

37:42

me and name any inanimate

37:44

object around you. And it was this

37:47

moment of corporeal

37:49

physical crisis that for a

37:51

second made me feel alive and

37:54

made me feel more sane than I had ever felt.

37:57

So that was the stand up moment at Riggs,

38:00

where, amongst all of this

38:03

kind of just hanging out,

38:05

this introspective luxury,

38:08

this kind of glorious,

38:10

gluttonous psychological

38:12

lethargy. Suddenly my

38:14

body is doing these

38:18

very real things.

38:20

Secrets are coming out of it,

38:23

provable secrets that I can literally say,

38:26

Look, something isn't right.

38:29

Look, and it just happened to be in the shape

38:31

of a six inch worm.

38:34

It's at RIGS where you first

38:36

encounter the term depersonalization.

38:39

Yes, and again you

38:42

look it up and one of the things that you learn

38:45

is that it's a condition brought on by trauma.

38:48

Right, But at that point I

38:50

was convinced that I

38:53

was having a reaction to my mom's

38:55

traumatic history, and I

38:57

sort of denied the idea that

39:00

anything traumatic had ever

39:02

happened to me. So

39:04

basically, I get out of BRIGS and they refer

39:06

me to a psychopharmacologist,

39:08

who, upon meeting me for

39:10

forty five minutes, sends me home with

39:13

ninety adderall, which is

39:15

a stimulant for add and

39:17

ninety klonipin, which is a highly addictive

39:20

anti anxiety medication similar

39:22

to xanax vallium, And

39:25

the only instruction he gives me is

39:28

adderall wears off every four hours

39:30

and take the clonipin whenever

39:33

you're feeling anxious. Or to go to sleep. I

39:36

take this adderall and within

39:39

forty five minutes, my heart

39:41

is pounding, I'm sweating through my shirt, telling

39:43

stories about my childhood and chain smoking

39:45

cigarettes. And then you

39:47

know, a bit anxious too. So I'm taking

39:49

the klonipin, which I can't even feel

39:51

because I'm on so much adderall because I was instructed.

39:54

It wears off every four hours. So

39:56

this medication completely hijacks

39:59

my personality, and

40:02

the combination of this medication is

40:04

causing these side effects that mimic

40:07

other disorders. So I

40:09

gradually get diagnosed with new

40:11

disorders that require more medication.

40:15

So in the span of three years, I'm on

40:17

eight different medications, antipsychotics,

40:20

mood stabilizers, axiolytics,

40:22

stimulants, and of course other

40:25

medication who treat the

40:28

side effects of all of the medication, So

40:30

whether it's a thyroid medication, whether

40:32

it's a weight loss medication, because

40:34

the side effects are extreme. And I'm

40:36

also starting to learn that feelings

40:39

are pathologies that need

40:41

to be medicated away. There is no such thing

40:43

as joy, there is only hypomania.

40:45

There is no such thing as sadness, there is only

40:47

clinical depression. And

40:50

I had switched psychopharmacologists,

40:53

and I had found another one who had just read

40:55

my file and continued to prescribe more

40:57

and more medications. And this psychopharmacologist

41:00

assured me that this trial

41:02

and error was how it was supposed to go, and

41:05

that I'd need to be on medication the rest of my life.

41:07

And it was so

41:10

casual, this prescribing that I

41:12

even would be able

41:15

to leave a message on his

41:17

voicemail requesting, let's

41:20

say lithium, and the next day

41:22

a prescription would be called in for me. So

41:26

I truly believe that

41:29

I was basically like an appliance

41:32

or a machine that ran on pharmaceuticals,

41:35

and any discomfort I had, I

41:37

thought was just my stupid,

41:39

dumb body, and

41:41

not this barrage of

41:44

medication. So it was

41:46

again this kind of

41:49

secret. The medication obscured

41:53

who I was, and who

41:55

I was sort of became very

41:58

like a secret that I would only hear

42:00

whispers of because I was so

42:03

hostile. I was the completely

42:06

different person than I

42:08

had been before on these medications.

42:12

In two thousand and nine, the medications

42:15

trigger a psychotic break, and

42:18

I believed I had delusions

42:20

of persecution. I had delusions

42:22

of surveillance. I thought people were

42:24

following me. I thought I had been hacked. I

42:27

thought people were breaking

42:30

into my apartment, chloroforming me and gang raping

42:32

me. In my sleep, I would tape

42:35

bed sheets to my windows so

42:38

people couldn't surveil me. I would get in a

42:40

cab and then realize that that cab

42:43

had been put there by these

42:45

invisible, unknowable assailants

42:48

to track me, and I would just get out of the cab

42:50

and run through the streets.

42:52

So this is sounding awfully like your

42:54

mother's quote unquote recovered memories.

42:57

Exactly right. So

42:59

basically, my life became this war.

43:01

I was having to defend myself against these invisible

43:04

forces, and as horrifying

43:07

as it was, it gave

43:09

me this bizarre sense

43:12

of purpose and significance,

43:15

because if I'm

43:17

someone who's being followed

43:20

and being persecuted in

43:22

this way, I must be

43:25

important, I must be special, and

43:28

I have a calling. That calling

43:30

is to defend myself. So,

43:34

in this strange way, this

43:37

delusion became

43:40

the only true thing in my life, and no

43:43

one else believed for me. The

43:46

psychosis lasted a year.

43:48

How old were you?

43:49

I was twenty three, and I

43:52

finally went to my psychopharmacologist,

43:56

and he said, take these three extra

43:59

medications or I'm going to send you to a lockdoord.

44:02

But he kept me on all the other medications

44:04

too, and the

44:06

new medications made my hair fall

44:08

out, they made my hands go numb. I

44:11

gained forty or fifty pounds

44:13

in a couple of months, and again

44:16

I thought it was just my stupid

44:18

mind and body. So I agreed

44:21

to go to a treatment center, but

44:23

I was admitted into a trauma group, where,

44:26

on the one hand, I could

44:28

accurately identify the

44:30

transgressions that had been taken place, but

44:34

it went too far. I had this

44:37

over zealous counselor who

44:40

convinced me that my mind

44:43

was keeping secrets from me and

44:46

that much more had happened and I just

44:48

wasn't remembering. And she

44:51

told me that she took a long time

44:53

to get me to say the words I was

44:55

molested by my father, So she

44:58

convinced me never to talk to him again and

45:00

never to see him again. And I

45:02

was so desperate, like my mother,

45:05

for something big

45:07

and dramatic, to

45:10

explain everything, to exonerate

45:12

me, to make me not feel like such a

45:14

fuck up, that I

45:16

welcomed the simplicity and

45:19

the straightforwardness of that story,

45:21

and I made it my new identity.

45:25

And I didn't talk to my father for twelve years.

45:30

Twelve years. A

45:32

lot happens in those twelve years.

45:35

Alice reconnects with a man named Gregory,

45:38

who she had met earlier. They'd

45:41

had a tenuous but beautiful relationship

45:43

early on, but neither had

45:45

been to put it mildly ready. Each

45:48

had been in the throes of their own addiction and despair.

45:51

But when they find each other again, they're

45:54

each in a very different place. Gregory

45:58

is extraordinarily optimistic and

46:00

compassionate. He supports

46:02

Alice through myriad stages of

46:04

pain and self discovery.

46:07

He's there for her when her mother develops

46:09

dementia, then Nanny

46:12

starts to decline, then Nanny

46:15

dies. Alice

46:17

and Gregory moved to Nashville, far

46:19

from one three to four Charles Street, far

46:22

from the city that held so many

46:24

difficult memories for them both. But

46:26

Alice can't outrun her history.

46:29

She still struggles with all the medication she's

46:31

on, and at one point, the

46:33

clinical flux, paired with all

46:36

that's gone on in her life, leads to

46:38

a massive dissociative break as

46:40

Alice calls it the most gone

46:43

she's ever been.

46:45

The touchstones of my life are not there anymore.

46:47

My mother has dementia. She no longer

46:50

houses our history. Nanny is dead.

46:52

She was the holder of all of our memories. She was

46:54

the witness. The only person left

46:57

is my father. So in

46:59

order to build myself from the

47:01

raw materials of my life, I

47:03

decide I'm going to confront

47:06

him, and Gregory

47:08

and I decide to go to Paris. We

47:10

have no idea what to expect. Is he going

47:13

to be furious at me? Is he going to deny everything

47:16

I couldn't live with no one inside?

47:19

And we arrive, Gregory

47:22

announces rules no drinking, which is directed

47:24

at my dad. If anybody

47:27

wants to stop at any time, you can.

47:30

The first person presents

47:32

their version of events for half an

47:34

hour with no interruption, then the other person

47:37

can respond. And then he said, I will be outside

47:40

monitoring for signs of distress, and I will

47:42

come in if I hear yelling. So

47:44

I tell my dad every

47:47

single incident where

47:50

I felt violated, whether it was

47:53

him organizing naked photos of

47:55

me on a horse galloping

47:58

through the Germany toplet, Yes,

48:00

while I was quote unquote still a lolida

48:02

before I turned eighteen, or whether

48:05

it was the pimp. I told him everything, and

48:08

he responded

48:11

with such humility, with

48:13

such shame. He didn't deny

48:15

any of it, he didn't

48:18

remember some of it, but he believed

48:20

me. He apologized.

48:22

He not only apologized, but

48:25

I watched him embody

48:28

my experiences and what I was telling

48:30

him in a way that was so

48:32

powerful. He understood

48:35

and he felt totally

48:38

awful, and he embraced,

48:40

for lack of a better word, my reality.

48:44

And that was a plot twist I was not expecting,

48:47

and I allowed him to

48:49

share his version of events, and

48:52

I conceded places where

48:55

maybe I had misunderstood, or maybe

48:58

it was a collaborative effort to construct

49:01

this new reality that we could both inhabit,

49:04

both being wholly ourselves and

49:06

belonging wholly to ourselves. And

49:10

what was so special was

49:12

that it was exactly because

49:16

we could say anything

49:18

to each other, that we could say everything

49:20

we needed to. It was exactly the

49:23

oversharing, the

49:25

intellectualizing that

49:28

had caused so much harm was

49:31

exactly what allowed us to heal

49:34

together.

49:36

That's really beautiful. I'm very

49:38

touched by your incredible eloquence

49:41

about things that can have

49:43

the opposite effect on people.

49:48

What I realized was, you

49:50

know, the dissociation, the thing that had

49:53

almost killed me, was

49:55

what allowed me to

49:57

embody his truth and

50:00

understand that so many things could be true at

50:02

the same time. And that's what inevitably

50:04

gave me back my family and

50:06

gave me back to myself. And

50:09

I think, you know, maybe things he did

50:11

were some of them were inexcusable,

50:14

but I think that it's not a zero

50:16

sum game. Exercising empathy

50:18

for him only fortifies

50:22

the empathy I feel for myself. So

50:24

believing in him and believing that

50:27

he was a damaged

50:29

person who tried his best doesn't

50:32

diminish what I experienced.

50:35

It was just a powerful, a

50:38

powerful exchange.

50:44

Here's Alice reading one last passage

50:47

from her magnificent memoir Everything

50:50

Nothing Someone. In this

50:52

scene, Alice is in effect

50:55

saying goodbye to her brilliant, complicated

50:58

force of a mother, scattering

51:00

her ashes in the Atlantic Ocean.

51:05

The clouds split open, the

51:08

gaudy guts of a shamelessly showy

51:10

sunset, spilling across the horizon.

51:14

A thick golden light spread over

51:16

our faces, which were all turned

51:18

toward the sun's extravagance sinking.

51:21

It looked exactly like an endless,

51:24

excessive oil painting. It

51:27

looked, in its extreme, bragging

51:29

beauty, almost insolent. I

51:32

recognized it. Gregory

51:35

tears and light in his eyes, said,

51:38

Jennifer looks good up there. We

51:40

laughed. I stripped

51:42

down to my swimsuit and I lowered myself

51:44

into the Atlantic. I swam

51:47

out, holding my mother's ashes

51:49

aloft. We were as

51:51

far out as we could go. I

51:54

didn't want to leave her, but

51:56

she needed to be alone.

52:03

Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.

52:06

Molly Zaccur is the story editor and

52:09

Dylan Fagan is the executive producer. If

52:12

you have a family secret you'd like to share, please

52:14

leave us a voicemail and your story could appear

52:17

on an upcoming episode. Our number

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is one eight eight eight Secret

52:21

zero. That's the number zero.

52:24

You can also find me on Instagram

52:26

at Danny Ryder. And

52:29

if you'd like to know more about the story that inspired

52:31

this podcast, check out my memoir

52:33

Inheritance. For

52:57

more podcasts from iHeartRadio.