A Carlin Home Companion (31 page)

And of course the other good part about going to grad school was that it would make my dad happy.

First of all I'd no longer be spilling my personal guts on a stage. Instead I'd be spilling them in the confines of the walls of a grad school. Also, I'd be off in some institution of higher learning, something I knew my dad loved from my days at UCLA. Dad took such pride in my academic achievements. Last, I'd be pursuing something more tangible and solid than a precarious career in showbiz. At the end of three years Pacifica would give me a solid plan B for life—a Master's in Counseling Psychology that would allow me to become a therapist if I chose to.

Win-win.

With all that, there was one thing in particular that tipped the scales for me. A few years earlier I'd read
Fathers' Daughters: Breaking the Ties That Bind
, by Maureen Murdock, a Jungian psychologist and lecturer at Pacifica. In it she focused on her struggle to claim her personal power and unique voice while climbing out from under the shadow of her father. The back jacket states: “In order to sustain his approval, protection, and love, she often distances herself from her mother and rejects her own feminine nature. By identifying solely with her father, her development as a woman is arrested in daughterhood.”

I could have written those very same words myself.

I knew that Maureen had much to teach me.

*   *   *

When I went up to Santa Barbara for my interview, I was nervous. This was such a huge leap in a new direction that I wasn't sure I could do it. As I waited in the room with about a dozen other applicants for the orientation to begin, I looked around and thought, I'm making a huge mistake. These people all look like therapists. What am I doing here? And then a woman said, “Sorry, I'm late. I hit some traffic.” And I looked up, and walking in was Maureen Murdock. She was our host for the day.

Hello sign from the universe.

My interview later that day confirmed my growing enthusiasm. Kathee Miller, a full-time therapist, and photographer and dancer, interviewed me. As we sat down in her office she said, “Your writing is beautiful.”

“Oh, thank you,” I replied. “It was an amazing experience for me. Very healing in some ways.”

I'd used the script of
Driven to Distraction
as the essay requirement in my application. Because I hadn't been in school for almost a decade, and had zero background in psychology, I'd hoped it would tip the scales in my favor. Plus I wanted to communicate to the powers that be there that I saw myself as an artist first, and a pursuer of healing second.

“It's so honest and raw—really great work,” she added.

I was filled with an intense warmth and hope. I felt seen and loved. I saw that this school could be more than just a place of learning and understanding about the human psyche. I saw that it could be a place of deep healing for me, too. These women of Pacifica—Maureen and Kathee—would see me, could acknowledge me, and thus really support me—all things that my own mother, due to her alcoholism, had found difficult to do until later in life. If I could be seen and heard in this unconditional way by these role models, these women, maybe I'd finally learn to trust myself fully and not be “arrested in daughterhood” as Maureen mentions on the back of her book.

My “father issues” may have led me to Pacifica, but it would be my mother issues that would be healed by this place.

Kathee and I continued to talk a bit about why I wanted to attend Pacifica.

“I'm so curious about the human psyche. Why are we the way we are? Why do we take certain paths? Being a solo show artist, I want to be able to take all that information and weave it into future works,” I told her.

“What about the therapy part?” she asked.

“Well, I feel like I've been a therapist since I was three years old, and that I'd have a particularly good leg up in that department. But in the end I'm not sure that's what I want to do the rest of my life. But I
am
interested in helping people heal. I'm hoping to be able to use that knowledge in some way other than one-on-one therapy.”

“Not everyone who comes here goes on to be licensed. There are many modalities that this stuff can be used for. And as far as the creative aspect,” she continued, “many of the classes allow you to do an art project as your final assignment.”

I felt as if I'd just been given the key to the Emerald City.

She closed my folder and said, “It looks like everything is in order. You should be getting a letter in the mail next week telling you that you've been accepted. I can't see any reason why not.”

As I drove down the coast back to Los Angeles, I felt exhilarated and terrified. It was now hitting me what a huge commitment I was making. Not only was I saying yes to a great undertaking—a forty-thousand-dollar student loan, a two-year program, writing a thesis, and at least two years interning as a therapist—but also the possibility of a whole new direction in my life. I didn't know who I'd be or where I'd be going when I was done. There was a very good chance I'd be leaving showbiz—the only life I'd ever imagined up until this point. Everything was now wide open for me. That was both the exhilaration and the terror of it. That and the fact I'd be walking away from the world that held my father in the highest regard. I'd no longer be in his domain. I'd no longer be in the solar system that revolved around my personal sun—my father.

I needed some advice. So, I reached out to my dad.

*   *   *

After the therapy session the two of us had about my solo show, Dad and I realized that we didn't really know how to talk to each other, and so we deliberately set out to communicate more frequently and more honestly with each other. No longer did our exchanges resemble those from my childhood and adolescence, which consisted of nothing more than Dad asking, “Hey, how are you?” and me replying, “Fine.” We were now
actually
communicating.

Here's the actual e-mail I sent my dad that day after my visit to Pacifica, with his responses in parentheses (which
he
embedded in the e-mail):

Hey there,

I went to Pacifica Grad Institute today and it was really great. It's a beautiful campus—two exits before San Ysidro—and has an interesting program for the MA in counseling psychology. I found out that a lot of people with an artistic orientation go there, and that the school supports and encourages that aspect of people. In fact, you can do an art project as your thesis. I think it could be a real home for me.

The other side is that I feel overwhelmed and completely unprepared for this adventure.

(Just like that other adventure I felt overwhelmed by and completely unprepared for: that adventure of doing a live stage show about you and Mom and all my pain.)

I'm so used to hiding from my power, gifts, and the world that it seems like an act of insanity to go outside of all the safety I have created for myself.

(Therefore I took it for granted that I could never do a show like that, and I stayed in that nice safe spot I had created for myself, and never answered the call of my soul.)

Is it possible to have the life one imagines?

(I know my Dad sat in the movies when he was ten and imagined he could be a famous comedian, but I'm nothing like my Dad. We have no traits in common.)

I know it is for others, but I have always doubted it for myself. It looks so simple from the audience.

(Kelly—In life, one is never in the audience. One is always on the stage.)

Hope I can stay awake for the Letterman. Hope all is well.

(Hope you can stay awake for your next great adventure.)

Later,

(Now!)

Love,

(Power!)

Kel

(Dad)

Hey Squirt!

You know your direction; there's no down side. There is only the wonderful, scary sensation of succeeding … and the joy. The great joy of being completely alive. Oddly, joy takes courage.

You walked away from Andrew and into the light. That took courage.

You went back to a school that had once overwhelmed you, and for which you had been completely unprepared … and you thrived. Magna cum laude. You walked into the light. That took courage.

Look to your courage; walk to your light.

Here's my advice about your above message: Every time you start reciting your second paragraph in your head, shout the first paragraph out loud; especially the last line.

Love and all that stuff,

The father of KELLY

PS—The Letterman was great. I'll lend you the tape when it comes in.

As I read those words, I wept. My father saw me, acknowledged me, and supported me. He always had—I'd just had a hard time seeing it and receiving it. I'd always thought I needed to be perfect in his presence, and had therefore hidden my anxieties about my life's path from him. Of course this had kept me feeling alone and scared for so long. But the moment I risked being open with him, he was instantly present, perceptive, and full of unconditional love. What took me so long?

I drank it all up like water at an oasis, and took the leap toward my master's degree.

*   *   *

I began the program in September 2001, two weeks after 9/11. The world had gone mad. But in the womb of that campus, curriculum, and those thoughtful teachers/psychologists, I felt safe, and in a privileged position to make sense of the world and maybe even humanity. But first I had to unearth a few things from my own psyche.

In my first winter quarter at Pacifica, January 2002, I got to work with Maureen Murdock. I was beyond excited. Because of the serendipity of my encounters with her—the book and the orientation—I felt an odd attraction to her. I desperately needed her to see me, acknowledge me, and love me (my mother issues clearly present). At the beginning of the first class, I was only semiconscious of the fact that I was projecting all of my own mother shit all over her. I'm sure that as a seasoned psychologist, she could feel me flinging all of this toward her. But even after I realized that my reaction to her was heightened and unconscious, I still couldn't control myself. I had some work to do in this department.

Maureen's class was called Myth and Memoir. She was developing material for her next book,
Unreliable Truth: On Memory and Memoir.
I was very excited to be focusing on memoir stuff. I felt like a bit of an expert after doing my solo show.
I wonder if I'll get brownie points from her for this?
I was also intrigued by the subject because I thought it might help me with my thesis and any other projects I did in the future.

As psychology students, what we were to take away from the course was how our clients construct narratives from the events of their lives, and how these then filter what they think about the world, and thus shape the choices they make. In order to write our final paper, she asked us to think about a myth or a narrative, and to explore the mythology that we had lived out within our own lives.
Alice in Wonderland
immediately popped into my head. I'd certainly felt like I'd fallen down the rabbit hole a number of times in my life. After class, I approached her.

“Hi, Maureen. We met on orientation day?”

“Yes. Welcome again,” she offered.

“I didn't get a chance to tell you then, but your book
Fathers' Daughters
really affected me. It's why I wanted to come to Pacifica. You see, my dad is George Carlin and, well, there's a lot of stuff there—and now this memoir stuff. I did a one-woman show last year about it, and this stuff is so intriguing to me.” Ugh. I felt like a fan talking to a rock star.

“I can only imagine what that must've been like, growing up with him, in his shadow,” she said, with not quite the enthusiasm I wanted from her.

But her clinical distance did nothing to dissuade my admiration for her. In fact it just fed my need to please her even more.

“Anyway, I was thinking about the story of Alice in Wonderland as my myth,” I said. “It really seems to hold so much of my story. I feel like most of my life was lived in a world that was upside down.”

She looked at me sternly and said, “I really think you should wait until the next class, when we explore the myth of Demeter and Persephone through a reenactment.”

I had no idea what this Demeter/Persephone myth was all about, and felt like a kid who was just told to eat her vegetables. I continued, “Or maybe Psyche and Eros,” hoping to continue our conversation and connection.

“I think you'll really resonate with Demeter and Persephone. It's the mother/daughter myth,” she said. “Just wait until after the reenactment, then decide.”

I felt gutted, just like I had every time my own mother had not supported me the way I wanted. I didn't want to do the “mother/daughter myth,” I thought as I walked away.

But something wiser and deeper than the petulant and needy child within me told me to trust Maureen. She'd led me here to Pacifica, and I was here, ultimately, to trust something else besides my old story line, and so I acquiesced and waited.

*   *   *

During the monthlong break between classes (Pacifica was a monthly three-day program), Maureen had e-mailed us all with her casting. I saw that I'd been cast as Metaneira, and the actor in me immediately went to the script to see how big my part was. I was only in one scene, and had only a few lines. I'd hoped that she'd seen my potential and given me a leading part like Demeter or Persephone. No such luck.

On the day of the reenactment, people brought costumes and props with them to enhance their roles and the overall production. I was underwhelmed by the thought of it all until Maureen walked up to me, smiling, and said, “I've brought you something special—my own baby doll to play the part of your son, Demophoon. Please take care of it. It means a lot to me.” I was filled with a warmth throughout my whole body, privileged to be the keeper of her precious baby. Maybe there was a chance for her and me to connect after all.