Don’t get me wrong, I still loved Sunny, and I hoped we would reconnect with each other once I moved to LA—but I wasn’t holding my breath. She just seemed too unpredictable to be counted on, and I needed people around me who were stable and safe.
After losing Sunny and Yvonne, I felt rudderless and abandoned. I fell into a deep depression; I didn’t feel like getting up in the morning and I couldn’t get to sleep at night. I obsessed about all the things I had done wrong—especially about wrecking my mother’s car and drinking at Yvonne’s house. I wondered if my causing us to lose our studying place had added to Sunny’s stress level. Normally, I tried to forget my past mistakes—to block them out of my mind and just move on. But even though both Yvonne and my mother had seemed to have gotten over my blunders, when I was depressed like this I dwelled on all the bad things I’d done.
I didn’t feel motivated to study. I loved my English, sociology, and psychology classes but I was barely passing chemistry, which made me seriously rethink becoming a nurse—especially since I’d also recently found out I was squeamish about taking or giving blood.
For a time, I had considered being a social worker like Yvonne. Under her direction, the Y had started a program to help young people who had been in a mental hospital adjust to normal life once they were released. I was attracted to the program because of my experience with Sunny, so I often attended the “social hour” held every Wednesday afternoon at the Y, where I—along with other Y teen girls—talked and danced with the former patients.
There was one young man in his early twenties whom I connected with more than the others. He had been a student at Bakersfield Jr. College when he’d had a breakdown, and he was planning on going back to school soon. He was quiet and sad and I wanted to help him come out of his shell.
We talked and danced together several Wednesdays. Yvonne wasn’t always there, but on one particular Wednesday in early December, she was. I was waltzing with him when I got a glimpse of Yvonne. Much to my surprise, she gave me a critical look.
Confused and upset, I excused myself and went over to her.
“You’ll never make a good social worker,” she said harshly. “You don’t have good enough boundaries.”
I didn’t understand what she was talking about. “What do you mean?”
“You’re just supposed to socialize with the patients, not get romantically involved with them.”
I was shocked. I wasn’t getting romantically involved with the young man. I felt badly for him that he’d had a breakdown like Sunny and been hospitalized at such a young age, but I wasn’t coming on to him. I wondered if perhaps I hadn’t noticed that he was attracted to me. I often missed signals from guys because I didn’t feel attractive. Nevertheless, Yvonne’s reprimand caused me to question my ability to be a good social worker. Would I end up getting too involved with my clients? If being a social worker meant being cold and critical, as Yvonne sometimes was, then maybe it wasn’t for me. So now, in addition to all the other losses I was experiencing, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.
As the months went by and I reflected on my relationship with Yvonne, I realized that while she had inspired me to reach for more in my life and to be the best version of myself, there was a critical side to her as well—a part of her that was diffi-cult to please, a part of her that had unreasonable expectations. She had gotten in the habit of saying to me, “Get on the stick, Engel!” and each time she said it I felt criticized. She seemed to be saying that I could do better, even when I was trying as hard as I could. In more ways than I wanted to admit, she reminded me of my mother. Realizing this was very depressing to me. I wondered why I hadn’t seen it before. I had put her up on such a pedestal that I’d been blind to this aspect of her, just like I had been blind to Sunny’s recklessness.
Fortunately, Sharon and Grace, two of my friends from Medical Careers Club in high school, invited me to the snow for winter vacation. I’d never spent much time around girls like Sharon and Grace—normal girls who hadn’t suffered abuse, their parents’ alcoholism, or worse. They each had two parents who loved them, who had stayed together and seemed devoted to their children. It was comforting to be around these girls and to see that normal families actually existed.
Although they weren’t wealthy, Sharon and Grace’s parents had enough money to send their girls to nursing school after they graduated from Bakersfield City College. And they had enough money to rent a cabin for us to spend a week in the snow at Big Bear.
Sharon’s father drove us there and picked us up a week later. I was impressed that her father trusted us to not get into trouble, but Sharon, Grace, and Sharon’s cousin,
