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his hands. I never once intentionally provoked him or cut him off, as I did so often with other adults, particularly authority figures. At the end of the hour, I surprised myself by agreeing to come back again, to try whatever “therapy” was supposed to be.
    Relieved that I was at last cooperating with them, my parents allowed me to move back into their home. But after a few months, Jim suggested that I stay in what he called a “halfway house.” He knew of two therapists, Pat and Ray, who rented rooms to people like me, people who were in transition and needed support. They lived on the premises with their two young daughters, a cat, and two dogs. Jim thought the move would give me a chance to grow up and begin to separate from my mother and father. I was all for it; I couldn't wait to be on my own. My parents were wary but they'd made a decision to trust Jim and so reluctantly agreed.
    I fell in love with the house the moment I saw it. It was a two-story, weathered pink Victorian A-frame on the corner of Park Avenue and the Speedway, an alley that runs along the entire stretch of Venice Beach. The boardwalk and the sand, separated from us by an empty dirt lot, were less than a half block away. At night, I could hear waves breaking on the shore as I fell asleep. I quickly became fast friends with Pat and Ray, good-hearted hippies in their midthirties with degrees in social work who now devoted their lives to helping others. They welcomed me into their home.
    The big surprise was the other residents: Pete, a schizophrenic in his early twenties who mostly kept to himself, and Dolly, a wired manic-depressive woman. My God, I thought, Jim put me here with the mentally ill! Pat and Ray agreed: That was exactly what Jim had done. And yet, somehow, it didn't matter to me. What mattered was that I felt free. Still, the first time I opened the medicine cabinet and placed my toothbrush beside Pete's Thorazine and Dolly's lithium, it did give me the creeps. But besides the times when Pete was hearing voices or Dolly had her bouts of insomnia, we all got along just fine and life was pretty uneventful.
    I continued my therapy with Jim. Yet despite the bond I felt I had with him, I didn't open up immediately. Nor did my initial timidity last: I was a hard case, fighting him at every turn, testing and probing to see how far I could go. For several months I missed appointments, challenged him, threatened never to come back again.
    Then, one day, after being in therapy about a year, I told Jim about a troubling dream I'd had when I was nine years old. The dream was similar to a wakeful state, vivid, not at all like a regular dream. I'd never discussed it before with anyone except my parents. In fact, I'd purposely kept it a secret. Recalling it now as part of my therapy, I described it in my journal:
    My nightgown is drenched in sweat as I bolt awake, knowing that my grandfather, who lives three thousand miles away, had just died. I can hear his voice saying good-bye to me over and over again as I struggle to get my bearings. It's the middle of the night. My bedroom is pitch black. I can't tell if I'm dreaming or if this is really happening. Almost too frightened to move, I drag myself from bed and run as fast as I can into my parents' room to give them this message.
    Instead of being upset by my announcement, my mother smiles and assures me, “You were having a nightmare. Grandpop's fine.” The absolute certainty in her voice makes me doubt myself. Of course Grandpop's all right. I've simply overreacted, I'm told. So I head back to my own room again, comforted by the notion that my panic was unfounded, and drift off to sleep.
    A few hours later, my aunt calls from Philadelphia, to tell us that my grandfather has died of a heart attack.
    As I recounted the dream to Jim, he listened intently without flinching or recoiling as I expected he would. Instead, showing genuine interest, he asked me to speak more about it. I first told him my