“I’m not suggesting we send him on a mushroom trip,” my ex-wife said. “But I feel like some sort of transformation needs to take place.”
She’s against the twelve steps as a path to our son’s recovery. She wants him to have a spiritual awakening of some other sort. And while the twelve-step interventionist is the only support my son has right now, she’s not convinced our son has an addiction problem. Echoing his repeated statements, “But I’m not an alcoholic.”
Ah, my son. But your mother might be. Perhaps the other room would be better for your troubled soul. Here’s what we do know. He’s been drug (anti-depressants allowed) free for several months. He’s had a job for two months. Still suffers from delusions about how and why he ended up carless and homeless. And he’s madder than a hornet. So man, the coach is running interference for him. He’s not coaching him, he’s mediating an ongoing dispute between a son and his three awful parents.
My ex-wife’s spectrumy husband opts out of most of the drama about the boy. It seems like the he and my wife don’t live in the same reality. One thing is clear, though, money is the issue we should all focus on. The money. The rent. How can he pay for his own car? His housing? He’s making $500 a week. I’m spending $250 a week on Uber for him.
How do you influence a young man who won’t respond to calls or texts? How do you let go of a loved one, understanding that their poor choices are not your fault? Was it the divorce that crushed his spirit? Or the broken leg in 5th grade? Or the drugs, guns, and violence? What it must’ve been is unknown. Even to my son, he’s confused. Says things about PTSD and my ex-wife nods her head, and maybe magnets or that left-hemisphere-right-hemisphere thing with lights or sounds. Searching for clues.
I have got to stop searching for my son’s salvation and let the process work. Time. Growing up. Adulting. Understanding that the fast car is out of your financial reach until you finish college. Oh, and about that, just the degree is not going to make a job happen for you. That too is a process. Any suggestion that he begin looking at the job listings to even see what is open in the market is brushed off as dumb.
But, that’s how this process works. You begin the process fresh each morning, put your back to the rock and begin pushing up hill. Why does every single thing have to be so hard for him? Would he really just stay in bed, smoke on the screened-in porch, and blast his brains out with random bro podcasts? Would he forget to eat? Get even skinnier? What would he do if he were not being pushed, prodded, coached, loved, cajoled, and begged?
Get Your Shit Together.
Ah, my son. My own journey was difficult as well. By 22 my dad was dead. Ding dong the devil is dead. And, oh my god, we had so little time after the cancer sobered him up for the first time in my adult life. Then we watched his wife fly around the country with her escort. He withered and spun in his mansion on the hill. All of his children moved back to Austin. The end times with Dad.
I spent as much time as I could with him. I was a full-time college student. The pressure of death was heavy. I didn’t enjoy my first few years of college. Emergency rooms, hospital beds, and loss. Then he was gone. Like the last conscious hug we shared at the golf resort where he’d taken up residence.
“We need to do more of this,” he said, standing in the doorway of his blue-themed condo. There was not enough golf in the world, enough dinner buffets, enough time. I would never get a strong hug from my father again. I didn’t know that at the time.
“Yes, Dad, we do.”
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