We struggle to support our kids. We look for how we can be helpful without being enabling. A bit of AA and Al-Anon wisdom. We don’t want to enable our kids to keep acting out. We also don’t want to miss if a full-blown intervention is the last final step.
Will it stick? Who knows. Are there other options? Well, trying to wait him out is killing everyone around him. I am dying in this PAUSE mode. We have a timeline, however, a horizon. I am leaving for New York in a week from tomorrow. BEFORE I leave, I’d really like to have my son tucked in at a facility that might address his deeper issues. He’s stone cold sober at the moment. Well rested. Perhaps the “too much sleep” effect is kicking in too. Either way, a new move is required.
Massive Action
I learned about this idea during my initial Divorce recovery. I related this story to my son yesterday over dinner as he was whining about the sad state of affairs in his life.
“Yes, you have a tough journey ahead.”
“I’d just as soon not be here,” he said.
Let me tell you about my experience. It’s not the same as you. But I think you’ll get the comparison I’m trying to make. I understand you. I understand where you are FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.
I had just walked out of the family home. I was living with my sister in her downstairs mother-in-law suite. I had zero privacy. Her kids would come down and watch TV all the damn time. I could not get away from the sound of dumb movies. I did not have any noise-canceling headphones. I just put on my earbuds and rocked out. But it was miserable.
But get this, I was a dad with two kids, no job, no place to live, and no idea about how to get started. I did know it was a LONG WAY BACK before I would be able to have a life. I had no life. I wallowed in that place for a few weeks. Just like you, I was sleeping all the time. Not sleeping at night because I slept all day. I was hopeless.
I was looking for clues. Asking God for assistance. And I was white-knuckled in a semi-comfortable place like you have today. I’m not pressuring you about anything. I’m making sure you are safe, don’t have access to MY drugs, and have food, water, and shelter. I’m even willing to keep buying cartons of cigarettes for you to smoke on my back screen porch. But, I understand how you still feel hopeless.
So, at some point, I understood my path out and up to be this: job > apartment > dating > partner. That seemed impossible. I had no energy to even start. So I didn’t. I slept. Read some books, played some iPhone games, and felt miserable. In my reading of AA stuff, I came across the concept of MASSIVE ACTION.
What you are dealing with is not going to respond to adjustments. Not to your meds, to your schedule, to your relationship. Minor adjustments have been tried and failed. Minor approaches to your future are no longer viable. It’s time for YOU to take massive action.
For me that looked like this: job hunt got more serious, I joined an Aikido studio and learned how to attack and be attacked well, and I joined a Divorce Recovery therapy group that would begin meeting once a week for six weeks. I still had no job, no prospects for my future. I only had one thing: my own agency.
I keep using that word. “You have agency over your own life.”
Today, I’m afraid I’m beginning to lean toward, “You do not appear to have any impulse to get better, to DO anything, or to even remain awake for more than 30% of the day when you smoke on the back porch and look into the sky. I get it. I have been there. But, here’s where our journeys are about to split.
You don’t seem to be taking any action. The actions you have taken over the past three months have all been against your best interests. So, now you are hibernating. I get it. But, here’s the thing. There is no one to rescue you. I am not here to provide a rescue. Safehaven, temporarily, but you have got to take action to get your life back in motion. Sure, sleep a lot, eat good food, have one or two minor conversations with me a day, and veg the fuck out. For now.
Here’s what’s coming.
It’s time for a massive move. It does not seem that you are capable of architecting the first steps up the hill. I am about to help. I’m about to carry you out of your own burning building. Not in a rescue, but in a 9-11 call.
I am already so sorry. I am sad. I have been hopefully waiting for you to catch up to this moment in your life. It seems like you’re plan is to delay, avoid, and sleep so you don’t have to engage with your next steps.
Yesterday was an opening. A different approach to your situation. With a man who’s been through it a lot, with a lot of men. It’s all he does. You were lukewarm. “He was okay.”
Again, here’s the message, so you don’t miss it: MINOR ADJUSTMENTS ARE OVER.
In your assessment the idea came to light, the results of the 28 hours of meetings and testings: Acute in-patient psychiatric help is required. I’m sorry.
I understand. I’ve also been there. And what is about to happen sucks. It just might save your life. Someday, you might forgive me for failing you.
I can hope.
Your dad.
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