Ah, the words we are hoping to hear from my son. Today. Tomorrow. This week.
We need to be listening for ourselves. I am in the middle of a crisis that smoldered and smoked for two years before bursting into flames in March. And against my best efforts, we’ve all been wrestling with demons. Our own demons.
Mine involves my ex-wife and her sagging health and emotional autism. Her husband outstanding in his field. My son, the identified antagonist. And me.
I don’t want to be here anymore either.
Making the change is hard. Leaving a relationship is hard. Oh, shit, I didn’t mean to let that slip out here.
Redirect.
If we’re all focused on the crisis of our own making we’re ill-equipped to help or even deal with the crises of our loved ones. I understand this fully. We are living it. Even the zero suffers unnecessarily. I don’t want to be here anymore. This morning, today, I’d like to drive over to his crappy Air Bnb, swaddle him, and bring him home. Or to the mountain. Anywhere but here.
Anywhere is better than this.
I am feeling no pain. I’m in a creative surge. I’ve either had a seizure, I’m in the throws of a full-blown hypo-manic episode, or… Better answer… I’m finding my voice in typing, recording, and living this moment. We are near the endgame stages. My son is down to a knight and his king. And, while we are three pawns, I am a space away from promoting myself to a queen. We’re about to … Oh shit, it’s my ex-wife and her husband we’re talking about here.
In my imperfect world of wisdom, we’d get him on a fastpass to recovery.
His TA therapist, yesterday, said “I want to give him more options than just the mountain.” He will be delivered. Verdict: higher level of care.
I need a “higher level of care.” Okay, what’s my plan for that? Let’s do that. Let’s go to the moutain. I need a break at an Air BnB. Maybe if they’d been around in 2009 when my then-wife said, “We can just tell the kids you’re on a business trip,” I’d of had some real options. Moving to a hotel? Not an option. Moving out of my house at the beginning of divorce negotiations? Also, not an option.
In this higher level of care it’s important that I listen to the desires of my soul, listen to where the energy of life is coming from, and mine the heart for the answer. And… Fuck! The answer is out. On all fronts. Do I need to be here? I mean in Austin, not on the planet. Can I go to New Mexico now?
My GF is waiting in CA on the beach. Um, yeah, about that…
<scene>
See, I can’t leave on vacation at this very moment. I’m sure you can understand why.
Oh, and… I think I’ve decided not to come to the beach. I’m headed for the mountain, with or without my son. Wait. Dammit. I’ve shared too much. It’s okay, I’m sure she’s not reading along. I mean, she’s on the beach, sharing sunset pictures, texting “I want to hear everything.”
<endscene>
No, you don’t.
As I was learning to contain my own sadness, then learning to contain my own happiness, I redirected my need to talk, to share, to explode to writing about it rather than sharing it. As Rikle famously said, “Shut up and write.” I paraphrase.
I will not paraphrase this moment in my life. I will not allow for AI summaries and Cliff’s Notes versions to be created of this novel. I will fight for the right to …
I might have found a new regenerative energy source: writing against something.
I forbid you from summarizing, skipping, skimming to get to the good parts. It’s all good parts. All horror parts. All scenes from a Tarantino movie that just won’t fucking end. And so we are in the boat together. We’d like separate boats to go our own fucking way, I think, yes, please, and thank you. But we’re stuck. The boat has taken significant damage and is taking on water at an unsustainable rate. We’re either all going to drown, or…
Someone, anyone, is going to jump out of the boat.
My hope is that someone is me. To grab the bowline and pull us back to safer waters. Not my son, jumping out for another race to Dallas, where his fantasy lesbian neurosurgeons live. The last time he was driving back he texted me, “I’m going so fast. I could see wrapping this car around a tree.”
Yeah, except you’d probably survive in some severely diminished form. That’s what we’re trying to avoid. Damage that causes lasting complications throughout his life. Just like me. I’m trying to keep my son from going through so many of the horrors I experienced. We knew so little about neurochemistry, the instruments were blunt and cruel. They had aspirational names like Thorazine and Stellazine. I mean, who wouldn’t feel better on Stellazine?
Today’s pharma promos push the miracle drug angle even harder about everything. Hell, they’ve even cured fatness. Well, I mean, the science so far says as long as you stay on the injectable (feeling full) drug you’re good. But that cannot be your life plan, right, take a drug for the rest of your life? Oh, right. Hello.
It’s complicated. All of it. The love. The meds. The lies. The stories we even tell each other. “He seems to be improving,” my ex-wife texted me two months ago. “He’s getting up regularly. Next, we’re going to make him be responsible for waking himself up.” Fuck. No. And, you are a big part of the problem.
Oh, that’s something rather interesting. I can’t really tell you all of it, to protect the innocent and the hopeful journey we are on. Let’s just say I mentioned the other parents malfunctions to the TA therapist, “And THEY are a significant part of the problem.” Her response was silence. Ah. We’re on the same page about the parents too.
I, on the other hand, am a model of strength, sobriety, and charm. I’ve written books. My book on depression is probably a roadmap that would work for my son. Yeah, but… We are only ANGER and ADVICE to him. He can’t hear us. Can’t hear a thing I’m saying to him.
Now, he’s reduced his comms with me. Yesterday I got little more than an “I’m alive.”
Barely, I’d say. But I won’t. I’m really on his team. I’m the only one rowing the boat toward the shore. It has taken two months of hell for the adults in the boat to agree on a direction. I’m not saying my ex-wife and her husband were rowing away from the shore, just that their direction and motivation have changed many times over the storm-ravaged course of the last two years.
That’s enough, right? Two years.
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