Listen to ESC_KEY Notes Discussion: Listen. Learn. Evolve! discussion
It’s important to remember our own failures, attempts, near-misses, and wins. As I recount my own trajectory in my 20s I see a young man with ambition, promise, and a mental health issue. My son is the same. I understand him through the lens of my own experience. He is me, and he is not me. We are similar. We struggle with mental fitness and creative bursts of energy that tend to wipe out those around us. We thrash ourselves in the name of creative output.
I’m learning again how to be a parent. How to stay in my lane while still enforcing boundaries. The victory last night was he went to sleep in his own bed. The light was on in his room and it looks like he just fell back on his bed and passed out. He was up late sterilizing the bathroom. He’s a bit OCD. I don’t think I have that. He will try and pin it on PTSD. I think it’s a learned trait from his mom and her husband. Overwhelming dred and the belief that if it’s not working out it’s someone else’s fault.
I know this is not my fault. I struggle with his pain. Again, not my fault. I have done my best to stay relevant and supportive in his life. I’ve been excommunicated a few times. His mom’s house, new remodel nightmare, would not work out for him. The husband cannot tolerate his all-night ragers. Even if he has his music or podcast blaring in his Airpods, it’s still a rager. When I woke last night most of the house was lit up. 2 am, an old man, I had to pee.
I’m still working on my sleep with the chupacabra in my house. He’s fiddling with everything. Wanting to modify my entire living space. He complained about his “privacy” when I busted him for drug dealing, here in my living room. Yet, he proceeds to “clean up my house” as he filters through everything I own in search of gems. Back in the day it was anti-anxiety meds. Today, I’m not sure. Small things appear back in circulation for no explainable reason. The Roomba is abandoned in the living room.
“I don’t need any more projects,” I tell him. “Feel free to reorg your room or the garage, but you can’t invade every room of my house.”
In a moment of clarity a few night ago, he reacted to my statement. A few minutes later, he returned with a bit of new awareness. “I get it. I am sorry. I have stuff in every room of the house. I will make adjustments. I’m sorry.”
He was a big “I’m sorry, now fuck you as I go the opposite direction.” He often makes no change in his behavior and merely tosses off another “I’m sorry.”
In my marriage, I too learned to say I’m sorry a lot. Nothing worked. I did continually try and evolve, improve my housekeeping, my availability for kid pickup and delivery. I was doing everything I could think of to keep my marriage together. She, my ex-wife, was convinced that her unhappiness was my fault. That my struggles at work were an indication of my lack of responsibility. It was my depression. My unemployment. My failures. If only… She would be happy.
She never got happy. She married another atypical with OCD that amazes even my son. My daughter just refuses to deal with him and his requests. Nevermind. She is the dark star in his life. I’d like to say I’m the bright star, but it’s not that black and white. It never is.
The biggest difference is I take my Al Anon recovery lessons as gospel. I cannot change the behavior of others. I can only be responsible for my behavior and my words. What you (she) does is up to you. I stay in my lane. Even with my son, today, I’m withholding my advice. It has not been asked for. Unsolicited advice is always a complaint. I am complaining, but here and at work to a few of my younger confidants. Young men of his age are my friends. There are a few, even the spectrumy ones, who are similar to adopted son-figures. Odd, I know. I enjoy chatting and collaborating with my friends.
This morning with him in his room rather than sprawled uncomfortably on the red chair, I am relieved. He stirred and projected until around 1 am. Waking up at 2 am to pee and finding him fixated with a flashlight in the darkened garage was spooky. We jump scared each other.
Later I apologized. “I wasn’t stalking you, I thought you were asleep. I was looking to see what you’d accomplished in the reorientation of the garage.”
“Yeah, it frightened me too. I didn’t think you were stalking me.”
“Getting more sleep, and sleep in the dark hours, would be good.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m just struggling, man.”
I think I’m clear on my role here. I am dad. I am a vulnerable man with similar neuro challenges. Different, for sure, but related. I can hyperfocus. Mine tends to be on creative projects. His, at the moment, often involve guns. A pistol strapped to his leg. “This is my new open carry thing.”
I am also keenly aware of the risk at opening up to much to my son’s mercurial moods. I do not want to cycle with him. I do not want to collapse under the weight of trying to save him. I cannot save anyone.
I can and will remain focused on my own path, my issues, my recovery. In Al-Anon, it’s not the other person we are focused on. It’s ourselves. We have to understand that we cannot fix or help our “qualifier.” We can only stay in our own lane, deal with our feelings, our disappointments, and our goals. The future is up to us. Our future with an alcoholic or addict, however, is optional. In many of the Al-Anon meetings, there are old-timers who are still with their alcoholic partner. They are here for survival strategies. How to remain self-focused when the other person is demonstrating unhealthy behaviors.
In my middle school years I was trying to save my dad. I was trying to be an A-student, a football star, a singer, and a magician. I was an overachieving mascot child. My dad was deep into his own darkness. Self-medicating with alcohol, he was neglecting his body and his health. It’s said doctors are the worst at treating themselves or their families. In my father’s case this was true. He couldn’t see that he had a problem.
Even after his third heart attack he didn’t sober up and change his ways. His body and soul were sending a message. He refused to alter his course; he doubled down, marrying another alcohol enthusiast. And off he went, slipping down the slope of drinking toward becoming a ghost, which he did when I was twenty-two.
As I’ve struggled with my own depression and mental aberrations, I wonder about my dad’s journey into oblivion. I look at the last fifteen years since my divorce, and I can count two or three times when I was passively considering ending it all. Ideation. I think, then, about my dad, and his first heart attack. How in the fuck do you not begin pulling your amazing life back together? His internal guilt about his father’s demise was too great. He dove for the exit. Drank each night to blackout. He married a woman who joined his misery.
I only observed this macabre dance between the two of them once in my life. It nearly killed me. I was back in Austin for Spring Break of my sophomore year at prep school in Maine. I was sleeping in his new wife’s daughter’s bedroom, directly above the dining room where the nightly festivities and shitshows occurred. Every. Single. Night. Drinking together into rage and fighting, and slurring beyond comprehension. I was terrified.
When I returned to Maine, I was a wreck. My first morning back, I called my dad from the phone booth in the commons room.
“Dad, you’re killing yourself.”
He placated and lied to me. He told me to take care of myself. Not to worry about him.
I hung up the phone on a bright and beautiful Maine morning in early May and woke up the dorm drug dealer and bought two hits of speed. The morning raged into flames. I argued a fine point with my favorite English teacher. Egoism vs. Egotism. I was righteous and unstoppable. At lunch my girlfriend looked worried. She asked how she could help. I got out of there fast.
Fuck everyone. No one can understand. No one. Not god. Not Jesus Christ. Not my dad, my mom, or my favorite sister. We were all suffering from the destructive hurricane, but couldn’t come up with a coordinated response or rescue. I got into Adult Children of Alcoholics meetings when I returned to Austin. But that was later. Years later, after the second catastrophic collapse landed me back in my Dad’s orbit and the blistering shame of returning to my old “clique-rich” high school.
Of all those around me, only my other sister remains. She’s a bit cold and aloof. That’s how she survived. She got really good at sneaking out and acting out during high school. Then, after college, she got very good at managing and orchestrating complex projects. She still takes that approach to life. It’s more of a project management mindset. When our mom died, she offered to let me come over to her house. That was not a good option for me.
I took a worse option. I called my ex-girlfriend. Hilarity ensued.
