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This is not meant to be a confession.
I am admitting to a few dark moments in my past. It’s what we all do as we grow older. Reflect. Repent. Seek to understand. At least, that’s my understanding of maturity. Here goes.
I was born into a rapidly ascending upper-middle-class family. When I arrived, six years after my nearest sibling, I was regarded as a mistake, a miracle, and a savior all at the same time. I was also hated by my nearest sister. I had taken her spot as the baby of the family. I recall some moments of joy in my early years. Mainly related to music (singing Beatles songs at the top of my voice with a fake microphone in front of my bedroom window to my adoring fantasy audience below) and my oldest sister, my muse and keeper. Also the conduit for all this great music arriving in the late 60s and 70s. I was born in 1962.
Things progressed. Mom and dad built a famously massive house on the lake. He a successful family doctor, her a successful socialite. It’s what she was trained for. “Finishing school.” They fit the bill perfectly. Played the part for the city. Big parties. Talk of the town type of thing.
First grade I was heading to a new school due to the new house. I was sad. I was hyper-interested in chasing girls during recess. Those things were interconnected. I was so sad, apparently, that my mom drove me into town during all of second and third grade. It was a hardship. I was back with my friends. I was still unhappy.
A moment frozen in my memory still haunts me a little, so I’m going to exhume it now. A girl in my class, third grade I believe, had returned from vacation in Hollywood and brought back an autograph of David Cassidy. All the kids were swarming around her at recess. She held the fragile slip of paper in her hands. I ran up, grabbed the autograph and crumpled it throwing it to the ground as she howled. I ran off.
Later in the principal’s office my mother was called. I got the rest of the day off.
Trying to parse this nearly fifty years later, I can only imagine how my sadness had turned into rage and jealousy. I wanted to destroy this girl’s joy. I wanted to strike out. To be famous, like David Cassidy, even if it meant infamy. The next week school returned to normal. What was happening at the magical lake house is more like a fog in my mind, a fog of loss and unhappiness. My brother and older sister were sent away to boarding schools, and I was left to fend for myself with Mom and my remaining sister against a sad alcoholic.
Years later, back in Texas after a failed escape, I horrified myself once again with some questionable actions. I didn’t really have anything to complain about. Divorce. Sure, but lots of kids have divorced parents. I had a nice car. I was struggling with school a bit, but more from boredom and ennui, rather than academic rigor. I was coming back to school after a dentist appointment or something, walking across the hot student parking lot, early May in Texas, already nearing the hundreds.
I picked up a rock. My mom had sold the lake house and now we lived in a smaller house up on a ridge overlooking the wealthy family and their kids. An heir to the King Ranch, I hear, but you hear that a lot in Texas. The two kids, of these rich people both went to the same school. They too drove nice cars. Maybe nicer than mine. The next part is less clear. I know I hurled the rock at the boy’s car. Immediately I was horrified by my actions. I bowed my head in the heat and scurried into school.
This time the connection with my David Cassidy moment is more obvious now, looking back. Life was crumbling, had already crumbled, and here were all these kids, just going about normal life, doing well, doing better than me. I don’t recall if there was significant damage, broken windshield, or anything. I blocked it out. There was an announcement at assembly the next morning about some vandalism that took place in the parking lot. I smiled and cried inside.
In third grade my son, my talented and happy son, broke his leg during the first week of school. A spiral fracture that put him in a wheelchair and rehab for most of his first semester. Heartbreaking to watch your vibrant kid wither. He began to give up. He no longer took chances. He refused to learn how to ride a bike after that. Never did.
I see how this catastrophic collapse crushed his hopeful optimism. Nothing would be easy in life from this point on. Sure, that sounds dramatic, but it’s where we are now. Something catastrophic has happened to my son. I don’t believe I am to blame, thank god. He is making a difficult bed and having a difficult time sleeping in it. All the things in his life that derailed and didn’t work out (yes, we all suffer) seem to be piling up on him just now. He keeps making bad decisions. He’s struggling with demons I can only tangentially understand. I understand. I have a misunderstanding.
My son needs to be in a time-out. He needs to have his freedoms and responsibilities taken away for a short period of time. The mountain, I suggested, is a place where he could get clean, get clear, and get a plan for what’s next. He’s twenty-three. He refused. I lined up the insurance (pre-qualified) I wrestled with his mom and her husband, but in the end, he’s an adult. Or would be treated like one by the law. His admission would be voluntary. He could walk out at any time. That’s what he kept saying. “I’ll just walk out. I’m not an addict.”
But what he needs is a mystery even to himself. Just tonight, he’s torturing himself. He keeps agreeing to a plan. Not doing the plan. Then bolting. How long can a twenty-three year old man, with no money and no job, run? How far can he go? What’s the worst that could happen? Wait! Let’s not talk about that, okay?
I had no choice when I was sent to the mountain. Not the first or the second time. The third time, back in Austin, my mom and I were struggling with big issues and big disagreements and I remember her asking me, “John, do you want to go to the hospital?” I nodded.
The reset required is on all levels. Spiritual. Physical. Emotional. Chemical. My son (as did I) requires a timeout. He is refusing to comply. He’s agreeing and nodding his head and then he’s doing the opposite. He’s very apologetic. “I’m sorry.” More of a mantra than an apology. He’s sorry, that’s obvious, but only because he’s not rich and already out of college. I might have been in the same dark hole when I threw the rock.
I recovered.
I suppose as a parent of a twenty-three-year-old man, I have to let my son work out his demons. I can offer help, bounded by my own understanding of what he must be going through. He had not hit rock bottom. I keep trying to help him avoid the pit of despair.
We’ve all got to go there, alone.
I offer flashlights. Supplies. Hopeful stories. Rejoinders. Texts. But my influence is limited at this point. My strength is an unwavering commitment to recovery. Whatever that means to him.
He’s been at the “my life has become unmanageable” point many times. Tonight, even, as we texted about his dire situation.
“I’m not doing well,” he texted.
This time, I was conscious of the sadness I was feeling. Rather than try to supply an answer, I said simply, “I’m sorry.”
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