you may now listen to this chapter free on YouTube: no snow on the mountain
It’s true, misguided, but true. I would like my struggling son to get himself to a monastery or ashram or treatment center. I do not think the military would be a good crash pad for this falling star.
He is calling out for help on all channels. And taking none of the help but the money. And when there’s money there’s the flight risk. And when there’s a story, there are lies. And when you order a new set of surgery gloves and n97 masks forgive me if I imagine you might be going back into the drug trade. I mean, what gives? What’s next? What’s it going to take?
We can’t make our adult kids do anything. An intervention only works when the flailing person accepts the request to change. It’s an intervention that’s needed here. It’s where I was three months ago when this current drama began. To the mountain. Get sober. Clean. Take in some fresh mountain air. Meet some new people who are also on the hard journey back to serenity.
But he’s got an idea that we’re sending him to a psycho ward, as he calls it.
“The mountain might be different you think,” I say.
And he’d rather I never mention it again. But today, as he crashed his car into someone, essentially putting himself on foot until repairs are made, he began to feel the pressure. I agreed to pay for the towing. The repairs are going to be negotiated with his mom and her husband. They are currently his guardian devils. It’s not easy. I can’t imagine it.
Reading The Drama of the Gifted Child today, I came across this wisdom from the intro. It is our parents’ lack of understanding of their own damaged condition that makes them poor shepherds of their kid’s troubles.
Here we are, stuck. Well, I’m gratefully out of the war zone. I opted out of the current laissez faire plan. I will attend and participate in any discussions I am invited to, but…
I will not negotiate with my ex-wife and her husband about the health and future options for my son. I guess it’s between him and his own higher power, even if that part of his soul has not been hooked up properly. And I can’t take blame for that either. I was jettisoned when he was 9. The new man has been in his role for longer than that, at this point.
Where was the parenting on their side? The 70% side? The “in the best interest of the children” side? I guess this is not an argument or attack on the mother of my children. I’d say the teen years and developmental milestones that go along with that trajectory were not only poorly attended, but the consequences of their lack of “attachment” and discipline are also here in a 23-year-old male child.
His adverse behavior, anger, and unreliability have brought him and them to this place. I am perched nearby, but avoiding the chaos of daily management of the unmanageable. Like a teenage kid that needs to be grounded, my son has never been as close as he is now, to facing some consequence of the last two years of bad decisions, drug abuse, drug merchandising, and a hefty gun fetish.
How did we get here?
And, more importantly, where do we go from here?
Here’s my out. I too struggle, have struggled, with mental health issues. I empathize with my son. I offer what I think is best for him. I suppose his mom and her husband are doing their best as well. But their dysfunction has a larger role to play in my son’s death spiral than they are willing to admit.
If one member of the family has an issue and goes “into treatment” guess what happens? The entire family goes into recovery.
That is never going to happen.
As a father with my own challenges, when my son’s antics and anti-social, anti-hopeful, anti-motion process are too much for me to wrestle with on a day-to-day basis, I know how to take care of my own health and wellness. Thus he is at his mom’s. Oh, and the fact that he was dealing from my house. Nope.
I am not prepared to jeopardize my own serenity for a son who is clearly still on a bender of some sort. He howls, “But I’m not addicted to drugs.” He also lies. Repeatedly. Openly. When the lie makes no sense. He must imagine that none of us are texting and talking to one another. So, I have placed a firewall between me and my self-igniting son.
In this moment, in this period of evaluation and options, I have been patient. Everyone tells me how beautifully I’m doing with my son. Even my ex-wife, who is in some sort of death struggle of her own. I am clear on two things.
- I cannot provide the rescue
- The path and willingness has to be his
Other than that, I suppose he can fuck around and find out through the end of the summer. We’re at the end of May right now. He has to make his own decisions.
At breakfast, he kept talking about his run of bad luck. “Why now, god?” he whined. I smiled.
I do not take any satisfaction in my son’s struggles, nor his pushback against me and my “mountain” idea. But…
I’ve always believed that everything is just right. His car is disabled. His willingness to “just get a job” is all talk at this point. Perhaps walking will provide new motivation. Perhaps just new resentment and anger at the three people trying to throw him a lifeline.
This is a moment. My hope is his epiphany comes before some other tragic event occurs forcing a change. Today’s event unhorsed him. As I’ve said before, “We are at a perfect squeeze point.”
But, you know, if he doesn’t want to go, he will refuse. His defiance being his only current badge of honor. The thrill of saying “fuck you” and doing the exact opposite of what is requested of you, well, that’s not only a pattern but a habit. There is some reward for him in sideways “fuck yous.”
In my history, during a toxic period of my life with the alcoholic I was engaged do, I came to an understanding that my depression, the overwhelming darkness and shame, was actually a feeling that I could lean into. I had to learn to lean away from the darkness.
Today, I think my son believes that leaning into the darkness is going to bring him relief. Throwing Molotov cocktails into his mom’s house would destroy the only safe haven he has left.
I learned this propensity to go for the numbing pain over several years. I even had the lesson repeated in my next relationship, which also involved a young boy. There was a dark secret thread that ran through the entire relationship. I tried to address it. I broke up with her and moved back to my apartment twice. And, I failed. I gave in. I accepted being treated with disrespect.
Inside this relationship was the most loving and nurturing partner I’ve ever had. Her hippieness must’ve lit up a lot of my favorite sister’s vibes. Her enmeshment with her 8-year-old son, on the other hand, was disturbing. And her yelling at him. She even started therapy on her own, before we started dating, to try and self-correct. The therapy didn’t take.
The boy was part of the complexity of this love. The toxic part came just two weeks after we’d been dating. Turns out, my partner had a sweetheart deal with her landlords, who happened to include her very best friend, Haley. Her husband, unprovoked, sent a message to my partner through her friend. “If he moves in, rent is going up.”
Dating. Two weeks. WTF?
The bigger WTF moment, however, happened each time I tried to get an agreement on a plan or path for resolution from my partner. “Let me work it out,” she said. As our days and nights together began to build momentum, I was also uninvited to jump the back wall (the landlords were also neighbors) when my girlfriend and her son went for steaks, drinks, or just a holiday visit. I was not welcome in their backyard or house.
I tried to understand the disconnect. I tried to lobby for a peaceful solution, and a joint resolution, but my efforts were often shut down before being considered. I was asked to be patient as the two most important people in my life hopped over the back fence. All the fun, the cookouts, the sunsets (their house overlooked the lake), the holiday gatherings, I was not allowed.
Near the end, after two failed hunger strikes, I gave her a date for resolution. [Note: I restarted an SSRI in September as we were all coming out of the pandemic and by November I was clear, “This is very unhealthy for me.”] I had my talk therapy appointments on Wednesday afternoons. The end of January would be my deadline. If there was no forward movement with the landlords I would move out on February 1st. After my calls, I would go hang on the kingsize bed and wait for her to finish her remote workday.
“I need something to change,” I said.
Nothing changed.
On February first I moved out. A writer friend, and previous muse, had offered me her daughter’s bedroom until I found a place. My partner looked confused as I was packing my stuff.
What happened next was even more confusing.
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