Listen to the Notes on the Spectrum podcast: Pause + Pray + Patience
The stability of the self is required for the stability of the family. I pause on my inquiry and management of my son’s life. I refocus on myself, on my routines, my job, my aspirational hopes. Prayer has become a part of my response to the trauma, to the failures, to the continuing saga. I have my own saga to deal with. I cannot manage the angry son acting out in the music room, his temporary home. It was always temporary. He doesn’t seem to be motivated to find his own place.
And, to be fair, his presence here has provided several nice moments of connection. A breakfast together. Watching a movie he picked out. Making him breakfast or dinner. Random conversations and giving him my attention on his gun fetish. All positive and connective.
The flipside, as I’m realizing having had a great night’s sleep without Chupacabra skuttlings, is I am sad he is gone, and relieved to have my own space and quiet back. I feel for him. I am sad for him. Sad for the missed opportunities we could’ve shared. Not in his current agitated and militarized headspace. I’m still the enemy. He’s fighting a war inside his head. An anxiety he can’t label or address. So, he wears face coverings, pseudo-military clothing and hoodies. He carries a Glock on his cock. He’s prepping for war.
The war is in himself. What he’s running from. Sadness? Fear of the unknown? The horrors of a shitty job? Loneliness?
“What are you afraid of? Here in this cul-de-sac, what is the threat?”
Is it me? Probably it’s his own inner demons. The job he didn’t get. The shame around lying and failing his last semester in college, twice. The anger at getting so close to his first job and being rejected for lack of experience.
I think of the scene in Goodwill Hunting where Robin Williams goes after Matt Damon’s book knowledge versus lived knowledge. “What do you know about the Cistene Chapel? You could tell me all about it. Quote great writers. But have you ever stood in the church and felt the absolute presence of God? The magnificent power of human creativity and ambition?” I paraphrase.
It’s like my son in his military gear, his boxes and clips of ammo. Yet, he’s afraid to watch a movie about Vietnam.
“I like shooting targets, not people.”
The military gear, too, is a bluff. Trying to appear tough, gangster, mysterious. One of his friends from his Dallas excursion said, “He’s a white boy playing soldier. Someone’s gonna check that shit.”
And that’s my fear about the paramilitary spasm he’s having. Someone is going to challenge him. In Dallas, he claims he was robbed at gunpoint while taking his trash out. The friend said, “Yeah, he would be walking around in his uniform with a rifle slung over his shoulder and a mask covering his face. Like begging for someone to challenge him. It might have happened.”
The story changed every time he told it. First, it was the pot they wanted. “Why were you carrying pot?” I asked when he texted me he’d been robbed. The next time he told it, to his therapist, mother, and me, it was money. “It was all I could do not to shoot the motherfucker. I was armed.”
He was terrified and playing soldier in a scary apartment slum in Dallas. A real gangster had seen enough and gut-checked him. Took his lunch money. Was he already dealing drugs at the time? Hard to know. The story continued to change. It became the reason he needed to take a semester off. PTSD. His mom leaned into that rationale. I advocated therapy and meds. She felt he just needed time and distance. Oh, and that he stay with dad, at my house. Convenient.
That’s where we’ve been again, for three months. She and her husband have been taking a rest, hoping for the best. I guess we will see their level of engagement when he finally calls and tells her he’s been kicked out. They’ve got a newly remodeled house. A spare bedroom. He’s got guns, ammo, and a computer farm he’d like high-bandwidth and VPN access to, thanks.
Yeah, I’m not sure that’s going to go well. Last time, it lasted about five days. He was then given his Airbnb, to sort himself out without the parent-supervision hassle. He totaled his car after three days in the Airbnb. We leveraged that into his first rehab visit. Again, he walked out early against medical advice. He was 23. He could make his own decisions.
He walked back into my house. At this point, I took action. I found a 12-step intervention counselor. And we weighed the cost and success potential of inpatient treatment or a sober-living house.
Indications at this point: he is no longer sober. He is not showing any momentum toward landing a real job. He’s bluffing with a side project. Now, he claims he launched the demo platform three months late. But… If that’s true, then why didn’t he share it with his mom or me? If he produced the new website and system, why hasn’t he demoed it, to me, his technical friend?
Chances are, he’s lying. Chances are he’s getting the money from dealing drugs, again. That’s a party I cannot be a part of, and I will not be enabling that dangerous choice. A bust could take away my house. A violent act could send me to jail. I have my eyes open. I am not going down the dark road with him.
That’s probably what the anxiety is about. When we busted him the first time, his phrase was, “I’ll either end up in prison or in a body bag.” Tough talk for a kid who’s dealing drugs. The body bag, I get. Nihilistic. Tough. Tragic. Ends the pain. Prison? That’s another nightmare all to obvious. He would be someone’s pretty bitch in prison. He would never recover.
There’s another foul line of mental code he’s running. Before he completed college, he liked to say, “I don’t really need a degree. I’m already good enough.” He was trying to justify his dropping out for a semester. “Well then, go ahead and get the job, then. They’ll let you finish your degree while you’re working.”
He had an escape plan. At one point, his high school girlfriend, Bulgarian, was going to take him with her to live in her country. She had some tragic parent-death-insurance-money and they could just live over there. He could work over there. She already owns an apartment. That didn’t work out.
He’s often tied himself to moonshot entrepreneurial projects. He’s strapped to another woman’s business and building her platform. Except he’s not working on it. He’s fucking with the guns. He’s stringing her along the same way he manipulates his mom. He’s using the fog of technology and coding to explain the delays. He’s hiring contractors to do the parts he doesn’t want to do. He’s spending money and spinning wheels and praying for her, the owner, to get funding. Everything would be great if she would just land the investment capital and he could get an apartment, a new car, and a new girlfriend.
The alternative, as he used to complain during his rest from college. “I’ll probably have to get a shitty job for a few years.”
“That’s not a great attitude about work,” I said.
“Yeah, I’m pretty depressed about it.”
“No, I mean… Don’t you think a job might be cool? A role within a team? Building something important?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Find something that interests you. Like OpenAI, or Google, or something that lights you up.”
“It’s hard, man. Fucking hard!”
At this moment, this morning, I understand that to my core. My shitty job has been consuming a good portion of my time for the last six months. It would’ve made my life so much more difficult if I had been bitter or ashamed about it. Instead, I wrote a book about it. I warped my own mind, used mindfulness, meditation, and mantras to unlock my own approach to surviving a retail job. The money sucks. I’m running down my savings. I’m unable to access the equity in my house because I can’t make the payments. So, I’m stuck.
I’m anticipating a jobby-job. Today, anything that will relieve the poverty wages. I’m also applying for aspirational jobs. I’m getting some interviews. Having some near misses. All misses.
It’s my mind I’ve changed. It’s my resilience and optimism I’m trying to demonstrate for my son and my daughter. Yes, it’s hard. Yes, the hours and the pay suck. Yes, I’m going to do it, so I don’t burn through all the money I’m hoping to save to help both kids with future expenses. Like having the money for a down payment on a condo.
I was feeling rather sad last night. I missed him. Well, I missed the idea of the son who would engage, laugh, and talk about something other than guns. I want so many more of the movie night, dinner down the street, moments. I want my son to be happy and healthy again. And… I know, I can’t make that happen. In fact, I’ve made the opposite happen by kicking him out of my house. He’s breaking all the rules we established. He’s in a fugue state with guns, drugs, and AirPods blasting out his thoughts.
Sad. I’m not going to play witness to that any longer. It hurts, tough love. I see the road ahead. My prayers are that he finds his way through the woods and back to the happy-healthy path. I can hold the flashlight for him. I can refuse to collude with his malfunction. I can pray and be patient. God works in mysterious ways. I’m certain, in some ways, he is healing me. Our struggle is rewriting pain, loneliness, and suffering of my inner child who fought like hell to save my alcoholic father.
I know better now. I can’t save him. Trying to save my dad nearly killed me.
Patience, again. That is the only way.
note: image panels created with AI
For readers new to hyperfiction: see this explainer video: Blueprint Of Icarus Ascending
