this chapter is now available to listen free on YouTube: Threading a Dangerous Needle
Okay, so he claims he’s not using. My ex-wife and his talky therapist gave him a pass. The squeeze point is missed. I take the drug test home with me after the session. We are no further along in our discovery, but we’re also moving along with our semi-normal lives.
It’s what you do. When your kid is struggling with something you don’t understand, you do your best and you keep moving forward. Six years ago, while he was in high school I got a strangely calm call from my daughter. The zero had stabbed himself, EMS had been called, and he was on his way to the hospital with his mom. Could I come get her and take her to the hospital as well?
I was on my way to work a shift at the grocery store. “Fuck, they’re going to dock me.”
This moment was a bloody scream for help. He was not under my care 70% of the time. He’d been in his room with is girlfriend, door closed, and apparently took LSD. On a peaceful Saturday afternoon. I took the hit at work and drove to pick up my daughter on the way to the hospital on the South side of town.
This was the first moment of inflection. Where emotionally awake parents would begin making plans and getting help for the crisis. While there was a short stay in the ER he was released a few days later, to continue school, try and forget about it, and “let’s just keep the goal of graduation in front of us.” As I had been taken out of the parenting and healthcare roles by my ex-wife’s animosity, I was mostly on the sidelines for the next two years as he finished high school.
We’ve only been able to talk about this incident in the last year. At the time I said things like, “I’m the one person who can really understand.”
“Nah, I’m good,” he’d say.
I think he saw a physician’s assistant and got on an antidepressant and something for anxiety, but I only got tangential evidence. He was focused on finishing his junior year, nothing else. The girlfriend ghosted. And I was unable to gather the confidence that would’ve been required to fight my ex-wife and her husband about his terms of care. Besides, I had no money at the time. 50% of my $15 an hour wage, was going to my ex. I buried my concerns in my shitty job, the upcoming holiday season, and pints of Haagen Das Swiss Almond Vanilla.
My mom, who I was living with at the time, got wildly freaked out. We told her only a few of the details. I was given the task of calming my mom. My son was in the wilderness with two emotional zeros, trying to find his way back to some idea of happiness.
I’m not sure he’s gotten there yet.
My actions, today, in this moment, are going to be much more clear, direct, and eyes-open. It was the burner phone that tripped my alarm bells a few months ago. After the last joint therapy session, we agreed to meet again in a week. Along the way, another rupture happened, that changed all of our trajectories.
He was staying with me, as his defiance of his mom and her husband had grown toxic. We had been talking about setting a more normal sleep schedule as part of my request for his continued stay. Around 3 am I woke up to go to the bathroom. The door to his room was open but he was not in his bed. He was facedown passed out on my dining room table. I felt deep sadness and compassion for my struggling son. I tapped him gently on the shoulder and whispered, “It’s gonna feel a lot better if you get in your bed.” A few hours later, I woke up again and made coffee. He was asleep in his bed.
Coffee in hand I came to my living room to write. His “bag” was on the couch—nothing special, just a ratty backpack that was always with him. “Fuck this,” I whispered to myself as I turned on the lights and opened the bag on the same dining room table my son had been sleeping on two hours ago.
Boom.
He was a very conscientious drug dealer with an eye for branding. He had business cards, prep wipes, and enough variety in his product that I had to pull up the PILL ID DATABASE on the web. Of course, the business cards pointed to the burner phone’s Dallas number. “Signal Only,” it said. And “Reagen tested – clean.” He was a professional.
He kept saying, “I was trying to protect you both from exposure to this,” for the next two or three weeks as we were trying to sort through our options. That morning, I sat in the same chair I’m in right now, wrote, and called people, and asked god, my higher power, buddha, for help. I asked my dead brother to support my son, as if he would understand.
On that day ATT had a massive outage in the Southern United States. I could not phone anyone. I was able to get texts out on my computer and wifi, but at six am I was unable to reach anyone.
I prayed. I wrote. I listened to an album called “A Dark Mile to the Surface,” that began speaking to me clearly about my son’s malfunction. Great art, great writing, great music usually comes from some great pain. This album comforted me. I continued to write, trying to make sense of my thoughts, my next right move, and how I could wake up my ex-wife, my son’s therapist, or even my girlfriend, while the phones were down.
It was me alone with this horrible news. I tried bargaining with God. I kept trying Facetime via wifi and I eventually reached one of my buddies.
“I’ve taken the bag. He won’t ever find it. But I’m afraid.”
KP had been in a similar movie, “You’ve got to secure the firearms.”
I was able to grab his two AR-15s and one of his two Glocks. There was still one pistol unaccounted for.
I hoped for better results this time. I was fully engaged. I would be the turning point. My ex-wife and her husband had known about the burner phone for two months and not said a word about it? I assume, hoping things would move along and my son would finally graduate from college. That was their focus. Just like after his self-inflicted stab wound, “If we can just keep him focused on school, I think he’ll be okay.”
He will not just “be okay.” It does not work that way.
At this present moment, a few things have changed. I saw my son yesterday for an early dinner. He had been given a “shitty Air BNB” as the next step forward. He would be able to prove for everyone he could be responsible, find a job, and prepare himself for the last semester (version 3) in college. Crazy, right?
This time I am close. My goal is to maintain an attachment to my son. I am a confidant. I am also the reason his original plans were foiled. I took his drugs and his guns. And over the course of the last two months, he and his “board of directors” as he called them, had struggled with his symptoms, his defiant departures from the plan, and eventual hopelessness about how to pull him out of his darkness.
Yesterday, he was buoyant. In some ways, he’d won. He still had no job. He had made their house so exponentially stressed out that there were giving him a two-week “time out.”
How is this going to work out?
I’m on both on my son’s side and holding a firm line that “treatment” is the only option. I might be wrong. He has the opportunity to show us all how resilient he is. As my ex-wife explained in a text to me and the talky therapist, “We’re going to take ourselves out of the monitoring role, that’s going to be handled by his new “Therapeutic Assessment” counselor.
At dinner, my son had concerns, but mostly complaints. “It’s only a bed. There’s not a desk or a chair.” I offered to help him procure the working furniture. And, to be honest, at this moment, I am optimistically hopeful. That’s my MO. It’s also one of my blindsides.
Whatever my son is doing is out of control. I’ve been trying to introduce him to the principals of the Serenity Prayer without being “programy.”
“There’s a lot of this shit you can’t control,” I said yesterday.
We talked of getting a truck and moving a desk and chair from my house. Tomorrow, which is today. “What are the next milestones for you?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I mean, getting all the registration worked out for school in September? Right? I guess the hope is that you’ll be able to do the last two electives remotely?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Have you been negotiating with the school?”
“What do you mean?”
And here we are.
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