That One Three-Way Call

Well, it’s been a minute since I’ve written and all I can do is give way to a pause.  I heard from my son last night.  He made sure to get on the phone via a three-way call because his calling account is compromised.  The young man he called to connect us?  As lovely a young man as you’d ever want to meet.  I find my son is fortunate to have such a good and loyal friend who also seems to be a sweet and decent son.  

He called to tell me he got the news.  This is never a good introduction to a conversation with my boy.  Seems the verdict came down and he will be spending a three-year sentence in a state penitentiary.  I’m hoping county time counts in the grand tally of time served.  

And so here I sit.  I’m hungry but I can’t eat.  I’m tired but I can’t rest.  I’m restless but there’s nothing I can do to be still.  I feel like I don’t deserve to eat or rest.  I’m suffering because that’s what mothers do when they are broken-hearted and devastated.  They suffer.  I still fee like it’s my fault.  Like maybe if I had raised him differently that he’d be better able to make better choices.  Alas, if wishes were horses beggars would ride.  

I’m terrified for him.  This is next level consequence.  We’ve only done long stints in County.  More aptly, “he’s” only done long stints in County, which is bad enough. He just got out of solitary for breaking the rules. As a mother, it’s frustrating to wonder what it will take to learn that the rules apply to everybody. Regardless of solitary, I feel like he’s safer in County.  He’s also within city limits so I can get to him more readily.  Now, he’ll be taken away and it will take me hours to get to him god forbid something horrible happens.  I can’t help but to forecast poor favor.  I wish I had something of lighter substance to share.  It’s all I can do to not vomit all over unsuspecting victims.  You clicked on my page.  Buyer beware and you are not forewarned.  

Other mothers brag about college graduations and excellence with a musical instrument… or six.  Other mothers speak of driving lessons and senior proms with corsages and bouquets of adolescence and youth spent well.  I never did get to speak of such things.  My own has been battling his own demons for a very long time and now it has come down to this.  State prison.  Early twenties will vanish and make a bitter man.  How can I determine if he’ll learn his lessons well and never return to the hell that makes men hard?  How can I guarantee that he’ll be okay?  It is a mother’s worst nightmare to know that her child is in harm’s way and I’m powerless to stop all influences, all danger.  So here I sit.  Alone.  In the dark.  Putting down on paper words my mouth doesn’t want to speak.  There is no way to protect him.  There is nothing I can do to pull him from an environment hostile toward sentient beings and reckless souls.  Three years in.  Well, I can count my blessings that it’s not four or more.  It’s with a hard swallow that I recall the freight train of self destruction that I couldn’t stop when I DID have the power.  Now, it’s full steam ahead into a life of a young man who bit off more than he could chew.  And I cry.  And I pace the floors and I howl as I sit on the couch completely defeated.  Destroyed.  You can’t blame yourself, they say.  Oh.  I can.  You betcha.  I look back on the years and wonder where I went wrong and think of the countless mistakes and skewed ways of looking at life that I had.  He grew up thinking life was hard because life was hard for me.  It never occurred to me to offer a different view because it was the only one I could see.  And now… his life is hard and is about to get a lot harder.  Gee… thanks mom.  But no.  he never utters a word of the like.  He tells me, “chin up mom.”  “I need to know you’re doing well”, so I stifle back the tears, choke back the worry in my voice and pretend to be cheery during that one three-way call.

My Life is Worth Cherishing

Recently someone asked a question on social media.  “What has been your favorite year so far?”  I instantly responded with, “40 because the sex became exponentially better.”  I guess what I heard about a woman coming into herself is true.  (Not that sex was bad before but the quality became surprisingly out of this world).  But then I paused. I really was baffled by how excited I was when considering for a moment longer which year was the best. Was it better sex or was it when my son sang in the boy’s choir? Was it it the year I graduated university after nearly 20 years of college or was it when I experienced freedom of sorts for the first time ever? Yes, sex got better but I realized that there were many more years to consider in hindsight and yes, there was a joy that came from contemplating what year was the best, even though it seemed like ALL the years had been hard.

As the days rolled by throughout the entirety of my life, I had always more or less hated being here on this godforsaken rock.  I’ve taken my blessings for granted while holding them dear at the same time.  My life has always been a strange dichotomy.  I value all life, except for my own.  I cry over miracles but never consider my survival a miracle by itself.  I’ve been nonchalant about the value of my own life and the neglect to observe the blessing that I got to be here at all.  I’ve complained my way through life and have learned hard lessons kicking and screaming the whole way, playing the victim even after all the victimization was over.  I was always stuck in this vicious loop of self-loathing and self-pity.  

I have always suffered from severe depression and PTSD.  A deep soul heaviness and constant flashbacks have kept me feeling like I was underwater at all times.  Everything has always seemed so painful; so awful that my desire to be here has been strained to say the least.  There have been times when every cell in my body was screaming with agony and my brain was just ready to pull the trigger.  I have lived with self-harm and suicidal ideations since I was about 5 and it just seemed like the quality of my mental health never improved.  How I’m still alive is beyond me.  I truly am a miracle.  

“What was the best year of your life?”  It’s such an interesting retrospect as I look back with a strange fondness.  What?  Me?  Grateful to be here and for the gift of life?  It’s foreign but it’s true.  I look back with kindness in my heart, remembering how hard it was, visceral memories stored in my muscles without the actual memories of the hundreds of events that made life so unbearable.  This leads me to believe that my life isn’t all that bad, but the way my brain works is.  Yes, there are things to increase the quality of my life.  My relationships, my recovery, my freedom to do whatever I want whenever my fancy gets struck.

Life genuinely was really bad, what with a brutal childhood, the trainwreck of the 20s, the parenting of a mentally ill son for over 20 years, but now that the toughest parts are over and I’m heading into my 50’s, I look back after having lived through it and realize that maybe the reason why it was as bad as it was was because of the way my brain works.  I don’t know if anyone else has the same defects but the misery and heartbreak were most likely exasperated by severe depression, isolation, the disease of alcoholism, and of course the baseline of severe PTSD symptoms.  

So maybe it was legitimately not as bad as I thought.  Or maybe I’ve changed over 50 years.  If I can look back with gratitude and fondness rather than regret and remorse, regardless of hardship then maybe my brain is not my friend and it didn’t reflect reality.  It seems like having really bad things happen and a really bad life is not the same thing.  Maybe there were fond moments other than the great sex.  Close bonds with people I love and moments of accolades worth that quiet smile to self during moments of reflection.  Or… maybe my current outlook is just proof that I overcame hardship.  

In hindsight, I have joy, and am grateful that I’m here after all.  If I can see through the lens of kindness and softness in my heart then, either life is looking up or it wasn’t so bad.  If I can find gratitude for the time I’ve had here so far and if I can look forward to all the amazing things that are about to come then perhaps either the medication is working or I’ve learned that life here really is precious.  It really is something to celebrate.  My life truly is something to cherish.  Some people believe we only get one chance; one life.  I don’t know if that’s true or not but I know that THIS life; MY life is something to believe in.  My life is one worth cherishing.

Self-loathing, Self-pity and Self-Victimization

My self-loathing is much like an ungrateful interloper, always hanging on to secret rendezvous between my humility and well-inflated ego.  Like any woman who’s motherhood has descended into the depths of being an ATM machine and relationship counselor, I oft look back and wonder what I could’ve done differently with every mistake placed with careful ceremony under the microscope of regret.   It isn’t until they are gone making their own mistakes, all of which you want to lay claim to, that you begin to see how all that time really is like a wave in the ocean.  Even if you ride it, it’ll never come back for you.  It washed itself out like time and you’ll never get it back. 

Such is the position that I’m currently in.  You see, my son is doing time.  He started acting out at a young age and I never really could catch up.  I never seemed to know what the right thing to do was.  I comprehended that it all would end up this way but there was no message in a bottle that gave me the secret recipe for disaster preparedness.  Now that I think about it, plenty of agencies can’t handle such a task, let alone a teenage boy or a frazzled single mom.  But disasters none the less, and lives potentially devastated, I walk through the day a zombie, either exhausted from the years of effort or numb from current affairs that have him behind bars and me accepting collect calls. 

I want to take the blame because I feel somewhat better equipped to handle it.  I should’ve known better.  I should’ve insisted on sports.  I shouldn’t have grounded him when he was ten, and then… there was that time I slapped him.  Maybe I should’ve hugged him more.  Maybe I shouldn’t have worked the two jobs.  Perhaps poverty would’ve been a better alternative if he had known I loved him enough to stay home.  

I feel better qualified to deal with the consequence all the while I’m sitting here stupified that I didn’t have better answers when the time for answers was then.  Now is too late.  Now he is sitting in there depending on blackbirds flying by the glass slit in his cell, carrying with them all the freedom he wished he could have.  Sadly, the truth is he can’t handle the freedom.  He never could.  And I knew it.  I just didn’t have the answers to the BIG problems.  And, so now he is safe and so is everyone else when he is in… there. 

Self-pity is another albatross around my neck.  It curves around and squeezes me to my core, suffocating the very breath out of me.  I’m not sure where the crossroads of self-pity and guilt meet but I’m a victim of both.  I would gladly put myself in that jail for all my own failings.  I don’t forget that he gets to make his own choices, I just remember that perhaps had I done a better job he wouldn’t be there in the first place.  

Victimization.  I would never do to others what I do to myself.  I seem to rather enjoy the torture of yesteryear, always looking back with a twinge of regret and self-absorbed horror.  Some people look to their past as having been filled with grand events, momentous occasions and frivolous free times galore.  I wonder where it all went wrong and if I could see the signs that were clearly right in front of me.  I am a victim of such pitiful introspection that I make myself sick.  The side of me that kicks my own butt is sickened that I would only wake up with my victim card in hand after enough time has gone by for me to be grossed out by it all.  During every time my son has been incarcerated, I’ve fallen prey to self-victimization.  Perhaps it will take a few more times before I learn more immediately than not that I am not the victim here.  Neither is my son.  There’s no reason to fall into the depravity of self-pity, self-loathing, self-victimization, self, self, self.  I swear I am disgusted by my lack of inner knowledge.  Inner peace be damned.  I’d do just fine to not wallow in a messy bog of ickiness.  

So what do I do with the sadness?  When the punishing side, (my first instinct) has retracted its fist of anger and I’m reduced to a quiet acceptance of the sum total of the scenario? I’m still working it out.  I exercise, I eat, I do well to take care of myself.  I stay as busy as I can during a pandemic that has lasted longer than anticipated.  (All my household projects are done and all the spring flowers have perished.)  I read.  I engage with others for short amounts of time.  I write.  Rinse and repeat.  I get to take a look at the punishing side and ask why any punishment is necessary at all.  

It’s because I grew up with it.  It was so deeply ingrained in me to punish or be punished that I grew up repeating that which I had been taught.  I’ve been spending the last half of my life unlearning everything they taught me but I fear it’s too late.  The damage is already done.  Hence the guilt.  Still ego.  Still all about me.  “I”, “I”, “I!!!”  I even try to make his story line and challenges all about me.  Oh, when will I ever get it?  That I only get to be a cheerleader and an onlooker?  When will I take note that this is not my story?  I just get to tell it by proxy.  For, perhaps another mom who’s son is in a room with three other men, sharing facilities, boxing up tasty treats so no one else can eat them, there may be camaraderie. I do it for the other parents who are in the same boat, children incarcerated, legal by age but not my mental or emotional maturity. I share the brain space in case you might be there too, staring into your vegatable soup trying to make sense of the overcooked letters of the alphabet; gagging on the rest.

I suppose service to others especially now is the only real answer I would give you, therefore, paramount in my own life… when I remember to; when I have the fortitude. I imagine it doesn’t even matter in WHAT service one might choose to engage in, so long as it gets you out of you… or me out of me.

The Letters I’ll Never Send

I write this letter with no intention of sending it.  Today is so much easier than yesterday was.  I feel like I can breathe a bit more today and not like an elephant is sitting on my chest.  It seemed like yesterday I was drowning in self-pity and self-loathing.  I’m one of the strongest women I know, except when it comes to you.  When it comes to you, all my strengths turn to weaknesses and I’m a blubbering mess, aimlessly pacing the floors, not sure which room to be in, let alone, sit.  To my fault, you are my happiness, my purpose for working so hard, my reason for staying sober, my Achilles heel when something is wrong with you.  Shoot, my prayer when you were young and sick was, “Take me, save him.”  

Self-loathing is an easy pit for me to fall into.  I feel like it’s my fault that you’re where you’re at.  Like the little blackbirds you depend on for sanity as they fly across the windowed slit in your wall, I carry all my parenting defects in my wings; the same wings I tried to protect you from yourself with.  I somehow can’t get rid of the idea that had I done a better job your reasoning skills would be more sophisticated and your sense of right and wrong would be more aptly felt.  I NEED blame.  

I found myself wallowing in self-pity that I can’t help you now.  Forget how it makes me feel that you’re going to do serious time, I can’t help but to be sad that I won’t get to watch you grow and develop like other men your age.  Things like new cars and college graduations should be the norm for every intelligent person and yet, strangely where you’re concerned, while your intelligence is not an issue, your judgment is in serious question.  I’ll not get to see many things because you’ll be busy paying a debt.  I tried for years and years to convince you to learn your lessons before they became too big.  Well, now here we are.  And, I wait to take your call; the highlight of your day, because it’s my job to respond.  I’m mom.  Of course I want to hear about what kind of soup is your favorite as you try to stay warm in your cell.  I NEED judgment. 

I harbored some resentment toward a few because I felt left behind and uncared for.  Where once I was quite used to nursing my own wounds in the privacy of my own little world, I no longer wish to carry the heavy burden alone.  And still, those, who I thought would be there weren’t.  Those I’d never imagined would be… were.  

And I learned.  

I learned from someone who doesn’t even speak sober.  They don’t speak spiritual principles.  They don’t know the lingo.  And I heard it.  No blame.  No judgment.  It just is what it is.  It’s not your fault, or his fault or his fathers fault or the system’s fault.  Don’t blame yourself.  Don’t blame him.  Don’t blame his father or the system.  Don’t judge him.  Or yourself.  Things just turn out the way they do.  We make decisions.  Sometimes decisions that carry a heavy consequence but there’s no judgment about it.  Blame is useless.  

I want to argue.  Blame at least let’s me put it in a box.  Blaming myself allows me to play God and judge myself for not being perfect.  I blame you for not taking yourself more seriously but that would be me playing God and then blame myself again.  I might as well take a belt to myself and whip myself with it until I pass out from exhaustion.  But that would be futile and I couldn’t be of use to you or anyone else.  I’ve not gotten yet to the place where I could be of any value to myself.  I place myself last every time.  

But, I did get up and put on my clothes and face.  I did make a meeting and I did make lunch, even if the lump in my throat makes it feel like I was swallowing a frog.  I did communicate with a couple of people who I didn’t expect to and still haven’t with the people I should feel comfortable doing so with.  I got some household chores done and was asked a curious question. 

“What are you going to do to not let this consume you completely?”  “You’ve been through this before.”  What a horrible thing to say to a mom!  “You’ve been through this before.”  Like the first few times should’ve geared me up for this latest round of heartbreak and devastation.  It’s a good question actually.  It came from a place of great love and concern.  I suppose while yesterday I was in a messy bog today my ears are open to messages of great tidings.  

No blame!

No judgment!

No perfectionism!

No, I’m NOT God. 

No matter how much worrying I engage in, it still will not lighten whatever sentence you’re going to get.  

No matter how much I let it get to me, you’re still in solitary confinement.  The blackbirds will have to carry your sense of hope that maybe someday you’ll either beat the game alone or you’ll come to terms that you can’t have your life the way you want it and still engage in raucous behavior.  

I don’t quite know how I’ll let it not consume me.  I want to bleed all over these pages and all over you and I want you to feel how sad the whole thing is.  But… I won’t.  Because it’s neither useful, nor productive.  So, I’ll just have to honor the sadness and carry on, wishing that you had made other choices. 

Mom’s of Prisoners

It’s the strangest occurrence.  Somehow when your child goes to prison, people never ask how mom is doing.  It’s like the baby shower is the last bit of attention mom gets before the baby is due.  Then, moms are merely a vessel for the sweetest thing to ever grace the planet to be judged if there’s milk on the bib.  Moms of prisoners get left behind.  What, with all our mixed emotions about their child having messed up badly enough to get there.  Even your closest friends forget to ask, “Hey, how are YOU doing?”  “I’m not doing so well, thanks for asking.”

I feel like a balloon who’s air has been slowly leaked out, limp on the floor, left on the floor by some forgetful child.  I can’t focus.  I can’t find the good in anything. It’s hard to breathe or find purpose and meaning. The only good thing is that he and society are safer with him being on the inside, being dictated to hour by hour as to when he can make that one phone call per day, usually to me, and I’m sure, not to break my heart but because no one loves you like your mom. 

People forget that moms are people too and we need a support system around us for when things get hard.  Or, perhaps just moms of kids who have milk on their bibs or who are in jail.  Never having been mother of the year, I can’t attest to being surrounded by others who are rallying the cookie-baking troops.  I never did much like those women anyway.  Perhaps because I never measured up and I knew it.  Perhaps out of jealousy that they seemed to be doing it right and no matter what I did, I just somehow always missed the mark. 

I feel like it’s my fault that he’s in jail.  The guilt, warranted or otherwise is nearly unbearable. That and the fear of what’s to come. Add on top of that a certain level of shame and you have the perfect brooding storm of negativity and potential hostility. You know the drill.  “Well, you know…. Bad parenting and all that.”  “His parents really fucked his world up.”  “What’s wrong with parents these days?”  “He just comes from ‘bad stock’.”  I won’t put it past myself and readily admit to having an inferiority complex when it comes to my parenting skills.  I, myself came from bad stock and it’s a miracle I’m even alive, let alone allowed to hang out with tiny humans. I was never given the answers and had horrible examples to follow.  I was dealing with my own shite while trying to raise a rambunctious little boy who just refused to participate in functional rearing. No was always the answer.  To just about everything.  I wasn’t smarter than a fifth grader.  I tried every rule of engagement to cover just the basics.  We really mucked it up and now he’s paying the price.  So, is it all my fault?  Probably not.  I just have a horrible time with peripheral vision and perspective.  

But, it sure feels that way.  And I sure feel alone.  I almost feel contagious, like if you talk to me maybe you’ll catch what I got.  Or had.  See, I’m not the same person I was before.  Before I was hard and crusty on the outside and soft and mushy on the inside, hurting but never showing it.  Now, I hurt and I lost the crusty exterior.  I suppose water smooths out all sharp edges over time.  In the instance of raw emotions and fear and sadness, I am exposed and yet, there doesn’t seem to be a person, who I hold dear to me who gives a hoot.  It’s almost like… no one cares.  

If your kid is in jail and your sad about it, you can talk to me.  I’ll listen.  I’ll take you in and offer a cup of tea so you can just sit and either talk or just sit in silence.  Just know you don’t have to sit alone.  Because on top of all the sadness, it’s the alone part that is most burdensome.  It somehow sets in the sadness, and so, like stone you just sit there; the weight unbearable.  You’re not alone.  There are a lot of us out there.  And maybe I’ve just put too much stock in people who have proven they can’t or won’t be there or who just throw out trivial passages, like, “this too shall pass.”  What the heck kind of liine is that?  It’s an easy passing of the buck; an easy dismissal of someone’s heartbreak.  I hate that line.  It does literally no good to hear it.  Please don’t ever say it.  It’s disrespectful and dishonors where the suffering sits. I’ll never say that to you.  Instead, if you want, I’ll just ask how you are doing and let you cry if you want to cry or be silent if you want to be silent.  But, I’ll give you the time and space.  Because that’s what moms of prisoners want.  They want to exist and they want their own heartbreak acknowledged.

Letters to an Incarcerated Son

If I thought bleeding all over the page would turn back the clock, I’d do it without contemplation.  I’d splatter you with dark and the truth.  If for a second, I thought you’d actually be able to see my tears, as in, your heart would break to see them, then yes, I’d shed them for the world to see.  But, isn’t it true the world sees enough of mothers’ tears falling onto the pages of unread journals?  If there was ever a time I wished I could go back and change things, that time would be now.  Oh, how there have been so … many nows. Now… as the highlight of your day is seeing the birds outside from a slit in the wall.  You consider yourself lucky at all that you can see the outside. Now… as the epic moment in your thirty minutes free is to get a soup to eat before you go to bed cold and hungry.  Now, as then, is hard and I’d pay a heavy toll to go back and reverse our ways but such movement along a linear timeline is impossible, isn’t it?

I always did take pride in working harder than anyone else to provide the best I could.  I did actually do it all for you.  I did want the very best for you.  I wanted success for you and happiness too.  None of these things were of interest to you and now I see your little blackbirds keep you company as your days go dragging on.  I see them and I think of you and your little blackbirds are mine now too.  The sun will roll from east to west and you’ll still be in your single room with your porcelain toilet… well… it’s better than steel.  

You’ll look forward to that one person you can call who will always answer the phone.  I have to.  You don’t have anyone else.  I want to.  I want to hear you say that you’re done.  I want to hear you say that you’re clear your addiction has caused you every trouble you’ve ever found and that you’re ready to put it down forever, just one day at a time.  I want to hear you say that you’re powerless and your life is swiveling out of control.  But you don’t say that.  You focus on a face, rather than the picture frame as a whole.  You focus on getting out without having a plan in place.  You focus on what you need from me rather than how it’s killing me that you’re in there at all, let alone for the umpteenth time.  

I feel dead inside.  I feel like crying but I’m all cried out.  I try to hide in bed with the blinds shut tightly, rebuking all the life that’s outside but I’m awake.  Short of taking something there’s no way I’m sleeping through it all.  My heart feels sore like someone is squeezing it too hard and my teeth hurt from gritting them.  My body has aches and my head is splitting.  But I’ll answer when you call just like I did all those other times and just like I’ll keep doing. 

We’ll talk about the weather.  We’ll talk about what you need from the commissary.  We’ll talk about what a loser your lawyer is because they couldn’t get you out or off without little consequence.  And my heart is broken.  Here you are with all that god-given intelligence, charm, good looks, talent for so many things and we’re talking about instant noodles being your most pressing need.  Well, at least there you’re getting three hots and a cot.  Can’t say they never gave you anything.  

I try to stay alive and lively.  I put on red lips hoping to charm myself into wanting to be upright but it’s no use.  I just lay down in the dark with red lips watching the clock tick into another hour.  An hour that I could’ve been useful but for some reason… I just couldn’t.  

Well… that’s been my day so far.  I hope you’ve gotten in a lot of writing.  I hope perhaps you’ve taken the time to see what you might want in your future and perhaps how to go about achieving whatever goals or aspirations you have.  You’re world just got so small again.  I imagine, save for the imagination, it’s hard to think big.  

Love, 

Mom

A Letter from a Mother of an Incarcerated Son

I knew it when he was small.  I didn’t want to believe it, thinking myself just being negative-minded.  I wanted to see the best in my boy, even giving him a presidential name.  For all my defects as the not so perfect mom, I always loved him and raised him, hope against hope that my worst fears wouldn’t come true.  I saw in him when he was very young that he was a budding alcoholic.  It would only be a matter of time before he found his solution.  Being alive has basically always been his problem.  All my years sober couldn’t get him to see that his problem is bigger than the bottle.  My fears gradually came true little by little as he grew from a little guy to a teen to a young adult.  I hoped my worst fears wouldn’t manifest.

They did.  

While my boy has spent countless stints in rehabs, hospitals and jails, it looks like he won’t be getting out of this one.  Not without a serious consequence that we will all have to live with.  My heart… broken.  My dreams for him… dashed. 

I’ve been told we don’t know what’s behind door number 3.  It’s true.  While he’ll never be president, he can still have a bright promising future.  But not without a few years behind bars.  Maybe he’ll see the error of his ways when in there?  Maybe he’ll see how life on the outside is a far cry better than having someone tell you when you can eat and sleep.  Perhaps he’ll come to his senses and will cease needing a looming authority figure over his head while the price tag on his forehead goes up.  Incarceration costs.  

The house is eerily quiet.  There is no, “hey mom, can you do me a favor?”  Gone are the sounds of the video games or the free hugs that come with the hello or goodbyes.  There is nothing but silence and I pace.  I pace the floors, I walk into one room… not remembering why and I walk into another room aimless.  I’m quiet because I can’t cry anymore.  I feel like a balloon who had all its air let out.  I’m devoid of any emotion.  I feel empty. 

“Can you put money on my books?”  I have been reduced to an ATM machine.  Gratitude is only necessary when asking for, not for actually having received.  The sense of entitlement comes and it makes me think he should be in there.  But caging people doesn’t make good people.  It makes for people in survival mode.  The other half of me can’t blame him, even though I want to.  I want to shout at him that had he not done “such and such” that he wouldn’t be in this mess and I wouldn’t have to be at his beck and call.  Because frankly, when you’re in jail, you NEED for someone to answer the phone.  You NEED someone to put money on your books, else the experience is exponentially more miserable.  

I walk aimlessly with my feet touching the tile with intention.  I can feel the cool texture under my feet and I aim for a spot that I haven’t walked on yet.  I’m looking to change the way I feel, temperatures aside.  I need to fill the void and I’m not hungry, I can’t sleep, I can’t cry and I can’t fight or throw things.  My gardening is done.  The house is clean.  And the quiet is killing me.  I’d do anything for a house of rowdy people, if for no other reason than an audible distraction. 

I can pray.  I can give my sorrow to the sky.  I can beg the universe to take pity and walk tall among you.  That’s what I can do.  I can put on my brave face.  I can look like my son is not in jail.  I can not bring it up.  I can focus on you instead.  I can ask how you are as soon as you ask me how I’m doing without ever saying a word.  I can make a gratitude list with him on the very top.  That I got to be a parent at all.  That I got to experience hardships so I can be there for you.  I can be grateful for the roof over my head, the food in my fridge, the air conditioning pumping, cooling the tile beneath my feet.  I can be thankful for electricity, running water and indoor plumbing.  I can show thanks for the clothes on my back and the chores that I need to get done.  If I can “get” them done.  If I can move from this chair in my dining room that I’ve planted myself in because sitting on the couch for too long bears would put a dent in the cushion.  Laying on my bed too long does the same thing.  I know.  I did it.  

I can show my gratitude for your happiness as your children go off to college or score that epic job they wanted.  I can be happy for you that you can be proud of your children.  Secretly though… my heart breaks.  It just shatters.  Into a million little pieces.  Every day, sometimes on the hour, as I move through the weeks and months and for what this time, looks like years. 

“He just needs”… (insert recommendations here).  I know.  I know.  He needs a lot of things.  Perhaps a new mom.  Perhaps a past that didn’t include me in it.  Perhaps I was a worse mom than I thought or feared.  God knows, sometimes no matter how hard we try, it just… isn’t good enough.  It would be easy for me to blame myself 100% though.  Almost too easy.  He can’t get off that easy.  I taught him right from wrong.  He just never cared.  He always did things his way, no matter the consequence.  He just never much cared for consequence and looked at leniency like an entitlement.  That time is over.  His luck ran out. 

If He Dies, I Die

I’ve written some pretty candy-coated pieces here.  I’ve tested the waters and still am not sure if I’m ready to go full throttle into what I really want to share.  I’ve wasted years “holding off” until I was ready to put into words the stories that might help another.  After all these years perhaps it’s safe enough to share about some experiences I hope you never have.  Good – NESS, I hope you never have them.  They were some of the most painful times in my life; some of my deepest levels of despair came from being able to do nothing but watch and exist in the moments that were to transform my life.  Those moments came largely around my experiences with parenthood.   It’s always been in my home where tyranny reigned supreme. 

Being a parent has been the most excruciating time of my life.  That isn’t to say that there weren’t also amazing times; beautiful times; moments sublime and moments of great pride.  There are no greater teachers than your children if you’re doing it right.  Or maybe if you’re doing it wrong.  For all my troubles and mistakes in my own life, my son not included, the one thing I can attest to while he’s been here is that I loved him.  Some days too much.  Some days, not enough.  Some days I wanted to but didn’t know how to show it.  Show me a parent that hit the nail on the head perfectly at all times and I’ll call you a liar.  

My son has had his own journey, aside from being my boy.  I firmly believe he chose me to be his mom, as I chose to be with my own parents.  Our parents… like our children, are also our greatest teachers.  His journey though, as I go back through the years, had much more to do with him; what his soul needed and much less to do with me  Though my ego wants to make it all about me… all about my mothering skills or the lack thereof, the truth is, everything my son has experienced is what his spirit dictated.    He has his course to travel and I was merely a conduit.  I had my time to be an influence and there was plenty of it, both good and bad to both guide and teach him.  How he walks it has always been up to him, much to my dismay… however heartbreaking it has been to watch.

I was ill-prepared for the bouncing baby boy who didn’t come out screaming.  In fact, after three days of labor and a treacherous delivery, he finally came to “rest.”  That is to say that there was no crying or screaming.  He didn’t make a sound but rather, was placed on me and he just stared up into my eyes… quietly.  The moment he arrived the rain immediately stopped and the sun popped in through the blinds of the delivery room.  He was born at 9:35 on a Wednesday.  To say his arrival was a celestial event would be too great an understatement.  There are no words to describe the quiet that was in that delivery room. 

So when he started scooching and walking at about seven or eight months I was not prepared for the full-on marathon that would continue until today.  He has always been “on the go.”  He had always been a handful with full autonomy since day one.  I always joked that he had more energy than LA proper.  His education started out rocky and the calls started coming in.  The art projects started prompting notice from the school psychologist.  The behavior issues started.  

He never was much into school sports.  He never was much into math, science or musical instruments.  Shoot, I even bought him a drum kit, thinking, “boy-loud-banging-energy.”

My son would exhibit dangerous and reckless behaviors and the police were being called by the time he was twelve.  There was the time he held a pair of scissors up against a little girls throat in the fourth grade and threatened to cut her.  There was the time he shot the neighbor with a bb gun.  (The cops suggested I whoop him for that one).  I put him in Catholic school to keep the cops from being called to his fourth-grade class.  Needless to say, while that shaped his life, he hated every minute of it and we punished each other ruthlessly for the experience.  He would punish me for putting him in there.  I would punish him for all his misdeeds.   I tried everything.  Corporal punishment, talking, negotiating, grounding, leaving it alone, lecturing, rewarding.  None of it worked.  Maybe you also have a kid who’s so smart he knows that if he just waits for it to all blow over, he’ll resume his normal activities once mom’s taken her heart from her throat back into its rightful place. 

I didn’t lose him though until the seventh grade when all hell broke loose for him and for us.  It was by that time I could no longer impose the “you have to be in a sport per semester” rule.  Thinking sports are good for youth, both with lessons of team spirit, teamwork, self-esteem, and accomplishment, I lost him to a football team of 40 kids.  Most of them were benched even for practice.  My kid said, “Peace!  I’m out!” and being the working parent that I was, I had no control from 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. which was just enough dangerous time for a kid to find all kinds of things like booze and all kinds of drugs. 

My kid is an addict.  He is also an alcoholic.  The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.  I’m the same except sober.  Fifteen years.  How I didn’t drink during the craziest of times is beyond me.  It’s a baby Yoda thing for sure.  I had a brief relapse when he was in his developmental years and only 25 years later am I able to actually start to find forgiveness for myself around that.  But, again, his story doesn’t have much to do with me at all.  I work really hard to remove my ego and realize that there are plenty of kids who’s parents fell and still didn’t feel the need to drink booze with homeless people behind 7-11 dumpsters or get addicted to meth. 

We have visited psych wards, rehabs, therapists, counselors, mentors, family, halfway houses, and jails.  It’s hard to get down to exact examples of which were the most painful because there were so many.  I can tell you that there were Thanksgivings where I literally rocked myself back and forth on my couch because I wasn’t with my son.  I can NOT tell you how many times I cried myself to sleep.  I can’t tell you how many  years I just didn’t have an appetite.  I can’t tell you how many years we just didn’t have money to get him the resources I thought he might need to get a different perspective on life.  You know.  One of those nature hikes where they stick a kid out in the woods with one match and a canteen?  Yeah.  Thousands of dollars.  

I can tell you that he suffers from PTSD as a result of his first solitary confinement in jail at the age of 17, naked and alone in a cement cell because he told the cops he was trying to drink himself to death.  I can tell you that visiting him in the psych ward was excruciating because it goes against a mother’s instinct to walk in through a metal detector and locked wall units just to observe your son and all the other youth treated like prisoners.  I can tell you that rescuing him from the shock and trauma units at the hospital was by far the worst.  Imagine the car ride there. 

Various emergency personnel would call me from small Texas towns only to be met finally by my unwillingness to “come get him.”  “Ma’am, he’s sick.”  “Well, take him to the hospital.”  “Ma’am, he’s not injured.”  “Ma’am, he’s getting agitated.”  “Well, call the cops.”  “Ma’am, he’s not committing a crime.”  “Well, I don’t know what to tell you, but he’s going to have to figure it out.”  At some point when the heart breaks badly and deeply enough, I, as a mom had to say, “no.  He has to learn that this is the wrong path.  Hopefully, if I don’t get him, he’ll think twice about putting mind-altering substances into his body, leaving himself vulnerable to the elements.  But, no.  The shock and trauma unit experience came… even after that.  

What I found in the years that were the hardest was devastation.  I was completely depleted of any real desire to live, let alone be happy… about anything, even the good in my life.  It didn’t matter how dearly I clung to the belief that “I” would be okay regardless of anything happening to me or around me.  My child was suffering and there was nothing I could do to save him from himself.  He was making choices that required extended stays in the county jail and he was looking at prison.  Upon his first taste of freedom, I would pick him up, we’d go out to eat, I’d get a fresh wardrobe and a halfway house and he was right back out there doing what he did best… making himself feel better… at all costs.  Of course, it was all my fault. 

My kid (I use that term with affection), has attended the school of hard knocks his whole life.  I, myself have attended that same school and the university as well.  Currently, we’re not in the worst of it.  I should say, he’s not in the worst of it.  I just don’t have much to be on guard about right now.  But that, like everything is temporary.  I know this because I understand the nature of the condition.  His freedom is limited and that thrills me to no end.  Because of this… I came to believe that with all the depravity and desperation; with all the death-defying antics and life-threatening risky behaviors that I clung to a secret that I shared with no one.  

If he dies, I die.  I was so sure that if he died from all the recklessness or from murder or an overdose that I would no longer have a reason to be here.  It sometimes felt like having a son was my primary purpose.  A son to love and to teach.  A son whose company I could enjoy as time went by and into the future.  Family, after all, is everything.   I had three separate plans of ending my own life and was fully prepared to carry out one of them on the dime.  I just couldn’t imagine life without having him on the planet.  NO child should go before their parent.  

And so, as I was going to work or going to gather with my fellow or the grocery store, I would walk around like an emotionally mangled zombie, always with the fear and the thought that today could be the day.  No one knew.  All the while, I still tended to my prayer.  And my meditation.  I was still checking in with others living a completely fabricated lie that I was okay and strong enough to help others.  And, indeed, I was strong enough and I DID help others.  I just didn’t share that I was pulverized by the sadness and fear.  I was just incredibly dishonest about having any will to live whatever.  

Until one day without any kind of catalyst, a thought just popped into my head.  “You don’t get to go just because he goes.”  It completely went against every grain of my being since I am no stranger to suicidal ideation.  I’ve been wanting to die since I was five years old.  And it hit me.  There are plenty of parents who lose their children.  There’s actually not even a word in the English language for a parent who loses a child, it’s that abhorrent.  But I don’t get to go.   I get to keep plugging along as if my life matters, with or without my child, hopefully, with.  

Currently things are okay.  They’re not great, but they’re manageable in the emotional and spiritual sense.  I’m still heavily dependent on the Great Yoda in the sky but I feel like I can breathe some and even have some hope.  I’ve even been seen having peace and serenity.  
I hope that my son decides to make better choices.  I pray that with some time to mature that some of his former goals will be seen as foolish and unfruitful.  I pray that future goals might look like a good education and good health.  I have made great strides in the world of the Spirit to trust the infinite; to love anyway; to trust regardless.  The process is the journey.  There are still so many things to learn and experience.  In the last two years the fear has subsided and faith has been somewhat restored.  I don’t know what’s coming.  The years to come might be the best ones of my life.  Of his life.  I don’t get to know.  I just know I don’t get to play God.  I just know that when the storm hits I hit my knees and bow down until it’s over, remaining in a humble position while I’m knee deep in it, knowing full well I’m about as powerless to change any course other than my own.  I can only pray that so long as I walk the path of faith I’ll find myself not contemplating my own end.  It’s worked so far. 

It’s MY Fault He Hits Me.

“It’s MY fault he hits me.”  That’s what she said to me.  She called me to confide in me that she was confused and she needed some guidance.  Me.  She called someone who used to say the exact same thing.  When it’s all said and done and your body is sore from taking the whoopin’ you start to feel guilty that the consequences of abuse are at hand. “Maybe I should go get him out of jail.” “I feel bad because I fought back.” “I want him to know that I love him.” “Maybe if I hadn’t argued back.”  “Maybe if I’d just kept my mouth shut.”  “Maybe if I hadn’t blocked his hitting me, it would have stopped sooner.  “If I’d just taken my licks, we would’ve been done with it.”  “I deserved it.  I was prodding him.”  All of these self rationalizations trying to make the crazy somewhat sane are completely wrong.  Fallacious in nature, I must implore that if anyone is ever hitting you, it is NOT YOUR FAULT!!!  

“I don’t even know what happened”, is what he responded with.  “I was in a blackout.”  “I don’t remember.”  And, the clincher for me was…“she just bruises easily.”  REALLY?  That’s your response to photos of her neck, her arms, her knees, where she fell are bruised up?  Man… I lived the whole second half of my life the way I did to prevent any kind of domestic violence from rearing it’s ugly head in my life again and so that no one else would ever have to see me be abused.  The second worse thing to being abused is someone witnessing the abuse.  

I chose the long, hard road for some semblance of peace but it took about twenty years removed before I could finally hear the insanity of what I used to say myself.  My life was brutal not to mention impoverished but I had no choice to make it work.  I split with a little one and not one guarantee anything would ever be okay.  I just knew it would be better than being beaten and raped on the regular.  All those rationalizations I used to tell myself, placing false guilt on myself without looking at my real truth were just layers of a blinding veil I placed over my eyes of my conscience.  But, NO!  I do not have the power to make anyone hit me.  I don’t have the power to make anyone mock me when I’m in pain as I’m being kicked.  I also don’t have the power to make them stop.  

I do have the power to call the police.  I have the power to end that relationship.  Oh wait.  Eeesh.  That’s way more complicated than it sounds.  Because I love him so.  Because we’re financially tied.  Because we have children together or own property together.  It’s more complicated because I was the second part of the equation.  It’s my fault because I picked the fight and kept it up until he couldn’t take it anymore.  I’m just lucky that he loves me back.  Where would I go?  What would I do without him?

What you’ll do without your abuser is so much safer.  What you’ll do is lick your wounds and nurse your bruises.  You’ll take a hot bath with a hot cup of tea and treat yourself like one would treat you if they were nursing you back to health.  Because you need that.  And then you’d go to a doctor to make sure that nothing is broken other than your heart.  Because when all the bones heal, the heart matters.  The mind needs fixing too.  The mind needs healing just like the body and the spirit, else you can find yourself with the same picture frame, different photo.  

You’ll go to work and then therapy, and then your favorite thing, be it dance or music or theatre or film and you’ll nurture yourself.  You’ll do what you like to do without reporting to anyone.  You’ll heal your soul and be good to remember that no matter how powerful you are in your own life, you’re just not that powerful in another person’s life to make them hit you or push or kick or beat you down emotionally.  And you will rise.  You’ll get off your knees where he pushed you, stand up, press charges and walk right into as healthy living as you can muster.  And then you’ll keep doing it. 

Because you matter.  Because you are a sentient being having a human experience.  Because your very life depends on it.  Because you are worth every ounce of nurturing and self-love and healing.  Because you are worth being treated gently and sweetly.  You are worth the work it will take to get the gears in your head right and switch it from, “It’s my fault to… Your actions led me to walk away.”

A Mother’s Prayer

Well, it looks like it’s that time again.  The time when the Mom card is tested is here and I get to look at my hand really carefully.  I don’t play cards because I don’t like to lose but parenthood is just like that. For me, anyway. See, while I’ve had my horrendous dealings with drugs and alcohol and I’ve experienced the joys and sorrows of recovery, I also have a baby boy, at the ripe ol’ age of “in his 20’s” that I get to watch as he covets his own derelictions.  I’m back at that stage where I don’t know what’s going to happen to him or with him and the consequences are stacking up.  

It’s never been an easy road with my offspring.  He, like me, was born an alcoholic/addict.  I knew it would only be a matter of time before he found the elixir and would choose the hard road.  And, much to my consternation, I was right.  It’s been a frightful journey as a mother.  I would have done anything to save him from the troubles of himself but as with myself or anyone else, it’s an inside job and I just can’t be at all places at all times.  

I used to have three suicide plans.  I had every intention of employing one of them if he ever died an untimely death.  I have since decided that there are plenty of parents out there who’s children have died from the disease and they didn’t feel a need to check out.  I didn’t depend on “that” to keep me alive but more received a moment of clarity that, just because they go doesn’t mean I get to.  So great!  Now I get to be alive with no way out during some of the most difficult pain a parent can experience.  I’m still getting used to the idea that I have to stay and try to figure out how I’m going to live through it all.  

There’s always an uneasy feeling during the good times like I know the end of it is coming.  I know that somewhere there is a lie and all is not well.  He’s trying to keep his secrets and I’m just not privy to them yet.  I suppose it is the highest honor that he has no fear of sharing with me the darkest of truths.  They come out when his back is up against the wall. He’s on the firing line of honesty. I’m not sure which bullet of truth will pierce the armor of dastardly living. I’m there without judgment when the beans get spilled all over the place.  I just hate being left alone with them as they’re splattered all over me.  He forgot to include a splash guard when he chose to tell me the truth.   He can’t imagine what it’s like to love someone so much, you’d do anything for them, only to realize there’s nothing anyone CAN do.  

Normally, during times like this when I know he’s under duress my brain gets really foggy.  The brain fog keeps me from taking the next step or doing the next right thing.  I don’t know if I should sweep the porch or tend to the yard or slit my wrists because it hurts so badly.  Well, the last option is certainly no option at all so I’ll just pace the floors until the fear paralysis dissipates.  Maybe I’ll scrub the inside of the oven or re-fold all the towels.  Because after all, there’s still a pandemic so my “outside world” options are limited.  

I call in all my favors only when it comes to getting him the help he needs and I have to wait for him to ask for it and hold my breath waiting for him to follow through, embarrassed if he doesn’t actually utilize the favor I just asked for, translated, looks like, “please help my son!”  I get to remember it’s not my life; not my story.  I get to just stand on the sideline while he navigates around his world in the best way he knows how, the best he can.  It’s the most painful thing in the world to think that your child chose incarceration over sobriety.  It’s harrowing to watch as the booze and the drugs take over any thought of self-preservation, as in, if I do “this”, my butt is going back to jail.  The disease of addiction says, “Naaa… you’ll be fine.  You’ll get away with it.  Just do it at this time or with this person or at this place.  Only do a little.  They won’t give you a UA.  You can get away with it.”

I got away with plenty during my 24 year drinking and drugging career.  I also didn’t look death in the face in the same way as my son.  His daring of death looks so much different than mine.  I’ve never been beaten up by cops.  I’ve never been runnin’ and gunnin’ with gangs on the streets.  I’ve never committed obvious crimes that would warrant long stints in jail.  I just did enough drugs and drank enough to be pathetic.  I only did enough to remain unavailable.  I couldn’t show up for life.  Certainly, not in any functional meaning of the word. 

But, he’s trying.  And, I know it.  He’s trying to have his cake and eat it too and he’s circumventing the fundamental truths of the spirit and my heart goes out to him.  I know what it’s like to try absolutely everything except the one thing that works to combat the affliction.  Oh my God, ANYTHING but abstinence!!  Non-addicts will never understand that abstinence is simply not an option.  There’s GOT to be another way!!! 

So… I pace.  I wander my house aimless, not sure what to do next.  Teeth brushed.  Check.  Hair brushed, check.  Laundry folded?  Dishes washed?  Bed made?  Oh yeah!  I didn’t make my bed.  I can start there.  I can just start with the little things first as I’m wondering if the probation officer is cool or if he’s got a hard-on for sending kids to jail.  “Damn it son, didn’t I tell you prisoners are just a number and they get PAID to incarcerate you?”  “You LIED to me and you’ve been doing such and such this whole time!”  “Okay, what can I do to manipulate the situation so he doesn’t have to deal with this consequence?”  He’s just a kid.  

I have to keep my hands off it.  I have to show up for love and support, give resources and then back off.  HANDS OFF!!!   Oh, hell, I still have my own life to live and I feel immobilized.  I can’t find a stream of happiness anywhere when I can’t rescue him.  I have to just “be” with it.  I have to just engage in a boat load of prayer, never quite knowing if that’s just a neat little diversion tactic humans use, as if it does any good or if I should be fervent in my appeals.  I suppose if prayer is all I have, then prayer it is.  

Dear whatever is out there, 

I don’t know if I should pray for a hedge of thorns or mercy. 

I don’t know if I should pray for a rescue mission or tolerance. 

I don’t know if I should pray for compassion or a good swift kick

But I know that he can’t do this on his own. 

I know he can’t do this without you. 

I know that he needs something.  I just don’t know what that is. 

Please help me be available to do the tough stuff and to be there. 

Please help me help him with love and light in my heart. 

Please help me help him with patient guidance.

Please help me be the best mom he needs right now. 

Please show me what love looks like in this situation. 

Thank you for the years I’ve gotten to know this supreme being; 

This young man who has an incredible story of triumph.

Thank you for showing me what real love looks like as I carry on.

Thank you for granting me a son who has shown me love and forgiveness.

Thank you for showing me what sobriety looks like. 

Thank you for the ability to show up, no matter how much it hurts. 

Thank you for the strength. 

Thank you for the grace. 

Thank you for the integrity. 

Thank you for the freedom. 

Thank you for the peace. 

May my son experience all these things.

May he turn his compass north. 

May he turn his face to the light and not hide in the shadows.