Velvet Verbosity

I went to see Poe and to meet with his clinician at his detox unit.  I got terribly lost in the city where Five Stories, Poe’s detox unit, is.  I got into the city, within five miles of Five Stories, at 5:20 and then got lost.   I went around in circles for 45 minutes and got there late.

Then the elevator wasn’t working right so I stood in the lobby for another 10 minutes, juggling some food for Poe, an unwieldy purse, my laptop that I didn’t want to leave in the car, and Poe’s favorite shirt.  Juggling all those objects, thankfully, kept me from compulsively rubbing my left eyebrow, a habit that started to become compulsive right around the same time Poe almost got himself killed.  Go figure.

Twenty minutes late I finally arrived on the fifth floor.  Someone went to get Poe while I extricated, one by one, all the objects I was carrying for inspection.  My purse, all objects in my pockets, and my laptop were put away behind the desk.  The food was looked over, and Poe’s shirt was examined right down to the seams.

We were escorted to the family room for our visit.  First we met together with the clinician, McHelp.   He was a clean cut, tall, fresh out of college and without a clue kind of guy.  I wanted to take him out for a drink and teach him a thing or two about dealing with addiction in real life.  Textbook knowledge is nice for objectivity, but it’s like reading about war versus being in the trenches with grenades exploding feet away from your face.

Poe looked good.  He looked tall and healthy, relaxed and happy.  I expected this.  I’ve been living with Poe for a long time.  I know what he looks like when everything is stable.  I know the person behind his addictions and brain disorders.  Everyone there talked about what a “great kid” Poe is.  I know.  He’s more than a great kid, he’s a wonderful human being when he’s not in the throes of cycling madness, or seized by his addictions.  He’s superbly talented, wise, and naturally intelligent.  These things don’t make it any easier to deal with what’s going on.  In fact, they make it harder.  My heart swells out, pushing out of my chest like an aching sail hoping for a cool wind to soothe.

We spoke at length with McHelp regarding Poe’s after care plan.  He can’t come back and live with me.  Not right now.  He needs longer term care and we’re trying to get that for him.  A group home with structure and lots of staff and other kids who are struggling to find order for themselves.  This is where we think Poe might find his way.

After McHelp left, Poe and I had a half hour to share a meal and visit with each other privately.  He was full of stories about the people there at Five Stories.  He was bonding with the others, feeling safe and secure, getting good sleep and eating well.  Then he looked at me and said, “Mom, I’m really an addict.”  He described how when some people were talking about drinking during group time, his leg started to twitch.  He showed me just how it twitched, he re-enacted the emotions and I watched him transform, right before my eyes, back into the addict.  His body tightened, his shoulders slumped, his face gripped back in on itself.  It was a palpable tension.  I saw it all the time, but he hadn’t been able to because he had never been clear of it long enough.

His eyes got progressively wider as he explained to me what addiction could do to him.  I know, I know Poe.  It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, but you couldn’t hear me.

As I relayed this story to friends and family, the collective concerned, they all said, “that’s good, right?”.  Yes, yes, it is good.  But it’s only the beginning.  There is no magic wand.

Warning: this post comes from a raw place of surrender and radical acceptance. It may sound callous or give the impression that I’ve given up on Poe. It’s not Poe I’m giving up on, it’s the idea that there is a magic solution. I’ve lived with addiction and mental illness too long to play nice with it anymore. Addiction and mental illness pummels everything and everyone in its path and leaves a crapload of carnage in its wake. I will still do what I can to get Poe the treatment that we know works, but I can’t be there, right there, his whole life to hold his hand and make him find the treatment that works. He’s got to embrace this for himself, and that’s what this is about.

Poe called last night. He sounded good. Tired, humble, surrendered, and good. It won’t last. It never does with the addicted. It never does with the fucked-up. It’s a long road he’s got to crawl his way down before he can walk on his own two feet. A long road with a lot of sidetracks, and snake filled pits he could fall into on any given day. Using your mind to fight your disordered mind is a damn near impossible task, and few people figure it out. He might die from his fucked up and addicted. He might end up in jail. He might hurt someone else. He might, eventually, learn how to live without fucked-up and addicted. He might learn how to really live, laugh, and love. I can’t be there every second as he crawls along the road. I can’t warn him about the snake pit right in front of his face, and even if I could he might not be able to hear me through the fog of fucked-up and addicted.

So what the hell does a mother do? A mother, who by nature is here to care and protect? How do I care without going into the snake pits with him? How do I protect when he runs away from help? How do I reach through the fucked-up and addicted and pull out my baby? I can’t. Not because I don’t want to. Oh god believe me, I want to. I want to crawl right there next to him, forgoing everything else. Forgoing work, love, life. I want to go into the dark with him and save him like Robin Williams goes into purgatory to save his lost wife at the risk of going mad himself in that movie, What Dreams May Come. I want to believe that my love is so powerful and so pure that if I surrender to the darkness to be with him that we will both magically be lifted back into the light, like a fairy tale where pure love conquers all.

This isn’t Hollywood. It’s real life. Every partner/mother/sibling/child of an addict or the mentally ill (which really aren’t two different things) has always wanted to believe that all that is ever needed is pure love. “If only I love enough”, “If only I love him right”, “If only” has been the mantra of codependents everywhere. Hollywood tells us it is so. It worked in Walk the Line. It worked in What Dreams May Come. Damn it, it should work in real life! I just need to love harder, fiercer, better, longer. I just need to have better endurance, I just need to be stronger, I just need to be better.

I just want that magic fucking wand!! Why god, why can’t you just give me the magic wand?

In real life, not in Hollywood, the magic wand is never blessed upon us. In real life, going into the darkness of fucked-up and addicted means neither of us may ever come back. In real life, if I get down on my knees and crawl the path with Poe, I will get lost and sick and leave Alba all alone and that act will throw a demon on her back. In real life, I can only be here for Poe when he can see through the fog, and when he’s ready and willing to stand up and figure it out. I’ll always be here then.

With love,

I wasn’t satisfied with the blog alias I had given my son, so from here on he will be referred to as Poe.  My daughter, when I write about her, will be called Alba.

Yesterday in itself is a long story. It went something like the phone ringing, voice on other end saying, “Poe definitely has a problem but we can’t help him, try these folks”, and so it went all day. Yet somehow, we ended up standing outside a five-story building at 7:30 last night waiting for a security guard to unlock the door, and then escort us up to the fifth floor where there would be a stack of paperwork to sign, another to take home, searching of bags, and finally a bed for Poe. He hadn’t slept in two days.

Everyone was kind, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that their kindness was of the sort that implied little hope. It was a removed kindness. I suppose they had figured out that the “too involved” type of kindness doesn’t work any better and would only make them more crazy. I took a note of that for my own future sanity.

It was a clean place, a warm place, and other than the locked elevator, not much to indicate what this floor of rooms was there for, except for all the  brochures about drug addiction and AIDS. I don’t know if I expected or wanted the place to be more dingy. It seemed more fitting, but in the end I felt better that it just seemed calm, warm, and clean.  The mother in me, who seems here to stay, approved of the comfortable chairs, the earthy tones, the soft carpeting, and the cleanliness.

Today, after my shower, I put my hand up to my head to tussle my hair and shake out some of the water. My hand came back with a handful of hair. I reached up and just touched my hair lightly, and again my hand came back full of hair. A third time supplied still more. My body is giving up, my mind is giving up, and my job is to pull it all back. To, in a sense, go against nature, and find my way. Like Seligman’s dogs, there have been too many unpredictable shocks and my body is trying to take over and give up, shutting down the systems. As far as it’s concerned, it’s game over. From its simplistic evolutionary perspective, this body has nothing left to offer the tribe.

Poe’s clinical worker, McHelp, called me today to get some history so he could better understand Poe. So he could try to match up his experience of Poe and what Poe was telling him with what I had to say. I never know where to begin when people who are trying to understand Poe ask me what I think. I want to tell them every little detail from his birth to now. Part of me wants to say, “I have no idea anymore, that’s what you’re here for, you tell me.” Somewhere in the middle I did my best.

I asked McHelp how Poe was doing today. He said he was doing well, he was interacting with others, playing games, and when McHelp asked him if he wanted to be there, Poe said, “Yes, I want help.” If my body hadn’t shut down most of my systems already, I probably would have cried.

Two weeks ago, about two hours later than now, I received the phone call no parent wants to receive.  Some would say I co-created that reality through my incessant worry that I would receive that phone call one day and it would be about my son.   He has been on an addictive self-destructive path that has been increasing in intensity.   The story is so long, so full of sorrow, desperation, anxiety, worry, love and anger.  Last year, after several years of an ever tightening battle, I found a treatment for EK (I sometimes refer to him as Evil Knievel, but I don’t want to keep typing that because then I get traffic to my blog that should never find its way here) that worked.  Neurofeedback.  It worked to quiet his brain in places where things were on fire and causing him to feel and act crazy and self-destructive.  After a month, I felt myself exhale.  It was really working, and things weren’t perfect, but they were so much better.  We all felt life was more manageable again.

Then my insurance denied me.  I was making too much money, but not enough to buy my own.  I had to reapply, and in that window of insurancelessness, our neurofeedback provider and awesome therapist filled up her schedule book and wouldn’t be able to get EK in for months.  She was good, and word got around (partly thanks to me).  I searched around for a new provider, but most wouldn’t work with teenagers, and the rest either didn’t take insurance or were full.

Things started ramping up with EK, and we all felt it.  A month and a half ago, I was just getting ready to put my head to my pillow when EK walked in to my room and said, “Mom, I need to get back into treatment or be on meds or something.  I’m starting to not feel well again.  I feel like I’m slipping back to where I was before.”    The room was dark, lit only by the hall light, but I could see the tension in his face.   It was a look I knew all too well.  The look of my son struggling with an inner chaos that he didn’t know how to right, how to control, how to stop.  I was scared for him, and I knew if I didn’t find someone soon that things were going to get really out of control again and there wouldn’t be anything I could do to stop it or help it.  I told him I would make another round of calls the next day, first thing.

I spent the next several days calling every provider.  Every one told me the same thing I had heard before.  They were full, didn’t work with teenagers, didn’t take my insurance.  But each time I was given another number, and eventually that chain of numbers led to The Meek One.   The Meek One was a long time therapist but new to neurofeedback.  She was connected to Mother Hen (our previous provider), and was training under the area’s foremost expert in the field.  She could get the protocols from Mother Hen and would not only take EK, but she would provide intensive treatment (three times a week) for free.

It was a miracle.  But with all the set up, the conversations, the equipment not working right and her being too green to know how to correct it, time ran out.   EK self-destructed.  A series of unfortunate events, rising tensions in the house, a fight with a stranger, and feeling like a simple legal case was going to come down hard on him, he got himself good and worked up.  For legal reasons I can’t disclose details.  What I can tell you is that he is lucky to be alive and through his pain, and his fear, he asked to go into inpatient treatment.  His assessment was yesterday and we are keeping our fingers crossed that he will get in and that it will help.  I’m worried.  Worried that after seven years of trying everything that this might be yet another patch that doesn’t hold him together and might make him worse.  Worried that really the neurofeedback is the only thing that really works, and he won’t be able to get it while he’s “in”.  Unfortunately, things have reached such a crescendo that those decisions are now out of my hands.  Out of my wringing worried hands.

Internet, VV will be down for an indefinite amount of time.

This one is a quickie.  I’m about to watch the VeeP debates and I’m all set with my nachos, chai, and an ice cold beer.  This is a spectator sport.  Isn’t it?  So let’s roll out the submissions.

Lessa slid in past the deadline, but I forgive her because she ended up being my pick of the week.  I like the spunk and rebellion of this piece, and it was just what I needed as the frost begins to settle over the night.

“It ain’t RIGHT. It jus’ ain’t an you know it Joseph Daniel Scranton!” I stomped my foot and glared at him, but he ain’t seem to care. He never did. He’d just grin that lil grin of his an’ expect me to jus’ do whatever it was he wanted. An’ right now? He wanted me t’realize somethin’, somethin’ I weren’t ready to realize jus’ yet.

He finally jus’ pulled me close, an’ held on tight. “Ain’t no place in this for what’s moral or right. Jus’ for hangin’ tough. So hang with me, like always.”

Like I had a choice.

• Lose yourself over at Losing Yourself, a newcomer.
  
• VIU will make you question the art of surveillance
• I, Rodius is taking the hands off approach
• JM and a delicious slice of life a’la Frank
• Sassy Mama weaves us a bedtime haiku (brilliant)
• Ninja delivers a strike in the dark at our illusions of morality
• Don’t think those kids aren’t listening to you Grandma (so says Patsy)
• Night Blogger sticks it to morality good.

I don’t have a book handy with me.  I’m writing this from a cafe that is staying open late to air the debates.  I watched the presidential debates here last week, and I love it.  All these local people gathering together to discuss politics.  Throws me right back to a time when we cared.  If they had a fireplace, some wingback chairs, and smoking pipes I would die of romantic nostalgia.  So, from a sign on their door:

Blend 

With love,