Evening News
After reading the article, I watched the video of the police rounding up these young men, handcuffing them and transporting them. I’ve written here about A.’s friend before, the one who came to take him to the airport that last time A. was home. The one who I observed to have fresh needle marks in his arms and in a panic I called A. to make sure he wasn’t going to be shooting up with him on the way to the airport. The one who I have known now for 6 years… who I have had in my house and treated as my own son… whose mother is a teacher in the same district that I teach in. It was the video of him handcuffed and being put into the car by the police that hit the hardest; that look on his face, his shallow sunken eyes, the pain. You could see that he knew in that moment it was all slipping away from him…his life, his future, his present…and for him, knowing that he would detox in a jail cell…be cut off from the one thing he craved more than anything…his drug of choice-heroin; it could be seen in that empty look on his face.
I turned from the computer, shaking and forced out something to S. about “that coulda been A., woulda been A.” as I felt the emotions unlocking, a rush of familiarity and repulsion in the same moment. I started crying, uncontrollably….out of gratitude, for sure, but also out of fear, of anger, of confusion. We had escaped something that would have certainly devastated us, like we had barely avoided a collision-and here we were in that moment after, gripping the wheel. Alive. It was tragic and haunting to see his friend whose path had not changed a whole lot in the past two years, mostly because his parents couldn’t afford to get him into any intensive out of home therapy. They had been through this once with their older son, also an addict. They only had local and state programs to turn to, and they are rarely effective long term. I felt a heavy and sickening sadness for these boys’ parents, their siblings, their grandparents. While many watched that story with possibly disbelief or gratitude that these “punks” would be off the streets…I couldn’t help but feel all the disappointment and confusion that I knew was very much a part of their lives in that moment. I can only imagine a moment when your child is taken away in handcuffs, not knowing which is worse…the reality that they are a criminal or that they have been lost to drugs.
I was shaking, as S. hugged me…not only to comfort, but to also be comforted. It is a place we come together, my husband and I, lost and bewildered, with only each other to turn to when everything else seems blurred. It is something that we learned to rely on in the turmoil-each other. Sometimes it was the ONLY thing. We are intimately familiar with the devastation that heroin brings…it is a hell that we have lived through. Seeing that news clip, of A.’s best friend, a friend A. feels a brotherly love toward…that clip brought it all back to our home, our hearts. “We did the right thing…this proves it. That would have been A. No doubt. And who knows what our lives would have been like. We might have been devastated completely by then…our family might have been in ruin by then,” S. reminded me as he held me. And I know this. That is why I have not been able to shake it
At a district-wide professional development yesterday, I ran into many of A.’s old teachers, also colleagues whom I have had a close relationship with since my first days of teaching with them in a smaller school setting within the district. They are like family to me and with great interest have stayed informed of A.’s progress. Each one of them gave me a long, knowing embrace as they saw me yesterday morning. They had seen the news.
“Did you hear?” one of them asked me as soon as he saw me.
“Yea…I did. It’s so sad.”
“Did you see who was on the list?” he asked.
“Yea…I did.”
“Did you see whose name wasn’t on the list?” he asked with a smile, and then he hugged me closely and firmly. The tears came again...though they were tears of gratitude, of joy, of celebration.
“Yea…I did,” I said through tears and a smile.
And in that exchange, without saying it, I knew that he knew. He understood the magnitude of the effect of those arrests on me, my family, and on A.. Our brief exchange was a quiet celebration of A.’s success and our choice to send him away.
It’s coming up on 2 years since A. and I flew out to Salt Lake City, where he would then leave willingly with the escorts from Second Nature Wilderness Program, an intensive therapeutic program for struggling teens. Back then, it would have been easier had A. simply been a “struggling teen.” When I looked at my son sitting next to me on the plane, in his itching and scratching, his constant fidgeting, his chills and then his sweating, a touchy stomach, fresh needle marks in his arm-- I think of that now and realize that he wasn’t just struggling, he was beyond struggling. In fact, he was dying. In those days, his body had become an object of abuse. Anything left functioning on the inside was taken captive by his addiction to heroin. He would have done anything for a fix. He had given up the struggle.
He believed it was a quick 2-month program, and then back to life as normal. We knew better. We knew that after possibly up to three months in the wilderness, the real work would begin in a year-long residential program somewhere else. It was hard to lie to him, though he was going to treatment willingly, had begged to go to the mountains. Most of these kids who go to these programs are actually woken from sleep in their beds at home as two large strangers take custody of them. Their whole words are taken from them in a confusing instant, as their parents and siblings cry and remind them that they love them, that it will be okay, that this is for the best. Tough love.
In the few short months before we got A. help, before it became clear to us what was going on, money started disappearing. He started pestering us for quick, odd-jobs. His sleep habits became erratic. He was feeling “sick”, drug sick, all the time. He would sweat and then become clammy, complaining that he couldn’t sleep. He wasn’t eating and was losing weight. And then it got worse, he’d stumble in the door late at night, barely able to keep his legs beneath him. His moods were erratic. He became extremely argumentative, began cussing at me, punching walls. I should have seen the signs of his desperation. I think, in hindsight, I did, but I just couldn’t put it all together. It was like a picture slowly coming into focus. When the debit card from my purse was stolen and used to take out $40 cash (to buy a fix) and a handgun from my mother’s turned up missing (he pawned it), it all started to make sense. That and S. finding the spoon and needle in his car. After finding that, in a frantic search through his bedroom, I found a hundred, maybe more, little wadded up balls of foil in the bottom of the wastebasket in his room; each opened piece of foil revealed a charred black residue in the center of the square. And all the little tubes of rolled up paper, or straws, or emptied disposable pens that had become the device to breathe the vapor into his lungs….THAT was what had got him hooked. It made me sick to think of how many times he had been up in his attic bedroom, smoking heroin, before drifting off into a sleep that somehow gave him everything he thought he needed-what he explained as “a feeling like no other, better than anything I have ever felt…even better than sex.” In a journal entry from wilderness, he once called heroin his “demon lover.”
We called the police when he stole my debit card and had them come to the house, knowing they might arrest him. They explained that he would be charged with a felony and taken to jail, should I decide to press charges. I remember giving A. a choice that day. Either I press charges and he goes to jail, OR he gets into treatment. He actually weighed out that option for a long time, though he ultimately said he’d get into treatment; that he almost chose jail over treatment is an example of what he was willing to endure to avoid having to face his addiction head on. I so often wonder what might have happened if I had not forced that decision that day. If I had simply chalked up the theft as yet another symptom that something was horribly wrong. He had a choice that many of the kids who were just arrested might not have ever had.
I think back to that plane flight…and A. was indeed a “struggling teen,” though he was also beyond struggling. He had given in…completely. He had resigned himself to heroin as if his life depended on it. I, his mother, had also resigned myself to the acceptance of his needs, and here we were on the plane, off to the mountains for intense therapy…as if our lives depended on it. And they did. It was our last, best chance before he turned 18.
Since making that decision two autumns ago to get him help, our family has faced the most profound challenges; though through it all, we have grown stronger and closer. It was the year after my father’s death, my relationship with my husband was growing more and more distant, we had three children to care for, ages 5, 7 and 17, our oldest was disintegrating right before our eyes, we were shaken up and became strangers in a strange land. We were a family experiencing a lot of stress, a lot of pain, a lot of dysfunction. Looking back today, I see the long, rugged path. It has been both terrifying and sorrowful, but nonetheless powerful and life changing.
We have not yet talked to A. about the arrests. He has decided to live without a cell phone, so we have to leave messages with friends who then pass them on to him. It’s usually a few days after we leave a message that we finally hear from him. Hearing his voice, hearing that he is “blissfully happy” as he last described his present state of mind, hearing him say “I love you Mom” when I might not have ever had the chance to hear those words again had he died or taken the turn into a lifetime of drugs and alienation-these things will lift me. They will make me want to sweep him up in my arms and praise him for having the courage to face his inner demons…to end his relationship with the one he once loved more than most anything. It will hurt me to have to tell him about his old best friend…to bring back reminders of what might have been. Though, I know he needs to know, that he must know the impact of the work he has done, that where he came from and where he is now has been the journey of a lifetime.
Though I understand the patterns, the statistics and probabilities, the threat is always there. His “demon lover” will always be in the shadows. Lurking. Waiting. Wanting. So today, in light of the evening news, my hands grip that steering wheel a little bit tighter again…in anticipation. I hope that one day I will be able to loosen my grasp for longer and longer periods of time, but I also know it would be foolish to think that it is safe enough yet to turn up the radio, roll down the windows, and drive with one hand out the window and one hand resting easily on the wheel.
I turned from the computer, shaking and forced out something to S. about “that coulda been A., woulda been A.” as I felt the emotions unlocking, a rush of familiarity and repulsion in the same moment. I started crying, uncontrollably….out of gratitude, for sure, but also out of fear, of anger, of confusion. We had escaped something that would have certainly devastated us, like we had barely avoided a collision-and here we were in that moment after, gripping the wheel. Alive. It was tragic and haunting to see his friend whose path had not changed a whole lot in the past two years, mostly because his parents couldn’t afford to get him into any intensive out of home therapy. They had been through this once with their older son, also an addict. They only had local and state programs to turn to, and they are rarely effective long term. I felt a heavy and sickening sadness for these boys’ parents, their siblings, their grandparents. While many watched that story with possibly disbelief or gratitude that these “punks” would be off the streets…I couldn’t help but feel all the disappointment and confusion that I knew was very much a part of their lives in that moment. I can only imagine a moment when your child is taken away in handcuffs, not knowing which is worse…the reality that they are a criminal or that they have been lost to drugs.
I was shaking, as S. hugged me…not only to comfort, but to also be comforted. It is a place we come together, my husband and I, lost and bewildered, with only each other to turn to when everything else seems blurred. It is something that we learned to rely on in the turmoil-each other. Sometimes it was the ONLY thing. We are intimately familiar with the devastation that heroin brings…it is a hell that we have lived through. Seeing that news clip, of A.’s best friend, a friend A. feels a brotherly love toward…that clip brought it all back to our home, our hearts. “We did the right thing…this proves it. That would have been A. No doubt. And who knows what our lives would have been like. We might have been devastated completely by then…our family might have been in ruin by then,” S. reminded me as he held me. And I know this. That is why I have not been able to shake it
At a district-wide professional development yesterday, I ran into many of A.’s old teachers, also colleagues whom I have had a close relationship with since my first days of teaching with them in a smaller school setting within the district. They are like family to me and with great interest have stayed informed of A.’s progress. Each one of them gave me a long, knowing embrace as they saw me yesterday morning. They had seen the news.
“Did you hear?” one of them asked me as soon as he saw me.
“Yea…I did. It’s so sad.”
“Did you see who was on the list?” he asked.
“Yea…I did.”
“Did you see whose name wasn’t on the list?” he asked with a smile, and then he hugged me closely and firmly. The tears came again...though they were tears of gratitude, of joy, of celebration.
“Yea…I did,” I said through tears and a smile.
And in that exchange, without saying it, I knew that he knew. He understood the magnitude of the effect of those arrests on me, my family, and on A.. Our brief exchange was a quiet celebration of A.’s success and our choice to send him away.
It’s coming up on 2 years since A. and I flew out to Salt Lake City, where he would then leave willingly with the escorts from Second Nature Wilderness Program, an intensive therapeutic program for struggling teens. Back then, it would have been easier had A. simply been a “struggling teen.” When I looked at my son sitting next to me on the plane, in his itching and scratching, his constant fidgeting, his chills and then his sweating, a touchy stomach, fresh needle marks in his arm-- I think of that now and realize that he wasn’t just struggling, he was beyond struggling. In fact, he was dying. In those days, his body had become an object of abuse. Anything left functioning on the inside was taken captive by his addiction to heroin. He would have done anything for a fix. He had given up the struggle.
He believed it was a quick 2-month program, and then back to life as normal. We knew better. We knew that after possibly up to three months in the wilderness, the real work would begin in a year-long residential program somewhere else. It was hard to lie to him, though he was going to treatment willingly, had begged to go to the mountains. Most of these kids who go to these programs are actually woken from sleep in their beds at home as two large strangers take custody of them. Their whole words are taken from them in a confusing instant, as their parents and siblings cry and remind them that they love them, that it will be okay, that this is for the best. Tough love.
In the few short months before we got A. help, before it became clear to us what was going on, money started disappearing. He started pestering us for quick, odd-jobs. His sleep habits became erratic. He was feeling “sick”, drug sick, all the time. He would sweat and then become clammy, complaining that he couldn’t sleep. He wasn’t eating and was losing weight. And then it got worse, he’d stumble in the door late at night, barely able to keep his legs beneath him. His moods were erratic. He became extremely argumentative, began cussing at me, punching walls. I should have seen the signs of his desperation. I think, in hindsight, I did, but I just couldn’t put it all together. It was like a picture slowly coming into focus. When the debit card from my purse was stolen and used to take out $40 cash (to buy a fix) and a handgun from my mother’s turned up missing (he pawned it), it all started to make sense. That and S. finding the spoon and needle in his car. After finding that, in a frantic search through his bedroom, I found a hundred, maybe more, little wadded up balls of foil in the bottom of the wastebasket in his room; each opened piece of foil revealed a charred black residue in the center of the square. And all the little tubes of rolled up paper, or straws, or emptied disposable pens that had become the device to breathe the vapor into his lungs….THAT was what had got him hooked. It made me sick to think of how many times he had been up in his attic bedroom, smoking heroin, before drifting off into a sleep that somehow gave him everything he thought he needed-what he explained as “a feeling like no other, better than anything I have ever felt…even better than sex.” In a journal entry from wilderness, he once called heroin his “demon lover.”
We called the police when he stole my debit card and had them come to the house, knowing they might arrest him. They explained that he would be charged with a felony and taken to jail, should I decide to press charges. I remember giving A. a choice that day. Either I press charges and he goes to jail, OR he gets into treatment. He actually weighed out that option for a long time, though he ultimately said he’d get into treatment; that he almost chose jail over treatment is an example of what he was willing to endure to avoid having to face his addiction head on. I so often wonder what might have happened if I had not forced that decision that day. If I had simply chalked up the theft as yet another symptom that something was horribly wrong. He had a choice that many of the kids who were just arrested might not have ever had.
I think back to that plane flight…and A. was indeed a “struggling teen,” though he was also beyond struggling. He had given in…completely. He had resigned himself to heroin as if his life depended on it. I, his mother, had also resigned myself to the acceptance of his needs, and here we were on the plane, off to the mountains for intense therapy…as if our lives depended on it. And they did. It was our last, best chance before he turned 18.
Since making that decision two autumns ago to get him help, our family has faced the most profound challenges; though through it all, we have grown stronger and closer. It was the year after my father’s death, my relationship with my husband was growing more and more distant, we had three children to care for, ages 5, 7 and 17, our oldest was disintegrating right before our eyes, we were shaken up and became strangers in a strange land. We were a family experiencing a lot of stress, a lot of pain, a lot of dysfunction. Looking back today, I see the long, rugged path. It has been both terrifying and sorrowful, but nonetheless powerful and life changing.
We have not yet talked to A. about the arrests. He has decided to live without a cell phone, so we have to leave messages with friends who then pass them on to him. It’s usually a few days after we leave a message that we finally hear from him. Hearing his voice, hearing that he is “blissfully happy” as he last described his present state of mind, hearing him say “I love you Mom” when I might not have ever had the chance to hear those words again had he died or taken the turn into a lifetime of drugs and alienation-these things will lift me. They will make me want to sweep him up in my arms and praise him for having the courage to face his inner demons…to end his relationship with the one he once loved more than most anything. It will hurt me to have to tell him about his old best friend…to bring back reminders of what might have been. Though, I know he needs to know, that he must know the impact of the work he has done, that where he came from and where he is now has been the journey of a lifetime.
Though I understand the patterns, the statistics and probabilities, the threat is always there. His “demon lover” will always be in the shadows. Lurking. Waiting. Wanting. So today, in light of the evening news, my hands grip that steering wheel a little bit tighter again…in anticipation. I hope that one day I will be able to loosen my grasp for longer and longer periods of time, but I also know it would be foolish to think that it is safe enough yet to turn up the radio, roll down the windows, and drive with one hand out the window and one hand resting easily on the wheel.