Weekend blog - I promise they wont ALL be about the hard stuff. I'll get back to being grumpy and trying to be funny soon enough, I promise. It's my main defense mechanism.
Things have calmed a bit around the homefront since the lengthy marathon of hospital madness, the teenager is still inside and seems to be doing much, much better for the vacation from drugs. His actual progress remains to be seen but he seems to be facing the right direction.
I spoke to him at the "Family Meeting" and he seemed actually positive about the prospect making some changes to his former trajectory. I also spent two hours with another doctor doing another lengthy interview about his family's chemical and mental health history - it was scary to say the least.
We don't spend a lot of time talking about the horror show that his childhood was in specific event-by-event detail and it's easy to forget just how nightmarish some of it was. Thankfully I got to do most of that part without him in the room but me and the doctors both had a few different moments where they were shocked and I had to snap out of it and remember that this is really out there stuff spilling out of my mouth.
At the very least you can't hold the boy's problems against him, it almost makes you want to give him a pass and say "you, you've earned it. you can just be crazy and stay high" but sadly that wouldn't do anything good for him and I know it even if he doesn't.
I got several texts and emails (which I appreciate) from people making sure I was ok through the whole thing and honestly it was the first time I had even considered it, it was all one of those times when the handy-dandy parental auto-pilot switched on and you just do the things your kid needs. As soon as they gave me the 'just say go and these things will all happen' it started.
all these radical changes will take place in the next 2 minutes, check
drive across town and lock the boy up, easy
wait in this room for 12 hours, done
if a big guy with a mallet had calmly said "We'll just need you to put your hand on the table for a minute" in a tone that convinced me a few broken metacarpals and phalanges were what they needed to get my kiddo closer to the help he actually needs I probably would've done it and gone back to reading my book and hoping he got in because it would be good for him in the long run.
I always remember the story of the woman whose house was hit by a tornado, she threw her kids in the bathtub and covered them with her body. She took a board through the spine and will never walk again and her kids were fine. In the interview they always ask the same "so you just made the choice of your kids over your own safety?" questions and you could always tell by her reaction that it had never even occurred to her that there WAS a choice being made.
Or one of my favorite pieces of film that I hope to never have to watch again - that scene in Syriana I wished they had warned me was in the move, the one in the swimming pool. As much a kick in the face the shot of the little kid was I loved the next one of the dad running through the crowd and just jumping in the electrified pool without even slowing down while everyone watched. You could feel every father in the theater exhale in agreement.
obviously that's extreme - I was throwing my kid somewhere much different and not in any real danger myself but it's that same state of being. Until someone asked me halfway through the whole thing how I was holding up I hadn't once considered the day's events as something that should be taking a lot out of me or thought of anything that wasn't all about the boy getting better.
Once I did, of course, I realized that I felt like shit about the whole thing and yes it sucked. Turn that switch back off, go about the business of getting things done. It's one of those things that parents say "you can't understand if you don't have kids" about and people without kids think we sound like assholes.
Oh well, there are worse things.
the end result is the boy is where he needs to be even though getting him there falls into the category of things that if you asked me if I could do I would give you a shakey "maybe" but now that it's done I'm breathing easy and I feel like the big, hard, first step is out of the way.
Thanks for the good vibes everyone.
Come to the show tomorrow, I'll be doing comedy.
Seriously.
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