I am taking a brief moment today where I wont be making you laugh. I do realize that is the primary purpose of this blog, to ” Be Peachy”. Today I have to write a post that warrants personal attention to a person who will never read it.
If you are a friend you have no doubt constantly heard me refer to the young Prince and probably read a guest Post or my references of my about to graduate from college daughter Sam-I-Am. Many readers are oddly unaware of my other child. My Dude. He is going to be 20 this year and is the source of the only 3 part series I have written, called, ” The Hardest thing I hope I ever write.”
My Dude has lead a life of struggle, he is no angel, despite his problems and all of our efforts we could not help him. We tried our best, we failed him, but when he is ready we will try again, and again, and again, and sadly again.
He left his mark on each of our souls in this family. They say when one person has a disease the entire family is sick. Whoever the hell “they” are, that’s about the only thing “they” ever got right.
He also left his marks on our house. The written on walls, the slammed doors, the broken dishes. Silly little things really in the scope of things. When you consider how many times we have started over. House fires, floods, hurricanes. When his lows were so low and the anger beast would flow through him raging out his fists and into the walls. Nothing was safe.
For years the holes would multiply, weekly, monthly, eventually I learned it was silly to fix them because they would come back, bigger, and with more vengeance as if to say, ” how dare you not acknowledge me?” So we stopped. We stopped fixing the holes, we focused on simply surviving in our broken world, the best we could. We made horribly hard choices that parents shouldn’t have to make. He grew bigger, stronger, and his disease became more pronounced and him more distant.
Then 2 years ago this week what little was left of my world crashed down. My Sam I am, left for the University, she was my only daughter, my first born, my best friend, the first thing I had ever done right, and honestly my biggest confidant. I wanted her to escape the madness, to spread her wings and go, but the selfish child in me wanted my friend, my baby, my daughter to stay. It was 2 weeks before that I received a medical diagnosis in regards to myself that I kept secret for 3 weeks so she would go because she is the kind of girl who would give up her life to stay behind and help. The diagnosis was so shocking that the amount of research just to pronounce it was mind boggling not to mention how to deal with it, and adjusting our lifestyles and goals around it. But we did. A couple months later Dude, had a break down, freak out, and then he left.
I have spent 1 1/2 years of him being gone, he did come back briefly twice. It didn’t go well either time, and both times he left on bad terms. Once after a physical altercation with me. Every night I go to bed not knowing for sure where my son is. If he has eaten, if he is safe. To be frank I don’t know every night if he is alive. When my phone rings from another state or an unknown number in the middle of the night chills run up my spine and I feel like I will vomit, as I prepare for that phone call that no parent wants. Because I don’t know. I beg him to get to a Doctor. A hospital. A police Station. A shelter. Anywhere.
He’s never had a job. He’s never driven a car. He receives no welfare, no medicaid, no anything, he’s not a drain on your tax dollar, but does have mental illness and he is walking around this country. How has he survived? I have no idea. He is good looking. Very good looking. He’s also very smart, and a great con man. I love him dearly but I am not looking at the world through rose colored glasses here. I wouldn’t want anyone to cross his path because honestly I have no clue what he is capable of, he hasn’t been on meds in over a year and I can’t legally make him take any because legally he is an adult.
So for this past year and a half, when I don’t hear from him for a week or longer, and I worry, or I get a call of him just talking crazy I can sit on my stairs and run my hand over that hole in the wall and try to absorb some of his pain. Because I am his Mom. It’s my job. Kiss the bobo, make it all better right? I can’t. I have never been able to make it all better, and he goes from loving me to wanting me dead in one deep breath. So I leave the holes in the wall to remind me of his pain, to remind me of how I can’t fix him, I can’t help him. All I can do is love him. That he is real, even if he isn’t here.
Then over the last 3 weeks he was calling 10-15 times a day and full of tiger blood and all grandious like Charlie Sheen, and for some reason the stars lined up and a guy came by that did drywall and I hired him and paid him. My dad went in the hospital last Friday I spent the entire day in the emergency room until we got him admitted. I got home and at midnight I got a call from another State that my Dude had been picked up, they wanted to know about his mental health he had asked them to call me. I had to say horrible things about him, to strangers. Who think I am a mother who doesn’t love her son. What they don’t know is I love him enough to say those things so they will get him help. I hope.
In a strange twist of fate. Due to the law, I can’t find out if they have my son, if he is alive, where he is, how he is. Nothing. Tomorrow will make 6 days since I have had an update. It’s eating at me. My dad is home already thank goodness. Yet I have to go on, with work, baseball games for the Prince, The Droids birthday is on Mothers Days, then Sam I am turns 22 on the 11th and graduates on the 13th. Yet I know nothing about my Dude. I kick out jokes, posts, tweets, pictures, why isn’t my phone ringing DAMN IT !!!! I am his mother, just let me know he is ok please.
I went to the stairs today, put my hand on the wall and the drywall had been fixed. I just sat on there and felt as though I couldn’t have betrayed him more if I had tried. I’m so sorry honey. I hope one day you will understand that I love you to beyond the universe and back.
To all the parents that feel like they are failing, messing up, being judged, on the edge or losing it. You will survive. I can’t guarantee your sanity, but you will survive. Hang in there. Try to remember to smile every chance you get, honestly it helps. I promise.