Reading, Heavy and Light

Last week, my team at work was trying to think of a group Halloween costume. One of my co-workers has a toddler and his family went as the Flintstones: Fred, Wilma and Pebbles. Thinking of cartoons from my childhood, I thought of Winnie the Pooh, which then got me thinking about Beatrix Potter.

Half of my team was born in India, so they have not necessarily read all of the same books I read as a child or I read to the Boy and Claire-Adele. The stories of Winnie the Pooh, when told in plot summary, sound completely ridiculous.

• Pooh visits Rabbit's hole and eats too much hunny. Pooh gets so fat, he can't squeeze out of Rabbit's hole. Rabbit paints a face on Pooh's bottom and hangs towels on his feet. Piglet sits outside with Pooh as he waits to get skinnier until they can pull him out of the hole.

The point of the story is friendship, that even when we do something stupid--which we will--good friends will be there for us, just like Piglet was there for Pooh.

The Boy loved Beatrix Potter. His favorite story when he was three or four or five was The Tale of Two Bad Mice. There were two kind mice who tried to set up home in a little girl's dollhouse. They explore the dollhouse and are surprised when the dolls don't talk back. They knock a few things over, and are dismayed when they try to eat the food and it is made of plaster.

"Bam! Bam! Bam!" One of the mice takes a fire place tool and beats the food to bits after he tried to eat it but couldn't. The beautiful thing about childhood is that I could read that passage over and over again to the Boy, and he would laugh each time as if he had ever heard it before. He would wait, knowing it was coming, and burst. It was pure joy.

Now that the Boy is getting settled, I am starting to find things to do that I enjoy, like reading. I just finished a very short book A Sin By Any Other Name: Reckoning with Racism and the Heritage of the South by Robert W. Lee IV, a great-nephew of the Confederate General Robert E. Lee. The most interesting thing I learned from the book was from his word choice. Instead of using the word racism, he uses "white supremacy." I found that interesting. To me, racism has the connotation that people of color are less than others. White supremacy implies white people think they are more than others. It is simple to think someone else can be less, but it much harder to justify why we are better than others.

Family

This weekend, I listened to Esther Perel's talk on modern love and relationships that she gave at the South by Southwest conference in 2018. She covers a lot of ground in this video, so I'll probably watch it again to get more out of it.

A topic that struck me was how families have changed over time as we have moved from an agricultural society, to an industrialized one, to now a global and connected society. I am trying to figure this out. Our communities have changed as people move around the country and world for the sake of a job and economic opportunity. A vast majority of my friends in Seattle were born and raised in another part of the U.S., and don't have family in town. Where I work, half of my team is from India and they often don't have extended family in town, either. Even though I come from a different culture than them, we both have our extended families living someplace else, and we have to figure out who is our community as a result. I never thought of having that commonality with them until now. I am two thousand miles away from my dad and they are seven thousand miles from their families.

For those of us not from Seattle, we have to find and/or make our own communities that serve as surrogate families. Perhaps these are families of choice. At my birthday party this year, I gave a speech where I told my friends that they are part of my Seattle family. I then told a short story about each person I invited and how much I appreciated them.

Are these people my family? Are they filling the role for what used to be filled by aunts and uncles, grandmas and grandpas? Yes and no. These friends are my friends, but they don't play the same role in the lives of my kids. My friends don't take my kids out for lunch or shopping as my Aunt Pat used to do with me. Family is a web, where everyone is connected to everyone else directly.

Not having family in town puts a lot of pressure on a marriage. When the marriage is under stress, there is less place to seek relief. For years, the only people in my family in Seattle were Jack, the Boy and Claire-Adele. Now, two out of three of those people live outside of Washington. I have my dad in Ohio, but my mom is mentally gone and my brother is crazy. I have aunts in Chicago who are busy with their own families. I can't easily turn to my aunts. Jack can't easily turn to is brother and sister. Who else do I have? Maybe I should have had a few more kids. Seriously. I love the ones I have, but maybe I should have had a few extra. It would at least give my kids perhaps more support as they grow older. Or maybe not -- maybe they too will move to where they find meaningful and fulfilling work.

I've been lucky--I have had lots of friends, neighbors and co-workers who have stepped in and supported me at my worst, at my lowest, my nadir when the Boy was in crisis and settling into treatment. If family is defined as people who stick with you through thick and thin, then I have learned watching the Boy go through Wilderness and treatment that I have lots of people here who are my tribe, my clan, my people. Even if they aren't directly connected to the Boy, they have helped him by helping me.

What did I do? and Enable v Fail

At the parents workshop at the Boy's therapeutic boarding school, the therapists asked the parents what we did to contribute to our kids needing to be there.

It was a tough question. Half of me resents it. Do they ask parents of kids with cancer what they did to cause their kids to have cancer? No. Do they ask parents of kids with Downs Syndrome what they did to have a kids with a developmental disability? No. Do they ask parents of kids with autism what they did? When I posed this question to the Boy, he replied with a hearty and hale "They vaccinated their kid!"

(He was kidding. Even though he is depressed and has anxiety, buried deep inside he has a wicked sense of humor. I can't wait until it comes back.)

The other half of me took this question "What did I do?" seriously. What did I do? Part of me thinks I should get a medal for dragging my son--who five months ago had the mood and personality of a wet bag of cement--to Wilderness and therapeutic boarding school.

Maybe the better question is what could I have done differently or what should I have done?

Before that, let me consider my options. But before that, let's differentiate parents from partners. Mutual relationships are quite different than parent and child.

Given that I am the Boy's mom, what were my choices?

Generally speaking, the green circles are better for raising a self-reliant and confident person. Yet, some parents can do all of the red clouds above, and their kid will be fine. Some parents can do all of the green stuff, and their kid will have issues. Sometimes the parents do the green clouds, and then that doesn't work, so they try to the red clouds and that doesn't work either. Maybe they try purple or orange clouds, which then means things get really messed up. Some of the kids in Wilderness experienced trauma outside of the home. Is a parent to blame for that? Hell. No.

Why don't the green circles automatically work? Because kids are people and people aren't widgets. There is no one strategy that will guarantee success, happiness, and self-actualization for kids. The kid needs the motivation to become a self-reliant adult, but sometimes mental health issues coupled with bad habits can prevent that from happening, not matter what the parent tries. As my manager famously said the other day, "If they don't open their mouth, you can't put the food in."

Two weeks ago, I asked the Boy what I could have done differently. "Nothing," he said. "I was a blank book with no title on the cover. If I didn't know what was going on or how I felt, how could I have expected you to know?"

Which brings me to the final point: yes, I could have done things differently. I could have parented more in the green clouds. Would that have prevented my son from needing Wilderness and boarding school? Very likely not.

Sixty Percent, Drama Queens, Sister Mamas & Because it is Hard

Last week when I got back from Montana, I went to lunch with my friend who has anxiety and depression. Sometimes he is quiet, sometimes not. Last week, he was talkative.

We went to lunch on Monday, and I was still recovering emotionally from seeing the Boy and physically from the drive and lack of sleep. I still struggle with how to be happy while I am coping with the Boy's depression and anxiety. Watching the Boy struggle with all of his emotional challenges is heartbreaking. He is making progress, but that progress means uncovering a lot of challenging thoughts. I was still pretty raw from the trip when we were at lunch.

My friend's anxiety has had physical ramifications. He used to be very athletic. Now, not so much.

"I am sixty percent of where I used to be," he said. "I could be sad about the forty percent that I lost, or I could be happy where I am at. What would be the point of looking back at where I was?"

It took me several days to absorb these thoughts. Part of that time I was recovering from seeing the Boy. Still, my friend is right. I need to find a way to be happy in spite of these challenges.

Ironically, one thing that has made it possible to even think about being happy is digging into my sorrow. My path to happiness hasn't been to go around the Boy's problems, but to go through. Before I acknowledged how much I was worried about the Boy committing suicide and checking out from life, I was a Drama Queen inside my own head and to my closest friends. I'd spin and spin about tangentially related issues. When I spoke about my fears in the group therapy session, the drama almost came to a complete stop. Without the constant mental distractions, it is much easier to think about being happy.

When my son was at Wilderness therapy, I met other parents in the program at the program's family wellness weekend. There, I met many sane and normal people who had kids with major challenges. Maybe some of these parents were a little on edge or crazy or sad or whatever (myself included) because they had a kid who went off the rails who was then put in the middle of the southwestern United States to sleep on the ground under a tarp for three months.

Since the parents weekend, I've kept in touch with three other moms. One of the moms calls us Sister Mamas. As I wrote before, I bought them each a journal.

Here is the letter I included with the journal.

Dear Sister Mamas,

Last week, I was driving back from Montana after visiting the Boy when I stopped in a gift shop in St. Regis. It was a long and exhausting visit where I got to witness the Boy having a panic attack and then watch him for the first time articulate what he was feeling. He was so open with his emotions which was great but it was difficult to hear all of the fear and shame he was holding. I had no idea what to do. I felt glad he was in boarding school because his sadness was so deep and his anxiety so strong. There was no way I have the skill set to take care of him.

When I walked into the gift shop, I saw this journal that said on the cover “I think I’ll just be happy today.” I thought what a load of crap. There is no way that can ever be me with all that I have gone through, am going through and will go through. The book is full of platitudes that I would have liked in middle school. Ugh.

And then I thought holy cow how did I become so cynical? Maybe I could try to be happy in spite all of this. Maybe the platitudes apply. Maybe I need a flowery journal with a cute little bird on the cover. Maybe I need a dose of that blind and sunny optimism I had in 7^thgrade that I found in a small town in Montana. Maybe I need to find some hope and happiness so my son can find hope and happiness for himself.

Then I was grateful for Montana—the entire state--that the houses residential treatment programs for kids with issues. I was glad for the kind (and super intense) parents at the boarding school. I was grateful for the self-aware kids at the Boy’s school. And of course, I am grateful for all of you and sharing the experience of wilderness.

Instead of one journal, I bought four. To paraphrase John F. Kennedy, I am asking you to be happy, not because it is easy, but because it is hard. 

·     Life doesn’t need to be perfect to be wonderful.

·     You are amazing. Remember that.

·     Every journey begins with a single step.

·     Some days you have to create your own sunshine.

·     Mistakes are proof that you are trying.

·     Always remember you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.

All of this is easy to think when life is going well, but harder to believe when life is dark and seems impossible.

Thank you so much for all of your inspiration, vulnerability and honesty.

Lauren

Jump

I've been offline due to simple exhaustion lately. Saturday, I slept for most of the day, and today I have been super sluggish. I think my body is recovering from the previous week of emotional work, followed by a week of my day job.

A little more than a week ago I wrote about the Boy's suicidality. Since then, I've been uncovered some of my deeper, repressed fears.

In 2016, my family went to France for a week. We flew to Paris out of Vancouver, B.C., because the airfare was significantly cheaper than flying out of Seattle. Jack wasn't 100% certain of his work schedule when we booked the tickets. It ended up he had more time for vacation than he thought so we spent a few days in Vancouver before the trip. We stayed in a two bedroom apartment at the Sutton Place Hotel so the kids could have more space and privacy. The place had a cool layout, where there were zigs and zags to get to the different corners of the flat. We were on the 17th floor and the view from the balcony looked out over the quiet, residential part of the neighborhood as opposed to looking out on the busy-ness of Burrard Street.

The morning to fly to France had arrived. Jack got up and bought breakfast and we ate in the apartment. It was around eight a.m. and we had about twenty minutes before we needed to leave. I think I said something to the Boy like "Please use a plate to eat your croissant" and he flipped out. He got really irritated and started stomping and screaming that he didn't want to go to France, that whole idea was stupid and why were we going. He went and chilled out on the balcony. I was keeping an eye on him but was torn between giving him his privacy to mellow out which he often needs versus hovering and making sure he didn't do anything stupid. I did not want to escalate the conflict before we were supposed to leave on an international flight. I stepped into the master bedroom to brush my teeth or finish packing, and then I went back into living room to check on the Boy. I looked out on the balcony and he wasn't there.

My first thought was he jumped.

My second thought was Do I go to the balcony and look over the edge to see if he jumped?

My third thought was Do I want to see his dead, limp, bloody body on the ground?

My fourth thought was Maybe he's not dead and I could call an ambulance.

My fifth thought was I wonder if anyone saw him jump, and if they did, would they be screaming at the horror of seeing a body fall from a hotel balcony? I'm not hearing anything, so could that be a good sign?

All of this raced through my mind as I raced to the balcony. When I got there, I didn't see him, so I screamed his name, it echoing off the tall buildings through the sleepy Vancouver morning.

"What?!" the Boy said pissed off, stepping out of the second bathroom. "What do you want?"

My heart skipped a beat or six. "I didn't know where you were," I said.

"I am right here," he said. "What is your problem?"

Somehow, the Boy managed to calm down, and we made it to France, where he had two or three more panic attacks.

This week, I was walking Fox through Victor Steinbrueck Park and I saw a condo building that Jack and I had looked at last year before we bought this place. All of condos we looked at were in multi-story buildings. We discussed in a normal tone of voice what if we got a condo with a balcony--would the Boy jump off and kill himself? How likely would it be? Should we create a rule that the Boy was not allowed to kill himself by jumping off the balcony? In the end, we got a townhouse that opens to a private courtyard. We have a balcony, but it is one story off the ground. The Boy might sprain an ankle if he jumped, like it would be very unlikely that he would kill himself.

A condo building with beautiful views that we did not choose.

Since the Boy did not jump to his death from that balcony in Vancouver, should I have still been afraid when looking at condos? Was I the irrational one, making a big deal out of something that didn't happen?

I don't know, but I think I was right to error on the side of caution. Sometimes when someone commits suicide, people say they didn't see it coming. Sometimes people put on a good face for their public friends, but their family knows their misery. Or, their friends know but their family doesn't. Or no one knows. In this case, we knew the Boy had been close to the edge. When he showed similar behavior, I would get really, really scared, and try to calm him down as much as possible, never knowing if it would be enough or not.

I was talking to a friend of mine today whose son was at the same Wilderness program at the same time as the Boy. I told her that I was now able to look into the abyss of the Boy's suicidality without freaking out. We discussed how "normal" it was to incorporate our fears about our sons into our everyday lives without realizing exactly how messed up it was.

Five months ago, I don't think I could have thought about incident in the Vancouver hotel or how we talked about the Boy jumping off the balcony of our condo. Now I can. I hope this is part of the healing, the recovery, for both him and me.

Purple Mountain Majesty & Strike That

Yesterday, I drove home from Montana. The drive from Kalispell to St. Regis is the most beautiful drive I have ever taken in my life, and I have been to New Zealand which is amazing. The scenery was breathtaking. I now know where "purple mountain majesty" comes from. I didn't take any pictures because I was driving, but here is a map of my route, in case you want to know. The drive goes along Flathead Lake, through plains and then along a river in the valley between mountains.

My manager had been teasing me that these trips to see the Boy are vacation.

"No, this was not a vacation," I'd say, thinking of the hours of therapy I'd been through.

"You just said you took the most beautiful ride ever! How is that not vacation?"

He has a point.

How do I reconcile the beauty and the pain of this trip, hold both in my hands and heart at the same time? That the Boy is doing better even though he has a long way to go before he is functional? That I love him even though Saturday he ignored me which pissed me off and made me feel like I was an inadequate parent? Today, I sent a message to my friends I met at the parents weeks for the Boy's Wilderness Camp. One of the women calls us "Sister Mamas" which I love. I wrote a note to them saying "I am glad he is getting help." I was going to add "but I wish he didn't need it." I struck that from the note to these women. I've decided to not add this caveat to every conversation.

I am trying to incorporate the Boy's mental health struggle into my day-to-day and still maintain my sanity. When I was in St. Regis, there is a gift shop. I found a journal that looked like something I would have bought in seventh grade, but it spoke to me. I bought four: one for me and three for the other Sister Mamas.

Three weeks ago, I would have thought this cheerful little bird was full of shit. Now after starting to read Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning and learning at Wilderness that negative emotions only last thirty seconds to three minutes if you just sit with them, I might learn to find happiness while the Boy is away.

Gratitude helps, too. I am grateful for Jason, one of the Boy's supervisors. I am grateful for the entire state of Montana, for hosting a place like this boarding school, and people who dedicate their lives to helping kids like the Boy find their way.

Glacier

The Boy is kind of an asshole.

He didn't talk to me at all yesterday, the last day of his pass. We talked for a few minutes on the car ride back to school, but it was hard for me to concentrate on a therapeutic conversation while driving 60-70 mph at dusk on a winding, hilly road with deer popping out.

My therapist would be proud of me saying that. Normally, I can twist myself into a pretzel rationalizing anyone's miserable behavior to me. "So-and-so is acting this way because they are insecure..." even when that behavior is hurtful to me. I can also find my own fault in situations: "Well so-and-so is upset with me because I said/did..." I cut some people a lot of slack, perhaps too much. Cutting slack to someone who is kind and respectful 90% of the time is reasonable and should be expected. If we expected everyone to be 100% all of the time, the world wouldn't work. People who are consistently difficult, hurtful or untruthful...that is a different story. Then you have to decide whether to cut slack or cut bait.

Most sixteen year old boys are assholes, especially to their parents. I feel sorry for the Boy (See? I'm doing it--cutting slack) because a usual teen would be expected to lash out at their parents or give them the silent treatment. Now that the Boy is in treatment, he is supposed to talk about his feelings with us, which given the natural order of things, would be the very last thing a teenage boy would want to do.

(I am not really sure if I should call him the Boy anymore, either. He weighs 175 pounds, gaining thirty pounds since he left home in June. Think 145 pounds is the max limit for boys. Anything more is a man.)

The Boy's pass for the past three days was challenging. I had him all to myself and I am not the adrenaline junkie his father is. The Boy was frustrated the Friday when it appeared that I wasn't having fun mountain biking. We talked on the side of the mountain for about a half an hour (he talked, I listened) and then he stormed off on his bike. Fortuitously (hey, I spelled that right without spellcheck!), the Boy on his rant ride crossed paths with Jason, one of the adults who supervises him at boarding school. The Boy and I were separated for a half an hour before we found each other on the path.

"I fucked up," he said. "And don't tell me I didn't because I did."

"You fucked up," I said.

Friday night, the Boy talked about this experience with Jason. I didn't know at the time, but the Boy was supposed to spend part of Saturday talking to me about how we both trigger off the other's anxiety. In other words, I get anxious to talk to the Boy, which makes him anxious to talk to me, which makes me anxious. I know that this conversation would have been anxiety producing to start, which then means his best coping strategy is to avoid it.

Saturday, he didn't talk to me. We went to breakfast. We went to Glacier. We drove ~200 miles together in the car. He didn't talk. Giving me the silent treatment for a whole day kind of sucked. It was hurtful.

I did learn one thing--how to be present at while hiking and enjoy the scenery even though I was both sad and pissed.

The next things I am going to learn is to tell him, not that he is an asshole, but that it was hurtful that he didn't talk to me all day Saturday.

What Would Elizabeth Bennet Do?

A few of my friends, as am I, are going through really difficult times in their marriages. As I talk to my friends and think about myself, I am starting to ask "What would Elizabeth Bennet do?"

For those of you not entirely familiar with Pride and Prejudice written in 1813 by Jane Austen and turned into a dozen movies in more recent times, Elizabeth Bennet is the main character who meets Mr. Darcy, an intelligent, handsome, wealthy and brooding man with limited social graces. (Mr. Darcy grew up with no one ever calling him on his bullshit because he was Mr. Darcy.) Mr. Darcy falls in love with Elizabeth and he asks her to marry him against his better judgment because of her low connections, etc. to which she tells him she wouldn't marry him if he were the last man in the world:

“From the very beginning—from the first moment, I may almost say—of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form the groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.”

Ah, Elizabeth Bennet and the power of no. The power of "I find this behaviour unacceptable." The power of "I won't put up with this bullshit even if you are smart, handsome and rich."

We must also look at Ms. Bennet's behaviour before she tells Mr. Darcy to fuck off. She refuses to marry the insufferable Mr. Collins even though he would secure her family's estate after Mr. Bennet dies. She dallies with Mr. Wickham, whom she later realizes is a cad and then she backs off her affections for him. This is a woman who knows what she does and does not want. She has standards.

When Elizabeth said no to Mr. Darcy,  the ball was in his court. What did he do then? To finish the story, Mr. Darcy listened to Elizabeth, and then goes out of his way to demonstrate to her that he is not the self-absorbed jerk that she thinks he is. The romance isn't just saved because Elizabeth spoke. She was walked away, Mr. Darcy acted and Elizabeth revised her opinion of him; hence, Pride and Prejudice is considered one of the great feminist love stories of all time.

Being Elizabeth Bennet is a lot harder once you are married, but shouldn't the same standards apply to the people we are married, too, perhaps even more so? I was reading an article on Medium.com which also channels Elizabeth Bennet: "You cannot have a real relationship unless you are willing to leave the relationship."

The challenge is harder when there are kids and a mortgage. It makes it harder to walk away, and so people put up with greater and greater levels of inappropriate behaviour. This isn't to say conflict and open disagreement is bad. As the Medium article by Brianna West states,

"Couples who are more confrontational are typically healthier and happier. Can you say your truth? Can you risk losing the relationship? The more you can say ‘I am unhappy,’ the happier you can be. This is because the more honest you can be about your needs, the more you’re giving your partner a chance to understand and adapt to them. When your primary goal is to sustain the relationship because you’re afraid to lose it, you’re more inclined to stay quiet and small, even though you feel disrespected or neglected."

Jane Austen couldn't have said it better herself.

Spinning & Rising

When I first thought of the name of this blog post, I thought of the Maya Angelou poem Still I Rise.

I rise.
I rise.
I rise.

Two days ago, I think I hit the bottom and now I am coming back up. How do I know? My mind has stopped spinning. I am tired. I am exhausted. The distractions are gone. Instead of drinking or using drugs, my mind created its own distractions where I'd focus all of my attention and energy on outside drama that I had created for myself. When there was a break that made me lose a distraction, I'd find myself looking straight into the abyss of the Boy and I couldn't go there. I was grieving his loss, but more I think I was imagining he was dead, not safe at boarding school, that there would be a possibility that I would never see him again. Of course, I will miss him, but hopefully not with the same dark, grieving intensity. Here is where my emotional, reptile brain took over. I was living in a primal state where my first and only thought was taking care of my child.

Two days ago, I admitted my deepest, darkest fear to a room full of supportive strangers and my kid's therapist and (more importantly) I have seen the Boy and he seems better. Now when I am sitting by myself alone, I have moments where I have no thoughts--I am just there and present. This is a major change from the past few months where my mind was always whirring in the background, and I would have to make enough noise in the front of my mind that the background wouldn't come to the front. I feel like I've lost fifty IQ points in the past few months. My mind was so pre-occupied that I couldn't truly concentrate. I haven't finished any new books except one collection of personal essays that my friend DJ had a piece in, and those essays either dealt with death or were funny. I haven't read a newspaper meaningfully. I've read parenting books because I've had to.

My brain hurts from all of the stress it had trying to keep my mind away from the most terrifying thing I could imagine: that my son might kill himself.

Wilderness therapy was supposed to be the reset button, which is was. There we learned how dark the Boy's mind really was. We knew he was in a bad space because he physically was not participating in the world. He was lying in bed.

"Aren't you glad he stopped going to school?" my dad once asked me. "If he had kept going to school in spite of all his issues, you might not have been so motivated to get him help."

That was a weird question to ask, but the answer was yes. Of course, I wish the Boy didn't have these horrifically dark thoughts where he didn't think he was worthy of loving and living. Wilderness uncovered the tumor. Boarding school is helping to shrink it.

I didn't realize I was in a bad space until another mom asked me a very simple question: "What are you doing to take care of yourself?" As I wrote yesterday, I lost it and started to cry. The emotional dam broke. This was a safe place to break down because I could look into the abyss after seeing the Boy. I could then meet him for lunch and spend the afternoon taking a walk or playing pool or Foosball. I told him how worried I was that he might kill himself, and he could listen. He could tell me about his fears and why he felt the day he did. I feel like he is on the path to getting better, so when I look down into the abyss, I can see hope.

How do I know I am better? In addition to my much, much quieter mind, for the first time in ages, I thought about my career. Not my job, but what is it that I want to do next, where do I want to go instead of doing what needed to be done because it was in front of me. I think of my friend listening to me for hours prattle on about all of the drama in my life. Not that the drama has gone away, but isn't as pressing or in the forefront of my mind. The noise has abated.

And so I rise.

Suicidality

Hopefully, this will be the most depressing blog post I've ever written, and by that I mean I hope I never have a post nearly as dark as this one.

I couldn't even call it "Suicide." I had to give it a softer, less harsh name by changing the verb into a noun. It sounds more clinical, less personal that way.

This isn't about my suicidality, by the way. It is about the Boy's. 

I am in Montana at the Boy's school for parents' week. I should probably go visit Claire-Adele at college in a few weeks to see what her parents' weekend looks like. It is probably a bunch of alums from that university schmoozing. This parents' weekend probably has more education, power, money and white privilege than an Ivy League alumni club, but instead of talking about how great the parents are or networking, we are sitting in group therapy discussing how our life choices impacted our sons. It is brutal.

Before I get into the dark part, I met the Boy's English teacher yesterday. I'll call him Matt. The Boy wanted us to meet him. Matt is a soft spoken guy with a mess of red curly hair and glasses. 

"I enjoy having the Boy in class," said Matt. "He is eloquent and a hard worker." The Boy had English last term, but not this term. "When will I see you next?" asked Matt asked the Boy. 

"So you are doing your homework?" Jack and I asked the Boy.

The teacher looked at the Boy as if he were surprised that this kid used to not do his homework. But he probably wasn't surprised because most if not all of the kids at this school had checked out of life which is why they are there.

This is an about face from where the Boy was a year ago where the Boy was skipping class and not doing any work. His English teachers for both freshman and sophomore years were toxic, and that is me being nice. Ms. Narcissist was a nut case and Mr. Narcissist (no relation to Ms. Narcissist) was arrogant and self-absorbed. Toxic teachers aren't solely to blame for the Boy checking out, but they certainly didn't help.

Back to the topic. Monday, one of the therapists (note: there are more than one in the group therapy sessions) asked the parents "What is your role in your child being here? How did you contribute to this? Sometimes things that you thought were helping were making things worse, not better."

Oy. So I thought about it. Of course, I believe I am perfect so I had no role in any of this. I thought and I thought and I thought.

When I got to the group, I gave a little speech. I am good at giving speeches. I was involved in education politics for a long time. I've given lots of speeches.

I don't know how I contributed to this. Jack has said he was afraid to talk to the Boy for fear of setting the Boy off and then him running in front of a bus or jumping off a bridge and killing himself. I remember a time when the Boy was in seventh grade. We had gotten tickets to see Billy Elliott which the Boy had wanted to see. The day of the show, the Boy was a cranky jerk. Claire-Adele said something to trigger him at the beginning of dinner and he ran off. We had no idea where he was, and when Jack would text him, the Boy would text back "fuck off." It was highly unpleasant. 

The Boy settled down for the show, but as soon as we got back in the car, he was back to being a dick. I asked him to turn his phone off and he got pissed. Not typical teenage, grumpy pissed, but like I had tapped into a deep seated rage. When we got home, Jack walked the dog while I tried to get the Boy to go to bed. He picked up his laptop, and acted like he was going to throw it on the ground. 

"Don't do that," I said. "You will break your computer."

"It won't break," he said as he chucked it against the floor. I picked it up and the screen was shattered. I was pissed. I had been dealing with this angry kid who basically ruined the entire evening and now he had trashed his computer.

The Boy's face turned white, and he ran out of the house. I figured he was just going to run to cool off. About twenty minutes later, the Boy and Jack appeared. I was still pissed and I started going into the Boy. Jack pushed his hands down, our family sign for calm down. I did that once to the Boy when we were in a small car accident, and it worked. He automatically chilled.

Jack had run into the Boy at the Ravenna footbridge. Jack was there with Fox and the Boy had run over there, looking over the edge, thinking about jumping. This bridge is about eight stories off the ground. If he didn't die, he might have broken his neck and been permanently injured. I am not sure which would be worse: to be dead or to be paralyzed.

That was episode one of many when we feared the Boy might do something impulsive and rash to end his life. Recently, I found on my computer a story the Boy wrote for school freshman year about a kid who considers suicide but doesn't because he doesn't want to ruin his mother's life.

This past April, I was talking to a friend who has anxiety and depression. We were at lunch and we hadn't talked about the Boy in a while.

"How is he doing?" the friend asked.

"He hasn't gone to school since December," I said, which is when my friend lost his shit.

"Lauren, why isn't he in treatment? It is not like it has been a few weeks--the Boy hasn't gone to school for months. What are you thinking?" This friend is from India and in his corner of the world, it is perfectly acceptable, nay--encouraged, to tell people when you think they are ruining their life. I got the gist after about twelve minutes, but he kept the firehose running for an hour.

"Lauren, the Boy is home alone all day while you are at work. You have no idea how dark his thoughts could get." His face clouded over at the mention of this. I am guessing he could relate to how dark the world could get.

Jack had been stalling on getting the Boy into treatment. That weekend while Jack was cooking dinner, I filled out the application for the Education Consultant, the woman who would find the Boy a wilderness program and then a boarding school. The ball was rolling.

What is my role in getting the Boy to Montana? I thinking about it now, my role is that he is there at all. I helped to keep him alive long enough to get him into treatment. After Billy Elliott and few other similar incidents, I was afraid to confront the Boy about anything negative for fear of him killing himself. 

After I said something like that to the group, a mom asked me "What are you doing to take care of yourself?" and I burst into tears. 

"I have been distracting myself," I said. "And when my distractions go away, I am looking into the abyss."

Admitting something like that in a room full of supportive strangers and therapists was so hard and yet so freeing.