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.