Sleep

I've been in Montana now for more than a week and my major "accomplishment" (which is not the point of vacation) has been catching up on sleep.

Last night I slept for 10.5 hours. I went to bed at 11:15 p.m. and woke up at 9:38 a.m.. Most other nights on this trip, I've gotten at least eight, often nine, hours of sleep. I had two nights of insomnia, but those weren't that bad. One morning, I woke up a 6:30 a.m. to go fly fishing.

I've really enjoyed catching up on sleep. At home, I started a new job about three months ago and I start work at 8:00 a.m. compared to my old job which started at 9:00 a.m. Getting up and ready an hour earlier than usual has been an adjustment.

Why the restfulness? Am I more tired than usual? Am I exhausted? 

The past two years (and more) have been exhausting, stressful, and depleting. The time has been spent recovering and learning more about myself, how I tick and why I act the way I do. In some ways, the time has flown by. Life was easier knowing Pedro was being cared for and learning to care for himself. At times, I felt like a failed mom, that I had to outsource parenting to an outside organization. Other times, I felt like the challenge of raising Pedro more than most parents could handle, and there was no shame in seeking help. 

Why the restfulness? Am I more anxious and depressed, and therefore sleeping more? Is my body preparing for the stressful weeks ahead of having Pedro home?

One of the symptoms of depression is sleeping more. I can't say I feel depressed, but I know I am stressed about bringing Pedro home. I know there will be hard times, that I will have to exercise setting boundaries in ways that I never had to before. This will be hard. Before when I set boundaries with the Boy, I feared alienating him, that perhaps we would be estranged forever. In the past few weeks, I have set some hard boundaries. I did not rescue. I did not rush to jump in and save him.

And it was fine. He didn't hate me for setting boundaries.

Why the restfulness? Am I more at peace, so sleep comes more easily? That after more than two years of helping my breath, I can finally relax?

Perhaps this is the best answer.

I feel good about my progress and the Boy's. He worked so hard for the past two years, taking his therapy seriously. I give him credit for all of the work he has done. I give myself credit, too. I have done quite a bit of inner work, and I have grown in ways that I have not expected. Most of all, my mind has stopped spinning. At times--often actually, I am thinking of nothing. My mind is quiet, still, something I don't think I have ever experienced in my life before. At first when the spinning stopped, I felt dull. When I told my therapist my mind stop spinning, he said, "You are feeling calm. That is normal."

Perhaps the best analogy is I feel like I have come back from a long and arduous trip, and I can finally sleep in my own bed again. I remember coming home from camping trips as a kid, and crashing into sleep. It felt so good to rest.

And so I feel the same now. It feels so good to sleep.

A River Runs Through It

The Boy has become a Montanan.

He has lived here for eleven months and is now a resident. 

"I don't plan on living in Seattle ever again permanently," he said. I think the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (aka CHAZ) might have been hard for him to explain to his non-Seattle friends at school. To the rest of the world, they saw CHAZ and thought "WTF?" To Seattlites, we knew this was the uber-left co-opting the Black Live Matter movement to justify taxing Amazon, not to change policing practices towards people of color.

The Boy is becoming an outdoorsman. He imagines his first car will be a pickup truck. He likes Dodge Chargers. He thinks there is nothing inherently wrong with Republicans and one day he might own a gun to hunt.

The Boy has become a Montanan.

Since the Boy can't mountain bike or hike or ski with his newly repaired knee, he has found a new sport. The Boy collects sports the way I collect books: just because I found a new book doesn't mean I don't love the ones I've already read. This sport is one that will likely never leave him: fly fishing. 

"In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing," opens Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It, a book read and re-read by the Boy. We watched the movie tonight at the Boy's request. The story takes place in Missoula, about 150 miles from the Boy's school. In Montana terms, 150 miles is considered the next town over. The scenery is breathtaking.

Norman's brother, Paul, is played by a young Brad Pitt. Paul is charming and smart and handsome and an artist when it comes to fly fishing. He also has a gambling problem and some other addictions that in the end ruin his life and break the hearts of his parents and sibling.

"Why do the people who need help the most refuse it?" Norman's girlfriend, J.C., asks. Her own brother is a very hot mess, but lacks the kindness and grace of Paul.

I was talking to a fellow boarding school mom the other day and she was moaning about the cost. Another parent a few months ago also kvetched about the cost. While I have no solid proof, my guess is that these families have some means. If they can afford this, why are they complaining? Don't they know they are lucky to be able to save their sons, cost be damned?

Why do I think this? I am the queen of investing and saving money. Shouldn't I be evaluating the cost-benefit analysis of this spending? Why am I so okay with shelling out an obscene amount of cash when people who I am guessing have way more money than me are complaining?

My brother was Paul Maclean, minus the fly fishing.

I couldn't save my brother, but perhaps I can save my son. If I lose him to Montana, I am okay with that, as long as he finds himself.

Sent Away and Country Roads

I dropped the Boy off at his boarding school tonight after spending two weeks with him in Kalispell after his surgery. Overall, it was good but I am exhausted. So exhausted.

A new phrase entered the Boy's vocabulary: Sent away.

Time for him is marked as before he was sent away and after he was sent away. This strikes a little pain in my heart, as if I chose to ship him off because he was a pain or an inconvenience. Not true.

"The phrase isn't good or bad," he told. "It isn't judgmental. It is what it is. I was sent away, even if it was for my own good."

The Boy's school is about thirty miles outside of Kalispell in the middle of nowhere. We were listening to Spotify when the song Country Roads by John Denver came on about ten miles from the school. Jack said the song reminded him of the movie Logan Lucky.

I said the song reminded me of the Boy. He knew why.

Last year on the Boy's sixteenth birthday, I drove him and two friends skiing. When this song came on, the three kids sang along. It was one of those rare moments when I saw the Boy happy, carefree, having fun.

"After you were 'sent away'," I told the Boy, "I was driving to work and this song came on. I started to sob. When the song was over, I played it again, and continued to cry."

He looked at me and smiled.

"You are weird."

I am not weird. I am a mom.

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.

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.

Montana Driving

I made it to Montana yesterday afternoon, in spite of the major winter weather storm that hit the state. I saw the snow fly, but none of it stuck to the road. Still, it was a little scary to be driving on narrow, winding, unfamiliar roads in winter conditions. I am a moderately aggressive driver from years of driving in the city. I kind of cringe when I see out of state license plates driving the wrong way down a one way street, or making a left turn from the right lane because they don't know where they are going. I had one out of town driver treat an intersection on Ravenna Blvd once as a round-about, when it isn't. He plowed through the intersection, and honked and swore at me because I didn't stop. I didn't stop because it isn't a roundabout and in my fifteen years of living in Seattle, I have never seen anyone stop there.

What is the point of me complaining about out of state drivers? In Montana, I am that idiot driver who is probably making everyone else batshit crazy. Someone Montana has a blog out there who is writing about how awful drivers with Washington plates are. "Why can't she drive ninety miles an hour like the rest of us?" they are probably complaining.

Anyway, Montana is god's country. It is amazingly beautiful, with beauty I didn't see from flying to Kalispell twice before. I didn't get the full glory because of the low clouds, but man mother nature is impressive out here. I don't have any pictures because I was driving, so you will have to trust me. I am shocked that I have never driven out east this far before. I've been to New Zealand to see spectacular natural beauty, when instead I could have hopped in the car and hit the road for eight hours.

I'll be driving more today, so I don't know if I'll get any photos this trip. I'll figure something out.