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.

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.