Defiant Little Shit, or the Pit of Despair

I was talking to a parent with a kid in residential treatment (PKRT) recently about the Boy. Her son knew my son somewhere along the way so when she read Jack's article, she reached out to me to commiserate. I told her a story about when the Boy was a defiant little shit.

"'Defiant little shit' is a technical term," I said. She laughed.

All kids reach a stage in their lives when they become a defiant little shit (DLS). If a kid doesn't become a DLS at some point, they are either 

a) too young (but just wait), or

b) there is something wrong with a kid who can't stand up for themselves or have boundaries by time they are eighteen, or

c) the parents are super controlling or drunk and the kid is afraid to act out. 

I remember a vivid incident when the Boy was a DLS. It was May 2016 and we had tickets to Billy Elliot. Two months prior, the Boy saw a flier for the show that came in the mail and asked if we could see it. 

"Sure," I said and ordered the tickets. I ordered them early enough to get seats in the third row. Jack and I had been taking the kids to the Seattle Children's Theatre for years, so it made sense they would show interest in theatre for adults.

The day of the show came and the Boy was in a bad place. He was grouchy and tired and probably hungry. He was in no mood to see the play I had bought tickets to months earlier, but fuck it, we were going.

The Boy sulked in the car on the way there. He had a tantrum in the restaurant before the show, triggered by very mild rudeness from his sister. He stormed out the restaurant, didn't eat and was texting Jack "Fuck you!" when he was asked to return to the table. 

The show was about to start, and the Boy settled down. I was anxious during the most of the show as we were in the third row. What if the Boy had a fit and disturbed the performers? I had a flashback to a Northwestern v Washington basketball game where he punched his sister for leaving him behind at the concession stand. The Boy was lost for twenty minutes. When he came back to our seats, he slugged Claire-Adele. We were sitting four rows behind the Northwestern bench. The security guard gave us the stink eye and watched us for the rest of the game, ready to eject my family if the situation got out of hand.

Fortunately, the Boy was fine during Billy Elliot.

After the show was another story. Here he was a defiant little shit. He sat in the front seat of the car where I usually sit. I told him to turn his phone off in the car, and he didn't. 

When we got home, Jack walked the dog and the Boy melted down. He raged and threatened to smash his computer against the floor.

"Don't you dare!" I said.

"It won't break!" he yelled back as he chucked it against the floor.

The screen was demolished. Shattered.

"What the fuck were you thinking?" I screamed. I was pissed after being on edge for the previous five hours.

The Boy's anger flipped on a dime to sorrow. The gross realization of the damage -- physical and emotional -- hit home. He left the house. I texted Jack that the Boy was on the loose. I was glad he was gone. He needed to cool down.

Except he didn't cool down. He walked to the footbridge in Ravenna and looked over the edge. Jack was there with the dog, talking him off the edge, both literally and figuratively.

This week, after talking to this new mom with a kid in treatment, I realized that for the past four years, I have lived in fear that my son might kill himself, a fear that grew until the Boy was sent to treatment. It became more tangible as the Boy receded from the world, escaping into Netflix and Youtube and Instagram.

This week, the Boy called from Montana. He is been given the green light to run from his physical therapist since his ACL surgery. 

"Mom, I ran on the track instead of the treadmill. I hate treadmills. I hate them so much I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it and these treadmills had Netflix," he said. He paused.

"I passed up Netflix to run on the track," he said. He knew meaning of this was not lost on me, that this was a major development. A sober alcoholic can pass by a bar and not walk in. The Boy passed a screen and didn't watch.

I finally feel like I can breathe. After four years, my fear of my son killing himself is abating. 

Now that my fear is receding, I can step back and see the pit of despair that I was living in. I had glimpses of it before and it terrified me. Now, I can see the hole for what it was. I am starting to recover from the trauma.

In my recovery group, there are lots of people who became lost their sanity themselves after living with someone with addiction. 

Why is it that we who live with someone with mental health issues or addiction become so sick ourselves? Why?

If my son had cancer and I dropped everything to save his life, I'd be considered heroic? Yet, when I tried to save my son from anxiety, depression, suicidality and screen addiction, I became just as crazy?

Bandwidth

This weekend, my dad commented that I haven't posted recently on my blog.

This past summer has been crazy, with two trips to Montana, the Boy coming home, Claire-Adele coming home, layoffs at the company where I work and the Boy transitioning to the next phase of his program where he will attend a public high school in Montana while living with a handful of his peers from the boarding school (residential treatment? in-patient treatment?) in a house in town.*

This weekend, I was super tired. I slept a lot on Sunday, which was good. I'm still tired, but I will make it through the week, I hope.

As I am recovering from a busy few months and a very intense two years, I am taking time to take care of myself. The bandwidth I have to take care of myself is expanding, and I am almost feeling flooded by the need to attend a bunch of stuff that has been unattended for years. I feel like I moved into a house years ago, and then a bunch of unwanted guests moved in a trashed the place. Now, the unwanted guests are out and I am assessing the damage. Do I think of my family as unwanted guests? No, but rather I didn't have the appropriate boundaries in place to keep myself sane, and to keep my inner space clean and calm.

No wonder I am exhausted.

The good news is, I actually am looking forward to cleaning up the mess. I am looking forward to having a clean, calm inner space. I am feeling better as I address these issues that have been festering. I am re-learning to stand up for myself. I used to stand up for myself, but somewhere it got lost along the way.

I am glad to be finding my way back.

* Saturday night, the Boy called. It had been his turn to make dinner. He made chili and was exceptionally proud of his homemade cornbread.

"I don't care"

I went for a walk today with one of my former work colleagues. He is gay and originally from a conservative part of the country.

"When people in my hometown see me with my boyfriend and figure out we are a couple, they act all super sweet. It is performative," he said. "When people see us in Seattle, they don't care if we are gay or not."

I don't care. What does that mean? There are so many ways those three words can be interpreted. It is like the expression "Too bad" where tone matters. The French have multiple ways to say "too bad" ranging in meaning from "my deepest condolences your grandmother died" (je suis desolee) to "I am sorry your car broke down (quel domage). Tant pis, like "I don't care," can be kind or cruel, meaning either "oh well" or "tough shit" depending on the context and tone.

My friend H from college lived in Taiwan until moved to the US when she was seven. While her English is undistinguishable from a native born American, she was missing a few idioms.

"Lauren," she asked me once, years ago, "where do you want to go for dinner?"

"I don't care," I replied.

"How can you not care? You should care where we go to dinner!" she replied. 

Uh...I thought I was giving her space to chose the restaurant. Fortunately, I realized she was having a glitch in her internal American dictionary. I recovered with "I am open and flexible with where we go."

Still, "I don't care" is tricky. It can seen as belittling or dismissive. "I don't care that the former police chief in Seattle was a Black woman" can mean I am simply tolerant. I could mean I am apathetic. I could mean that I am embracing a non-white man leading the city's police force. 

At best, "I don't care" is imprecise. Sometimes imprecise can be fine, but other times, it matters. Like all other language, half of communication is what the other person hears. My friend H's feelings were hurt when I told her I don't care, which of course was not at all my intension. 

I apologized because I care more about her feelings than I did about where we ate dinner.

The Kids are Back, or Boarding School Boy and Poker

And all is well.

For the most part.

Eh.

Families are hard.

I wish my family was easy

but is it not.

I wish I was relaxed

not anxious about everything.

I am trying to change

but is it hard. 

Earlier this week I was going to write about how splendid and wonderful it was to have my family all together, and how fantastic and wonderful the Boy is doing. He is doing so much better. I feel like he is out of the woods in so many ways. He understands what his anxiety is, and he's learning tools to help him manage it himself. One of our family's many therapists said "Emotional maturity is being honest with yourself." The Boy is getting there, and I am so grateful and relieved.

Saturday, the kids taught Jack and I how to play Texas Hold 'Em poker. Both kids play regularly at school. The Boy plays one a week at school. (Replacing drug, alcohol and screen addictions with gambling addictions, or just a fun, social game? Anyhow...) Claire-Adele plays with friends in the dorm. The Boy in some ways is living the college life, minus the freedom to make his own schedule. He hangs with friends and peers 24/7, from brushing his teeth to every meal to all entertainment to sleeping in the same room. Layer in fifteen months of residential therapy, and the Boy is so mature. He seemed more like a twenty-three year old than a seventeen year old. He is learning self-mastery, the ability to manage himself instead of needing an authority figure to do it for him. Some people need someone to give them rules, then they can follow the rules. That is not self-mastery. That is rule following.

As a parent, I feel tremendous relief.

Then, the bickering started. 

Oy.

I hate bickering.

It makes me stressed.

I need to detach

and look at the positive sides of 

my kids.

Loneliness from Working and Living Remotely, or Four Months Left til the Zombie Apocalypse

Along with millions of Americans, I am officially five months into working remotely. 

How's it going?

A few weeks ago while I was in a coffee shop waiting for my barista to make my mocha, I read an article in the Wall Street Journal by Chip Cutter Companies Start to Think Remote Work Isn’t So Great After All.

Now, as the work-from-home experiment stretches on, some cracks are starting to emerge. Projects take longer. Training is tougher. Hiring and integrating new employees, more complicated. Some employers say their workers appear less connected and bosses fear that younger professionals aren’t developing at the same rate as they would in offices, sitting next to colleagues and absorbing how they do their jobs.

Months into a pandemic that rapidly reshaped how companies operate, an increasing number of executives now say that remote work, while necessary for safety much of this year, is not their preferred long-term solution once the coronavirus crisis passes.

“There’s sort of an emerging sense behind the scenes of executives saying, ‘This is not going to be sustainable,’” said Laszlo Bock, chief executive of human-resources startup Humu and the former HR chief at Google. No CEO should be surprised that the early productivity gains companies witnessed as remote work took hold have peaked and leveled off, he adds, because workers left offices in March armed with laptops and a sense of doom.

There are lots of other reasons why working remotely has its challenges for some types of work. There aren't spontaneous conversations. Young people don't get the mentoring they need. Teamwork diminishes. Some people feel more productive, but ask their bosses. Do they feel the same? Sometimes not.

I read another article from the Wall Street Journal that said people become lonely after working remotely for nine months. When I read that, I thought that is so true. I thought about myself working remotely when I moved from Chicago to St. Louis from for Jack's job years ago. We moved to St. Louis in June and I kept the job I had in Chicago. Everyday, I went to my cube in the St. Louis office where I had no peers. For nine months, I had no one to eat lunch with (except when I was on the road). I quit my job the following February. I had another friend/co-worker who moved to another state a few years ago in July to follow a girlfriend. The next spring, he was showing signs of anxiety. By the summer, he checked himself into a hospital for mental health treatment.

When I told my friend Ellen that after nine months of isolation people become lonely, she said, "So in around the holidays we all are going to collapse?"

Yes and no. Not everyone will collapse, but some of us will. Social connection is a very important part of living a healthy life. It is like diet and exercise: some people eat crap, smoke, drink never exercise, and then live to be 86 with very few health issues (see: Auntie Chris). Other people who do the same die of a heart attack when they are forty-three. Likewise, some people can live an isolated life and are fine. Others not so much.

How can we stay connected to society, to our friends, our peers?

I don't have an answer or plan, but at least I have a goal of staying connected.

High Heels & Lipstick

I was getting ready to go out and get my haircut today and I put on lipstick, rouge and powdered my nose.

Why? 

No one can see my face, so what is the point? All you can see are my eyes and forehead. I don't wear eye makeup because I had an eye injury as a child. Will makeup evolve into forehead makeup, where we will decorate everything above our eyebrows?

And I looooove my new shoes, but I haven't worn heels in months and my legs and feet got a little sore. Heck with high heels -- somedays I don't wear shoes at all expect to go to the lobby of my building to get my newspaper.

P&E

My kids real initials are P&E, which is an accounting term for Profits & Earnings, neither of which either of my kids are for me. Maybe one day they will earn their own way, but for now...

Anyhow.

Both kids will be in Seattle next week.

Which is terrifying. I feel like a horrible mom for saying that.

And I don't. 

I went to dinner last night with one of my new downtown friends. She is a mom of elementary school kids. She is divorced and splits her time between Seattle and Pullman, WA. Her kids live in Pullman, and she works in tech in Seattle.

Like me, she is a part-time parent. She knows what it is like to both be a mom and not live full-time with her kids. When I told her P&E were coming back to town at the same time, she said,

"That must be so stressful." 

She said what I had been thinking but I could not admit. I've been working on "my stuff" lately, and I realize that many problems in people's personal (and even professional lives) are often because we are not honest with ourselves. For me to admit or acknowledge that I am terrified of my kids being home is the first step. Then I can do something about it.

Why am I terrified of both of my kids coming home at the same time? I happy to have one at a time. 

P&E have very, very different personalities that sometimes clash and there can be big problems. I don't like big problems.

Early this morning, Jack forwarded me a text from one of our college friends whose 14 year old daughter "up-and-died." "Up-and-died" is a non-medical medical term for unexplained and/or unexpected death. Ada, my firstborn who died an unexplained and sudden death, would have "up and died."

Yesterday, this friend carried ten pounds of his daughter's ashes on a hike and scattered them off a cliff. "I carried the ashes in the same backpack that I carried Madison in as a baby. This was the last time I carried her."

I've read the text three times and I've cried every time.

I felt like a heel for not joyously welcoming my two living, breathing, kids back home, especially at a time when almost every other mom on the planet with kids under the age of twenty-two has her children underfoot. Here I am, dreading two weeks. My kids are alive and healthy and I should be happy. I should be thrilled, but instead I am not.

What should do? When I started back to work, I had a friend who said when I started to feel upset, I should ponder three things:

• What am I feeling?
• Why am I feeling this way?
• What am I going to do about it?

When I am at work, I am good at sorting these things out. At home, not so much. At work, I am not nearly as emotionally invested in whatever problem I am having as when my kids are ready to kill each other.

What can I do? 

1. Learn from others 
• Alexis and David Rose, my favorite fictional brother and sister even, fight all of the time. ("Ew, David!") Fighting between siblings is good, right? 
2. Practice gratitude. Kids home = 
• Cranberry muffins
• Chocolate chip scones
• Claire-Adele's cooking (see: stuffed portobello mushrooms, chicken parmesan, and peach pie)
• The Boy's movie must-see list
• Legos
• Hiking
• Hearing stories
• Playing game (Scratch that--50% of games lead to fights because everyone is my family is fiercely competitive.)
• New music that the kids introduce me to
• Team crossword puzzles with the Boy

Best. Shoes. Ever.

Fluevog had a sale. I am stimulating the economy.

These are the best shoes ever. And they look good on my feet and bring out the muscles in my calves. I am inspired to ride my bike so my legs look even better in these awesome, wonderful, glorious shoes.

I also bought these shoes, which are very nice, but next to the ones above, are just okay. The blue shoes are like Beyonce's younger sister, who very well is cool in her own right, but damn has to be compared to Queen Bey.

I am not the only one shopping during COVID, it appears. One of my friends said she could have bought a trip to Norway for all of the extra money she has spent since March. The New York Times had this article a few weeks ago: Meanwhile, Some People are Stress-Shopping Diamond Bracelets. This makes my shoe purchase seem like nothing. Actually, my shopping is way down from what it normally is because stores and restaurants are closed. Even if I wanted to shop, there are few places to go.

This is so versatile--it would look good with a LBD or jeans and a nice white t-shirt. 

If I owned this, I would wear it every day.

Why are we shopping now? Someone said we should all pull together to conquer COVID like this is a war. Sure, I'll wear a mask and wash my hands like a raccoon with OCD, but this is not a war. Do you know anyone who remembers the 1918 Flu? Sure, they are all dead but that isn't the point. War is way worse. Think the Civil War (which we are still fighting in Seattle and Portland), World War I, World War II -- all of them are worse than coronavirus. How do I know? If I had to pick between living in 1843, 1916, 1942 or 2020, I'd pick 2020 no contest. I am not saying COVID-19 is fun. I'd much rather me and everyone else have their normal lives back, especially those who died, became ill, or lost their jobs.

For the rest of staying home, wearing masks and trying to keep the rest of the world healthy, we need a little recreation, and what is better than a wee bit of online shopping? Something bright and beautiful to lift our spirits?

Besides, what happened after the 1918 Flu and the end of World War I? 

The Roaring Twenties. 

Flappers. 

Jazz. 

Gin.

I am getting a head start on my future party attire. It sounds like I am not the only one, either. I might not have diamonds, but I'll have shoes.

Lehman

I am reading a very good book

The Lehman Trilogy

by Stefano Massini

an Italian who writes about

Bavarian Jewish family

living in Alabama

trading cotton in 1850

who grow the business

into one of the largest banks in the world

when it fails in 2008.

From trading cotton to 

trading money

somewhere they got lost.

It wasn't 

too big

to fail.

The book is written 

as an epic poem

like the Iliad or

the Odyssey.

Last year

Claire-Adele and I went to 

the Museum of Modern Art

and saw the Robert Lehman Collection

with its own wing

and magnificent paintings 

by masters

modern and ancient.

Robert Lehman died

the year I was born.

It is one of the most interesting books 

I've started to read.

I want to read more

but instead I am here

attending to my blog.

Good night.

Myopia

While I am in Montana this week, I am reading Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell. In the book, he discussed sexual assault on college campuses, many of which are fueled by binge drinking.

Before Gladwell digs into Stanford rape case from a few years ago, he discusses what it means to be drunk. There is blackout drunk, usually at .15 blood alcohol content or above, where the drinker doesn't remember what happened. Sometimes, the drinker might appear to be awake--walking, talking, and--god forbid--driving. Can someone give consent when they are blacked out drunk? No.

Why do we drink? What happens before we blackout? 

According to Gladwell, we become myopic or nearsighted when we drink. We see what is in front of us, not everything else around us. The rest of our life fades in the fog. If we are drunk with our friends, we focus on our friends and forget about work. If we are drunk with work colleagues, we forget about our family. 

Lots of things can make us "myopic," for better or worse. A relaxing (or busy) vacation can make us forget the stress of our job. A walk through nature can help us meditate and put on problems in perspective. 

Likewise, we can use maladaptive coping mechanisms to avoid looking at the larger picture of our lives. The Boy used to ski to block everything else out, like that he was too anxious to go to school. Jack used to work too much to block out the Boy's problems. (Claire-Adele escaped the shit-show of our family by going to college.) 

What did I do? Hello, co-dependence! I focused on everyone else except me.

Here is a picture of my life:

Here is a picture of my life when it became unmanageable. See the Drama swirling in the corner?

See Drama now all blown up and out-of-proportion? It is the only thing I could focus on. My dear friends supported me during this hideous time between when the Boy stopped going to school in December 2018 to when he settled into treatment in November of 2019.

Slowly, I am learning to get out of the swirl of drama, not to be captivated by it. I am learning to have perspective.

Fishing Metaphors

We have hit a few fishing holes this week in Montana while visiting the Boy. Talk about a mental health break. Wow. I don't know how anyone can be anxious or depressed while fishing. Okay. I suppose someone can be depressed and anxious anytime.

As I have been on the side of the river for hours this week watching the Boy fly fish, I have found the original meaning of some meaning of fishing metaphors.

• The one that got away -- The Boy had a few bites that never took the hook.
• Get your feet wet -- I don't know if this is a fishing metaphor, but to truly fly fish, it is best to walk in the water to get away from bushes and branches when casting.
• There are plenty of fish in the sea -- The Boy was fishing on river, but the same idea.
• They fell for it hook, line and sinker -- When the fish is so dumb, it goes beyond the bait.

Fences & Cages

Years ago, my friend H said to me "You have to the leave the miserable marriage you are in to get the marriage you want." She was struggling in her marriage at the time. Her mother-in-law was the "other woman," the person her husband deferred to instead of her. H hated it. So, she made a plan and told her husband that the marriage was over. She was going to leave the following year when her youngest graduated from high school. She gave me the same advice she gave herself.

"You need to leave, Lauren," H said. "You are miserable. You need to walk away."

H is kind of bossy that way, but I love her nonetheless. Of course, I did not take her advice. I had thought it was stupid, but her husband got the memo loud and clear. He decided on his own free will that he needed H as his wife more than he needed to make his mom happy.

"You are my everything," he said, sobbing. It wasn't just tears that fixed the problem that made H running back. To her husband's credit, he changed. She didn't nag him. She threw a boundary.

"I need a husband who puts me first before his mother," she said. "If that is you, great. If not, I am moving on."

I've been thinking about this in contrast to some bad advice I got from a kind and well meaning marriage therapist.

"If you leave Jack, he will be married in six months to someone younger. He will likely start a new family," Janice said. "And you will be alone."

I paused.

"I've seen it before. This is what happens," she said. The unspoken advice was "Stick it out, no matter how miserable you are. Your happiness and well-being doesn't matter." This was an invitation to be co-dependent, not interdependent or independent. 

Now, I know better. Janice's advice--as well meaning as it was--was bullshit. If Jack were to dump for someone younger, so be it. Why should I have been miserable? To keep him from being happy with a new, chicky wife?

I realize now that H was right. In order to get the marriage I want, I need to leave the marriage I am in. 

How did I end up in this spot in the first place? How did it get so bad? 

Last year, my friend Anderson and I had a conversation about "Do people change?" His point of view is that over time, people are basically the same, that they don't change. I agree with him for the most part. My view is instead of people changing, circumstances change. When situations change, we see new features in ourselves and others. COVID season is a perfect example. We now know which of our friends are germophobes, and which people think wearing a mask to save the lives of elderly people with health issues is a stupid idea. 

Which brings me to my theory of marriage and fences. When cows enter a new field, they circle the perimeter, pushing against all of the fences to see if they are safe. Like cattle, people test boundaries to see if they feel safe. In relationships, we find people who fit in our fences. We don't necessarily set boundaries at first, because the people e choose might already fit inside our fence. We feel safe. For example, I would not want to be in a relationship with a coke-head or someone who did heroin. Jack never did coke or heroin, so I never had to set that as boundary in our relationship. If I would have said "I don't want to be in a relationship with someone who uses cocaine" when we first met, he would have said, "Sounds good to me." No argument would have ensued.

As life evolves, we encounter new territory and our boundaries change. We need to continue to test the fence. Suppose a young couple meets, and they both like to have fun. By fun, I mean party. They both fit in each other's fence at the time. Then they have kids. One person wants to be a responsible parent and stops partying. The other continues to party. Conflict ensues. They both might love each other, but the non-partier might say "I want to be in a relationship with a person who view parenthood as a serious responsibility." The other might still want to party. Then what?

What I used to do was bitch to Jack about the new territory, the changed area within the fence. Suddenly, we didn't agree on where the boundaries should be, nor did we know how to talk about it. Before, we had fit so nicely inside each other's fences before, we really didn't need to discuss boundaries. 

Then we did.

I thought an "I statement" was a complaint that started out with "I." I was wrong. "I statements" are about me, not about him. After more than a year of therapy, I finally figured it out this week. Before, I had thought an I statement was "I am bothered when you work too much" which is putting the blame back on Jack. "I want to be in a relationship with someone who has a healthy relationship with their job" is about me. It isn't about Jack. It is about what I want in a relationship.

Which brings me to cages. Why did I take Janice's advice at first instead of H's? 

Fear.

Janice's advice kept me in the cage. Janice's advice was fear-based. H's advice was faith based. The bars keeping me in the cage of my marriage were fear. No one was forcing me to stay. I didn't have the faith to leave the cage. And to be completely fair, this wasn't making Jack happy, either. He had to live with a disgruntled wife, which isn't fun. H's advice is scary, sure. I don't know what will happen if I take her advice, and that is the point. I can have faith that my life will be better, with or without Jack. And life will better for Jack, too.

What's next? I am not sure, but whatever it is it will be okay. 

In the meantime, I am enjoying Montana.

Wild roses

The Boy fly fishing