It's Four O'Clock in the Morning, Damn it*

At four o’clock this morning I’d been asleep for 5 hours.

Today I took him to the airport.

Four nights ago I drove him to the hospital with an empty bottle in my pocket. Four nights ago I was already in my pajamas and wanted only to go to bed and to sleep, when he showed me what he’d taken. Four nights ago he said he reached his bottom and was ready to recover, but that’s not why I took him to the hospital.

I was not sitting in the ER once again, with my son hooked up to monitors because of the street drugs he had been relapsing on for weeks.  I wasn’t there because of the altered state he went into the previous week during his birthday dinner, in the nice restaurant, surrounded by nice families. The altered state that was caused because he had stopped taking his prescribed medicine two weeks ago. I was in the ER because of cough syrup. Cough syrup he’d been drinking by the bottle, cough syrup that contained Tylenol. I took him to the hospital when I realized he’d been taking massive doses of Tylenol unintentionally with the cough syrup,  because a Tylenol overdose doesn’t kill you right away, it kills your liver and your kidneys first, and it does it slowly.

So I sat there, dead tired, not because of heroin, or cocaine, but because of Tylenol. I sat there while a nurse roughly scrubbed down his arm and called him “dirty”, while she told him was going to die, while she rammed an IV needle in his arm, intentionally causing him pain. He bore it quietly. Her harsh words and her painful treatment of him. I bore it too, even while a part of brain was saying how wrong it was.

They keep the curtains open in cases of overdose, they also take all your clothing and belongings to make sure you don’t try to sneak out before your mental health is properly assessed.

This boy. This boy that the angry nurse purposely hurt. This boy used to bring me dandelion bouquets, used to sit for hours on my lap while I read him story after story, this boy who always tried so hard to fit in. This beautiful boy was still there in the hospital bed, with the sore arm, with all his belongings taken away. My little boy, who I could still occasionally glimpse in a gesture, in an expression, he was still in there.My boy, who’s brain chemistry has worked against him for the last ten years was still there, still trying. He has been fighting against a mind that contains beasts and horrors and realities only he can see. A mind, that when he became overwhelmed with its noise, he tried to quiet with drugs, and they worked. The drugs settled his mind, the drugs helped him make friends, let him feel like he belonged and was accepted. How can you blame him? He was 15, and his brain worked in ways that none of us could comprehend.

I saw that he was in pain, and I tried to fix it. I tried everything I could think of, sports, clubs, mentors, social workers, doctors, life coaches, tutors, psychiatrists, psychologists, peer groups, retreats, camps. I tried, but none of these worked as well as drugs and so the drugs won. I lost my boy by degrees, and he became the kind of patient a nurse thinks it’s okay to shame and to hurt. He became someone I didn’t know anymore. He became the young man in the hospital bed before me.

I stayed till 3:30am. I stayed while another mental health assessment was done. I stayed till I knew he would be safe and survive the night, and then I went home. It was 4am when I pulled into my driveway, when I slowly got out of my car and started walking through garden to my front door. It was 4am when I noticed the songs of the night birds, and while I’d would have rather have done anything but spend a night in hospital with my drug addled son, the bird songs, an owl hoot, and my dog waiting up for me were comforting.

He was in hospital for four days. Four days that I spent negotiating with insurance, four days trying to find him something, someone, somewhere to help him. Four days crying in my car where no one could see me, four days asking for help, four days not sleeping or eating enough, and this morning I drove him to the airport.

Today he flew across the country to a residential treatment center in California called Michael’s House. He says it’s incredibly beautiful there. They’ve taken his phone now, and I won’t be able to talk to him for 7 days, but he seemed hopeful and happy tonight, so I will hold on to that.

 *Lyrics by Bernie Taupin from "Someone Saved My Life Tonight"

intolerable random ramblings of a vain wannabe

I would like to say I'm a wonderfully tolerant person, but I can't.


If that were the case I could write about intolerance from the lofty perch of one who could cast the first stone. This not being the case I will write about intolerance from my down in the gutter looking at the stars position. Naturally (ironically?) I am most intolerant of intolerance, but aren't we all? If the world would just see things my way it would be a much happier place, right? I think I am probably not the first to think this, also I think that world full of people who spend too much time on their hair, are severely directionally challenged and find anything to do with accounting horrifying would be a scary place indeed.


So let's leave my intolerance for intolerance behind, and get to what drove me to write this today. People who are able and allowed to indulge in unreasonable fears and behaviours. That sounds just a little bitchy, so let me 'splain. I have a friend who won't drive on an expressway. No big deal, except instead of taking alternate routes, this person has other people do all the driving for them. Another doesn't want to grow up, wants to stay home with their mom and never have adult responsibilities. Wouldn't that be nice? I know a few who didn't learn to drive, also fine if you live in the city and rely on public transportation. None of them do, they all expect to be driven by family and friends. Why does this make me nuts? I suspect it's because I have never been allowed to indulge in such behaviours. If I wanted to get somewhere I got myself there, I have been living completely on my own since I was 17years old, no summers at home, only brief holiday visits. I would have loved having someone take care of me, so perhaps I resent those who have managed to get others to take care of them?

Why do I want people to 'suck it up' and 'get over it', to 'grow up and wear their big girl panties'? Have the hardships in my life made me just a bit nastier? Maybe. Or maybe I was born with an innate dislike of complacency in ideas and in actions, of luxuries in thought. So am I more enlightened, or am I hopelessly locked in the cycle of Samsara, attached to my own ego and desires? More of the latter I think, my own jealousy and my infantile ego having a grand time with my psyche. My own angst rooted in my longing to have someone who wanted to take care of me. My mother had her own problems, having an unplanned child with a man who would turn out to be a less than ideal partner being one of them. Growing up with a mother who did not love her was another. In the end I think she loves as best she can, but she only knows the external appearances of love and not the agony and the ecstasy of the actual emotion. My marriage died in a large part because of my trying to mold my husband into someone he was not. He is not nurturing person, now that we have moved past most of the hurt and the resentment I can see the ways he tried to care for me, and I can also see how incapable I was at receiving it. It takes a while, but it is possible to teach a child that they are unlovable. It takes much longer to show someone that they deserve love. So I sit here today longing for someone to say "let me take care of you", and knowing that I would turn them down flat if they did.

I am jealous of wealth. I think partially because I have never known a time in my life where money wasn't a struggle, or a source of fear. I have lied to my children about why the water isn't working, or why there is no electricity. I humbled myself asking for more time to pay bills, turned down or been excluded from events with my wealthier friends. My real problem is, I think, is believing that having money immunizes you from the constant struggles of everyday living. My issue with complacency rears it's head again, I've struggled dammit, and so should you! In my head I know money does not bring happiness, and can bring the opposite. In my heart I'm still the little girl looking in at the happy family that she is not a part of.


I think I would be happy if only I had more money, if only I could get divorced, if only I had a cleaning lady (actually I think this particular 'if only' I would really enjoy...), if only I could get a divorce (why don't I? I need the health care benefits), if only I lived in my dream house by the ocean, if only I had a studio.... etc ad nauseam.  But the trick to being happy is not looking for outside things to make me happy, the way to be happy is to be happy with what I am doing, right now. Happiness, it's an inside job. The less I seek externally and the more I focus internally the happier I will become. My ego has a conniption fit at the very thought of this.


Back to my intolerance. Would I really be happy if one day the world actually aligned itself with my desires? If people actually behaved the way I wanted them to? Maybe for a week, and then I'm pretty sure I would invent new ways to be dissatisfied.   


Astrologically speaking, being a Leo and a Dragon doesn't help. I have come into this life with an innate desire to be indulged and adored. My life thus far has been a series of exercises in getting over these notions. Raising three teenagers can quickly get you over the notion that you are adored (oh how fondly I remember the days when they were little and I was perfect...). Living in a forever limbo relationship with my estranged, soon to be ex, separated (you pick) spouse and having a mother who can turn from pleasantly superficial to excruciating cruel in a heartbeat has kept me from wallowing in wanton daydreams of the good life.
I do indulge myself, and am mostly over the guilt, (yes I do dye my hair, my vanity does not include grey hair), but feel awkward and guilty when someone tries to indulge me, and sometimes I'm darn right nasty about it  ..... "thank you, I'll get it myself..." I can open my own damn doors, but secretly I want you to open them for me, poor guy can't win.
So where do I end up tolerance wise? Most days I'm pretty good; somedays I'm practically Zen like, and the occasional day I'm miserable and looking for something outside myself to blame. I generally get over that pretty quickly, so, I guess, I'm human. Just like everyone else.