If you looked at the timeline I linked to early in the day, you might want to look again. It’s grown. I wish TimeToast allowed me to make entries by time of day as well, because I fear the timeline’s going to be really confusing when you get to today, because I can’t get the events into the order I want them.
So, now it’s amateur psychology hour!
I decided to try the one thing I’m not sure anyone has tried yet – addressing O as an adult. I tried to get him out of bed three times to go to rehab. But I don’t want a repeat of this performance this morning, so I’m treading carefully even with those three tries. (The second time, I actually opened the door. He ducked under the bed covers like if I couldn’t see his head I would think he wasn’t there. It was actually a bit endearing, or would have been on someone else.)
So I go into the doorway of his room, sort of prop up and say something like, “I’m not like your dad. I’m not going to yell at you or lecture you. I’m going to try to talk to you like and adult, and just level with you. I want to leave out all the crap people usually say to kids and just explain a few things about how the world works. But I’m going to talk, and you have to listen, because I’m standing right here.
“Yeah, you’re probably right that you’re wasting your time in school and at rehab. I mean, I was an excellent student in high school, but I was probably wasting my time. I don’t know that I’ve ever really used anything I learned there. And I’m sure rehab is the same way. And it sucks. But you have to do it.
“You have to play their game. You have to sit in school so many hours for so many years, and there may not be much point to it, but you have to. Then you probably have to go to college in the same way, and then if you’re lucky you can find someone willing to pay you to come waste your time at their place. Every minute I worked at the library, I felt like I was wasting my time. But I had to do it to put food in our mouths.
“The thing is, it doesn’t matter. It’s a game, and you have to play it, and they make the rules. You have to play it so you can put food in your mouth and not wind up on the street. And you have to play the game until you retire, I guess, and I suspect longer than that.
“You’ve put your dad in a really hard spot now, where if you don’t do this they will arrest him. And then what do you think’s going to happen to you? It won’t be good. It’ll be a group home at best, probably that juvenile prison again.
“You’re old enough to start making decisions like an adult, and this is the stuff we have to think about. I’m sorry the world sucks like this, but it does, and you’ve got to start thinking about that when you think about what you’re going to do.”
By the end of my little speech he looked so bleak, now I’m worried that maybe I’ve made him suicidal. Except I don’t actually think he has the energy for that, even.
Seriously, by the time I finished, I’m feeling pretty sure he’s having some kind of emotional or mental crisis. Bf talked to his rehab counselor about that, and he was supposed to try to get him referred to the right people to at least do some tests, but we backed off last week and I don’t know if it ever happened.
I’m an armchair psychologist like a lot of people, although I like to think that my BA in sociology wasn’t completely wasted, and I could have gone on to get my MSW except that I was more interested in the pure science of it at the time. (In other words, I wanted to figure out who “they” were in my little speech today, where “they” went wrong in their thinking, and what “we,” the bored and restless and poor, could do about it. I’m not a socialist, but I do think that a lot of Marx’s observations were dead on.)
There’s something deeply wrong here. I know that’s obvious, but it’s a different kind of wrong than I thought. This is not just a kid who has lived his whole life without any discipline, any order, any respect, any encouragement to make good decisions. There’s something wrong. There’s teenage hormones and angst, but this is more than that. I don’t know if it’s major depression or something more complex.
But I’m at a loss as to how to address this. If the rehab center didn’t pick up on it, I’m stuck. I guess they would have the resources to hook us up with an organization or agency or even a flipping doctor who could help, since they know the insurance situation. If the budget hadn’t already been ripped to shreds, Area Mental Health might be useful, but I know they have their hands full dealing with the absolute raving cases that come in via ambulance and police cruiser.
Or maybe he just needs … I don’t know. Maybe it’s just that he’s become very good about not thinking about the negative consequences of things until they hit him in the face. I see that in his dad, for sure. I see it in myself more and more the longer I stay here, although with me there’s more than a touch of magical thinking, some belief that it will all just turn out okay somehow, when it clearly won’t. (Oh, Wikipedia doesn’t agree with how I want to define “magical thinking.” It’s such a good term for what I mean, which is that idea that it’s okay to charge a $1,000 suit to my debit card because well, I’ll figure something out and by some miracle it will all be right in the end. Maybe I’m looking for the term “miraculous thinking”?)
That’s how I want to describe the problem I thought O was having. I thought it was pure magical thinking, some idea that if he just ignored it somehow someone would make it all go away. (Problems like this do go away for rap stars and other celebrities every day. Go ask Lindsay Lohan, if she’s coherent enough to give you any answer at all.) I thought if I could just make him see that there is no courtly rapper in shining Air Jordans who is going to swoop down and make it all better, we’d at least have made a step in the right direction.
But I don’t think so anymore. I think he’s caught in some nightmarish thinking that his brain won’t let him break out of. I daresay the marijuana isn’t helping – it’s probably not wise to mess with brain chemistry without the input of a doctor if your brain chemistry is already screwed up. (Wonder if part of his problem could be the result of all the pot his mother has allegedly smoked, presumably before his birth as well?) I suppose I could slip some Effexor into his juice in the morning … but I need it too badly myself. Missed a dose the other day and had horrible nightmares about zombies who, precisely unlike vampires, were “allergic” to the dark.
Oh, there’s still so much to tell from the big argument with Bf today. How he wants me to believe he was always faithful, that the nasty text messages were friends of his trying to play tricks on him, and so on. He’s really focusing on that as the problem, when it’s a bigger deal to me when he doesn’t tell me things he already knows, like if an extra kid is going to be around this weekend.
The real issue is that I am not accustomed to this kind of low-class lifestyle and am not willing to become accustomed to it, even if the middle class is being eliminated in this country. My grandparents worked hard for our family to become homeowners and college graduates, and although I understand that the economy is working against me, I’ll be damned if I’ll start to act uneducated and ignorant, and I’ll be damned if I’ll keep hanging out with people who do.
And pick up your damn trash out of the yard! Grr.
(I had fun in this post with the “recommended links” from WordPress, mostly to Wikipedia and Web MD. I apologize if they annoy you. They’d like for me to link to one about Lindsay Lohan now, but I shall refrain.)
I ran across your website a couple years ago, and every once in a while it will randomly pop into my head and I think, “Oh, has she left that guy yet?”
I’m sad to see you’re still with him. I hope you are able to break free sooner rather than later.
Me too, Zoe. Me too.