This is a guest post by Barbara Straus Lodge who describes her feelings on discovering her son’s relapse.
His friends call me on my cell, “He needs help. He’s going to die if he doesn’t stop using.”
Wait. What? Hello? No.
Shell shock.
He’s been doing so well. He has two jobs. His life is moving forward. Our lives are moving forward.
Reverberations from this blast take my breath.
His friends bring him home to me. These are the kids who broke all the rules in high school….the guys who reeked of weed and bad decisions….the ones who weren’t welcome in my home.
Please, please come in.
Facing the Relapse
They flank him; sitting shoulder to shoulder down the length of my oversized couch. Some of them cry.
When I see my son, pale as parchment, shaking, clammy, looking down and feverishly twirling his thick brown hair, I want to run to him, wrap my whole self around him, rock him like I used to when he was a little boy, so afraid of the dark.
As I move towards him, he avoids my eye, saying he’s too ashamed to look at me. I keep my distance then, watch, listen, and learn that for the past many months, he’s been playing Russian Roulette and hiding his weapon masterfully.
I HAD NO IDEA.
He’s been depressed, suffering — been on a run for weeks, “huffing” on the freeway, passing out on the freeway, picking up where he left off driving down the freeway, clutching that nitrous cracker like it was his oxygen in a crashing plane.
Who is This Person Who Calls Himself My Son?
I think to myself, who is this person? This man/boy who suffers so deeply? What can I do for him that I haven’t done before? I have no idea.
And then I wonder, how did this happen? The thoughts, the images, the horror, the truth that “we could have lost him” sideswipe me. I forgot to put my oxygen mask on first and suddenly I’m gasping for air.
Over the years, I’ve done everything “required” of a mother in these circumstances — I’ve dismantled myself and put myself back together. I’ve gotten busy, done the work, exercised my mind and body, and given back to the world.
I’ve ridden the roller coaster of his addiction, seat belted right next to him, double buckled with him in fact, each relapse a new plummet, each sober milestone a new beginning.
Nothing Has Changed
“You’re on your way!” I’d gush, after he’d complete a week in detox and head into sober living. At that point my life would begin again. And again. And again.
He’s been doing great. Throughout months and months of “sobriety” he’s consistently assured me, his friends, and therapist that things are good. We all believed him.
I HAD NO CLUE…THAT….ALL THIS TIME…HE’S BEEN SUFFOCATING under the weight of his own lies and life’s complicated twists and turns.
HE’S NEEDED TO BE NUMB, TO NOT GET CAUGHT, and nitrous oxide is undetectable in drug tests.
I DIDN’T KNOW THAT my son’s been regularly abusing a drug so DEADLY, it could’ve snatched his life in an instant. In an inhale. Without an exhale. I am petrified, exhausted, and weak beyond my years.
Nothing has changed because nothing has changed.
A giant scissors materializes from the bookcase, moves towards the umbilical cord which stretches from my seat to his, connecting our heartbeats, our breath. That huge black scissors yawns its gaping blades wide open…and in slow motion…SNIP. A clean cut.
The Light of Compassion
I experience pain so real I double over in my seat. We are, in fact, two people. I’ve lost a limb.
And suddenly I wonder whether I’ve ever really known him. I’ve looked at his recent life as a series of disappointments and brand new beginnings yet I’ve not noticed the actual continuum of fits and starts.
In other words, I’ve seen tender new growths on one tree, but have been unaware of the dis–ease ravaging the whole forest.
Things will change if I do. I will learn to see him with new eyes, listen with new ears, and speak words that motivate. I will come to understand what makes his rocky path both universal, and unique.
And as I venture into the unexplored territory of learning how to relate to my son, I hope to be guided by the light of compassion for us both.
Barbara Straus Lodge is a native Angelino who earned a B.A. In English from UCLA and a Juris Doctor from Pepperdine University School of Law. She is a graduate of the UCLA Creative Nonfiction Writer’s Program and her personal essays, mostly about her family’s struggles with addiction, have appeared in Parabola Magazine, The Rumpus Voices of Addiction, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Random Acts of Kindness, The Good Men Project, New York Times Motherlode Blog, the LA Affairs section of the Los Angeles Times and a variety of Anthologies. Barbara was also a 2017 guest blogger for Speakers for Change.