A Mother's Tears • Ch. 8 of 16

On the Cusp of Chaos

Leaving Ann Arbor was challenging. I loved my hometown. All my friends lived there and all I knew was within those borders. I didn’t want to stretch or change—, so I rebelled against it, hard. Though my new neighborhood was beautiful, it was full of kids who had too much time on their hands and who drove nicer cars than their school teachers did. So when they wanted to have fun, they could afford it. Strangely enough, it was easier for someone my age to get drugs than it was to buy alcohol so I went with the flow and followed suit like everyone else. I slowly became a statistic. I’d met dozens of other people in my same position—, lost and without purpose. Just hang on until the next party, I’d remind myself.

The downward spiral started long before I ever truly noticed. Maybe from back in Ann Arbor, when I’d drink the night away with good friends. Now all that surrounded me was plastic in nature; the people, the artificial sunshine, everything was pretend. We didn’t know what real life entailed, we just wanted to escape again. Inside, I’d feel myself forgetting who I truly was.

“Try this,” some would say, offering me more poison on a plate. The clothes got scrappier, the music got angrier, and like all things around me at the time, my antagonism for life only grew. Punk shows, spray-paint, and sarcastic attitudes toward existence were all I was beginning to know. Hooking up in the back seats of different cars downtown Royal Oak, watching movies while plastered in Birmingham—, it wasn’t long before I stopped caring what I did or who I was with. Nothing else mattered—, just tonight. Tomorrow didn’t exist. My complete disregard for all things truly important manifested itself in my inability to take care of myself any longer. I was a walking energy drink with pills mixed in for good measure.

Fleeting Epiphanies

Lighting candles in my room, I was preparing for an adventurous night with some new party favors I’d just gotten. It was a bleak evening out past my bedroom window, so I put on some music to match the mood. Popping all of my treats at once, I drank a full glass of water and just sat at my desk, waiting. Some time passed by when I realized the piece of paper I’d prepared earlier to write on was still blank. Slowly, I looked down at the empty white bars holding the page in place—, the only things keeping it from crumbling to shreds. Next to it laid my pen; that syringe-like instrument which would draw my inner-plasma and inject it back onto whatever canvas I’d currently be using. I just needed something to spill my ideas on, something to catch my fleeting epiphanies and seal them up forever with a drug-laced kiss. Pick it up and write, a thought whispered.

“I can’t...,” I said aloud to myself and no one else. My own voice must’ve snapped me back into a strange reality as I suddenly looked around the dark room and noticed the flickering lights were no longer dancing atop the candles, but were barely lit. Maybe I got up to relight them—, maybe I got up to get another glass of water—, it doesn’t really matter, as all I can remember afterward is laying spread out across my floor. I looked from side to side, seeing only underneath my bed. I couldn’t get up—, couldn’t move. It was getting so hot to where I couldn’t breath anymore. I needed air. Slowly, I looked over to my shut window and began crawling toward it with all the energy I could muster up within me. Just open it, I thought to myself, over and over, trying to gain mental strength. Maybe I finally did, I don’t remember that either. The next thing I saw was a big bright light in my mind’s eye—, projected onto the screen of my psyche. I didn’t know where it was coming from or how large it truly was, but I could tell it was something otherworldly. I felt warmth radiating from it. I suddenly saw a man’s figure right beside it—, I couldn’t make out the features but I just knew it was my father. Below it was my slumped body. He was looking at it with deep sadness and conversing with the light about my very being.

“What a waste—,” I felt him saying. I wanted to look back up at him, to make a plea for my life, that I had a grand plan all along and nobody really knew. But I couldn’t—, because I didn’t. I just laid there—, unable to make a case for why I was still alive. Slowly, I felt the light dissipating from my surroundings and so, I fell asleep. That, or was kept from a darkness I can’t describe by Something beyond my comprehension. Either way, I awoke the next morning with a tear-streaked shirt and muscles too stiff to move about normally. I stretched my body to full length and slowly began my daily routine of getting ready for work or play or whatever I was doing at the time. I’d never forget that experience. Just like my candles—, I was kept lit—, barely.

Unbearable Sadness

I was out one night with a friend I’d recently made and on top of the normal drinking, we were on who knows what else. We sat on her front porch for a long while before finally going inside the house. We joked, laughed, wasted the hours away doing nothing. The next morning came around and she reminded me of something funny from the night before.

“What’s that mean?,” I asked of the inside joke I no longer knew.

“You don’t remember?—, we laughed so much last night.” I just shrugged my shoulders and lit up another cigarette. She looked at me with slight pity. “Do you like living this way?,” she asked from the heart. Again, I had nothing to say. I didn’t know the answer myself. It wasn’t that I liked the lifestyle, it was just the one I’d gotten used to. We split ways and I resumed my aimless wandering of random streets and areas of the city.

I’d walk around my neighborhood and just look at all the happier people out and about. They’d be talking to one another, holding hands, and just enjoying life in a way I’d forgotten how to myself. Deeper thoughts than I was prepared for swirled around my head like smoke drifting through the atmosphere. What’s this all mean? Where will I end up? How can I escape? Things I didn’t know how to answer kept coming back like when I was much younger going home on the train from New York. Interconnectivity; it was everywhere. I felt it in the trees blowing in the wind, in the man or woman walking by, in which cars drove on which streets during which time of day. Everyone had a very specific purpose to fulfill—, everyone but me, it seemed. I knew there was a plan—, I’d felt it my entire life—, but recently, I’d lost touch with that inner-voice telling me that it was all according to someone else’s will. I’d already given up my heart to foreign hands—, knowing it’d be safer there than in my own. Now all I had left was my hollow body. I fueled it with as much poison as possible.

Dripping With Depression

The earth was shifting—, its core held a grasp on my spirit and I followed it wherever it went. Fire and brimstone, violins and cellos; opposing ideologies started to work together in making my journey as complicated as can be. I didn’t know what to believe in anymore. I just knew that somewhere—, there’d be a way out. Years later, my mom would tell me how far away I’d drifted from her during that period in my life.

Everywhere I went, the haze followed. Something whose sole purpose was to see that I’d lose myself within its depths was always close behind. I’d hear it through depressing symphonies. I’d see it through the mist rising off the ground. Moreover, I’d feel it through the miserable dreams I’d have nightly. Just before waking, I could feel the real world coming back to front and center as I’d start tearing up—, both in my dream and on my pillow. Not even in sleep could I find any rest. Time became insignificant. What’d happened yesterday would loop around to tomorrow and I’d be stuck in-between two bookends of bad decisions. Today wouldn’t last long enough to enjoy the break—, it’d blend into the stream I was constantly in.

My reality slowly began melting, like my reasoning for being an individual—, I dripped with a self-centered depression, just like those around me. Yet, I was on my own journey. One into the very center of what it meant to be a human being who’d lost himself on life’s path. What remained but dried up leaves—, fallen from trees which weren’t in season? I was withering away. Like an out-of-tune piano, I was constantly trying to find my theme but getting disappointed in the process. Was this really who I’d become? Someone who couldn’t even hold a decent conversation anymore? I floated through my days with no end in sight. Different people would drop into my life and then suddenly drop out, I didn’t have time to make any meaningful relationships—, I just kept moving. At some stage within all of the constant commotion, I gave up on wanting to go any further. I eventually figured out what’d been in front of me all along; what’s the point? My body finally gave out; too much rushing around, too little sleep—, I needed to rest and so my system would soon do me a favor and shut down on its own.

A Cry for Help

I was especially depressed one night and thought that taking more pills than I’d ever done before would be a good idea. I swallowed the handful and sat down on one of my front patio chairs, waiting for them to kick in. The last thing I remember is listening to music on my phone—, and nothing after that. From upstairs in my mom’s room, the windows just so happened to be cracked open that evening. Though nearly asleep, she began hearing my voice from downstairs—, like I was talking to someone, but the speech sounded too slurred to make anything out clearly. Worried that I’d wake the neighbors, she crawled out of bed and made her way down the steps and toward the front door. I must’ve been leaning against it with my entire body because upon my mom opening it, I fell backwards and there I stayed, sprawled out on the floor inside, not knowing what was going on. She helped me to the living room couch and dropped me like dead weight. Though very annoyed and disappointed, she figured she’d talk to me about this in the morning, knowing I was too blasted to handle a talk right then. My mom turned to walk back up the stairs, but midway, she noticed my breathing was especially labored. Gabriela turned around and placed her ear right above my face, listening closely. She immediately grabbed the phone and called the only person that’d answer that early in the morning.

A half hour or so passed by before seeing a good friend’s face looking back at me.

“Hey...,” I barely got out.

“Hey man—, it’s time to go to the hospital, okay?” The car ride over was a complete blur. Once inside and on I.V.s, I was given liquid charcoal to drink. Everything I’d swallowed earlier came rushing back up.

“It’s a good thing you came in when you did,” the doctors would go on to tell me. “Had your mom gone to work today, your liver would’ve completely shut down followed by the rest of your organs.” Afraid that this all may have been on purpose, they cautiously put me on antidepressants. They worked for a small while but against all advice, I began taking them with large amounts of alcohol. Their effect backfired. I suddenly became worse than I’d ever been before. Thoughts swirled around my mind that maybe, this world would be better off without me in it at all. I crept up dangerously close to the edge—, something called me up to it and back down below its cliff. Further into the blazing fire, further into the lonely shadows I went. A flow of thick, dense fog permeated my immediate presence, clouding my ability to reason properly. Things got out of hand.

How to Destroy Your Life

On the day I dove straight into the ground—, the leaves outside were eerily still and there was no wind rustling a thing. All was quiet. I stared down at the source of my existence; something so tender and fragile and vital. Innocent wrists that deserved better. I closed my eyes. Visions of lightbulbs burning out—, of darkness filling a room with no view—, of doctors rushing toward me—, of stitches, stains, and sadness. Visions that made no sense to my chemically-addled consciousness came crashing in like waves onto once-sunny beaches now devoid of any brightness whatsoever. It was over—, my eternal summer had come to a quick and hectic end.

After sobering up and restored to my full reality, I couldn’t comprehend the consequences of living so loosely for the past year plus. EMTs again re- entered my path and proposed to go with them until I regained some type of stability.

“Do I really have to get on that?,” I asked the paramedics at the outpatient facility, looking down at the yellow stretcher they’d rolled up to me.

“Unfortunately, yes—,” one of them answered. “It’s the only way we can bring you in to the hospital.” I nodded that I understood, climbed onto its topside, and gave up my headphones which had been blasting angry music for months. Now, an unsettling calm came over everyone who I’d make eye contact with—, they pitied me without even knowing why. What did I do? The words echoed throughout the hollow corridors of my mind. I was left completely alone with all of my decisions and began to feel the weight of true freewill at last.

Eventually, I was placed in a hospital, a rehab, and finally, a halfway house located in a dreary corner of Michigan. My days of reckless abandon were over and reality swept over me like a flood out of the Old Testament. I sat in circles with other lost souls speaking on what brought them there, what kept them in constant cycles of self-destructive behavior, and what dreams they’d almost all but given up on. I became part of an organism too tragic to hold underneath a microscope. All I knew was that everyone had a room they’d go into after all the meetings and mealtimes and drift back off toward a subconscious escape. We’d finally found our collective sleep.

Pausing for Reflection

Rehab was a large cafeteria room with tables and chairs set up and two long hallways that met in the middle at a small medication dispensary. The men would sleep on one end of the first hallway, the women on the other end of the second. That still didn’t stop so-and-so from hooking up in the bathrooms whenever they could. There were lots of meetings. Many of them blended into each other and I’d leave feeling the same way I came in. At night, I’d lay awake and think of all the mistakes that’d brought me there. The horrible attitude I had toward life a few weeks ago was improving but I still felt the fire of rebellion burning deep down inside. I started writing out my thoughts. Slowly I filled an entire journal’s worth of opinions and wannabe op- eds during my two-week stay there. I didn’t know how my mom was holding up. I knew she’d moved into an apartment in Troy, one city over from our old condo. I called her for Thanksgiving as the holidays were approaching. I didn’t know how to feel other than complete self-pity which took hold of me every new day I’d wake up. I missed her. There were no words to describe how I’d felt for what I’d done. I couldn’t say a single thing other than “I’m sorry.”

When I wasn’t in meetings or asleep, I’d play cards with the other people in the lit up hallways or eat the cereal that was constantly set up in the cafeteria. Finally it was visiting day and my mom planned to come and see me. Upon watching her enter through the cafeteria doors, I immediately jumped up from my chair and went over to greet her. We walked back over to one of the tables to talk.

“How’re you doing?,” she asked me.

“I’m fine—,” I said, but cared more about her wellbeing. “How’re you?,” I asked back. She just nodded her head and slowly looked down at the table in silence. We didn’t know what to talk about. There were so many feelings swirling around each of our hearts that it was hard to pinpoint any one in particular. It felt like an emotional tornado of regret, repentance, and forgiveness all wrapped up into a chaotic funnel of forced empathy. Time ticked by slowly as we had less to say than expected. Of course we wanted to share everything that was going on in our lives, in our separate living situations, but we also wanted to cherish the moments we had left together. We sat in a tense quietness, knowing we didn’t want to part from one another anytime soon. However, it was nearing time for the families to say goodbye to their loved ones and leave once more. We got up from our seats and slowly walked out into the main hallway. My mom and I hugged and for a brief period, time stood still. There were no more people around us, no twelve steps to memorize, no lonely nights away from home—, I felt at peace within her warm embrace.

“I love you,” she quietly said.

“I love you too Mom.” I looked in her eyes and saw the watery film start taking over. “Don’t—,” I said.

“I won’t,” she replied. With that, we parted ways as she walked down the corridor, out of sight, and waited to get in her car before letting out what she’d been holding back for so long.

A girl with short brown hair who I’d become friends with stood a few feet away from us, staring. Once Gabriela was gone she came over and shot me a serious look.

“That just gave me chills,” she said of our goodbyes.

Onwards and Upwards

The days kept rolling by with nothing unusual happening. There was a thin woman among us who I’d noticed at meetings. She had a depressed look on her face every time I’d peer over. We started talking and sharing our back stories. The moment finally came for her to go back home but she still wore that look of desperation.

“I can’t go home,” she protested, “I’m going to use if I go back there, I know it!” I felt horrible for her. The problem was insurance—, she technically lived in a lower-income county than most others there. If her house had been two or three blocks over, she would’ve been in the well-off county instead. Because of her situation, she only had a certain amount of days she could be in rehab for. I asked to speak with my personal counselor in hopes of doing what I thought I could.

“Am I able to give up my insurance to cover her?,” I asked. He looked at me slightly confused.

“That’s nice of you, but no. That’s not possible.” I tried advocating for her, for the rehab to do anything they could to keep her there longer, but it was no use. We said goodbye to one another later on that day and since then, I often wonder if her life somehow changed, or if she ever did begin to smile. So that was it—, my two-week stay had finally come to an end. The van transporting me to my new destination slowly pulled up out front and I hopped in, not knowing what else might lay ahead for me.