“Thank you for your trust of me,” Ernie emails back. “I am not a parent, but from my observation and perspective, the most important thing is that Ben knows deep down that you care about and love him. We do what we can do, but in a very real way, all any of us can do is ‘trudge on.’ I am not sure whether youth or age does that better, but we have really no choice, at any age.”
Trudge on, Kathy.
I turn for advice to my expert friends—treatment professionals, intervention specialists, addiction psychiatrists, friends in long-term recovery. Listening carefully to the facts and the timeline—alcohol and marijuana use starting in seventh grade, legal problems, admission of daily use, a genetic history of addiction, trauma (bullying, John’s death), combining drugs (alcohol, marijuana, nicotine, and who knows what else), out-of-control anger, punching holes in the walls, personality changes—they agree that Ben may have a serious problem. In this little circle of experts, I feel no shame. Just fear.
One day in the detention center, we talk about tattoos. Nine of ten kids in these groups have some kind of tattoo. Maybe not a professional tattoo—no big-winged eagles with sharp beaks and talons digging deep into writhing snakes. These are hand-drawn for the most part. The ones that make me cringe are the bowl burns.
“We just get really, really high,” Susie says, smiling sweetly. She is fifteen (“almost sixteen”) and has dyed blonde hair and braces. “Then you don’t feel it, or maybe you do, but it feels, I don’t know, good, I guess.”
“It” is the bowl of the marijuana pipe, burning hot after dozens of hits, the rim offering a perfect circle of red hot metal. Turned upside down and placed on flesh—teenage flesh, soft, fresh flesh—it creates a perfect ring for those who let it burn long enough. Like branding. I think of cows, roped up, and the red-hot iron applied to thick hairy flesh, animals screaming in pain as they are branded and forever after belong to someone, freedom denied, a possession to be bought, sold, milked, butchered.
I shake the image out of my head. These kids love their tattoos. The tattoos mean something to them, by commemorating an experience, remembering a loved one, symbolizing a stage in life, paying homage to God or family or friend. Engraved with pain, the tattoos are worn with pride and a sense of personal power—living, breathing reminders of life’s experiences and even, perhaps, life’s meaning.
“I have tattoos.” Manuel has been sitting back a bit in the circle, watching but not contributing to the discussion. His hair is long, and he combs it over his eyes, like a curtain that he can close when he wants to shut out the world.
“Two tattoos. One on each shoulder.” He pulls aside his orange jumpsuit to show us the words, which are written on the top of his shoulders in a graceful, looping script.
“Cielo” is engraved on the right.
“Inferno” is inscribed on the left.
“Cool,” someone in the group says. We’re sitting in our customary Wednesday morning circle in the juvenile detention center. Four boys and two girls, ages fifteen to seventeen, all in orange jumpsuits.
The look on Manuel’s face is hard to read. It’s not pride, I realize. He’s not showing off for the group. No, there’s something deeper etched into the lines around his mouth as he looks at me.
I might call it an invitation. He is asking me to understand. For on his shoulders, it seems that Manuel has outlined a battle of polarities, the push and pull of good and evil, the moral struggle between right and wrong.
“Why did you choose those words?” I ask him.
Some of the kids in the group smile. Like, “Isn’t it obvious, you know, heaven, hell, angels, devils, life, death?”
But Manuel understands why I’m asking the question. These are his tattoos to decipher, no one else’s.
“Because they remind me,” he says, looking down at the floor.
“Of what?” I ask.
“Of what is inside me.”
“What is inside you?” I know these questions sound silly, even stupid because the answers seem so obvious. But I don’t want to assume anything. This is, after all, his story to tell.
“Good,” he says solemnly. “And evil.”
The other kids lean forward in their chairs. Good and evil are subjects worthy of attention.
Manuel smiles and softly pats one shoulder, then the other. “I know I have a choice,” he says. “I can choose to be good. Or I can choose to be bad.”
“If I’m good,” he adds after a moment, “the goodness doesn’t last. I have to keep doing good. If I do something bad, something evil, it also doesn’t last. But I can learn from my mistakes. I can lean toward the good.”
I nod my head, and he sits back again, signifying that he has said what he wants to say. After a respectful silence, the rest of the group continues to talk about their tattoos.
I want to know more. I want to understand the deeper meaning and significance of tattoos. I email my friend Nick, who is heavily tattooed, and ask him to explain what tattoos mean to him.
“Even the most random or seemingly meaningless tattoos,” Nick writes back, “are imbued with a story. That story might be just the actual experience of getting the tattoo. I can remember the day, the shop, the artist, the conversation, jokes people made, the music that was playing, what I ate, what I did before or after, and the pain. All of that is a story behind the tattoo. Some of my tattoos are favorites not because of what they look like but because of how they remind me of an amazing time or day or place. And that place may be painful and unpleasant.”
“What about a bowl burn?” I ask Nick. “Do they also have meaning?”
“They are also imbued with memories of times when someone was just messing around while high and wanted a dumb tattoo,” he writes. “From one perspective, it may seem sad that people damage themselves in this way. But for them and their friends, these marks showcase a life lived.”
Stories. Showcases of lives lived. We humans are a mix of polarities—right and wrong, heaven and hell, good and evil, broken and whole. Cielo/inferno. Manuel understands this tug of war and tries to lean toward the good. But I imagine drugs and addiction pulling him—as they are luring Ben—in the other direction. I cannot erase the image of addiction as a monstrous force that challenges our best instincts, subverting the good and threatening the very essence of who we are and what we believe in. Addiction widens the schism between good and evil, and in that ruptured space, we encounter unfathomable suffering.
As the great mythologist and teacher Joseph Campbell wrote in The Power of Myth, “The demon that you can swallow gives you its power, and the greater life’s pain, the greater life’s reply.” Both Ben and I swallow the demon. I see it as enemy. Securely under its power, he sees it as friend, consoler, protector. My goal is to destroy it. His desire is to embrace it.
7
438,000 minutes
2004–2005
A few weeks before the end of his junior year in high school, I write Ben a letter. Letters are my safe haven, giving me the distance I need to express my thoughts and feelings in a coherent way. If I sit down and talk to him, I turn into a blubbering idiot within minutes.
I’ve become a coward, a weakling. My self-confidence is shot to hell. I’m frightened of his anger and the way he turns everything back on me. I get so confused. He sets my head spinning, like the girl in The Exorcist. And this is really baffling to me. If he has the demon inside, why am I the one who feels so possessed?
My friend Julie, a family counselor, gives me the best advice ever. “When you’re in a conversation with Ben, and it starts to go south,” she advises me, “bite your tongue.”
“Why?” I ask. I want detailed instructions. “Bite my tongue” seems easy enough, but these days I find myself wishing I had a little tape recorder I could put in my ear with some wise person’s voice telling me exactly what to say. Maybe it would be the same words to repeat, over and over. And that would be okay, because I wouldn’t have to think or maybe even feel. I could be a robot Mom.
/> Julie explains the downhill slide that so often happens when parents try to talk to their drug-using children. “When an adolescent feels attacked and up against a wall—maybe they’re scared, nervous, guilty, ashamed—they will most likely attack, change the subject, or flee. Parents get frustrated and interpret this as denial, which they see as a major red flag signaling trouble. They get scared and want to fix the problem, so they start lecturing, which makes the adolescent feel even more attacked. Things spiral out of control to a bad place, often ending in a power struggle between parent and child, which tends to let the kid off the hook and undermines the parent’s ability to bring the conversation back to the original problem—concerns about drug use.”
That makes sense to me, and I even practice biting my tongue—biting my lip is easier, actually—but in the heat of the moment I get riled up. Julie is right about the dynamic; as soon as I start talking about the fact that Ben seems unhappy or depressed, often not even mentioning the drugs, he gets defensive and turns the conversation around so that I’m the one with the problem (“you think you know so much,” “you don’t listen,” “you just assume you know what’s going on with me”), which makes me feel guilty and confused. Then the conversation ends with one of us (usually Ben) leaving in a huff.
So I write letters. I am half-mad with love and fear for him, and the panic takes me to this feverish place of worrying that if I don’t do or say or try something and some terrible event befalls him, it will all be my fault, and I will live with regret and remorse for the rest of my life. I may even lose him, and the thought of life without him is too much for me to bear. I could never face myself again if I did not keep trying to reach him.
May 24, 2004
Dear Ben,
I am writing this letter because I miss you. . . . I miss the Ben I know so well, the gentle, kind, considerate boy with a great sense of humor and an ability to recognize when he makes a mistake and say he is sorry. I think of all the great qualities you have, Ben, your kindness and sweetness are the most important.
I’ve watched for the past year as you have changed. We thought it was adolescence—the ups and downs of trying to figure out who you are amidst all the growing pains and changes that are taking place in your world. Then we thought it was a stage. Then we realized you were using drugs.
After we’d fight and then talk and try to work things out, things would get better for a while. But then they start to go downhill again. I don’t know if you see the changes yourself, but I think I see them pretty clearly. I see your personality changing. I see you become angry and I hear you say hateful things to me and Dad. I see you punch holes in the wall and kick things. I see you get quiet and withdrawn. I see you become more argumentative at times, as if you are trying to provoke a fight. For what reason? I don’t know. I feel bewildered, sad, helpless.
I ask you to think about one thing, Ben: Is this really who you want to be? Do you want to be someone who you are not?
I want so much for you to be free and to love life and to love people and to spend your days doing productive things, helping others, learning, growing, laughing, loving. I want you to feel connected to the world and to others.
That is my dream for your life, Ben. What is your dream? What do you want? How will you work for those dreams, for those desires?
I pray that you will find your way, Ben. But I fear that if you keep using, you will lose your dreams.
Life hurts. Sometimes it hurts so much it is unbearable. But the pain is where we grow—the pain is a reminder that we are alive.
I love you.
Mom
Two weeks later, on a sunny June morning, I sleep in. I love that luxurious feeling of soft sheets against warm skin, waking up from a good night’s rest, fluffing up my pillow, turning over to doze a bit more, dreaming about the day ahead. After all, it’s Saturday and the beginning of summer.
I stretch and smile, thinking about spending the day in my garden with my roses. I have over four dozen rose bushes. Two dozen red, double knock-out roses line the front split-rail fence, creating the most breathtakingly beautiful summer hedge. Another thirty roses grace the front and sides of the house. I’ve never had enough time to spend with my roses—given how many I’ve planted, it’s no small wonder. I’m forever apologizing and talking out loud to them. I talk to myself, the dogs, and my roses because I spend so much time alone, writing in my upstairs office; it feels good to hear a voice, even if it’s my own.
“I’m sorry,” I say to my Double Delight, as I deadhead an abundance of blooms that I overlooked. They still hold a fragrance that smells like heaven to me, something of this earth yet beyond beautiful, beyond anyone’s ability to create or design, beyond our control. Who could make a perfume that matches the swooning scent of a Double Delight rose? Which reminds me of a story Ernie told me. “Who knows the fragrance of a rose?” the Master asks his students. All of them know. “Who can put it into words?” All of them are silent.
Stately Mister Lincoln, widely reputed to be a hardy, proud rose with an astonishing fragrance, has grown too tall and spindly. When I put my nose to his spare red velvet blooms, I smell musty decay. Most rose growers love Mister Lincoln, but he does not like my garden—or maybe he doesn’t like me.
“Why aren’t you happy here?” I ask him, as I chop off his dead branches.
Ingrid Bergman isn’t content either. I planted her under a vigorous crabapple tree, not realizing (amateur rosarian that I am) that the tree roots eventually would choke the life out of her. Years later, I dig her up and throw her out, disappointed in her, not realizing (or more likely not admitting) that it was my fault for planting her there. I dig up Veterans Honor, too, and Peace and Chicago Peace—I neglected them too long, and they are dead to the world. I ask Pat to throw them in the back of his pickup and take them to the dump. It hurts my heart to look at them, their black branches stiff and inflexible, their lifeless roots dangling.
I spend a lot of time in the garden feeling bad. Most of my roses look beautiful, despite my neglect. They work so hard to bloom and make me happy, and I don’t nurture them the way I should. Today I decide I am going to devote hours to them. I am going to trim them and talk to them and love them, and they will respond with gratitude and their unique, forgiving grace.
Pat is already up and about; I can smell the coffee brewing. I walk into the kitchen, and he gives me a morning hug.
“Guess what?” he says. I can’t quite read the look on his face, but something momentous has occurred.
“What?” I ask, holding my breath.
“Ben was arrested last night.”
I tighten both fists, raise them in the air, and offer a small shout of gratitude. “YES!” Pat is smiling, too, because here is the answer to our prayers. What was hidden is no longer concealed. What was unspoken—better left unsaid—is out in the open. No more secrets. Best of all, Pat and I now have unlikely allies in the law—Ben will be held accountable for his actions by individuals and institutions who wield both power and authority. This is the break we’ve been waiting for. It feels as if we’ve won some kind of lottery. The Police-Finally-Arrested-Our-Son Sweepstakes. How could we ever have dreamed that this moment would be a cause for celebration? How could we ever have imagined that this would be a scene in the script of our lives?
In the next moment, I feel that old push and pull between my personal and professional lives, asking myself what kind of mother I am, what kind of human being I am. The paradox of me strikes deep. I dream about talking to my roses, apologizing for my negligence, and in the next moment, I’m celebrating my son’s arrest on a drug charge. I wonder if the two are connected. Do I talk to my roses because I can’t talk to my son? Or do I neglect my roses because I spend too much time worrying about Ben?
We learn the details later that day. Ben was arrested at a party on a minor in possession/consumption (MIP/MIC) charge. When he mouthed off to the police, he was handcuffed and charged with obstructing a law enforcement officer.
Because it’s his second arrest, with the first back in seventh grade and still on his record, he will go through the diversion program a second time, which requires that he complete a drug evaluation with a chemical dependency counselor, complete twenty hours of community service, attend the DUI victim’s panel again, pay fines, write apology letters, and follow all treatment recommendations.
Ben is lucky. He’s still a juvenile, with just eight days left before he turns eighteen. If he’d been arrested after his birthday, his case would have been processed through district court; if convicted, he would have had a criminal conviction that would become part of the public record—in essence, a sentence for life.
Several weeks later, we receive the chemical dependency evaluation.
Chemical Dependency/Mental Health Evaluation
Identifying data/current status: Ben is an 18-year-old Caucasian male who is currently a senior in high school. He lives at home with his parents. He has two older sisters who are in college, but home for the summer. This is Ben’s 2nd MIP/MIC. The first was while in the 7th grade.
Referral source: Juvenile Justice Center, the Diversion Program.
Client’s statement of the problem: “Alcohol isn’t really a problem for me. My using marijuana wasn’t a problem. My grades have gone up. It hasn’t really affected me. My priorities are to get into a good college. I get my homework done before I use. I’m excited to see what the next few months will be like not using.”
Mental Status: No hallucinations, illusions, or delusions. Mood and affect are appropriate. Thought content is within normal limits. He is dressed and groomed appropriately. He appeared open and honest. Denies suicidal thoughts or attempts.
Substance Use:
•History: Ben states he had his first drink at the age of 12. He reports his last drink as being about three weeks ago. He reports that over the last year he drinks on average four times a month. It takes 5–6 drinks to feel buzzed/drunk. Marijuana use began in the 7th grade. He reports using almost daily for the last year. He has experimented with a couple other drugs, but only used a couple times.
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