BREAKDOWN
Coping with My Teenage Son’s
Severe Depression
Vincent Zandri
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BREAKDOWN
Coping with My Teenage Son’s
Severe Depression
Vincent Zandri
I find him lying face-first on the floor of the garage. He’s banging his forehead against the concrete floor, punching it with clenched fists. I could hear him screaming from all the way across the apartment complex common. The sound of his rants and cries are like knives piercing my sternum. My son and his depression have finally reached a point of critical mass. This teen, my boy, wants to be free of the dreaded weight. He’s breaking down, his internal house-of-cards collapsing. In a word, he wants out of life.
Watching your child have a nervous breakdown is something like watching cancer devour your child’s young body. Like cancer, depression is a crushing disease that can destroy both body and soul, rendering even the strongest of parents paralyzed. This isn’t my first encounter with the symptoms of my son’s depression, but it is my first encounter with a clinical breakdown in which his mental and physical selves finally go to war.
A breakdown is not for the faint of heart.
When a child like my son Jack suffers a nervous breakdown, it's as if he's become possessed. The violence is a traumatic thing to experience, a frightening scene to view. He issues guttural screams. He claws at himself and tears at his clothing. He lifts himself up off the floor and punches a concrete block wall full-force, hard enough to break skin and bone. But he will not feel the pain so much as he will welcome it, covet it, the same way an addict lusts for a drug. This is not Jack lashing out. This is Jack hurting himself, trying to cauterize the deeper pain that has consumed his soul. This is as close as Jack comes to damaging himself, without actually committing suicide. And y breakdown’s end, the boy is spent, soaked through with sweat, his face and chest moist with saliva, tears, and snot. There’s blood on his hands, and spots of blood on his white t-shirt, mixed in with grime and filth from the garage floor.
Jack’s thick dark hair is mussed and matted. His hands and knees are encrusted with dirt from the garage floor. He is cut and bleeding in more than a few places. It’s possible he’s broken a finger; maybe pulled a muscle. His exhaustion is so profound that he can't stand. He wraps his arm around my shoulder allowing me to support most of his weight for the journey from the garage to our terrace level apartment.
On the walk across the common, his head hangs low, his chin against his chest. Big tears fall, but his sobs are quiet now, his voice a hoarse whisper.
“I’m sick,” he mutters. “I’m sick.”
It’s all I can do to hold back my own tears as I get him through the backdoor and onto the couch. I don’t know what to do next. I’ve never before experienced my child breaking down. My pulse pounds. My mouth is dry; my hands tremble. I need a drink.
Looking at Jack laid out on the couch, eyelids at half-mast, I consider dialing 911. But I’m afraid that calling in help will take away any control I still have. In every Cuckoo’s Nest sense of the word, I picture the nuthouse. I see straightjackets, injections, lobotomies, big powerful men dressed all in white who will toss Jack into a rubber room and bolt the door behind him. They will drug him, physically abuse him, taunt him, forget about him. Forget his humanity. Over my dead body.
I decide to do something totally out of character: I call his mother, seek out her help. When she answers the phone with a simple “Hello” it somehow hurts, even to hear her voice. But I have no choice other than to lay the truth on her. Once more I hold back tears when I tell her “I can’t handle it.”
My ex-wife insists he needs a hospital. She says she knows what he’s going through. That she too had a breakdown not long after our separation, which led to months of rehab and a strong medicine she will take for the rest of her life. In the end, her bipolar condition is what led the courts to hand over custody of our two boys to me. Since then I've tried to play Mr. Mom and Mr. Dad, but looking at my son sprawled out on the couch, I feel like a failure. My ex, however, is willing to do what she can. She’s going to place a call to her doctor at the Four Winds Psychiatric Facility in Saratoga Springs. The doctor will call me to get a better idea of Jack’s symptoms.
When the call comes, it’s from a doctor I’ve never met. I'm no longer able to hold back my emotions. The flood gates open. The tears flow, and it’s some time before I can even so much as utter a single word. It seems to take forever to get my message across.
“My son is sick,” I finally tell him, reiterating Jack’s words precisely. “I don’t know what to do.”
The doctor tells me to calm down. He says that if I fear for Jack’s life or for my own life, to immediately get him to the emergency room.
I tell him that’s not necessary. I trust my son, even in this condition. I trust in him. Trust that he will not do anything to harm himself, or me, or his little brother.
Then comes the question: do you have guns in the house?
If so, get rid of them. Get rid of anything you might consider a dangerous weapon: hunting knives, ropes, darts, razorblades.
The doctor wants to see Jack first thing in the morning, in order to start him on medication. No more school for a while, no more friends, or activities: “Keep a close watch on him. Let him sleep if he wants to sleep. Above all, don’t excite him.”
He hangs up.
I feel drained. Drained, stomped on, gutted, bled out, crushed…
I go to the refrigerator, pop a beer, drink down half of it in one swallow, standing inside the open fridge door with the cool air seeping through my shirt. The alcoh
ol goes right to the sweet spot in my brain, tempers my despair, my anxiety. This is my way of medicating myself when the depression grows too intense.
I stare at Jack lying on his side on the couch. He’s assumed a fetal position, sleeping like a baby. I remember him as a baby like it was yesterday. I remember changing his diapers, holding him against me, tossing him in the air, hearing him laugh. I recall him as a toddler, full of energy, running in circles inside our little bungalow in the city – from the kitchen, to the dining room, to the family room, and back again. I recall his unstoppable enthusiasm for playing Pop Warner Football, and for playing sandlot football with his friends, and for Saturday night sleepovers, and for simply riding his bike. I don't recognize the boy passed out on the couch.
Over the next 24 hours comes a series of tests and consultations with psychiatrists and psychologists. Jack is placed on an anti-anxiety and anti-depression medication: Lithium. While admittance to a hospital is once more discussed, it's argued by the professionals that to lump Jack in with persons suffering from schizophrenia and psychosis would be a grave mistake. A grave mistake at this stage of the game anyway. This news comes as a relief, although I’m not entirely sure if the relief is for me or for him. I dread the thought of visiting my son in a psychiatric hospital.
Steps must be taken to get at the root of the depression. Initially, the steps are simple and practical. His doctors will interview him about his history and his short life on this planet. They will look for a trigger, a pivotal moment, or moments when the child went from happy-go-lucky to near dead. That moment could have come when my wife and I were bitterly arguing about something. It could have come from a bully on the playground. It could have come from a teacher who took a disliking to the boy. It could have come from nothing special at all other than his ancestry,his genes.
Again, they ask me if I possess firearms.
Does Jack appear suicidal? Does he speak of hurting anyone besides himself? Do I fear for my own well-being when in his presence? All the same questions that I fielded during my initial phone conversation the previous evening.
As necessary as the questions are, they are disturbing. I am a gun owner. I’m a bird hunter and I like to shoot trap now and again. But I don’t fear that Jack is about to use them on me or anyone else, least of all himself. Of course, this is exactly the attitude that will get someone killed. The guns will be removed this afternoon, I assure the doctor.
It’s decided that, while Jack takes a break from school, he's to begin a series of therapy sessions with his psychologist. These will occur three times a week for an hour at a time. The sessions begin the next day.
His mother and I are called in first to discuss Jack’s childhood. Was there fighting around him?
Yes, that’s why we divorced.
Did he have tantrums?
Yes, major ones, lasted for hours at a time.
Did he exhibit signs of obsession and/or compulsion?
He did. For instance, if you didn’t tie his shoes perfectly, he’d go into a kind of seizure. Later on I would learn that as a pre-teen, he would not leave his bedroom without knocking five times on the wall.
How did he take your divorce?
Not well. He lashed out at his mother. She had openly conducted an affair with her personal trainer while we were married – something she would later come to regret. He lashed out at me for falling in love with another woman soon after my separation from his mother. Something I would later come to regret.
By the end of this first fact-finding session I am again crushed, bled out, drained. I am convinced that this boy’s problem rests with me and me alone. I am at fault for his breakdown. The way I’ve raised him is the problem. My ex-wife and I—all the fighting, it is the root cause of Jack’s depression.
But then the doctor inquires about my family history, and a different story emerges altogether. My ex-wife’s side has two documented suicides and several more cases of depression and bipolar syndrome. My ex-wife herself is bipolar.
As for my side, it’s no better.
I immediately recall a story my dad told me about his own early teenage years. How one afternoon he came home from school and without warning found himself clutching at the driveway, convinced he was about to climb up on the roof and toss himself off. A nervous breakdown followed. He was later diagnosed with depression. This was at a time when depression was considered shameful. Those persons afflicted with it were to be hidden, kept out of sight of the “normal” people.
But my father went on to beat his depression and became a successful contractor Yet he suffered two more breakdowns throughout his life, because depression never really leaves you. It may disappear for a while, go into a kind of remission, but you can’t fight genetics. He told me of my great-grandfather who committed suicide at the dinner table. He did it by cutting his own neck with a straight razor, in front of his family.
The doctor, a tall thin man with long gray hair, dressed in blue jeans and a denim work-shirt, gazes at my ex-wife and I.
“This depression is genetic in nature,” he explains, waving his hands. “And it is weaving its way in and out of your bloodline.”
Bloodline.
Sitting there inside that small, square-shaped office decorated with prints of serene scenes, like horses running in wide-open pastures and boats sailing on calm seas, I suddenly regret having made the decision to father my children. It is not a good thought. It is a bad, disturbing, and unsettling thought.
This is not so good either: Jack is not genetically blessed and it breaks my heart.
But this is the modern world. Medicine and therapies are available now that can afford Jack a “normal” life, or so the doc assures us.
Lithium. He’s referring to Lithium.
The stigma of depression is no longer an issue. It’s not the Black Plague that it used to be. No one in today’s world will bat an eye upon hearing about depression in my family since everyone has an aunt or a brother or a partner on Zoloft or Wellbutrin. I have no problem writing about it. In fact, this story serves as my own therapy.
If only I could step inside my son’s mind, observe the grinding wheels and gears, observe the monster hidden behind them, I might understand more. I might be able to write, not in flat description but in a three dimensional world where I can use words to defeat the monster. But no matter how close I am to my child, I am an outsider looking in. I am on my knees looking down into the pit. There is nothing but cold empty darkness.
The news, however, is not all bad.
In a week’s time, Jack makes his first advance. He cracks a smile. I’m not entirely sure what provokes it. Something I say or something his little brother says. Maybe something Kramer spits out on a “Seinfeld” rerun. But the fact remains . . . he smiles.
It’s a simple smile. A grin, really. It’s not a whole lot. You might not give it a second thought under any other circumstance. But he smiles, and I find myself clutching to that smile like a drowning man savagely hording a life preserver.
A doctor will tell you it takes twenty-six different facial muscles to make a smile. Twenty-six muscles that make a whole lot of difference in the world. It takes more than twice that many muscles to make a frown, which means frowning takes more effort. But human physiology aside, that smile is more than just a smile. It represents hope. It is the future, and it is possibility. Most of all, it is survival. A smile is what we have to hold onto when we have nothing else. My boy’s smile rubs healing salve on my broken heart.
I know we have a long road ahead, Jack and I. That he is not coming out of his depression, but in fact, only entering into it. Or, to borrow some words from Winston Churchill, this isn’t the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning. There will be more tears, more exhaustion, more anxiety, more isolation, more darkness. More breakdowns. But perhaps the next time the depression rears its horned and ugly head, Jack will be ready for it.
When it does, I will be there to carry his weight.
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VINCENT ZANDRI is the New York Times and USA TodayBestselling author of THE INNOCENT, GODCHILD, THE REMAINS, MOONLIGHT FALLS, THE CONCRETE PEARL, MOONLIGHT RISES, SCREAM CATCHER, BLUE MOONLIGHT, MURDER BY MOONLIGHT, THE GUILTY, MOONLIGHT SONATA, and more. He is also the author of the Amazon bestselling digital shorts, PATHOLOGICAL, TRUE STORIES and MOONLIGHT MAFIA. Harlan Coben has described THE INNOCENT (formerly AS CATCH CAN) as ". . . gritty, fast-paced, lyrical and haunting," while the New York Post called it "Sensational . . . Masterful . . . Brilliant!" Zandri's publishers include Delacorte, Dell, StoneGate Ink, Down & Out Books, and Thomas & Mercer. An MFA in Writing graduate of Vermont College, Zandri's work is translated into many languages including Dutch, Russian, Italian, and Japanese. A freelance photo-journalist for Living Ready, RT, Globalspec, as well as several other news agencies and publications, Zandri lives in New York. For more visit www.vincentzandri.com
Breakdown
Vincent Zandri
This story was first published in Conor Friedersdorf’s Culture 11.
Bear Media
Front Cover Photo: Vincent Zandri
Author Photo: Jessica Painter
Breakdown Page 1