My Life, Deleted

by Scott Bolzan

  Taylor had been helpful in giving me some insight into Grant’s and her generation, but even she said she didn’t understand how her brother turned out so different from her.

  He had other tattoos I didn’t like either, such as the eight-inch bold dark letters spelling relentless that went from his armpit to his waist, which Joan said he’d gotten as soon as he turned eighteen. I had a hard time dealing with this one too because I didn’t understand it. If I had a thousand words to describe Grant, relentless wouldn’t be one of them. If I had to pick a word, it would be lost, same as me.

  Joan and I had talked quite a bit about the parallels of Grant’s addiction and my memory loss, which had forced each of us to search in his own way for his true identity and who he was as a man. Grant had lost his sense of purpose and his direction; he’d lost his way. My brain injury had caused me to lose my sense of self and caused my confusion. But I saw a potential for connection between us here, as each of us tried to fight through our own emotional pain, so I tried to use these shared struggles to bridge the gap between us.

  “If anyone can understand how you feel, Grant, it’s me,” I said. “We’ve both been through a traumatic brain injury. I understand what it’s like to be lost.”

  After my own experience with depression and getting some relief from Cymbalta, I also tried to talk to him about the depression I’d seen in him and the benefits of antidepressants. “I know what it’s like to not be able to get out of bed, to feel hopeless,” I said.

  Grant had tried the meds on and off over the past few years, but he’d always stopped taking them after a month or so. His excuses ranged from not liking the stigma to not having the money to buy the medication, and his current rehab wouldn’t let him take any medications. Of course, when he did have money, he’d turn around and spend it on recreational drugs instead.

  In the end, my attempts to have these heart-to-heart talks just didn’t seem to do any good. Apparently Grant wasn’t able to connect with me on that level. He seemed to resent me, and that left me frustrated, disappointed, and sad.

  It wasn’t long after he’d moved back in with us that I noticed about ten days’ worth of my OxyContin pills were missing from the bottle, which I’d hidden in my sock drawer. When Joan and I confronted him, he said, “I know you’re not going to believe me, but I didn’t take them.” I had no proof, but it wasn’t hard to do the math. I took the medicine three times a day, and thirty tablets were missing.

  Perhaps his conscience got the best of him, but several weeks later he admitted to the theft and apologized. We felt it was a big step for him to come clean like that, so we gave him a final warning.

  “This is your last chance,” I told him.

  From then on, we hid my OxyContin in the house safe, which was in my office closet and required a combination and a key to open. Grant knew the combination because we stored our trust documents and wills in there in case something happened to us. However, now that he was home, we thought it best to hide the key.

  I never thought he would find the key, which I’d hidden in an organizer on my desk, but that he did, several days before Joan and Taylor were due to go to Hawaii with Joan’s mother. When I saw that at least fifty of my pills were gone, leaving about one more day’s worth, Joan and I confronted Grant once again, and he denied, denied, denied.

  “I know what was there,” I said. “There’s no way for this number of pills to be gone without someone taking it, and the only logical choice is you. There’s no way I took an extra fifty pills by mistake.”

  But Grant stood firm. “There’s no way I can get into the safe because you need a key and I don’t even know where the key is,” he said. “I haven’t been in your office since you told me not to go in there.”

  I knew he was lying, but I was so fed up with him I just wanted to get away from him. While Joan and Taylor were in Hawaii, I planned to relax on the boat for four days to clear my head and start honing message points for my new speaking career. After recently losing a refill prescription for the pain meds, I felt it wasn’t an option to ask my doctor for another—or to confess that my son had taken my supply. Although I’d been taking the OxyContin regularly, I was down to a pretty low dose, so Joan and I figured it wouldn’t be a problem to go off it and that I could try to deal with the pain, using some backup Percocet I still had if necessary.

  I had mixed emotions about Joan’s departure. I wanted her to go and enjoy herself, because God knows she needed a break from me and certainly from Grant, but I knew it would be difficult without her. Before they left I made sure they had their boarding passes and hotel confirmations; I even went to the bank to get them some cash.

  After dropping them at the airport, I started my six-hour trip to Oceanside, figuring I would arrive about the same time they landed in Maui. While we were gone, Anthony agreed to stay at our house to “babysit” Grant and make sure he didn’t slip out to buy drugs.

  Shortly after I got to Oceanside, Joan called to say they’d landed and were on their way to the resort, but she was more worried about me because I wasn’t feeling too hot. She suggested that I go to urgent care in California for more OxyContin if I was so worried about Dr. Lanier’s reaction, but I told her I’d just tough it out.

  On my second day there, I felt like I was coming down with something. My body ached and I couldn’t sit still, but it hurt to move. I was either too hot or too cold, I couldn’t concentrate, and I felt disoriented. This was my first time being sick since the accident, and Joan thought maybe I had caught the flu due to the stress of the past ten months.

  After the third day of feeling crummy, Joan and I decided I should drive home and let Dr. Lanier look me over. Still suffering from insomnia, I headed out around 3:00 A.M.

  Seeing no choice but to be honest, I explained to the doctor that I hadn’t taken any OxyContin for four days because Grant had stolen my pills, and she immediately knew what was wrong.

  “You’re not suffering from the flu,” she said. “You’re going through withdrawal. It’s not a good idea to just stop like that.”

  Asked how long the detox would last, she said, “You should feel better in a couple of days.”

  “That’s fine,” I said, “but I’m going to go off the drugs entirely and see how the headaches are. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll go away.”

  Grant was still asleep when I got home, so I thanked Anthony for watching the house and told him he could go. Now that I knew what was wrong with me, I was angry that these four days of feeling ill had been forced upon me by my own son. The situation clearly called for a verbal kick in the ass, so I went into Joan’s office, where he was sleeping on the spare bed, and kicked him in the leg.

  “Get the hell up,” I commanded. “I want to talk to you. Now.”

  Startled, Grant muttered, “What’s wrong? Why are you here?”

  “Never mind,” I replied. “Just get up.”

  He joined me in the living room several minutes later, groggy, with his hair tousled. When I told him I’d just come from the doctor’s office after feeling like crap with the flu for the past four days, he acted concerned.

  “That sucks,” he said. “Are you okay now?”

  “Well,” I said, “I found out that I don’t have the flu, Grant, but that I’m going through withdrawal. And do you know why? Because you stole my medicine.”

  “Dad,” he said quickly, “I didn’t take your pain pills. I can’t even get in the safe.”

  “I think you’re a liar, and I’m so pissed off I don’t even know what to do with you right now.” After pausing to let that sink in, I went on. “From here on out you’re not going to lie around this house anymore. I want you working, cutting grass, cleaning the garage, and whatever else I tell you to do. Is that clear?”

  “Okay, whatever,” he said with a mix of apathy and anger.

  While he was mowing the grass, I called Joan and told her what the doctor said. I told her to have fun for the rest of her trip; I was going to be working
our son from morning till night for the next couple of days.

  “We’re going to have to make some decisions about Grant when you get back,” I said.

  Joan agreed, saying he’d been mouthy with her the last time she’d talked to him on the phone from Hawaii. “He’s using again,” she said. “I know it.”

  After Joan and Taylor flew in, Taylor headed over to Anthony’s to avoid the scene with Grant she knew was coming.

  Still maintaining that he wasn’t using, Grant had persuaded us to let him go to Las Vegas with his girlfriend for the weekend because he’d told us she didn’t use drugs, so Joan and I planned to talk to him peacefully when he got back.

  That changed, however, after Joan cleaned the bathroom, where she found several pieces of a gray cottony substance, a small black nugget of what she presumed was black tar heroin, and the tip of an insulin syringe. Joan then searched her office and the bed Grant had been sleeping in, finding more cotton and some wadded-up squares cut from a plastic shopping bag.

  “Look what I found,” she said, so upset she was shaking.

  The syringe was the only one of these items that Joan had seen in real life, but she’d seen the others online and on TV. I, on the other hand, was clueless. “Where did you find these, and what are they?” I asked.

  She tried to explain what little she knew about how Grant procured and used his drugs, saying the cotton was to filter out impurities when he shot up.

  “This is what the heroin comes in,” she said, pointing to the plastic squares. “He’s using in our house.”

  Grant had obviously crossed the line. “We can’t have this in our house,” I said, horrified by the implications.

  “He’s got to leave,” she said, just as mortified as me.

  When he came through the front door two nights later, we asked him to meet us in Joan’s office, where I stood with my arms crossed and Joan sat at her desk.

  “Is there anything you want to tell us?” I asked.

  Grant, who we later learned was still high from using that morning, was in smart-ass mode. “No,” he said. “About my trip?”

  “No, about the drugs that your mother found while cleaning the bathroom.”

  Grant paused for a moment, then copped to it. “Yeah, I’m not going to lie. I used drugs in the house,” he said.

  “In our house, Grant?” Joan repeated incredulously. “We can’t trust you, and you aren’t allowed to stay here anymore. You need to get help.”

  “That’s okay,” Grant said, adding nonchalantly that his girlfriend would let him stay with her family until she got her own apartment.

  His sarcastic attitude only made me angrier. “You are the stupidest kid I know,” I said. “We’ve spent nearly $75,000 dealing with your drug addiction, rehab, detox, and medical appointments. We’ve tried to help you, and you refuse to follow our rules in this house. I don’t care if you become homeless. You need to leave and get your life in order.”

  “Fine,” he said.

  “Don’t you even care that you’re hurting us?” Joan asked.

  “No, I really don’t,” he replied, looking right at her with such insolence and disrespect that I was furious on her behalf.

  Where did he think he got off talking to his mother like that?

  I grabbed him by the neck and pushed him out of the bedroom and across the next room until I had him against the open door, which was flat against the wall. “It’s time for you to leave my family alone. Get the hell out of here!” I yelled. “And don’t call us.”

  Grant just laughed, which only made me more furious. It really did seem like he could care less. “Say good-bye,” he said as he opened the front door. “This is the last time you’re ever going to see me. I have enough heroin in my sock to overdose.”

  Stunned by his last remark, my anger dropped a few notches. “I can’t stop you from doing that, but we love you,” I replied just before he shut the door.

  By now Joan was crying hysterically. Thinking logically, I figured his overdose threats were empty and manipulative and that he would simply find a ride to his girlfriend’s house. But Joan was clearly caught up in her emotions, fearing that he might just follow through.

  We had another rough night, with Joan worrying where he was, but she calmed down after she got hold of his girlfriend the next day, who said she’d gotten Grant a hotel room for a couple of nights. When he called to tell Joan that he was safe, she asked, “Are you going to hurt yourself?” and he said no.

  Grant persuaded his girlfriend and her family to let him stay with them. We weren’t happy, but we were relieved that at least we knew where he was sleeping, and it wasn’t a park bench.

  Joan’s hysterical crying was just one sign that she wasn’t handling things as well as usual. After being so strong for so long since my accident, she’d been showing increasing signs of stress and had been growing frustrated and angry with me more easily than before. These days, an offhand comment from me would send her into a tirade.

  Since the accident I’d gradually been joining in more of the joking banter our family did with each other. Once I’d gotten past my sensitive stage, I’d learned this was all done in a good-natured, playful way. But sometimes lately I’d noticed that when I tried to joke with Joan, she would go off on me in a bitchy tone. Honestly, it was like waking up to two different people. One day she was nice and sweet, and the next she’d be so difficult I’d want to run away from her. Concerned that I was doing something wrong, I tried to lie low for a while, but I started taking the whole thing personally, attributing her moodiness to my inability to be a productive husband and provider for our family.

  Is Joan starting to resent me for not being the man she once knew and married? Am I ever going to be that guy again?

  Then I started noticing that she was also directing her irritability at Taylor, yelling at her for minor infractions such as leaving a knife covered with peanut butter on the counter. If she was screaming at our sweet and well-behaved daughter, I figured she must be under a tremendous strain.

  When Joan and I talked about her mood swings and erratic behavior, she summed them up as PMS. Once I had a label to place on it, my first thought was, I’ve heard of this, but how do you get rid of it?

  Once again, TV helped me out. I often watched Everybody Loves Raymond to gain a better understanding of how families interacted, and one episode seemed particularly relevant to our current dynamic. Raymond’s wife, Debra, had a bad case of PMS, so he bought her some over-the-counter pills and read to her from the box about the symptoms it was supposed to cure, including bloating, headaches, fatigue, and muscle aches.

  “There’s nothing in here for bitchy,” Debra noted sarcastically.

  “You probably need a prescription for bitchy,” he replied.

  I felt like Raymond was speaking directly to my situation. It was kind of a relief, actually. Here I’d thought it was me and our household dramas, but it was simply the three most dreaded letters in the male language: PMS. Now that I knew what it was, I began to notice it started right before and continued during her menstrual period.

  After I’d started taking the Cymbalta, I’d felt the changes in my own mood. And after seeing the TV commercial for the drug, I wondered if maybe Joan was depressed too, grieving the loss of the husband she used to know. So, very cautiously, I broached the subject with her.

  “Maybe Dr. Lanier can help you with some Cymbalta,” I said. “I’ve found it’s been helping me cope with the stresses of life. Maybe you would benefit from it as well.”

  Joan mentioned that she’d already tried some antidepressants for PMS in the past and hadn’t seen much improvement, but she said she’d talk to Dr. Lanier. In July Joan began taking the medication.

  Within a few weeks Joan’s moods evened out somewhat and the time around her next period was much improved. But even then, some other thorny issues presented themselves.

  After the news stories started coming out, I sensed that Joan was becoming increasingly j
ealous of the instant attention I was getting, of the opportunities to tell my story, and of my decision to launch a new speaking career, which was a longtime career goal for her, not to mention the repeated suggestions that I write a book.

  Confused and frustrated, I was worried that we were headed for trouble if this continued. As much as I tried to include Joan in my media interviews, this gesture never seemed to fulfill her needs. I thought I was lost before in life, but there is no worse feeling than having a simmering uncertainty about what your wife wants and a nagging inability to figure out how to satisfy her.

  Chapter 22

  WITH MY FIRST HALLOWEEN coming up, Joan and I committed to take part in a charity event put on by Save the Family Foundation of Arizona to benefit underprivileged children, and we were encouraged to bring Taylor and my nephews Noah and Aden along.

  I was all for helping kids, but even after watching Halloween episodes of my regular shows on television and seeing the costumes and candy at Target, I still didn’t get the idea behind this strange ritual, so Joan tried to explain it to me. “It’s a holiday that allows you to be goofy, and you give kids candy,” she said.

  To me the notion was bizarre, but I generally enjoyed doing anything that Noah and Aden enjoyed, and I figured I would comprehend it better once I saw it. No longer the old Scott, who questioned Joan’s interest in participating in charity events, I wanted to be there with her, doing something to help. As an NFL alumni representative, I was going to meet the organizers and observe the festivities firsthand because my group was considering whether to support this charity in future events.

  We met up at the venue, the Hilton hotel near the Phoenix airport. While Anthony and I waited outside the ladies’ room, Joan and Taylor had the boys change into the costumes that my sister Bonnie had sent from Chicago. Three-year-old Aden was cold, so he pulled his red and gray nylon Transformers outfit over his clothes and put on his pointy-eared Batmanesque mask that covered his face from the nose up. Six-year-old Noah was a Ninja Warrior, wearing a plastic six-pack over his stomach and a stretchy hood mask with an opening for his glasses.