Proud

Every now and then my son says something, or in this case, writes something that makes me so very proud of him.

He wrote this for a school assignment:

“This has been a very eventful summer for me. I will be telling you about three stages of my summer, but first let me tell you a little about myself. I am a fifteen old recovering drug addict trying to get his life back on track. I currently have three hundred eight days of sobriety and that number is only going to get longer.  In order to do that I have to change some parts of my life, one of which is my performance in school and this is my start. Learning that was the first part of my summer.

               The second part was finally finding out what I wanted to do as a career. I found out that it was photography. I loved art, but I wasn’t any good at it. So I was pretty happy when I found out that photography was art. That was the second part of my summer.

               The third was when I finally decided I wanted to do something with my life and I was willing to do anything for it. Then I started a legal business, designed a logo, a name, and, a Facebook page. There is nothing I would rather have done this summer.”

Reading this made me feel pretty confident about his future and how the school year could go.  He seemed to be positive about his life at that point.   

I wanted to frame it and hang it in his room so that he would have a reminder of how he felt at the beginning of the school year.

I was pretty sure he was going to need it.

Me, too.

School

I decided since it was highly likely that he relapsed, but he swore up and down he didn’t, that I would say, in my mind "he has been mostly sober”.  At AA meetings, when he tells the group he is 270 days sober, I always silently change it to “270 days, mostly sober.”  What else could I do?  Insist that he start over at number one, when he insisted that he didn’t use?  I was glad that he thought of himself as being sober. 

He was about 280 days mostly sober when it was time to start the new school year at the high school.

I did not want him to go to that high school and I did not want to let him out of my sight.

I was so afraid.

During the entire summer, I felt like I spent my entire existence making sure that everything was just as right as it could be for him.

And now I had to let him go.

He said that since he hadn’t had hardly anything to do with any friends over the summer and hadn’t seen any of the kids he used to hang out with, straight or sober, for the last nine months, that he didn’t know what he would do when he went back to school.

I didn’t know what to think.

School alone has every trigger that there could be for relapse, but him saying that he didn’t know what he would do just made me feel so nervous.

I wanted everything to be just the way it should be so that he wouldn’t have a reason to relapse.  I know that sounds ridiculous and totally absurd, but every single part of my being does not want him to go back to using drugs.

And High school is the den of iniquity.

I couldn’t even imagine what it would be like for him.

Would he say, “I finally have some freedom and this is what I am going to do with it,” and then go right back to using drugs as if he had never stopped?

That’s what he did last fall after he was sick and stuck at home for 3 weeks.  His first day back at school, he was right back on the weed and whatever else he could get his hands on.

He went to his sophomore orientation day.  He had no one to go with and no one that he could count on to hang out with.

He had to be nervous, but he acted tough as if it were no big deal.

I surprised him with a cell phone.  I knew it would make me feel better if he had one.  And he had said that if he had one, he could call his sponsor or me, if he felt that he should talk to us rather than do something stupid.

He was excited about the cell phone for about two minutes.  As soon as he found out that it was restricted, he decided that he didn’t need it or want it and that was it.  He had been told many times that if I ever got him one, he would only be able to call or text certain people, and that there would be no internet access.  I guess he thought that was all right in theory, but not all right in reality.

When I tried to talk to him about it, he decided to strike out at me and hurt me. 

He said as sarcastically as possible, “Oh right, and when someone says, ‘hey man, give me your number,’ I can say, ‘No, I am not allowed to call anyone but my mom because she is my best friend.’”

Well, so much for thinking that for the most part, over the last few months, that we were pretty good friends.

It seemed like we had gotten back to normal in the past few weeks, even though I felt very cautious about letting myself open up.  I didn’t want to get stabbed in the back again. 

But, there is no such thing as normal.

Unless normal is knowing that he has an underlying thread of animosity about everything in his life.  And he was not afraid to let us know how mad he was about anything at any time. 

I know I have to stay detached and I know I have to not let  what he does get to me.  But, for me, that seems to be impossible!

He went to his half day orientation.

And didn’t take his phone.

Then, he got out early.  But, he couldn’t call me to come and pick him up because he had no phone!

While I was driving to the school, he was walking home.  Then, I waited and waited and he didn’t come out.

The longer I waited, the more nervous I got about where he was and what he was doing.  I thought my heart was going to beat right out of my chest. 

He called me from his only friend’s house and said that I wasn’t home when he got there, so he went to his friend’s house to call me and ask if he could hang out with him for awhile.  (This friend is one year younger than he is and still goes to the Middle School).

I was so relieved to know where he was and that he was okay.  But, I was also mad because at this point I feel like HE NEEDS TO BE WHERE I KNOW HE IS GOING TO BE and if I am going to pick him up from school, then he better be there for me to pick up! 

He didn’t see what the big deal was.

Great. 

He hadn’t even had one full day of school yet and I was getting attitude.

The first day of school just broke my heart. 

I got this text message during his lunch hour:

“Everyone is either a stoner, a jock, or a straight up nerd.  The only ones I fit in with are the stoners.”

I felt so bad for him.

I wanted to run right to the high school, take him out to lunch, and protect him from feeling like that.

But, I just texted him back and told him that HE is not a stoner anymore and that he WILL find friends who are in none of those categories because there are all kinds of people at school and in time, he will find good non-nerdy, non-stoner, non-jock friends.

We texted back and forth all during his lunch hour!

He actually used his phone!

That felt like progress.

??Relapse??

This has been the hardest chapter to write. 

I think that relapse is one of the hardest things for the family members of the recovering addict to accept.  It can happen and everyone knows it can.  But, no one wants it to and it is heartbreaking when it does.

The next day my son acted just as lethargic and out of it as he had the previous day. 

I told my husband that we could not delay the inevitable any longer and that we were going to drug test our son that afternoon.  I didn’t want it to be positive, but I thought that at least we would know if we needed to find out if something else was wrong with him because this all-over-the-place behavior could not keep happening.  There had to be some kind of explanation for his out of control anger and actions.  We had no other ideas about what could be going on with him.  It was so much more than just being overworked and tired.  I did not want it to be a relapse because he had been doing so well.  But, you never know what is going to trigger a relapse and something about working in the garage, probably did.

When my husband got home from work, we called our son in from working in the garage and told him he needed to go pee in a cup.  He said he would, but I sensed some reluctance. 

I didn’t really know everything was going to spiral out of control in such a big way from that one test.

I have never seen a kid freak out and lose control like he did. 

As we were watching for the results, he made sure to reaffirm that there would be a positive result for amphetamines.  As if I didn’t know that.  It seemed to me that he thought something would be masked on a drug test by the fact that it would already show positive for amphetamines.  (Adderall, that he takes for ADHD is an amphetamine). 

The drug test showed positive for benzodiazepems and opiates.  (Not even amphetamines, which was weird). 

Great. 

While we were reading the fine print on the drug test directions to figure out what benzodiazepems were, he asked us what the drug test showed and when we said that it was positive in two areas, he totally lost it. 

For the next 4 hours, all hell broke loose in our house.  I can’t even say heck, to put it mildly, because it was hell. 

He raged and yelled and screamed.  Then, he cried and sobbed.  He was convinced that now he was going to get sent back to rehab for something that he didn’t even do.

Neither parent had said anything at all about rehab.  We were still trying to figure out what the results of the drug test meant.  We kept trying to tell him that he wasn’t going back to rehab, we just wanted to get to the bottom of what was going on.

But, he wouldn’t listen. 

He said that the drug test was wrong and that he hadn’t used anything.  He wanted us to believe him and not the drug test.  He wouldn’t stop yelling and screaming F-bombs at us.  We couldn’t even get a word in edgewise.  I couldn’t believe this was happening.  It was like being in a movie that I wouldn’t even want to watch. 

I even tried just plain telling him to shut-up so that we could talk and then he came at ME very threateningly and told me to NEVER tell him to shut up again.  Wow.  Things were spiraling out of control and we couldn’t seem to stop them.

My husband stepped between us and told my son that he is not allowed to talk to me like that.  So, then he threatened my husband, which made me feel that I needed to get between THEM.  We were going around and around in a crazy circle.

One of us needed to go to the pharmacy to buy another drug test so we could get a second opinion.  I thought my husband should go, but he was nervous about leaving me alone with our son.  I didn’t really think my son would do anything to me, but I was pretty sure that something bad would happen between them if I went to the store and left the two of them alone together.

While my husband was gone, he called my son’s sponsor and told him that we were having a really bad day.  His sponsor was out of town, but he immediately sent some friends to come to our house to help us out.  They were going to bring us some 6-panel test kits that are used at sober living centers.  He felt so bad that all of this was going on and he wasn’t here to help our son through it.    

But he did call my son.  He tried to get him to calm down.  I think he probably told him that everything was going to be okay.  I know he also said that the drug test kits that he was sending to us would show the true results and that my son would have to accept them.  My son was adament that he hadn’t done anything wrong, and he seemed happy to comply with what his sponsor wanted him to do.  He was still so upset that he was crying the entire time he talked to his sponsor and kept saying that he didn’t want to go back to rehab.  He cried so much that he got physically sick and sounded like he was having an asthma attack, too. 

After he hung up, I tried to get him to use his inhaler so that he could breathe better.  He just swore at me and told me that he didn’t care whether he could breathe or not.  So much for seeming like he might have settled down.

While we were waiting for his sponsor’s friends to come, we used the drug test kit from the pharmacy.  It still showed positive results for Opiates (my husband bought the most expensive kit there was and then it didn’t even test for Benzodiazepems). 

I looked online to find out what drugs were in the categories of Opiates and Benzo’s.  Opiates could be pain killers like Lortab, but even harder drugs like Heroin.  Benzo’s are the class of drugs that Valium and Xanax are in.  Both would explain why he slept so much on Sunday, and how he was so tired, out of it, and lethargic on Monday and Tuesday.

The results of this 2^nd test did nothing for his attitude.  He started yelling and raging again.  Was he angry that he got caught?  Did he think he could hide his relapse behind amphetamines/adderall on a drug test and then it didn’t work out for him because the drugs he took weren’t amphetamines?

I was so glad when his sponsor’s friends came.  They were very nice and helpful.  Both were recovering addicts.  One was a guy who was now working in a drug rehab center.  He talked to my son outside for awhile and seemed to help calm him down.  Then performed the drug test himself.  It showed the same positive results as the first test.  He told my son that he needed to accept that he had made a mistake and move on from there.  He said that this did not need to be a setback.  He told us to go ahead and send the Walgreen’s test to the lab and my son seemed to agree that he wouldn’t be able to argue with the results of that, but was still adamant that he hadn’t used anything. 

They both told my son that trust has to be earned back and that we have every right not to trust him.  He was nice to them and agreed with everything they said.  He is really good about saying the right thing and acting okay toward other people.

We hoped that everything they told him would help his attitude, but as soon as they left he reverted to the upset, angry, raging madman that he was before they came.  He would not stop insisting that he hadn’t used anything. 

Things did not get any better that night.  In fact they got even worse.

Throughout all of the arguing and yelling and peeing in a cup, he kept going out into the garage and trying to work.  It was like he had an obsession with getting in as many hours of work as possible, even though we were trying figure out what he had relapsed on and WHY! 

Then, something very coincidental happened. 

He “found” a container of old prescription bottles in the garage. 

As soon as I saw the container, my heart just dropped into my stomach. I could not believe it was in the garage and I immediately remembered why it was and what was in it.  Some of the bottles still had pills in them, and some didn’t.  There also should have been some Lortab and a bottle with about 2 Valium in it, too, but they weren’t there.  I was pretty sure that if had prior knowledge of that container of medication in the garage, then the Lortab and Valium were part of the equation, even though the bottles weren't there. 

So what was up with vehemently denying out loud that he had used anything, but then magically finding a container full of evidence that there were drugs that he could have used in the garage?  What did that mean?

Was he trying to admit to relapsing without verbally admitting relapsing?

I could not believe that container was there.  I was SO MAD AT MYSELF! 

I felt so stupid. I had a recovering addict in my home.  And I had totally forgotten about a container of prescription painkillers and medication hiding in my garage.  How long had he known they were there?  When had he discovered them?  A year ago, a few days ago, or that day?  I had no idea.  But, it sure seemed like he knew they were there during the last few days.  I had exposed my recovering addict son to danger and didn’t even know it.

About 1 ½ years before that time, a family member of my husband was having some emotional and life problems.  She had supposedly tried to take her own life and ended up in the E.R.  But, the hospital didn’t want to admit her because she doesn’t have insurance.  So, even though we wanted her admitted to the psych unit, she had to be released to someone’s care.  She had already worn out her welcome with other family members, so we had to let her stay with us.  We did everything we could to suicide-proof our house, quickly.  I gathered up all of the prescription medicines and put them in a container to make sure they were inaccessible to her.  I remembered giving them to my husband to put in his safe.  I was not sure how they ended up in the garage instead of the safe.  Maybe we both decided to just stash them in the garage since we were in a hurry and meant to put them in the safe later. 

But, we both forgot about them--For one and a half years.

My advice now?  Never, never, never, ever keep prescription pain killers and medications just in case you might need them someday.  Once you have recovered from whatever they were prescribed to you for—dispose of them!  Keeping them is such a stupid, stupid thing to do. 

It was highly likely that whatever he had taken that day or in the past few days, came out of that container in the garage.  I was pretty sure that there were other bottles in it that weren’t in there when he showed it to me.  So where were the other bottles, or what else did he have access to out there? 

I felt like I had put candy in front of a kid who is not allowed to have any. 

But, it also made me really mad that he had taken something, whether it was right in front of his face or not. 

We told him that as of right then, he wasn’t going to be able to work in the garage anymore and he started ranting about how he wouldn’t be able to earn enough money to get his laptop if he didn’t work in the garage. 

Then, he decided that since he had earned all of the money he was ever going to be able to earn in his entire life, he was going to go buy his laptop RIGHT THEN and wanted me to drive him to Best Buy.

Seriously.  He just had 3 positive drug tests and freaked out on us for hours and then I was supposed to drive him to the store and reward him for his behavior?

I made the mistake of laughing at that idea.  How could he possibly think that after relapsing and raging at me all night that I would take him to buy a laptop?

So, he punched a hole in our pantry door while screaming and yelling at me for not being willing to take him to Best Buy.  I had the thrill and pleasure of being called a b!#@& AND a d!*k. 

It hurts my feelings SO MUCH when swears and me and calls me names.  At first I laughed because he called me
a d!*k, which is usually a name reserved for people of the male gender, but then I just started crying and sobbing.  My emotions had taken all that they could take for one night and I turned into a basket-case. 

The only thing I wanted to do was get far away from my son.  I said that I could not stand one more minute in the house with this child of mine treating me the way he was treating me and acting like nothing was his fault or responsibility.  I could not stop thinking about the awful things that he had said to me throughout the night.  As my husband was holding me, listening to me cry, something switched in my son.

He came and sat by us on the couch and became remorseful.  He tried to snuggle up to me and tell me he was sorry for how he acted.

What?

Was he afraid that I would really leave, since I am his greatest advocate and the only one who sticks up for him or is willing to do things for him (in his opinion)? 

Did he realize that he had actually gone too far this time with his raging?

Or did he have another agenda for acting sorry? (Like still being taken to Best Buy)?

I didn’t know. 

I stayed. 

There was no resolution that night.  But, there was also no more yelling and raging.

I could only hope that he realized that he screwed up big time and that the thought of going back to rehab scared him enough that we will never have to go through another relapse experience again.

He really relapsed.

I know he did.

I just don't know why. 

P.S. (We sent the test strip in from the kit that we bought at the pharmacy to the lab.  The pharmacy kit did not test for benzodiazepems, which we did not realize at the time, but when we got the results back a few weeks later, it did show positive for opiates, specifically -- codeine.  And about two or three months later, my husband was looking for something in the garage for work that he hadn’t used in over a year.  When he found the box, it had some prescription bottles in it—Tylenol 3, Lortab, something that we couldn’t even read the label on, and Naproxen.  They were all empty, but one—it had one Tylenol 3 in it.  One of the bottles did not even belong to anyone in our family—the one that I couldn’t read what was actually in it.  The Tylenol 3 could have given the positive for codeine on the drug test.  Just more evidence that he had a stash in our garage.  We now have a key lock on the door that leads into the garage from the house.  He is pretty mad about that lock and can’t believe that we don’t trust him to be able to go into the garage if he needs to.  I am pretty sure that it is going to take years to feel like we can totally trust him, especially if we have any more of these relapse episodes).

 

2 Steps Forward 14 Steps Back Part TWO

He was out of it the next day. 

He started working in the garage first thing in the morning and got mad when I told him it was time to stop so that we could take my grandson to the park.  I felt pretty bad about that because my days of babysitting my grandson were numbered and I was trying to have as much fun with him as possible before I didn't get to see him three days a week anymore.  My son knew how important that was to me, but he let his own agenda get in the way of my feelings.

He grudgingly came with us, but slept all the way there.  Then, he slept while my grandson played on the splash pad and in the water canyons/rivers area.  He lethargically played with his nephew on the playground.  He acted very out of it.   Usually he loves to play with his nephew and likes going places with us.   My grandson was having a lot of fun, but could not get my son to interact with him at all.  And then he slept all the way home.

My worst fears were rearing their ugly heads. 

The sparkle was gone. 

The fun and happiness in him was gone.

Something was wrong.

The minute we got home, he went right back out to work in the garage again.  I told him that if he was so tired, he probably shouldn’t work anymore that day.   Then, he told me what he thought about that.

I said that it wasn’t worth it if he was going to ruin relationships, get overworked, and be overtired.  But, he wouldn’t listen to me. 

And that night, all heck broke loose, again. 

I opened the garage door to check on him and I smelled some kind of fertilizer or bug killer.  When I asked him what smelled so bad, he jumped all over me and said, “What?  Did you think I was huffing something?”

Hmmm, did someone have a guilty conscience or what?

I said, “I wasn’t thinking anything.  It smells really bad in here and you need to open the big garage door and get some ventilation going so that you don’t get sick from smelling all of this stuff.”  I discovered that he had broken a bottle of bug killer when he decided that it was trash and threw it into the garbage can.   It should have been no big deal, but he refused to open the door.  So, I had my husband open the door, then I kept the door from the house to the garage opened and turned the air conditioner on high so that it could blow fresh air from the house through the garage.  This was step one towards that night's chaos.

    

Later, he came to me and asked me if we had any burn ointment.  He said he had picked up a torch and it turned on without him expecting it to and it burned his finger.  But, then he asked me if it looked like he also had a burn on his lip.  So, I knew that he had to have been screwing around with the torch because it is not possible for a torch to “accidentally” turn on.   I assumed that he had learned his lesson, so I told him to go run his finger under cold water for about 5 minutes and didn’t say anything else.

Shortly after that, my husband went outside to get something out of his truck and when he looked into the garage, he saw what seemed to be my son attempting to light something on fire in his hand with that same torch.   He shouted at my son to stop playing with the torch and that led to another scene of yelling and unreasonable behavior.  My son started calling my husband names again and claimed that he was just trying to fix the torch so that it wouldn’t accidentally turn on when someone else touched it and that my husband shouldn’t have freaked out on him.  He was mad that he had been yelled at when he “was just trying to make sure that no one else got burned by the torch.”

Seriously.  When you see your kid doing something dangerous, you are not going to mildly suggest that he stop.  You are going to speak sharply so that they will stop immediately—before they have a chance to get hurt.  But, my son was sure that he had been treated unfairly.  He got right up in my husband’s face demanding to be apologized to for getting yelled at.

He went on and on and became very disrespectful.  No matter how much we tried to tell him that he didn’t need to be so upset and that we weren’t mad, we were just making sure that he didn’t do anything that would hurt himself or the house, it didn’t stop the tirade. 

He said terrible things to my husband, which really hurt his feelings (mine were kind of hurt, too—so I knew how he felt).  He came to me and said that if our son was going to keep acting like that then either he was going to leave or our son was going to have to leave.

I just love that.  It seems to be one of those things that is going to be an ongoing theme around here.  My son is going to act like a little s#!% and my husband is going to want to escape or send our son away.  Neither situation is acceptable.  I am not giving up on our son.  I am going to deal with this crap and I am going to keep trying to make things better.  I am going to try to help him have a good life.  I don’t want my husband to give up on him and I don’t want my husband to give up on me.

His wanting to leave was just not fair.  It seems like I deal with our son 80% or 90% of the time all by myself anyway and then my husband wants to go somewhere else and leave me to deal with everything 100% of the time. 

I tried to get him to understand that blow-ups were going to happen no matter who was here and that he just happened to be the target this time.  If I were the only one there, I would have been the target. 

He stayed.

But, you could cut the tension with a knife.

My son was definitely doing something that was making him either act like a zombie or overreact to everything.

And nobody talked to each other for the rest of the night, again.

2 Steps Forward, 14 Steps Back

For most of 1he summer, we had been going to the arcade at the bowling alley following my son’s After Care meeting at the rehab center.  They had two for one games on Tuesdays.  We were earning points on our ticket card to redeem for a prize at the prize counter.  We joked about how many times we would have to go to the arcade and how many points we would have to earn each time to be able to use them for the laptop computer that was in the display case.  He seriously wanted to be able to get it with points, but finally became resolved to the fact that it would take us years to accomplish that feat.  We always had fun playing skee ball, air hockey, basketball, and even Wheel of Fortune.

After our road trip to Bryce Canyon, he got more serious about getting a laptop.  He had legitimate reasons for feeling that he needed to get a laptop as soon as possible.  He wanted to be able to work on a blog to exhibit his photography and start the plans for his foundation.  He had been earning money at his part time job with the family business, but he wasn’t earning enough—fast enough to suit him.  When my son wants something—he wants it NOW.  He doesn’t want to work for it.  He doesn’t want to have to wait.  For him, it has to happen now—or life is over. 

So, he came up with a plan to work in our garage to earn money faster in order to get the laptop sooner.  I did not want him to work in the garage because I didn’t know if our garage had any hidden stashes of stuff that I might not want him to come across.  I knew that the thing that opened up our world to this whole adventure—the lightbulb pipe—had come out of that garage.

For the last several months, his access to the garage had been very limited.  But, my husband couldn’t pass up my son’s willingness to work in there, which would help put a dent in the huge accumulation of electrical materials, tools, and supplies that always seem to pile up in an unorganized fashion. And, there was no talking my son out of the idea, once he had it. 

The first day or two went all right, even though he didn’t like it and he complained about how much unnecessary junk we have.  He wanted to throw everything away, rather than organize it.  Other than listening to him rant about that every time he came into the house, it seemed like working in the garage was not going to be too bad.

But it was.

As the days went by and he wasn’t earning money as quickly as he wanted to, he became irritable and hard to communicate with.  Sometimes he would work for several hours for my older son or husband on a job and then come home and work 6 hours more in the garage.  He is a kid who is not used to working and would rather have the stomach flu than work and I hoped that this experience would teach him some things about sticking to something.  I would have been really proud of him for that--if he hadn’t gone off the deep end. 

He was trying to sort things into categories—keep, questionable, and trash.  Some tools and equipment that probably should have gone in the questionable bin were put in the trash can.   Then, he swept the floor and dumped the dirt all over it.  He thought he was doing a pretty good job.

He wanted to show us that the garage was looking better and that I would even be able to walk on the floor instead of on top of piles when I had to get something out of the freezer.  So when my husband went out to check on him and see what progress he had made, my son was expecting some praise. 

Instead my husband asked him why there were tools in the garbage can with dirt poured all over them.  That was the wrong thing to ask.  Emotions exploded all over the garage.   My husband was trying very hard to remain calm, but my son totally overreacted to everything that was said to him and started swearing, calling my husband a not-so-nice name, quitting his job for the company, and saying that everything was just a bunch of crap.  He was on a roll.   He just kept getting angrier and angrier.  We did not have a good night after that.  Nobody was talking to anybody and none of us could sleep.

The argument affected my husband more than I thought it would.  He decided to take off and spend the next day, Sunday, by himself.  I wasn’t really happy about that, but there wasn’t much point in getting in an argument with him, too.  So, I went to church by myself for an hour.  My son refused to wake up to get ready to go with me.    

He slept almost all day and I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt about sleeping for so long on.  He had been working so hard, the previous day’s argument was very emotional, and he had stayed up quite late the night before.  But, I began to wonder what the real cause of his exhaustion might be. 

During one of his short periods of consciousness, I asked him if his behavior from the day before had anything to do with taking any kind of drugs from a stash that he may have found in the garage.  He swore that he hadn’t and said that he was still sober and volunteered to take a drug test. 

But, he made sure to remind me that if he took a drug test, it would show positive for amphetamines because his daily Adderol medication is an amphetamine.

That raised my suspicions.  Did he really take something that he thought would be masked by a positive amphetamine reading on the drug test?   Even then, I didn’t drug test him.  I was afraid that if I did it when my husband wasn’t home, I might have to deal with unwanted results all by myself.

So, I talked to him about how overreacting and freaking out makes me suspicious and, it makes me feel like I have to drug test him all the time since he tends to freak out whenever anyone says anything to him that he doesn't like.

He said that he had been thinking a lot about going back to school in a few weeks and that he was scared.  He said he hadn’t been out in the real world for so long that he was really nervous about it.  

I appreciated him sharing his feelings with me and told him that he needed to come up with a plan of what he would do at school if someone came up to him and wanted him to do something he shouldn't.  He said that is where a cell phone would come in handy because then he could go to the bathroom and call his sponsor or me and he could talk to us about it.  That made sense. 

But, I think he was trying to make me feel that his overreaction the day before was related to all of those nervous feelings.  And I knew it wasn’t.  I think he was trying to send my train of thought in another direction so that I wouldn’t be suspicious that he had relapsed.

Something was going on and I was sure that it was related to working in the garage and/or drugs.   

I did not have a good feeling about it at all.

Road Trip

Toward the end of summer, I wanted to go somewhere so badly.  It had been such a busy summer that I really wanted and needed to get away.

My son's birthday is at the end of July and I decided that I would to take him to Jackson, Wyoming for a birthday trip.  I love it there.  I love the Tetons, the wildlife, and the town.  I asked my husband if he could get off work on a Friday for a trip and he said he was just too busy and couldn’t.  So, I said, “Well, then, our son and I are going on a road trip without you." 

But, then I couldn’t find a place to stay anywhere in Jackson.  I was sad because I had gotten my hopes up and now we weren’t going to be able to take this trip.  My husband had a great idea.  He asked me, “Why don’t you go to Bryce Canyon?"

I do love Bryce Canyon.  I have been there many times and spent a lot of summer trips there as a kid.  I began checking for places to stay down there and found a little motel in Tropic, Utah that was cheap and within 7 miles of the National Monument.

On Thursday evening, the day before my son’s 15^th birthday we set off on our adventure.  He was actually very excited about this trip and at the prospect of hiking around and taking a lot of pictures.  We had been going hiking on weekends throughout the summer and were surprised to find that he really enjoyed hiking and climbing.  Who knew?

The drive to Tropic was unbelievable.  The radio in my truck was having issues.  It would just randomly stop working and the only way to get it to play again was to "Fonzie" the dashboard by hitting it just right.  That was going to be my son’s job while we were driving.  But, the first time that it stopped working, he said he wasn’t going to turn it back on.

Then, we talked the entire time we were driving.  Seriously, the entire time!  He did not sleep.  He did not listen to his I-Pod.  He did not ask how much longer the drive was, or complain about how long this was taking.  He came up with random topics and then we just talked and laughed together--for 5 hours!  I was amazed that we were having this experience.  It was another one of those that I will always cherish.

We didn’t get to our motel until about 11:00 p.m.  We slept in the next morning and then went to one of the few restaurants in town for breakfast.  But, we got there at around 11:00 and they had just stopped serving breakfast—with no exceptions.  Neither one of us felt like eating lunch yet, so my son had cake and ice cream and I had pie and ice cream.  Of course, having cake and ice cream for breakfast on your birthday is perfectly acceptable!

We had a great day in Bryce Canyon, taking a lot of pictures and going on some hikes that made me wonder if I was going to die from exertion, heat stroke, or a heart attack.  He loved the hiking!  I kept trying to go on the shortest trails and he kept trying to get me to go on the longest ones, partly because he was having fun and partly because he enjoyed torturing me!

We had dinner at Ruby’s Inn, right outside of Bryce Canyon, so that he could have steak for his birthday dinner.  As hungry as I was, I think I was more tired, so it sure felt nice to get back to the motel and relax. 

But, then when it was time to go to sleep, he wouldn’t.  He wanted to talk.  He wouldn’t stop trying to get me to talk no matter how hard I tried to convince him that I was exhausted.  So, I gave up and we talked until at least 2:00 in the morning.  It was a really good talk, though. 

We talked about him staying clean and sober.  We talked about how he could sell his photography, then, set aside some of the profits to start a foundation that would help other kids stay off drugs and help kids who have become clean to stay clean.  He thought he would help others learn how seeing the world through photography was a lot better than seeing the world high on drugs.  We talked about him going to the DARE officer at the elementary school and asking him if he could talk to the kids in the DARE program about what he has gone through and what he has learned to try to help them understand what they are really being taught in DARE. 

We talked about how he would like to travel around the world taking photos and how he would like me to go with him on all of these trips since we were having such a good time on this one.  We talked about him setting up a website to sell his photography and to promote his foundation.  We brainstormed about ways he could make money from his photography for his foundation.  It was so wonderful to make positive plans for the future with him.  It was inspiring to hear him talk about wanting to help other kids.  It made me feel so good to know that he wanted to stay clean and sober.  I was glad that we had come on this trip and felt that the long drive, money spent, sore muscles, and exhaustion, were all worth it. 

The next day, even though we didn’t get that much sleep the previous night, we did a lot more hiking and sight-seeing.  We went to Kodachrome Basin and the Petrified Forest.  If I had to do it again, I would skip the Petrified Forest and I know my son would, too.  But, I had it in my mind that I really wanted to see this forest of petrified trees.  I pictured a scenic drive, but the reality was that we had to hike really steep trails just to see huge colorful rocks on the ground. 

But, Kodachrome Basin was fun.  We hiked around on some trails and my son found that since it was a state park, not a National Monument, he could get off the trails and climb up and down rock formations.  That was a lot more exciting to him.   He scared me to death many times when he climbed a lot higher that I wanted him to.  Of course, he really enjoyed my increasing fear for his life and safety.    

He had just as much fun hiking as he did taking pictures.  The enjoyment he seemed to be finding by seeing the world through the lens of the camera or climbing to new heights was amazing to me.  It was a great day, finished off with pizza and thankfully, more sleep than the night before!

The plan for the last day was to go to back to Bryce Canyon to take some pictures with the new tri-pod that he just had to have from Ruby’s Inn General Store, then to go to Red Canyon, hike around, and  drive back home whenever we got around to it. 

We didn’t have as much time as we thought we would in Red Canyon.  We had just started hiking and my son had just started climbing around in dangerous places, doing dangerous things, when it started to rain.  Maybe it was a good thing.  Right before the rain started, he climbed up a steep, slick, shale covered hill while I waited at the bottom.  He just needed to see what was on the other side!  He had been up there for a long time, when I heard the sound of something or someone falling.  Then, I didn't hear anything else.  I called and called to him, but he did not answer.  So, then I had to climb up that hill to find out if he was okay. I was calling his name the whole time I was climbing and still didn’t get any answer.  I had this horrible feeling of terror about what I was going to see when I got up there.  Just as I got to the top, I called his name again.  Right at that second, he jumped from one hoo-doo to another and I startled him so much that he almost fell.  So much for my rescue mission.  I almost caused the thing that I feared had happened.  He had not heard me shouting his name—because of course, he chose this one time on the trip to listen to his I-Pod! 

And, he really had fallen while I was at the bottom of the hill!  His arm was scraped and bloody.  To him, it was not a big deal that he had fallen and he laughed at me for climbing up a hill that I definitely did not want to climb just to make sure that he was all right.

And then it rained.

We got back in the truck.  He went to sleep.  I drove in silence in the pouring rain. 

Vacation over.

But, it was good while it lasted.

I wish it could have lasted longer.

I really wish that.