It's Hard to Say

CW: Substance abuse and self-harm.

I don't know what he is hungry for. I wish I knew. He doesn't even know, he lies around in that messy room, clothes and jackets strewn about the floor, wires everywhere, tangled and broken, a desk covered in loose change, scratched sunglasses, gaming controllers, a guitar capo, dirty tissues. I go in every once in a while, the rumpled bed staring at me with blankets that cover him most of the day until I yell at him to get up, get a job, get out.

Yesterday, one of the bad days, eats at me. It's the holiday season and there is some event or party or music thing every evening this weekend from Thursday to Sunday. I try to live on, accept, pray, turn away from him, do that tough love thing they talk about in Alanon. Yesterday we were screaming at each other, he repeatedly shouting shut the fuck up.

The door was locked but it's one of those locks you can open with a coin. I opened the door, he jumped out of bed wearing nothing but tight black boxers, his skinny pimply body coming at me, he wanted to, started to push me out the door, I said don't touch me! He threw his desk chair to the ground knocking his Martin guitar from its stand with a stunned musical sound. The guitar, the guitar, I screamed, thinking I paid for that expensive guitar and he did not deserve it. And that is the story of me. One day I am angry and withholding, the next day I am purchasing a Martin guitar, DJ equipment, a Sony camera, and giving him money for the cannabis dispensary.

Slamming things to the floor, threatening to punch holes in the wall (which he has done many times), he told me to get out. As he turned away from me, I opened the top drawer to the desk and saw the coke vials, I have seen them there before, and I know, thought I try hard not to believe it, that he uses the money I give him to buy coke.

You would think I would just be angry and start the eviction but this guy sings out loud in the shower, he has been bullied, suffered panic attacks in various school settings, threw a boulder on his own foot to break it, to get out of some dumb wilderness camp we sent him to. These memories flood my existence every day. The rage at an addict mixed with a broken heart causes, at best, confusion like an ocean storm.

Trying to save him is not a sacrifice. There are no sacrifices where there is love, and I love him. From the day the social workers dropped him off at my home, a baby just a few months old, reeking of cigarettes, sobbing, gasping, suffering from a terrible diaper rash. A neglected baby. And now? I hold the neglected baby in my heart forever wanting him to see how much he is loved.

Is he hungry for love? For attachment? Was he so destroyed in his infancy that the hunger cannot be satisfied, that it is too terrifying to articulate except the desk chair slamming to the ground.

One vial laced with fentanyl will kill the pain for good. I think he might die young. But if he lives to be an old man, it will be a time in his life when I will not be there to take him grocery shopping, give him thirty-five dollars to go out with his friends, buy him clothes from Rhone and Vuori. Will he be all right without me? And if these are my thoughts, can I really evict him and expect that he will survive on the streets, this kid who leaves uneaten single wrapped cheese slices in his desk drawer?

Twice we had the ambulance, fire trucks, police blaring lights in front of our house, taking him to the hospital, the neighbors texting to see if we needed anything. Each time he was having a cocaine-induced seizure, requiring several days of hospitalization for each admission. The second time, as they wheeled him out of the house unconscious on a stretcher, I made myself go to him and touch his face as I thought, let me touch him one more time while he is alive. The addict chooses to continue using coke. I, the mother, stand by each day wondering if this will be the day I find him dead. I come home from work every day mid-morning because he is sleeping in and I cannot reach him by phone and I have to make sure he is not dead or almost dead. I go to the door of his bedroom, knock, knock louder, are you okay? He grunts. I think, fucking kid.

I won't make excuses like, if you had my life, you would drink and use too. I try to stay sober but sometimes that addict hunger walks me to a bar and I get some white wine. Lately I have not been drinking but those weed gummies elevate me to the plane where everything seems so absurd as to not be real. Although recently this turned into paranoia, terror, disgust with my body, wailing threatening sirens over him.

I know it's not just me. Everybody has burdens. But it sickens and saddens me to witness my son circling around the drain. Is it so hard to be hungry for life? That's a stupid question. I am often ungrateful and repulsed by life. In my better moments, I am fascinated by human actions and activities like kissing, dancing, arguing, smiling, even honking horns. And then I do occasionally enjoy life. Without weed.

I quit using again. Escape never lasts. My son and I are hungry for escape. Not food, life or love. Well maybe we are hungry for these things but the deprivation he suffered the first four months of his life (not to mention the damage done to him in utero) and well I might as well mention my deprivation stemming from a severely narcissistic mother (not to mention the stern unstable FBI agent father who I physically fought with and who disallowed me from playing the songs of Joan Baez on my guitar), have cornered us to prioritize our hunger for escape.

I drafted the eviction notice. Should I have it served on him by a State Marshall? It's hard to say.