The Voices

My son first told me about the voices in 2013. We were sitting in a Starbucks in Santa Barbara. I was trying to understand why he dropped out of college and why he was living on the street. When he mentioned hearing voices, everything just fell away. We left the coffee shop and started walking down one of those streets that have all the fun t-shirt shops and high end mall stores and yummy bistros and interesting bars and on the corner was a man screaming and screaming and beating his head against the sidewalk. There were police and an ambulance and they were trying to get him to stop hurting himself. It took a bunch of big, burly guys to pull the man up and get him sitting in the back of the patrol car. His face was bleeding everywhere and everyone on the sidewalk was watching like it was an attraction at the zoo. I wondered where his family was. And I had this uneasy feeling that was how my son was going to end up. I vowed that would never happen if I could help it.

Flash forward eight years. I no longer doubt the voices. I don’t hear them, but I know them. I know ER’s and psych wards, and trauma centers. I know delusions and paranoia, and conspiracies and mind control. I know all the first generation psychotropic drugs. I know the second generation drugs too. I know about EST; serotonin, dopamine and what the brain looks like with schizophrenia. I know the names of the drugs and their side effects; I know all the drugs that my son has rejected and why. I know the signs of impending truama. I know when the paranoia takes over and all of a sudden crazy shit starts to happen. Stephen King wants to meet him in Taco Bell. Trump is coming to dinner. The neighbor’s dog is threatening to kill him. I am an imposter looking to steal his soul. On and on. Finally, he flees. Outside is safe. He can run. He can hide. He can be “safe.” Except every damn time he flees without money, without ID, without anything. Each time is a little more horrific than the last. Each time seems more extreme, more dangerous. Each time the build up is quicker and the explosion is bigger.

This time he called 911 and reported that he was being raped. I guess I was raping him. I was the only one at home. Then he took off in his car. He dumped his cell phone in a remote wilderness area and I started imagining the worst. I felt like I was caught between two guns. Maybe I would never know what happened to him. I tried to imagine what it would be like to go the rest of my life like that. It didn’t even make sense. Or I’d find him and bring him back and we’d go through all the steps to make him healthy again. For what? So we can do this dance again in three days, or three months, or three years? What kind of life is that? For him and for me.

When I was a kid, I spent a lot of nights with my cousin, Jackie. She had this poster in her room that read–“If you love something, let it go. If it comes back, it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it never was.” I kept thinking about that, even though I posted a flyer and called the sheriff when my brother thought he found a cell phone signal. I went out to the levee and painted and started emotionally preparing myself to say goodbye to my son.

Turns out that after Shayne dumped his phone, he drove south to Saguache and ran out of gas. I’m not sure how long he was there, but a lady that worked at the gas station saw him and called the number on the flyer. He stole a sandwich and a drink and she had him on the surveillance camera. I was so mad. I thought he was dead and he was stealing sandwiches. I didn’t really want to go get him, but a girlfriend who was checking on me said that I needed to. She drove.

He was in Saguache. Sitting in his car at the park, all skinny and dirty. I knocked on his window and he opened the door and said, “How mad are you?” Then he said, “How did you find me? I thought you forgot about me.” Then he said, “I kinda hoped you would forget about me and live a happy life.”

I feel like I have been in the X Games of Emotions. And honestly, I’m pretty traumatized and not sure I am ok. I don’t know what to think, feel, say, or do. I’d love to believe that things will be different. He is back on his medicine. He is back to counseling. He is back to talking a good game about fixing everything. I guess I’m not mad anymore, but I don’t have any hope either. There will be a next time. That’s how this dance goes. But next time, there will be no flyer, no search party, no more bringing him home. Even if it kills me, I will say–Vaya con Dios, baby boy. And mean it.

I spent the day on the levee. I am out of red paint. But at least that’s a problem I can fix.