THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Eight

My nephew is home by the time I return from the Hastings. He’s a bright light in my life and has brought me great joy over the years. He is such a beautiful boy in every respect. It pains me to see him now, for I have who he was to compare him to. There’s that word again. Not only do I compare myself to others, I compare who I am now to who I was. It can go both ways. Good then, bad now or bad now, good then. If it’s the former, I feel bad about what I lost and if it’s the latter I feel guilty about the past. When do I get to feel good all the time? There’s always something about myself to pick on. I don’t remember being taught to do that. Psychotherapists are loons, you know. At least I know I’m a loon. I guess that’s a step in the right direction.

James is sprawled out on the couch watching TV. He has a liter bottle of Gatorade sitting on the table in front of him. I sit on the couch and place his legs over my lap.

“Hey, big guy,” I said. “Where is your mom and dad?”

“They went to the store.” He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t take his eyes off the TV. A commercial for laundry detergent is playing on the set.

“I’ve been having some weird dreams lately,” I said. “How about you?”

“Don’t sleep much. Can’t. By four or five a.m. I’m so exhausted I pass out. Sleep until noon.”

“Why do you think that is, James?” He used to love to talk. Had a quick mind. It’s still there I imagine, somewhere.

“I know mom talked to you, uncle Augie. I’m not brain dead. I know what you’re trying to do.”

“And what is that?”

“You’re trying to save me.”

“Do you need saving?”

“How do you save me from myself. I hate myself.”

Here we go, I thought. I know the pattern. Use drugs. Do stupid things. Hate yourself the next day. The stupid things intensify. The self hatred intensifies. Next thing you know you’re no longer taking the drugs for a high, you’re taking them to escape your own self hatred. It spirals downward fast.

“I can give you all the standard bullshit, James. But I’m not going to. I’m not going to compare you to who you used to be. Lately I’ve been trying to stop that habit in myself. I’m going to love who you are now. What pains me is how miserable you are. I empathize with what you are going through, but I am going to advise your parents how to protect themselves from you. Have you stolen from them yet?”

“A few bucks here and there.”

It was clear he is lying. “Are you doing o.c.’s?”

His silence is a yes. Big trouble. Oxys are expensive. When the money dries up he’ll be on to heroin. Cheap dirty shit. “I’m going to give you some advice, James. It’s new and I’m just now beginning to formulate the ideas. You can be my guinea pig. Whenever you think of it I want you to find something to appreciate about yourself. Right now I appreciate more about you than you do. Put post-its all over the place if you have to. It has to be real though, and it can be as simple as appreciating a strong regular heart beat.”

“What’s that going to do?”

“It’s a step, James. It just shifts you’re energy a little. The other thing I want you to do is to begin catching yourself whenever you go into ‘beat up James’ mode. Underneath everything you are a jewel. I know you don’t believe that. You judge yourself based upon what you do and what you believe about what you do. You are precious to me. A jewel can be dirtied, but beneath the sludge it is still a jewel. When you get it that the jewel is always there you’ll be less prone to judge yourself. Try it. There will be other things, but they’re not clear in my head yet. You won’t get any judgment from me, I promise. Will you try it?”

James sits up. It’s a good sign. “Actually, I’ll try anything. It’s more that the drug is choosing me now, more than it is me choosing the drug.” James stands up and grabs his Gatorade. “I have to go uncle Augie. My folks will be back soon and I don’t want to be around. I’m finding it more and more difficult to look them in the eye.”

I give him a hug and promise myself that I will begin work on my new book, Addiction as Choice.

I think about Sarah and how quickly I became attracted to her. I hardly know her and yet there is a pull. Maybe it has something to do with that love-at-first-sight thing. I know it exists. Some of my patients experienced it. Is it love I feel or just a strong attraction? An attraction to what? She has an energy about her that is more than just appealing. It is like a magnet. So much is happening. My walls are being struck down from all sides and I have no defenses to stop it. I don’t want to stop it.

I hear James pull out of the driveway. I’m worried about him. Life would be so much easier if I didn’t give a shit about anything and didn’t care about anyone. Is that even possible? I don’t think so. I remember telling one of my patients that it’s easy to reach enlightenment if all you do is hide-out in a cave and meditate. No brothers or sisters or wives or husbands or children or friends to give you those little and sometimes big tweaks that make you know you’re alive. The tweaks are both good and bad. What is good for one person may be bad for another. What do you believe, Augusto? It’s called moral relativism. It’s pretty much driven by the culture. The problem is that each individual holds their brand of morality as truth and then either argues for its rightness or kills for it. I have to start writing some of this down. Where the hell is all of this coming from? My mind feels like it’s speeding, but not like on amphetamines. My mind is not telling me to clean the house. It’s rearranging my psychic furniture.

I’m angry. Not at anyone in particular, but at my inability to grasp what is going on inside my head. I feel like Einstein must have felt just before the final piece of the puzzle came to him in his quest of the theory of relativity. Odd that I should think of that. It pertains to time. What does it say? I remember, it says two events, simultaneous for some observer, may not be simultaneous for another observer if the observers are in relative motion to each other. That’s pretty much the textbook definition for dummies and even that doesn’t make much sense. I’m sure Alexander Hastings understands it far better than I, but here’s my quick translation by way of the example I remember. There are two synchronized atomic clocks, one on the ground and the other sitting in a jet. The jet takes off and circumnavigates the globe. When it lands the time on the two clocks are compared, and low and behold the times are different. The difference is small because of the relatively slow speed of the jet compared to the speed of light. But, there is a difference. I’ll have to ask Alex the significance of this, since it really doesn’t seem to have any effect on my daily life.

I hear Rose and Charlie pull into the driveway. I take a deep breath and walk to the door. We need to talk. They need to talk. They put away their last minute Christmas purchases and sit with me in the living room. I have a deep sense of empathy for them as well as for James. Each of them is playing out their individual dramas, all intertwined within the addiction. Rose feels the weight of it all and begins to cry. Charlie sits there holding my sister’s hand.

“It’s like watching a part of yourself die,” Rose said. “No, it’s worse than that, Augusto. I would rather I die than be a witness to the destruction of my son’s life.”

I’ve been told by women and men that the love they have for their children is like no other. Women in particular say this. Men feel it, but don’t voice it as ferociously as women. I knew that Rose would throw herself under the wheels of a bus to save James. Charlie probably would too.

“It’s not your fault,” I said, knowing she had heard it many times before. It doesn’t help, but I say it anyway. What I said next was the most difficult for Rose and Charlie to hear. “You also can’t save him.”

Rose ignores me. “It’s worse than I told you, Augusto.”

“I know, Rose. I just spoke with James. What I am going to say may seem strange to you. I want you both to begin paying attention to what you want for yourselves.”

“We want James to get straight,” Charlie said. Rose nods her agreement.

“No,” I said. “That’s what you want for James. What do you want for yourselves, individually, for it may be different for both of you.”

“I don’t understand,” Rose said.

“I know you don’t, Rose. And you’re not alone in not understanding. What you want for James is not what he wants. Not now, anyway. What he wants now is to be addicted. Maybe not consciously, but it is his choice.”

“Addicts have no choice,” Charlie said. A bit angrily I might add. “That’s why they’re called addicts.”

“I know, Charlie. It’s difficult for me to explain, but that’s what I believed until a few weeks ago. There is something about choice and choosing that we are all missing. Our understanding of it is incomplete.” Christ, this is difficult. How do I explain something I can’t fully explain to myself? How do I explain something I know intuitively, but my brain is unable to form into words? It’s a knowing that I feel more than an understanding that I think.

Rose shakes her head. “If you can’t explain it, Augusto, how do you expect us to understand it? I feel like a miner’s canary slowly dying from a gas all the Ozzie and Harriets are immune to.”

“Maybe they’re not,” I said. “Look around you. Everyone seems to be suffering from one sort of emotional pain or another. There are no more Ozzie and Harriets. There never was. It was an illusion produced by Hollywood.”

I search for a means to explain myself, but can only suggest actions. Actions are real. They provide a sense of doing something....anything in the midst of confusion and crisis. Until I can figure this out I suggest they get a safe and keep all their valuables locked up. Never leave wallets or pocketbooks lying around. Make it impossible for James to get his hands on their financial resources. I know this path he is on might lead to heroin use if it hasn’t started already. Once the money dries up for the more expensive oxys James will turn to the cheaper and dirtier heroin. They can’t take care of James by making the acquisition of his drugs of choice easy for him.

An odd thought comes to me, but by this time I have become accustomed to odd thoughts just popping into my head. I told Rose and Charlie that they couldn’t save James. Only James could save James. The thought that comes to me is more in the form of a question. Does James need saving? What does James saving James mean? It means there is something wrong that needs fixing. Well, that makes sense, or at least it used to make sense to me. After all, I wrote a book about saving the addict. There’s something off about that, something that discounts the choices of the individual. The twelve step programs are the best we have, but that requires a lifetime of being a drugless addict. “Hi, I’m Bill and I’m an....” Maybe the addiction is trying to say something; provide some information. I sense it is not trying to tell the individual that he is a bad person. I’m going to figure this out. I know I am.

David Cawley, James, Alexander Hastings, little David Cawley, simultaneous time, and probable selves are all connected in some strange way. Everything is seemingly connected, but how? Patience, Augusto. I was never a very patient man. I hated it when I chose the slowest line at the grocery checkout. I wouldn’t get angry, but I did get frustrated. Frustrations are a mild form of anger. What moves me from frustration to anger? What do you believe, Augusto? What moves James to anger? We both believe in addiction and we trust what we believe. There’s something here...what the hell is it? Frustration is beginning to morph into its big brother. This free-form thinking is driving me nuts. STOP!

I spend the better part of two hours discussing James with Rose and Charlie. I end on a lighter note telling Rose and Charlie about Sarah Hastings and my attraction to her. Sarah invited me to dinner on the 26th, two days hence. My sister is excited, but questions me about Debra. I tell her it is more a relationship of convenience than love. She let it go at that. Rose is into protecting people, even if it isn’t any of her business. What if I married Sarah? I’d be Alexander Hastings’s step father in this life and his young friend in another. And that’s just on this one probability line. I’ll just have to see how it all plays out. I’m going to my room. Maybe I’ll jot down a few notes for my next book.