Life is a Jar of Marbles

So today my Mom had forwarded me an email in which a man was discussing a conversation on a shortwave radio.  In this conversation a man was asking a younger man why he was wasting his marbles by working so much and not spending his time with this family.  He used an analogy of a marble representing a week in his remaining life.  This spurred a thought on my part of how to modify this analogy and expand it.  As my other post have mentioned, my son struggles with drug addiction.  Currently his girlfriend who also deals with the same and his daughters have moved back to her mother’s house.  One of the hardest things for me is to talk to Chris and try to get him to understand what I am trying to say.  Like many of his generation, he seems to deal better with visible or physical examples such as what I did with a plate a while back.  Here is the letter that I gave after basically explain the concept to him.  Include with the letter are the items mentioned in the letter below: 

Life is a Jar of Marbles

Chris here is a jar.  This jar represents your life, your own Jar of Life.  One way to measure a life is in the number of years you live.  The average life spans 75 years.  This jar contains a glass bead for each of the remaining years of the average life span.  Now this is not a promise that you will live or die at 75 years.  Many are fortunate and live beyond the average of 75 years.  Poor life choices either your own or someone else’s or thru no fault of anyone’s, will break the jar and spill the glass beads, ending a life before reaching the potential that it has.

So each glass bead in the jar represents a year in your life.  You can look at each bead in a number of ways.  The simplest is that each bead represents a possible Christmas spent with your daughters.  Each bead means so much more though:

·        Every moment of happiness or sadness

·        Every moment of learning and wonder on your part

·        Every moment of wonder on your daughters part, be it the first time they see a field of Christmas lights, a first loose tooth and visit form the tooth fairy or the joy of a snow day or warm day in the sun

·        The first crush and the heartache that follows

·        The sense of accomplishment for a task done to the best of your abilities

·        The sun and rain and wind on your face, the brisk feel of a cold morning dew

·        Unfortunately also every moment wasted in the grip of a drug or other unhealthy habit

·        The time wasted on being bitter about what others have or have succeeded in doing

·        Time wasted holding a grudge or anger that hurts no one but yourself

So each year either at your Birthday or New Years, you need to remove a glass bead.  Take a moment to hold that glass bead and study what that glass bead means in moments of the year just passed.  You will notice that out of all the beads, there are no identical beads.  Some will look close to the same, but if you study the beads you will notice differences in texture, size, shape and color to name a few.  These beads as I said represent a year in your life.  While some years may feel like they are the same, if you study the year you will notice that it is never the same as any other year.  Each year is full of choices you have made and others have made that affect your life and others.  For instance your daughters are currently at an age where your love and approval mean everything to them.  As each year goes by your ability to influence their decisions and life will be less and less.  So when you are done reflecting on the year and bead, you will need to either throw it out or destroy it.  To be truly symbolic, throw it in a creek or river to show the flow of time.  As with the marble when it is gone, a year that has passed cannot be done again, relived or redone.  All the marble is now is a memory, just like the year that has passed.

Along with this Jar of Life, is included a Journal of Life.  This journal has no lines or other marking in it.  Every page just like every year, month and day of your life is a blank page waiting to be written on.  It is your choice if you want to write or draw in this journal.  Lisa and I will not read this journal nor will we look for it.  It is up to you what you want to put in here, memories of things the kids have said, how you feel for the day or week.  I would suggest you write how you feel each day or week and why.  What are you thinking what are your dreams and hopes.  Draw small pictures or images that have meaning to you.  In the end it is up to you what you do with the journal, just as it is up to you what you do with your life and in the end your responsibility as to what you make of your life.

Tomorrow....A word I truely despise

Tomorrow……how I have come to despise that word.  I believe it is either the addict’s favorite or second favorite word.  Probably the favorite as the other is actually a phrase.  Got into a discussion the other day with my son about when is this going to stop.  He always seems to have these big plans and dates or events that will trigger the stoppage of drug use.  When we has younger, when I turn 18 so that I do not have an adult record, when the girls are born as I don’t want them to grow up around drugs, when the girls are old enough that they would actually know what is going on, etc.,  etc., etc.  If it is not tomorrow for those reasons it is tomorrow because he had stress today or whatever excuse he has come up with to justify what he has done.  The girlfriend is just as bad but hides her drug use better and is a much better liar.

So during this discussion he was laying out the plans for the girlfriend being gone and him going to school and working a part time job to pay his bills.  So I asked him how you expect to get this job when you are still using.  The answer was well I was stressed with what she was doing and you cannot hold the last week against me, I am going to stop tomorrow.  I said isn’t that what I heard 2 days ago.  Yeah but she keeps coming around here and having me inject her because she cannot do it herself.  What a crock of shit as he is bitching about her still doing drugs still.  So why not stop do this for her?  Answer she will try to do it herself and not do it right.  Guess I have proof of that in that she evidently did it wrong and sprayed blood all over one of the bathrooms in my house.

So when are you going to quite supporting her habits and get your own under control?  I am going to start tomorrow.  Yet everyday there is still an excuse for why tomorrow has not come.  His moods swing from enthusiasm to depression in a matter of minutes.  I get a call, I want to go to school and can you help me look at the classes.  Call him back 5 minutes later and the world is ending and he is not interested in classes.   

 Now that the girls are gone there are moments of clarity but not what I would hope to see.  I ask him what about the girls…well I am not happy about what is going on but what do you expect me to do.  Guess that is another tomorrow for both of them.  I do feel that neither of the parents realizes how fragile the situation is.  I fear for the older of the 2 girls as I can see her already looking for the approval of parental figures that puts her first.  The younger is not far behind her in that aspect.  Maybe I am over-protective of them but I do not currently see things going well for them in the future while they wait for the tomorrow their parents keep talking about.  To be truly honest it just pisses me off that 2 people could be so damn selfish as to put themselves before the needs of their small children.  Each of these children are so lucky in that neither appear to have any lasting effects from the drugs used during the pregnancies.  Unfortunately the parents see that as a well everyone must lie about the effects of drugs.

During the discussion I did ask my son if he realizes that today was yesterday’s tomorrow and that time is slipping away from him?  The answer was I told you I am stopping tomorrow.  The drugs have affected his ability to reason and remember things form the recent pass.  Neither of them have the ability to think things thru worth a shit.  I can see effects in there motions and thought processes.  I just wish I know what to do to help the little ones.  I have considered trying to take custody but not sure if that would help or hurt the girls more in a lot of ways.

A bad day overall

So as I sit here, on the weekend of Thanksgiving, I wonder why I am still where I am.  As per previous post the girlfriend has come back and his attitude has basically gone to hell in a hand basket.  It is kind of a mix of things that leave me feeling that we are where we were.  Earlier in the week he left to go visit a friend and I have a feeling that he did something there.  The talk about wanting to improve his life and get started on something has faded, as they always seem to.  This is why I did not get my hope up too much this morning.  Unfortunately it was a typical Saturday morning in the house, in that my wife got stuck watching the kids as she ran off to a funeral (not typical) and he evidently laid in bed and was a complete ass when asked to get up to take care of his children.  Generally they both head to the clinic and my wife gets stuck watching them for little to no gratitude from them.

To add to the fun this morning, the youngest one has learned to take her diaper off, which she will quickly do when wet or wanting to go to the bathroom.  So my wife came down the stairs to find that she had removed her diaper and had a bowel movement on the floor.  So when he was asked to get up and clean up the mess form his daughter, he was quite nasty.  I attend a Karate class on Saturday mornings.  This is one of the few things that I thing helps me keep even the level of temper and frustration I have in check.

Today had a low point as I did start to lose my temper today with him.  The older granddaughter wanted to go outside and play.  The “Dad” had been laying on the bed and sleeping for a few hours at this point.  She went to ask him for socks, shoes and a jacket.  HE was nasty to her.  When I came down stairs to take her out, I asked him to get his ass up and get the stuff for her.  He got quite nasty about it and we started to have a shouting match, but I decided to stop as the younger one was sleeping.  Of course he had to keep pushing it until I started to lose my temper.  At that point I knocked his hat off his head and told him to shut his mouth while leaning over him.  As I was walking away, I saw the older one had come back into the room and decided she did not need to see me lose my temper.  He in the meantime had jumped up and grabbed a kids chair and decided to swing it like a baseball bat at me and hit me in the side as I turned to take the hit where it would do the less amount of damage.  At that point I had to fight hard to not just knock him on his ass and the only reason I did not is because she was standing there.  I took her outside for about 15 minutes before she got cold and wanted to go back in.  Of course he had to run his mouth about how I only took her out for 15 minutes….which I said was 15 more than he had done for her all day.  I also informed him next time he swings a chair at me he had better kill me because I will not stop next time.

It is a sad feeling as a father to want on a regular basis to want to do nothing more than to beat the shit out of your own son.  He feels safe as he knows we are trying to protect the grands and will not put them out on the street.  What he does not understand is how close to the edge he is walking.  One of these times he will catch me at the wrong time and as I explained to him a few weeks ago, I will lose it and unleash all of the pent up anger and frustration I feel at the position I have been put into.  He likes to make comments about how I think I can kick his ass because of Karate and he does not fully understand that it is because of Karate that I have not kicked his ass.  It has helped me greatly in controlling my temper.  Others ask me why we continue to try and hope for a change when they do not appear to even try and basically do what they want.  In the end the answer is always the granddaughters as I cannot imagine the life they would have if we did what we should do and throw them out on their asses as the little ones would go with them.  Sooner or later though we will hit a breaking point and we are so close to that already.

Ramblings about Lust and Love

It has been about a week now since we did the plate analogy.  In that time nothing has been done to repair the actual plate.  I do know it seemed to have an effect on my son as he has told some others about the plate and that he felt it was the first good talk we have had in a while.  I would have to agree with that as everyone stayed pretty calm.  There were a few times we had to refocus the conversation but over all good.   The other part is that the girl friend has currently moved out…unfortunately that means the granddaughters are bouncing around right now.  This occurred a few days after the plate discussion.  At the end of that discussion I had heard again the comments of needing to concentrate on them’.  A few days later while sitting at my desk, she started a conversation about what she had decided.  I told her that she needed to include the father (my son in the conversation).  From there it quickly went downhill, especially when comments were made about mistakes he had made in the past.  I quickly pointed out that she also had made mistakes in the past and if we were going to use history as the basis for all decisions, than she was not in a better place than he was.  After a short shouting match where I was informed she was the mother and had the right to make all of the decisions, she left.  I am sure she has a different take on this and that things were heated both ways.  The tension in the house has been better with her gone for the last few days.  When she is not here and the kids are, I see my son being much more engaged with them than in the past or when she is near.

I think today I might glue 2 pieces of the plate together as sometimes you just need a push to get started.  So far from what I can tell my son is working harder than in the past to get sober and get a direction started in his life.  The hardest part is to allow him the space to work this for himself while still supporting him.  On of the comments that came up during the discussion with her, was that she was not sure he was her forever person.  Personally I think that is a line of bullshit, but got me thinking about something I had read or had someone tell me when I was younger that over the years keeps coming back to me.  It has to do with the difference between Lust and Love and the areas that both intrude in our lives.  I think one issue that many have including generations older than mine is telling the difference between lust and love.  What is shown on TV and movies as love is an unrealistic fantasy that too many falls for and expect in their life.  Back to the point though.  At a low point in my life as I said I either read or had someone ask me, what is the difference between Lust and Love and what is the hardest thing about them?  I do not remember my exact answer but I am pretty sure it was a flippant answer.  The answer I was given back took me a bit to process.

 First Lust is not just sex and or the desire for sex as most think.  Lust is a desire to obtain or perform an act regardless of the consequences to yourself or others.  It is an overriding emotion or desire that can burn quickly or in some cases linger for years or longer.   As a parent it has taken me years to realize that I Lusted over my child being successful in what he attempted.  This came out as supporting him on endeavors to an extent beyond what I should have.  This also showed in trying to get him to follow paths that I felt he could be successful in.  An example of this would be as follows

                Hey dad, I think I would like to be an electrician

                Sounds great.  Let’s get you signed up for school and get you some of the tools you will need

                4 to6 weeks later, Dad don’t think I want to be an electrician.  Now I want to be an …..

By trying to be supportive and being extremely hopeful that we would find a path, I allowed my lust for his success to cloud my judgment.  Better approach in hindsight

                Hey Dad, I think I would like to be an electrician

Sounds great son, why don’t you take a class and/or go talk to someone about the job.  Maybe you can shadow someone while they do the work for a day.  If you decide to go for it after that we can talk about what you will need to do the job and be successful at it.  I might be able to help you obtain a loan for any tools you need.

This approach would have put the burden on him and not on me.  In my lust to see him do anything that could be seen as a step forward, I actually may have interfered with his success.  Over the years I have seen this Lust for a child’s success in many parents.  The ones that push their children to play a sport to the exclusion of all else, or push them to join every activity for a future they may not want.  Please understand I do feel there is a health level of setting expectations and pushing your child, but I also realize there is a fine line that goes beyond helping a child to succeed in life and trying to live your life through your child.  The setting of expectations was something we as parents did not do such a good job on, though I think many younger parents struggle with that.

Love on the other hand is so much harder to truly define.  It can and often is defined as the caring for someone.  It is easy to say I love my spouse, my child, my parents, my you name it.  It can be so much harder to show that though.  I guess the answer that still comes to mind that I heard for Love is being willing to be there for the hard times as well as the easy, being there and just as engaged during the boring moments of life as well as the exciting.  It is funny as in my mind I have a great definition for Love but I am having a difficult time putting it on paper, and I guess that is part of it as Love is a very personalized thing sort of along the lines of Faith.  Everyone develops their own definition for it.  The reason for it being in this though to get back to the memory is Love sometimes stops you from taking the steps that you need to take.  Be it having that hard discussion with someone that you keep putting off so that you do not hurt them, or picking them up to quickly and not allowing them to learn.  Love is supporting the person during the tough times and the emotional times.  It can be expressed by something as simple as a glance or a touch.

Over the years the Love I have for my son has been tested.  It has also lead me to make some decisions that in hindsight should have been made differently and in the end would have actually been more in line with actually showing him that I Loved him.  I have avoid having confrontations with him and/or his friends (and their parents) as to avoid embarrassing him.  That is probably the greatest shame I have felt over the years.  Maybe if I was willing to say to hell with the effect and addressed it head on, I could have avoided some of this or possibly have saved someone else from the same pain.

I have spent a few days on this and I am still unhappy with the way I am wording this.  I will probably revisit later after I have had some space form it.  As an update in the last 3 days the girlfriend has basically come back and I am not sure how I feel about it.  I see a change again in him though I can not say it is from that.  There is a tension back in the house that for a while was gone.  The question is has he decided to take a step backwards again or is just me being sensitive.  It is a fine line to have to walk between not trusting and trying to verify but not pushing it to a point where it is what the hell if I am going to get accused I might as well do it.

Letter to Drugs - Trying to explain my feelings as a parent

This is a letter I wrote about a year ago and shared with the 2 addicts living in my house.  It was more for myself and trying to express the anger and regret I have over their life choices and where it has lead me than anything else.  I do plan to try and post regularly what is occurring or has occurred and how I reacted and might now react knowing what I now know.

Drugs,

If it was possible I would gladly cut your throat and watch you bleed.  You have taken some of what should have been the happiest times in my life and turned them into a nightmare.  Failing being able to do that, I would happily substitute the men and women who profit from you while destroying the lives of others.  I am not talking the small dealer here, but rather the ones who are smart enough not to use you in their lives but do not have enough humanity in them to care about others as long as it profits them.  While it is easy to blame the dealers, the manufacturers and yes even the government, in the end I still blame you, the drugs.  I wish it was as easy as killing you to get you out of my life, if so you would be dead and if I had to pay for that then so be it.  If I could switch places with Chris and Taylor, I would gladly go to my grave knowing you are no longer part of theirs or the children’s life.  But I would never trust you to keep your promise, for you are a liar and deceiver.  You lure people in with promises of paradise and bliss, while actually only offering hell.  Many believe that hell is fire and brimstone, but that is not my belief, I belief on the surface it looks like paradise.  A place that is too good to be true.  It is only when you have taken too many steps into this wonderland that you realize that the path back has faded and the all of the beauty is only a glamour to hide the pain and suffering that was just below the surface.

You took the time that was set aside for Chris to learn how to be a man and wasted it.  This was the time when he could learn to control his actions and emotions.  What he thought of as euphoria was in actuality only a slide into the upper levels of hell.  You have taken the trust that was his to have and destroyed it, with him not even aware of it going away.  You stole moments that should have been precious moments from his life and from our life.  We will never see him graduate, or go to the prom or the joy of the first good job out of school.  You have taken moments that should have been awakenings into adulthood and buried them so deeply that he could not even get a sense of accomplishment from them if he had been able to complete them.  Were you happy to stop there, no as you introduced Chris to another of your subjects and together they went further into your dreamland looking for the glimpse of paradise that you had showed them, never realizing that they were just going to the next level of hell.  By this point you had already taught them to lie and deceive, to cheat others and to have no empathy for those that loved them.  You had tricked them into the belief that those that love them were helpless to stop their actions and that there was no help for them.  You even managed to replace the love God has built into parents for their children.  As long as you stay in their lives, you will always make yourself first and everything else, including their own children a far and distant second.

Beyond that you have intruded into the lives of their parents and grandparents.  As we struggle to help them recognize the hell they are voluntarily committing themselves to, we have been forced to also shoulder their responsibility.  This will end, as I will no longer support the hold you have on them.  If that hold is stronger than the love they have for their children and their families, then I will admit defeat and do what I can to protect the children from you.  Because of you we have had to put our lives on hold to try and help them find a path out of your glamour, a path that you try to continue to hide.  You also use others to bring them back by tricking them into thinking you are their friends and it will be different this time.  You continue to hang that carrot in front of them and like a mule they just keep plodding along hoping for the glimpse again. 

I look around and see the devastating effect you are having on the world and I wonder how we ever allowed this to be.  I know you have always been there, a tool for the devil if you will, used to destroy love and family and self-respect.  I see a generation that has fallen even more under your influence then past generations.  I wonder if this one will have the strength to throw off the yoke of slavery that they are so willing to put on for you.  I also wish I could say that it was isolated to this generation or that, but I see people of all ages falling for your tricks.  Yes I know you are sitting there laughing and say but I help people, imagine the pain without me.  You have even convinced the people who should know better, doctors and such, that you are good and a necessary evil.  You have managed with the pushers you have at your disposal to slip the shackles of controls and place them on your creators.  There is a place for some of your benefits in the short term, but in the long term, you are much worse than the pain you are supposed to help relieve.  Now you have idiots in power who go well let’s just make this legal it will stop there.  How you must laugh when you hear that.  Imagine how much more power you will have to enslave us when you can legally give that first glimpse at what you call paradise.  Natural or not you find the weakest points in our lives and manipulate them to make us weaker and enslave not only those who fall prey to your trap but those around them also.  I consider the first drink, the first puff and the first injection to all be times when you are tempting us to fall for your lies.  Each one after the first is just another small step closer to the edge.  An edge where you are waiting with the shackles so that you can claim another victim as you pull them over the edge and throw them into the hell you have waiting.  The amount of power you wield is greater than just about any other power in the universe.  You hear that love is the strongest emotion in the human mind, but it is also our greatest weakness as you will gladly replace the love of a child with the love of a drug.  It is truly sad that every day there are examples of children being neglected, abused and killed while those that are there to love and protect them are too busy trying to get your attention, never realizing the more they try to get that attention for that glimpse, they more you demand of them and the more they are slaves.  Then you use the love of those around them trying to save them from themselves, to entrap them in a cycle that is hard to break, always just waiting there for that chance to grab them too.  “How does it generally go?”, oh you are stressed because of the drug addicts in your life, well here I have a pill that can help you…..BANG! another one in the trap with a glimpse and a world where the stress is not gone but just not as noticeable.

You scare the hell out of me and that angers me, which is in and of itself another of your traps.  Just have a drink to help take the edge off, just ask the doctors for something to help you relax or sleep.  You have become so pervasive in our lives that most do not even see you anymore.  As a species we have become wimps and you have been there every step of the way.  Always ready to lend a hand to help make it just a little bit easier, less painful, and more beautiful.  We have become a species that thinks the only way to deal with pain, grief, stress, discomfort or even having to deal with others is to take a pill or a drink or a puff of this or that.  Our government supports you in so many ways it is not funny.  They waste our money in attempts to stop you that are doomed form the beginning to fail.  They want to stop the supply while not dealing with the demand.  Part of that is because in many instances the supply is also lining their pockets.

One of your greatest weapons in your control over the addicts and their families is the sense of shame and embarrassment you include in your view of paradise.  No one wants to talk about it as they are embarrassed or think others will question how they raised the child.  To many times I have heard that as the excuse for not addressing drug addiction or addiction of any kind.  “What will my friends think?”, “They must think I am a horrible parent.” and on and on with the reasons not to address you while you just sink your claws in deeper and deeper.  I know I fell for that trap also, there were times I should have gone to other parents when I saw their children involved in the same thing, but I did not and shame on me for that and for allowing you to dictate my actions.  It is amazing how quickly and easy it is to look the other way for fear of getting involved or embarrassing the other family.  I am over having something have that type of control over my life and my morals.  I get asked some days what is wrong, and I will talk to others and tell them the trials that you are costing in my life.  I am no longer embarrassed by what you have done to my child.  I have come to the realization that I did the best I could for him and that he is making his own choices.  The greatest shame is that we have become a country of “do not get involved in others business because you may offend them or embarrass them”.  We are so ready to sue others to hide what is going on that it is counterproductive and damaging to this society.  This is just another way for you to slide into the void created by people being afraid to address bad behavior.

So again let me say, if it was possible I would kill you, but unlike you I would give a quick and clean death rather than the slow death you hide behind your lies.  The part of your lies that so many miss, is that even when someone finds the path out, the road back is so short and the damage you have done is just hidden below the surface waiting for the next chance to drag them back into hell along with everyone who loves them and cares for them.

The plate as an analogy of life

So this is not what I planned for the first post here.  I had planned to give a bit of the history but be that as it may.  Every year for the last 5 years around mid-November my son and his girlfriend seem to go even more off the rails than normal.  They are both on and abusing subutex that they go to a clinic for.  They are abusing by injecting the subutex after fishing it from their mouths.  We will not go into al of the possible side effects there.  In addition there is pot and in my sons case Xanax and klonopin involved.   After a blowup between the 2 of them brought on by a drug binge I am again at my wits end.  So after 2 days of thinking of how can I make the point to them, last night we had a discussion about their life style yet again.  Realizing that talking is doing little good but still trying to have them be responsible for their children I decide to try a different approach to explaining the damage being done. 

I asked them to both come outside with me.

I handed them a plate and said I would like you 2 to hold the plate and tell it that you are sorry and that you are going to stop doing drugs

They thought this was rather funny and did it with a smirk on their faces like damn he has lost it.   I said that attitude towards the plate is the same attitude we feel you have when you tell us and your daughters you are going to stop.  So that plate is your family

Now throw that plate on the concrete.  They again both looked at me like I was crazy…but it will break they said.  I said throw the plate to the concrete

As expected it broke into many many pieces.

Tell the plate you are sorry you did not keep your promise to not do drugs and that you will stop doing drugs

They did this.  I than asked them if saying they were sorry fixed the plate

NO they said

I said right it did not fix the plate.  You have damaged that plate and it can never be whole again.  You can find most of the pieces and glue them back together again but it will not be as strong as it was and there will always be pieces missing.  This is what you have been doing to your family for years.

So now you have a plate that is weaker with cracks in it and you again throw it to the ground what happens.

It Breaks

Yes into smaller pieces and more of it is lost and it is even weaker.  The more times you patch it together the weaker it becomes and the more voids exist in the structure.  When you do it to many times there is nothing left of the plate.  The plate still wants to be a plate but it is no longer able to be a plate due to your actions.

Family, trust and Love are the same as that plate.  Every time you break it you lose a little more of it that you can never regain.  But you can stop the damage and work at filling the voids, though it will never be the same

When this was completed and we had gone back inside I had a thought.  I had asked them to clean the plate up in the morning.  But right before going to sleep realized that it might make more of an impact to ask them to find all of the pieces and put the plate back together to see how hard it is to repair what you have broken.

I do not know if this will sink in long term but as we completed our discussion, I did complete the analogy of the family and the plate to be that our family is very fractured right now due to their actions and that the next step is to have to remove them from our house and protect our granddaughters.  Unfortunately, I do feel that that will be a death sentence for at least 1 of them as the girls are the only thing that seems to slow them down occasionally.