The teenage years did not come easy in our house.
During their prime destructive years, the kids were 15, 17 and 19. Now to set the stage for the brewing of the perfect storm.
Alex had graduated high school, but was very unhappy with the move from Kentucky to Arkansas, so he promptly moved back to Beaver Dam. He returned to work at Voyages, a computer store he had worked at all through high school. My first born, unhappy with the choices his Mom had made, was making his first bold adult decision and striking out on his own. Not to go to college, but going back to the environment I was trying to get the kids out of. Unknown to me (luckily) he became heavily involved with drugs during his 6 month stint in Kentucky. I have no idea what prompted the move, but he came back home to clean out and to choose an alternative lifestyle- one without the use of meth. By the grace of God, he was home!
Andrew was not without struggles. He felt as though he always had to be in a relationship. Taking a page from his mother's playbook, most of those relationships were destructive. This cause him great internal conflict. His external conflict came from school! He hated it. Andrew has ADHD. School had become difficult for him somewhere about the fifth grade. By his senior year it was unsure he would graduate. Then the great calamity happened. He had a rather unusual emergency surgery and was prescribed pain meds for afterwards. Being an enterprising young man, he decided to take the schedule 3 narcotics to school and sell them for 5 bucks a pop. Ingenious! Until he sold a pill to an undercover agent. Within two hours he was in jail. Three days, many, many tears and a lawyer later he was out on probation for a year, and suspended from school for the rest of his senior year. He filled the next year with peyote, mushrooms, Robitussin, benzodiazipine, anti-psychotics; anything that proved to be a psychotropic. Next ensued the never-ending confrontations between Chuck and Andrew, with me placed smack dab in the middle. Andrew's behavior had become so destructive that he ignored every house rule. It was nothing to find him in bed with a female, naked, smoking pot, oblivious to their surroundings. One night he was locked out of the house because he ignored curfew, so he threw a log through his window to get in the house.
Next but not least is my Sweet Pea, Linda. She was my straight "A" student; involved in French club, photography club, on the newspaper staff, in this and that club, you name it, she did it! The only things she didn't do was sports and cheering. Linda was totally self propelled, she had a drive from within to excel at everything she did. Then, it seemed as if one day I woke up and Linda had dropped out of her clubs, was skipping classes, and smoking pot. For the first three months of this behavior I was in total denial. I couldn't believe what was going on, or that my precious little baby girl would become so wreckless overnight. By the time I started to come around and laying down new rules (she previously needed no rules, she governed herself), Linda promptly moved out of my house and in with her boyfriend. I was devastated. Linda eventually smoked so much pot that she quit going to school all together, dropping out her junior year. She quit coming around, with our friendship dissolved into a puddle of my tears.
It was more than I could deal with. A nervous breakdown does not happen in a day, a week or even a month. It takes years of trying to restore balance in chaos. And I eventually lost the battle.
No comments:
Post a Comment