He sits alone in a cold, stark concrete block room. His private classroom at school. It is only temporary you know, they say. No one wants it, but everyone needs it. The walls are an institutional blue and the short nap carpeting resembles that found in the hospital of your choice. There is a blanket and a book and Nick. He is alone. Alone by design. The widows are boarded up, he broke one once. There were cabinets in the room but they have been boxed in, he pulled out the drawers and the contents once and if he stands on the counter top he can knock out the ceiling tile. There are a few tiles still askew from an incident months or years earlier, when is immaterial. It is a sad place; for him and for me. It hit me today when I was watching him in the room, alone and sad. This is my son, locked up in a cage, a cage he built for himself, or maybe it was built for him.
It is the anger, the rage that put him here, will confusion and frustration keep him there? There have been too many instances of hope shattered, too many times that we thought it was the end. Too much unpredictability. The medicine doesn't help, or it does and we don't know where to stop, what to add, what to subtract. We can talk to the psychiatrist's personal assistant but not him, we need him. Information doesn't flow from that direction and we are as alone as Nick in that institutional blue room with no windows. Doses and drugs swirl around in my head and the only thing I know for sure is that I know nothing for sure. He has been better at home, at least as of 7:17 EST.
It has been 9 days, and that is all the further that discussion can go. Teachers and aids and administrators and social workers are afraid, and rightly so. When things are bad they bunch up and peer at him through the tiny window next to the door, waiting for the storm to pass but there is not a weather man alive who can make this prediction. When things are worst they struggle using physical restraint until yet another storm passes. OH MY GOD THEY HAVE TO HOLD MY SON DOWN! Before I turn the corner I pray that there will not be a crowd. The crowd is never a good sign. The silence is even worse because in my head it is accusatory, even though I know that is irrational. They want to help, they want what is best for Nick they express their love for him and for us and quite honestly they are as confused as we are and I want them to see the good things that have been happening as of 7:25 EST of which we will not speak too much. I feel less pressure at home, like I have made it through this mine field and hope that another doesn't appear.
They don't feel that way and I fear that it is going to be that much harder to rebuild trust and why not when someone else's son is shoving and hitting. Does anyone get paid enough for that? On the other hand what else is this school for if not for those who lives present challenges that are out of the ordinary. He leaves happy and are sure the call will not come and it does. The next time you try to trust that God will handle what ever arises but God has other plans and the phone rings. The next time you expect it and it may not come, but something happened there and there was an "incident" and everyday melts into one long groundhog day, day after day after day. So I have decided that while I want him to be good at school and at least be able to stay, and will continue to work tirelessly to that end, the only place I have any control is here at home and here he is working hard against the medicine and whatever else it is that haunts him and he wants to be happy and friendly and love us as much as we love him and that has to be good enough for me, at least as of 7:40 EST.
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the people in my apartment charged me for paintings for all the dents in my room. Then they decided I had to live in a group home because I'd destroyed everything, but they were pretty nice. The reason I got angry was because I was sick of everything. I'm schizophrenic. I was delusional at the time.