The time had come to pick up Ryan from what I refer to affectionately as “camp”. I use that word to express my humor about the situation. It is actually my power word. Mine against drugs. Because of his emotional definitions, he thought the use of the word “camp” meant I was embarrassed that he went to rehab. No I wasn’t then nor am I now. It is who we were and are today. We are perfectly, irritatingly messy people in the world of green truths. We make it easy for some people to appear to be good.
From the beginning I have been very vocal about Ryan’s drug use. Why? Because there is relief from fear found with those who are living what we are living. We feel each others pain. In addition, I was trying to warn people about what I saw as a huge problem in the future. Why? Because if my poster child could fall, then any dream could also fall. He wasn’t some spoilt kid having a tantrum in life contrary to what others believed and said. Even today we still encounter people like that. Some people just don’t want an addict to get well because then the truth would shine the light on them.
We had driven to the rehab in another state so that we could enclose Ryan back into the family circle. The vehicle of change included myself, Ashlee and my husband. We had prepared in advance of the trip so that when we arrived, our family time would move quickly through the paces. We would all say our words and then be done with that stint in hell. Our list work had required that we describe behaviors rather than use words of blame or shame. Blaming or shaming immobilizes people which further fuels adversity leading to continued failure.
My heart had been in the right place as a mother but not my words so I focused on choosing my script carefully. After all, it was our word selections that had brought us here. We had not spoken correctly. We had not “talked” him through life correctly. Now that he had had time to clear his head while away at “camp”, he would hear our effective word choices and return home as “our Ryan”. All of our sins would be erased.
I had imagined what our reunion would be like but I couldn’t be sure about it. The last time we had seen each other was when I had had him forcefully taken away. He was very angry then. Frankly he had been that way for some time. A few years earlier his anger had started to affect him on the soccer field. Despite his mad skills as a player, I had to end his participation because he was challenging opposing team members to fight him. I placed him in anger management counseling for a long time in hopes that he would work through what was going on for him. The discovery of his drug use led me to believe that the anger was directly related to the drugs. Today I know it was and it wasn’t.
After we arrived, we had to wait patiently for the counselors to bring the young men in from the field. When the truck unloaded, I thought that Ryan was not in the group. His tall, thin and disheveled appearance was unrecognizable to me at first. While his eyes showed apprehension, his smile told a different story. Any feelings of nervousness that I had went out the window when I saw that long, lost expression. That smile told me that we had done it. We had beaten hell with a swift kick from “camp”. Drugs were indeed dead.
Laughter filled the air as the families came together. There were many hugs and kisses for our returning addicts. Imaginary high fives were floating in the air above us. Everyone introduced themselves. We had been bonded by the destruction of our dreams and unified by the death of drugs. That scene was wonderful and yet also a picture perfect post card for the green truth.
Over the course of the next few days, we slept, ate and worked on ourselves as a group. The families counseled together so that we could learn from each other as well as give support as a whole. Eleven years later, I can still visualize the room where we used our new effective speech. It was dark and stuffy but a ray of sunshine reflected our new found hope.
In that safe place we were all doing and saying the right things. We used positive sentences such as “When you did this I felt this…”. For me, however, the disconnection that had gone on between my brain and my feelings was not going to be repaired in those few days. It wasn’t how I spoke. It wasn’t how I felt. It was not a part of my core. In fact none of us in the family spoke or acted that way. It was as if some how we expected a pass for our sins just because we had not chosen to cope by using drugs. Failure was served equally to all of us but Ryan was the one we wanted to pay for it.
We had made the effort to do this right while in that protected circle at the rehab but we had not developed the skills to change his or our lives permanently. It seems funny now how many times I felt he didn’t really try or was lying when in reality we were virtually all doing and not doing the same thing. We got exactly what we put into it as did he. If the adults couldn’t get it together then how could a victim ever stop being a monster?
Our time in the circle had ended. We packed up our things including all those work sheets. Our words had sounded better but our definitions had not improved. The vehicle of change headed back towards not just our home but our life as we had always lived and breathed it.
Drugs were dead. A soul was free. The mirror still knows the real truth. The snake talks better than we do. Monsters hide in plain sight. Hell wasn’t beaten. It was lying in wait for us. Time was running out on the life of the poster child. We laughed and joked all the way home…
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