“To tell you the truth, Mom, I think that everyone I love would have been better off if I’d never been born.”

What can a parent do, when confronted with such unhappiness?  Options are so limited when you live paycheck to paycheck.  I tried to keep communication lines open.  I tried not to judge.  I hid my terror of losing what I treasure more than my own life.  You refused to see a doctor about your mental state.  You explained once again that smoking pot made the demons recede.  I found myself wishing you could just smoke the damned stuff and have a modicum of peace. 

We got a call from Target.  You had been picked up shoplifting, of all things, Yu-Gi-Oh! cards.  You were sixteen and had the grace to be embarrassed.  Target chose not to press charges, but you had to pay a steep fine and go to an intervention program for at-risk youth.  I wondered if that was a strong enough consequence.  Will and I attended the intervention program meetings, too.  We learned a lot about at-risk behavior and its consequences. Did you?

Amidst the bad times, a job offer came through for you from the nearby grocery store, bagging groceries.  You’d already applied and interviewed, and your shoplifting episode therefore never came up in conversation.  You got lucky, Son.

In the fall of your junior year, you bailed out of your last honors class, an AP US history class that would have given you college credit.  You passed your classes by test and final grades alone, as you never bothered to do homework.  You greeted D grades with indifference; you got credit for the class, which was all you cared about.  You even got an A from the US history teacher into whose class you'd transferred.  I guess he didn't give much homework.

Just after your seventeenth birthday, you called us at dawn on a Sunday morning.  A few hours earlier, an officer in a police car had happened to see you jaywalk across a street, and decided to stop you.  When he ordered you to stop, you began to run instead.  Not a good move.  You did have the good sense to stop, but that initial panic earned you a search.  You were found with a marijuana pipe.  You were also told you could be charged with attempting to flee from arrest.  The officer told you that possession of the pipe was a Class Six Felony in the State of Arizona, punishable by up to a year in prison.  Furthermore, as a 17-year-old, you could be charged as an adult.  You were with your dad that weekend, so the officers dropped you off there.  Your dad, who is a state corrections officer, told you that you had shamed the family. 

Terrified, I went to the main office of Phillips & Associates, a law firm that advertises on TV and billboards, for a “free consultation.”  The reception area was intimidatingly posh, with mahogany and leather furniture that looked simultaneously expensive and uncomfortable.  I had to complete a long form which asked many questions about our financial circumstances.  We had a sum total of six thousand dollars to our name at that time, a fact I divulged.  The man we talked to, not a lawyer but probably a salesman, warned me that Arizona was a zero tolerance state and that very likely you would do jail time.  He then coolly set their fee at $6,800 just for initially handling your case.  It would cost more for them to represent you in court.  Openly weeping, I wrote the check that made us penniless.

Over the next two weeks, I began to wonder if we had been further victimized.  I talked to other parents who had dealt with their teens' alcohol and drug problems.  They, and some of your friends in various stages of state-mandated rehab, gave me hope that the situation was not as dire as we had feared. With trepidation, I called the Mesa Police and asked to speak to the officer who had dealt with you that night.  I don't even know what to call it.  Arrested you?  Charged you?  I was completely unfamiliar with legal terminology.

The police officer was informative and helpful.  He provided a larger picture of what to expect.  His opinion was that, in the absence of past infractions, and with an unblemished school record, you would be diverted to a program aimed at rehabilitation. 

With some difficulty, Will and I recovered most of what we had paid the law firm.  They kept $400 for their free consultation and for processing.  I was so relieved to have the money returned that I felt faint.

You were diverted to an intervention program and once again, Will and I participated in group sessions with you.  We sat in an auditorium and listened to a heartbreaking account told by the dad of a teen who was killed by a drunk driver.  We sat in small group sessions where you and other teens talked about what you liked about yourselves, and how you could set goals for yourselves.

Once you were out of the program, you returned to your late-night street-wandering, to the cryptic-sounding phone calls at all hours.  You informed us, almost as an afterthought, that you had tried magic mushrooms, that they were truly an awesome experience, and that you would do it again when you could afford it.  I spent hours feverishly reading up about this new substance online, and what I read stoked my fears.  One website frankly celebrated and promoted the mushrooms.  It was an encyclopedia of information.  The webmaster's message to readers was: do not ever assume the mushrooms you ingest are safe.  We know very little about so many varieties.  But cheer up!  If you die, you can consider yourself a contributor to the body of scientific knowledge, and your fellow mushroom enthusiasts will benefit!  I spent whole nights wide-awake, or, worse, inhabiting garish nightmares about your death, which made insomnia look like a better option than sleeping.

Your dad and stepmom were increasingly reluctant to receive you into their home on the weekends you were assigned there.  When they searched your backpack and found marijuana, they told you not to come back, that you were no longer welcome there.  That had been your house since you were four years old.  It stored your memories and artifacts of your history.  Over the next weeks, your dad dropped off boxes of dinosaur books, t-ball trophies, and Godzilla videos.  Your anger focused on your stepmom.  You had always been your dad's favorite, until she came along.  There was some truth to your perceptions, but this line of thinking would not help you to change your ways, I argued.  I wish you had been listening.   

In the meantime, you continued in your job as a bagger at the grocery store, and that part of your life seemed to be going well.  You were promoted to cashier.  You made it to your senior year.  Graduation loomed as a possibility ahead.  If I had been told ten years earlier, even five years earlier, that your high school completion would be cause for such uncertainty, I would have reacted disdainfully.  Not my kid.

Then, at school, you had a stupid moment.  You absently began cutting off the frayed hem of your jeans while in class.  What implement did you use?  A tool from work, used daily as you restocked shelves.  Box cutters.  A student reported you.  Your backpack was searched and cigarette papers were also found.  You were given two weeks' suspension.  And the three of us went through yet another round of intervention classes.  Your grades, already precarious, tanked.  You had F's in most of your classes.  We withdrew you from school and enrolled you in the district's "bad boy" school, where you were searched daily before you were allowed in, where all students were advised to keep to themselves.  You had three weeks to go before the end of the semester and winter break.  The only classes that you absolutely had to complete that semester for graduation were government and English.  You decided to focus on those.  You started government all over, using a computerized curriculum.  You finished it in the three remaining weeks, and got an A.  You had carried an F over from your English class, but managed to pull it up to a C, and got that credit, as well. 

I did what I could to cheer your successes, but Son, it was hard.  You could have earned a full college scholarship.  Now we would be relieved to see you graduate from high school.

Your depression continued.  I discovered your pot smoking station in the back yard, just out of view from the windows.  Will and I were at our wits' end.  Grounding you didn't work; we'd tried it and you merely left and did not come home.  We tried a "reverse grounding."  We told you that you would be allowed to sleep here, do your laundry, and shower.  The rest of the day you were on your own, until your drug test was clean.  You retaliated by moving out of the house and in with a friend and his father, both of whom, I found out later, were pot smokers.

You returned to your high school.  One economics class stood between you and graduation. Stubbornly, you continued in your refusal to do homework.  You played guitar, went to concerts, cracked teeth and got punched in your gut in mosh pits.  You had an F in econ going into the final.  You aced the final.

Your living situation deteriorated, and somewhat humbled, you moved back in with us, a week before graduation.

Graduation arrived.  In the desert of Arizona, rain seldom is a factor in an outdoor event.  But the night you graduated, it poured.  The graduation exercises were hastily moved inside.  Instead of the whole family attending, you received three tickets.  I told you to give two of them to your dad and stepmom, and to their credit, they attended.  I sat in the gym alone.  You and I could not find each other afterward.  Outside, rain fell in heavy curtains.  Sidewalks and streets looked like rivers.  I got to my car, feet drenched.  You called to tell me that you had a ride home.  The parking lot took 45 minutes to empty.  I sat alone in my car, clothes and hair soaking, and my sobs went unheard in the midst of the wind, the pouring rain, the heavy thunder.  I think I was mourning the loss of a dream.  
    

One night, you drove my car and careless, you nearly ran a red light.  You braked violently, backed up, and were immediately pulled over by the police.  The car smelled of marijuana.  Your friend had a bag of pot in the car.  He had already had his "one chance" as an adult, so as the staunch though misguided friend you tend to be, you told the officer it was your bag.  They gave you several sobriety tests.  You passed them all.  The policeman told you that you would probably get fined.  Your friend, grateful that you'd taken the fall for him, told you he would help pay.

Several weeks later, you received a court summons.  Charges--possession of marijuana; possession of drug paraphernalia.  You were incensed.  "There was no 'paraphernalia,'" you raged.  "Unless they are calling the bag 'paraphernalia,' which is pretty damned unfair--that's double jeopardy!"   

You and your girlfriend, after several stormy breakups and patchups, had a final breakup for good.  It resulted in the loss of your job, as you chose to conduct a ferocious argument in the parking lot of your store, while in uniform.  You told me, "Mom, I told Dad about the drug charge today.  He told me that he was tired of my bringing nothing but shame to the family.  He says he's not sure he wants to see me again.  I just couldn't take any more.  And then Mariel told me that I was too needy, just because I kept texting her the other night.  She told me she didn't return my texts as a 'test.'  And I failed the test.  I feel like I've been betrayed by someone I thought I could trust."  The bitterness in your voice hurt just to hear.

You start TASC in a week.  I'm not sure what the letters stand for, but it is yet another rehab/diversion program.  The State of Arizona is, amazingly, giving you another chance.  This program is a lot tougher than anything you've previously encountered.  They mean business.  You are going to have to pay a thousand dollars to be in it.  You will have to pee in a cup several times a week, and they charge you for that, too.  You can't have anything show up in your urine, not even cold medication, unless you have divulged it at the start, or else you will be back in the State Judicial System.  Your case is currently on hold.  You have 90 days of sobriety to get through.  If you succeed, the State will officially drop charges.  You will have a clear record once again.

Maybe a sea change, a turn of luck, is just ahead for you.  Two teachers at my school, faced with budget cuts and the prospect of losing their jobs, are expanding their employment counseling services.  You are going to be their first paying customer next week.  These guys have worked wonders with at-risk teens on IEPs for a decade at my school.  I just know that you will benefit from their job connections, their understanding of student interests and skills and how they translate into a career, and their ideas.  I've told them that there is a need for their expertise, whether the school renews their contracts or not.  You seem eager to talk to them.  I think you can help them fine-tune their services, as they help you. 

You are starting on St. Johns Wort and we have referrals to a psychiatrist to get help for your depression.

If you only knew, with your youth and talent and brains, how much you have going for you.  I can tell you, but some things we all must learn it for ourselves.  I believe there is a niche for you in this world, one that you will fill well.  I believe there is joy ahead for you, if you will look for it and be willing to create some, for you, for others. 

It is wise not to know the future.  A fortune teller cannot articulate the sums and losses of each day which, by some act of magnificent conjuring, construct a life in all its richness.  If I'd been told in advance, the day I first heard those galloping heartbeats on the fetal stethoscope, of what our future held, I'd have recoiled in panic.  I might have chosen to miss the pain of loving you.  But I would have missed you--YOU--your existence!--and now, just trying to fathom the enormity of such a loss, I realize the gift and the blessing you have been.