Ordinary People

(my kid just told me he wants to die)

This post is filled with pretty pictures depicting a rather pastoral existence in which gentle people do gentle natural things. What the pictures don't show, of course, is that our family is in the middle of a giant crisis. But perhaps some things are better left unsaid?

I don't know how many people remember the book, and the resulting movie "Ordinary People" with Mary Tyler Moore and Timothy Hutton, but this book had a tremendous impact on my life as a teen. Perhaps it was a bad movie for me to see, what with my own impending date with suicidal obsession which obviously didn't pan out as I had planned, what with me still sitting here typing about it. Not talking about things can destroy people. Young vulnerable people especially.

This is the Garden Potage soup on the stove, by the way.

Anyway, my kid just told me he wants to die. He's been saying this since he was, well, three. I've just gotten in a huge fight with Philip and Max over this little yellow piece of plastic called a memory card. If you or anyone in your house has a play station, you'll know what this is. We don't have a DVD player right now because McMinnville doesn't believe in selling decent electronics to it's people even though it believes in other similar things like selling them cheap crap from stores called Walmart. So to play a DVD I have to use the play station. This is fine most of the time, although it's irritating to use a joy stick (or whatever they're calling those these days) to navigate around the menu.

The memory card, for some reason, when left in place will sometimes make it impossible for me to get rid of the last screen it saved. This is mostly my fault, not the memory card's fault. I have not taken time to learn to use all the shiny features of our play station, if I had, I would probably know how to clear the memory card screen. Instead, I just remove the plastic card. I set it down near all the play station games are scattered out of their covers, and don't think about it anymore.

My men have apparently been asking me where the memory card went all week long. Five or six times they've asked me if I've seen it. I have no memory of this. Maybe it's because my head was rather busy with other issues such as the fact that OUR STORE IS CLOSING. But the more likely reason I don't remember this is that my husband has a very interesting habit of assuming I know what he's talking about at all times and therefore leaves out vital details. I probably thought he was talking about something less important. Because if I had known that their lives were going to end without that memory card, surely I would have felt my culpability right then and there.

Yes, it is my fault that the memory card is missing. The boys don't ever remove it from it's port in the play station. It is me. Me who took it out. This morning we were having the most delightful little morning snuggle and chat when suddenly all hell broke loose when I suggested that Max start playing on the play station (Saturday morning is the only day of the week he's allowed to play on it at all). Suddenly the two of them were looking on me with angry eyes explaining how they can't play the game they love best in all the world because the memory card is missing. When I didn't get what the big deal was and said I didn't realize the memory card was missing you could almost feel the electricity in the air as they prepared to fry me with punishment.

Philip was upset that I didn't remember this issue when he had asked me about it five or six times this week. Uh, I guess if you ask me once and I don't know where something is the most effective way to change reality is to hit me over the head with it as much as possible (which didn't work). So they're both angry with me and looking at me like I had purposely ruined their lives. Max started in on a lengthy tirade against me, so I left.

I came back several minutes later and Max had not drawn breath in his recital of my mortal sins. So I told him to stop or I would give him a time out. He sort of stopped. Just as I was about to be a very wishy washy parent and not insist on a time out he made an ugly face at me. So I told him he was to go to his room. But he wouldn't.

I don't know when the last time was when you tried to drag fifty unwilling pounds of flesh from one room to another, but it is not easy. He yelled, screamed, cried, and thrashed around. I finally got him into his room.

Fun times! I keep assuring myself that this is all making me a better person. I have to admit that the assurances are getting threadbare. So if this is how devastated my men are when they have to start over on a video game, what will it be like in here when there's an actual life crisis going on? How will we cope? Those guys turned on me viciously. I don't think I can trust them anymore.

This is the Garden Potage soup all finished. Normally it is a pleasing light green. It's khaki because I used red leaf lettuce. So take note: butter lettuce is the best choice for this one. Still, it was really good anyway.

I am feeling quite angry at them as well. I barely tolerate the existence of the play station in the first place. I think video games are evil. EVIL. I almost had a heart attack the first time I saw Philip playing on it with Max when Max was two years old. I almost started screaming at him. I hadn't wanted it in my house in the first place. EVIL. I hate seeing grown men play video games. I hate how quickly it can bring out aggressive behaviors in both men and children. (Probably in women too, I just never see them playing the games.)

But I didn't scream. I made my position clear: I will have nothing to do with that awful thing. It is between Max and Dad. I figured it could be one of those dad with kid things. I figured I wouldn't make a huge stink about it because, I don't know, because it seemed like the thing to do. But over the years we've had a lot of problems with the "PS2". I had to ask Philip to stop playing a couple of games that caused him to pound angrily on furniture and swear more than usual and on the top of his lungs.

I hate video games. I would like to take that play station and smash it to pieces. We've had to limit the time Max spends on it because it makes him surly and more negative than usual.

Max was just in here letting me know again how much he wants to die. He just told me that his life has been really bad so far. Then when I told him that's too bad he told me it seemed like I didn't even care about him. He can keep on that theme for hours. Why on earth couldn't he just be a little ball of sunshine?

Every time I hear him express his wish to die, and every time I hear him say horrible things about himself it's like a stab in my chest. Not only did I take his memory card out of its place and leave it for the dog to find, which has effectively ruined his life, I gave him all my demented genes. Philip gave him his too, which just happen to be as demented as mine. Only Philip lives life completely untreated. Every time Max tells me how he just wants to stab himself to death it's like a sharp accusation directed at me for having knowingly procreated with damaged genetic material.

People can say whatever makes them feel better about it, but the truth is incontrovertible. Depression, anxiety, and other fun issues run in our family. I come from a long line of imbalanced people. Philip comes from a long line of hoarders that have only escaped a clinical diagnosis because they all live amongst each other and think it's normal to keep every piece of mail you've ever received over the last forty years*.

My kid is a time bomb. So is my husband. They come unraveled at the slightest pull of their lives. I am the person who is always trying to reset the timer. It makes me tired. And when they turn their wrath on me together I just want to unplug them for a while and go sit where it's quiet and the air isn't burning with a world of barely repressed emotions.

How many people think about what they might be passing on to the babies they dream of having? I have to admit that I thought about it. I gave it a lot of thought. The biological imperative to have a baby overcame my very wise reservations. It was wholly selfish of us to make a being knowing that he not only might end up with all of the same psychological problems we have, but that he most certainly would end up with them. When parents think about starting a family it is all about them and their own desires. But that baby comes out and is a whole separate human being whose genes have a lot to do with the particular challenges they will have to navigate in their time on this planet. Parents don't get to choose which of their genes to pass on.

So for several years now I have felt my crime deeply. Every time my boy goes down this spiraling path of negativity, of self flagellation, of biting himself, banging his head on the wall, and viciously tearing himself or us apart with words I feel myself and my journey begin again in this small being and it makes me not only scared, but deeply deeply sad to have given my child this legacy. What's worse is that Max is discovering things about me that I don't want him to know but have no way of hiding. He asked about the scars on my arms recently and I tried to fob him off with some story about an accident but he didn't believe me because if there's one thing my boy can do-it's tell a lie from fifty paces.

I told him I didn't want to talk about it. I told him he was too young to know. That it would scare him. He wouldn't give up. Jesus fucking christ. I had to tell my kid about how I cut myself up frequently when I was a teen as an alternative to suicide. You know what he really really desperately wanted to know? He wanted to know what tools I used to cut myself with. Is this giving him a map to my special path through hell? Will he follow me step by literal bloody step? I knew this moment would come, I just didn't expect it to come when my boy was only six years old.

Are we going to become the new "Ordinary People"? Do your children frequently express a wish to die? Do they do it just for dramatic effect? Do they tell you how they will do it? Do you have secrets from your early life that you would prefer them not to know? Do they ask you questions that make your blood run cold?

For the last year I have been meaning to find a child psychologist to take Max to. But having the store has made it impossible to take care of important things like avoiding a teen suicide. Now that the store is closing, I think it's time to find someone for Max to see. We need tools to use before the hormones hit him in earnest. If giving him meds at some point in the future will prevent him from cutting up his skin with steak knives and razors, or from becoming a crack addict**, or from dying, then I will support it if we find a doctor we can trust who can give me adequate reason to go down that road.

Before anyone starts telling me how evil it is to medicate children and how everything can be fixed with some natural method or herb or meditation, just ask yourself this: are you so sure your advice is sound that you would take responsibility if my kid killed himself when he turns sixteen? That's serious shit to play around with. You must realize that my kid isn't your average kid with average kid issues.***

I spent nineteen years trying to deal with my genes and my head wiring in natural ways. Nineteen years not getting therapy and meds. Nineteen years is a long time to live in a very bleak head with no help. Nineteen years is a long time to struggle with a couple of disorders that St. John's Wart cannot fix. Having finally gotten help and the validation from a trained psychologist that I am not imagining that I'm not normal and that I can't just make all the hell go away by simply thinking sunny thoughts, I would probably not talk about mental issues so often if it weren't for the fact that I have this kid spitting it back at me every single day. He's like a tiny little mirror.

Now he's in the other room with his dad playing on the play station without the memory card, laughing together. Chatting easily. As though we were all just totally happy normal balanced people. Completely ordinary.