Storage Unit 3113

Dismantled inside a 10x10 sat the apartment I helped my son furnish.

The slate gray sofa. The breakfast nook set he styled with colorful placemats. The coffee table, the dresser once home to a row of coke bottles filled with beach sand. His bed, entertainment console, desk, nightstand, and all those sealed boxes of hopes and dreams.

The day he moved into his apartment I thought perhaps luck and life had turned for him, after falling prey to a horrific disease. At 22 he was desperate to return to school. To finish his degree. To feel a sense of purpose and regain his independence. To escape the darkness of the struggle. I wanted him to have that chance, even though his doctor warned me it was too early. He needed more time to stabilize.

My son convinced me otherwise, and I wanted to believe him more than the doctor. Not because I was in denial, but because I didn’t understand the tangled web inside my boy’s head. I didn’t understand the biology in his body had changed. That his mind struggled with a chemical imbalance that would lead to a brain disorder. That there would be no cure. That he would battle mental illness for the rest of his life.

I didn’t understand his fragility. I believed time would lessen the confusion. Focus would help him find direction. I misjudged the situation on all fronts.

I would soon come to see my decision to let him live alone a catastrophic error. Being on his own proved detrimental to his health. Over the next few months he would be hospitalized five times, each stay not long enough to stabilize him. Each discharge nothing more than a setup for another psychological break that would land him back in the hospital. As he grew more delusional, and his mental and physical health deteriorated, what little professional support he accepted withered. Family became enemy. He rebuffed our help and isolated himself from the world.

Five months after the landlord handed him the key, the words of his doctor proved prophetic.

He left school, lost his apartment and became homeless.

We packed up his life and moved it into Storage Unit 3113. I couldn’t bring myself to give anything away. I hoped it would eventually go into a new apartment. I needed hope. I had little else to hang on to.

I began searching for him on the streets of San Francisco. A weekly endeavor, where chance and luck occasionally brought us into the same orbit, mostly thanks to a joint debit card that enabled me to track locations via his transactions. I would put small sums of money into his account so he wouldn’t panhandle for food. The days I didn’t roam the city, I researched treatment options and facilities. I needed a plan should he ever agree to seek help.

He was broken. I was outraged. The mental health system had thrown him on to the streets, voiding his only shot at recovery.

Nine months after he landed on the streets of San Francisco we got lucky and managed to rescue him. My son, who had once pinned his hopes on a degree in video game design, suffered from paranoia, heard voices, and delusions fed his reality.

Getting him back home was a miracle, as was the mental health system finally breaking his way. He would be admitted to El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, Calif. There he received the care he should have had all along. Put on the right medication, he stabilized. Six months after hospitalization and out-patient treatment he would return to school, and this time forge ahead toward a degree at a manageable pace, with family by his side to support and encourage.

I avoided storage unit 3113. The memories too painful. My son went down with his dad and brought home his bed and nightstand, placing them in the room where he grew up.

Then one day circumstances forced that trip to the storage unit 3113. My daughter wanted to take a look. See what might work in her apartment. We drove over the hill to Santa Cruz.

As she lifted the door, a visceral sadness passed through me. I stared at all the pieces. My mind recalling the way everything looked in the amazing little apartment we had found in Soquel. God, I wanted it to work out so badly.

But that’s not how his life played out. Still, my head and heart knew it could have been far worse. I could have never found my son. He could have never come home. He could have never received help. He could have died on those streets.

And, I let go.

Storage Unit 3113 didn’t matter anymore. I could move forward. I donated the furniture to a homeless shelter, because that’s how the universe works.