WRITING

MORE THAN A DREAM

I had a dream years ago when Nick was 10. One of those vivid, startling dreams that decades later retains its lucid memory status. The dream recurred several times over a month.

Nick and I are in a store, an office, or on the streets. We’re walking somewhere, always undefined. I turn, and the next thing I know my son is gone. At first, I call his name without panic. “Nick? Nick? Where are you?” Then my pitch grows louder, more frantic until I break into a run screaming my son’s name. No one pays any attention. I stop and swirl to scan the crowd. I scramble in all directions. Alone. I never find him.

I wake in a start, body soaked in sweat and adrenaline. Scared beyond belief. Thinking “What the Hell!” Worried a harbinger is upon me.

Eventually, the dream fades, and my heart settles. I go about my day.

More than a decade later my dream became reality when I lost my son at age 22.

Unbeknownst to me, my subconscious had sent a warning. Yet even if this dream was a prophecy, an honest to god bona-fide biblical moment, how could I have stopped it? How could I have prevented what I didn’t know? That my son had a mental illness. That the disease had started to ferment in his brain.

Even knowing nothing, I still could have perched myself on a worrywart, overly-protective-parenting limb after the nightmarish dream. Then again, what if nothing happened? My son and I would have turned into neurotics. This just wasn’t my style.

In hindsight, I can look back to the moment my son’s health began to subtly change. He was 13 years old.

He sensed something off and couldn’t explain it. I sensed something off and never asked him to try and explain it. I didn’t listen to my gut. Yet there it was. That very moment we both knew something was amiss. When this invisible illness took hold and begun to worm through his mind. The timeline only apparent years later through conversations with my son.

If I had listened to my instincts back then, I would have questioned the moment this chemical shift in his brain started. The moment his cognitive thinking began to slip due to an excessive pruning of neurons in his brain, as a result of errant biological behavior. I might have understood the meaning of that dream. But I didn’t and I couldn’t.

I have come to accept the fact that portents can appear at any time, whether through our subconscious such as dreams or through unexplainable events that might leave us wondering, “What just happened?” I no longer take for granted or ignore those symbols, subtleties, and coincidences when they come upon me. I try hard to listen to my inner voice. If only I had followed my maternal instincts when I sensed things changing with Nick. To this day I berate myself for not doing so.

But back then, when I lost my son, the dream had been long forgotten. He and I were too deep in survival mode. He, lost in his head. Me, trying not to lose mine. My only focus was to muster every ounce of courage and perseverance within me to pull him out from the grips of a mental illness that had ransacked his brain.

There I was, in real-time searching for my son who had become homeless on the streets of San Francisco. Whose delusions had upended his reality. I was desperate to bring him home and find him treatment.

When the dream randomly resurfaced more than a decade later, I finally understood the message. But of course, by then it was too late.

Although my mental health education started after my son went into crisis, my horrors don’t have to happen for other parents. If you sense something wrong with your child, talk to your child, your child’s doctor, teacher, or the school. Check to see if local hospitals have support systems and programs, like the Aspire Program at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, CA.

Early mental health prevention and intervention can make a difference. The resources and tools out there. NAMI (The National Alliance for Mental Health) www.nami.org is a good place to start. They have a wealth of tools. Examples of other organizations working to change the mental health landscape include https://18percent.org/ and https://bringchange2mind.org/

THE LETTER

I stepped through the threshold of my home knowing my universe had experienced a tectonic shift, after my son’s mental health crisis in Spokane, Washington.

Eleven days ago marked another year, another world, another life. Every part of me hurt as if my essence had been ripped from my body.

My cortisol-laced emotions were stuck in fight mode. My psyche locked on high alert. My phone glued to my side.

My son had been diagnosed with a severe mental illness while away at college, and I had yet to comprehend the depths of his suffering.

I had no time to decompress, with only a few days to investigate treatment options, find a psychiatrist, and finalize plans for Nick’s discharge before I returned to Spokane to bring him back to California.

I stood outside my son’s room. I hesitated and stepped in.

Disbelief washed over me.

Nick’s artwork and photography hung on the walls. Posters mixed with photos of him and friends highlighted his life. Pinned to the wallpaper were certificates of achievements and community service awards. Sports medals and trophies lined his dresser. Every corner screamed normal upbringing. Not a whisper his world would tremble, quake, and split. Yet something went haywire, and I never saw it.

I straighten his comforter. I moved some books and papers on the headboard shelf when something caught my eye between the bed frame and the wall.

I pulled it out, a four-page handwritten letter torn out of a notebook — addressed to me.

I focused on my son’s trademark print-style handwriting.

This mattered. He deliberated over every word. This was not his usual illegible scribble. To the contrary. He numbered each page and even used whiteout.

My heart palpitated as I sat down to read.

Mom, I honestly don’t know what to do anymore.

I don’t know what I want to do with my life, and I don’t have a direction. I feel as if I don’t recognize myself when I look in the mirror, and I feel that you feel the same way.

I know you always wanted the best for me all my life, and I cannot thank you enough.

I’m in the middle of a very difficult time in my life. I’m still discovering what I truly am and what my purpose is. For the past three months I’ve been struggling through life, helping everyone else but myself. And now that it has come my time to seek help, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help myself, but I can help others.

I need help, I don’t think I can handle school, or meet your expectations, for myself. I just don’t see a purpose & I need guidance.

You say it’s all up to me ultimately, which is true, but I don’t see a purpose to work if there is no reward. And I know your answer is going to be, “The reward is for you to succeed,” or what not, but that doesn’t cut it. It’s not tangable (sic), it’s not something I can even mentally wrap my head around, because it doesn’t make sense.

I honestly have lost faith in the purpose of school. Why do I go to school? So I can go to a good college. Why do I do that? So I can get a good job. Why do I want that? So I can make money & be “successful.” Why do I want to be successful? Because then I will be happy. To me that logic is pointless. I know there are no short cuts in life, but at the same time, the longer path isn’t the better one.

What would make me truly happy? Freedom.

The freedom to come & go, to be who I want to be. I don’t see that in your way of how I should live my life. If you can prove me otherwise feel free to, but I don’t see it. I will continue to do things how you want them to be but the only satisfaction I honestly receive out of it is to not hear you complain. I do not find any reward in what I’m currently doing, and if there is one, apparently I haven’t found it.

So now you ask me, “if I don’t want to go through school to achieve your goals, what is your plan?” Honestly I do not know, but as I’ve said before, Things will happen.

When the time is right: And until that time is right I’ll do things your way. But once I see that the time is right, I will take that opportunity and run with it.

Don’t expect the Nick you used to know, I’ve seen “the real world” as you call it, and because of that I saw no purpose to what I was doing. I’ve changed, and I accept that, it’s time for you to do that too.

But remember one thing, regardless of what happens, I am your son, and I love you with all my heart. Whatever path life takes me down, this will remain true.

I love you.

Signed,

Your Son

Nick

I gasped for air, hyperventilating as I wept.

I stood up, letter in hand shaking I walked into my bedroom, and closed the door.

I headed into the bathroom and cried. My pain cut like glass. The anguish was unbearable.

Everything — guilt, shame, loss, fear — flooded out of me. I grabbed the sink to steady myself.

My body burned. My head pounded. My heart bled.

Tears flowed uncontrollably. I didn’t care. I wanted to feel the pain.

How come I never found this confession until now? When did he write this — junior year, senior year of high school? How could it have been trapped between the wall and the side of the bed frame for so long? Could I have saved him if I’d found this letter sooner? Would I have understood his plea or interpreted it as the mere musings of a high schooler grabbling with his future?

I cursed myself to hell.

I ran through every possible scenario convinced it was my fault.

Where did I screw up? How did I miss this? Was it genetic? Was it environmental? Did he go to the wrong schools? Should I have never gone back to work full-time? It must have started then. What have I done to my son? Shit! Shit! Shit!

I looked once more at his opening words, “I don’t know what I want to do with my life, and I don’t have a direction. I feel as if I don’t recognize myself when I look in the mirror…”

Oh my God, when did the stars in his life burn out?

He saw it coming. Deep, deep inside he sensed something wrong two years before his mind betrayed him. My son’s turmoil lost in the crack of his bed. He didn’t reach out, and I didn’t know to reach in. My instincts failed.

I walked out of the bathroom like a zombie and headed to my bed. Still shaking I put the letter on my night table. I promised myself to read it every night before turning off the light, a reminder to stay strong no matter what lay ahead.

“Nick,” I whispered to my son 900 miles away, “I will forever have your back. I will be your solid ground. I am so sorry. I didn’t understand. But God damn it I hear your pain now!”

A couple of years later, while participating in a NAMI family-to-family course focused on caregivers helping loved ones with mental illness, the facilitator said, “You did nothing wrong. You can’t know what you don’t know. This is not your fault.”

It would take me years to accept this truth.

I read the last part again:

“But remember one thing, regardless of what happens, I am your son, and I love you with all my heart. Whatever path life takes me down, this will remain true. I love you.”

These words centered me every day.

In the months to follow, as his psychosis deepened and he no longer accepted me as his mother or wanted me in his life, those words became my salvation, my hope. I knew this was his true heart.

I would never give up. I had to find a way to help my son battle an a brain disease that was not fault of his own.