Years before I knew that my older son, Seth, suffered from mental health and substance abuse issues, my then-therapist would often say that loving him was a long game. From an anxious, tender, cautious child to a seriously prickly and stroppy teen, I thought Seth was just being Seth. All these many years later, years of heartbreak slowly healing thanks to Al-Anon and the company of friends and family, I’m still playing the long game with my anxious, tender, angry, struggling, and so-beloved child.
After 8 plus months in a sober house, Seth recently relapsed. I don’t know the particulars but had severe moments of panic thinking perhaps it’s my fault, since just a few days before, Tex and I had declined to lend him money, not feeling comfortable with how much he wasn’t communicating – we didn’t even know where he was living for sure. I did a lot of crying and not sleeping, but friends and Al-Anon remind me I am not Seth’s Higher Power. “Guilt is just an ego trip in reverse,” said one dear friend. That was good to remember when I was thrashing around in the middle of the night, imagining all kinds of horrors coming down on Seth’s head.
The good news is that he called me. The good news is that I’m told that relapse is a normal part of recovery. The good news is that we’re back in touch after years of me not even knowing where – let alone how – he was. As I’ve said elsewhere, it’s a different kind of agony, but is certainly one positive aspect of having played the long game. Sometimes you have to wait. And wait.
As difficult as it is, I am ok waiting now. As difficult as it was, I managed to settle into long-game mentality when he told me he’d relapsed. I told him I loved him, that I’m proud of him for how hard he’s been working, that I have confidence he’ll find his way back onto a healing path. (All that crying and thrashing mentioned above was after we’d hung up.)
The long game is opening up the view to the big sky and the beauty in the world. It’s also focusing in on and cherishing the small, profound, everyday joys.
Seth isn’t able to do that right now, being firmly situated in a negative, isolated, hopeless place. As I pray that he is receiving fellowship and kindness and support from the various communities he’s worked so hard to build up, as I turn him over to his own heart and Higher Power and strength, I will bolster myself with this focus.
Crisp and tasty, soaring, squealing, robust, vulnerable and vivacious queer femme sisters, are things too too too negatory right now for you to spotlight those sweet, small, delicacies that surface no matter what? Like Seth, is there too much weighing down your brain to be able to remember that here, too, is joy? That was me last night, trying to sleep, trying not to let my extremely nimble imagination run away from me. But this morning, I can just about pull my brain back from the brink and here, here – let me share these sweet, fleeting moments that will, if I let them, enter and heal and ever delight:
–catfood on my old cat’s nose that he purringly allows me to clean off for him
–my friend’s cockatoo, who raises her crest and dances when I sing, “How much is that Rosie in the window?”
–a video of my old friend’s wee great-niece who is showing off her dolly, named after said old friend – such an honor!
–laughing harder than I’ve laughed in a year at Owen’s, my younger son’s, description of a movie he just watched in Tokyo where he lives, the scene in question a live-action portrayal of pooping, including sumo wrestlers as the sphincter
–doggie kisses
–my spry 80-plus-year old neighbor out shoveling snow wearing his extremely bad-ass leather Harley Davidson jacket
–all the different iterations of the Boston accent I come across every day here in yon Boston area
–stopping to savor a screech owl calling, calling, one snowy suburban evening
And there are so many more!
I bet you can come up with some, too, my dearest dearies, if you breathe and think a moment. Oh, hey! Lay ‘em on me, in the comments! Or don’t, that’s ok, too, just know I know you can and do and will play the long game with me. We need each other’s company, don’t we, my sweetnesses? So alive, so despairing, so coming back around.
You and me.
Me and you.
Every Monday, I offer a Meditation for Queer Femmes, in the spirit of my maternal grandmother, Mimi, who was fabulous, and from whom I inherited her Meditations for Women.
At the Total Femme, my intention is to post three times a week: Meditations for Queer Femmes on Monday, Pingy-Dingy Wednesday on Wednesday, and Femme Friday on Friday. Rather than play catch-up in a stressful fashion on those weeks when life prevents posting, I have decided to just move gaily forward: if I miss a Monday, the next post will be on Wednesday, and so on. Thank you, little bottle of antibiotics for inspiring me in this! (“…if it’s almost time for the next dose, skip the missed dose and continue your regular dosing schedule. Don’t take a double dose to make up for a missed one.”) And…as I go through life life life, I will post as I am able, Mabel.
The Total Femme 