Almost Lost (19 page)

Lance's voice was quiet and slow. “I hear your pain. I know it. It's been a constant companion of mine for many years. Especially when your mom told me what had happened to you. I accept the blame. I should have told her then about my drug addiction, but for some crazy reason I felt I had to explain it to you first. I guess because I knew if you couldn't forgive me, she never could. And there's no way I would ever break you up.”

“As though you could.”

“I know I couldn't, and, honestly, I wouldn't want to, but at least let me tell you the rest.”

Sammy shrugged noncommittally. Paula leaned forward.

“While I was in rehab I accepted, and set out to deal with, my being an addict—a literally imprisoned, completely, mind-and-body-controlled salve to drugs. It's strange how long I'd been in denial. Even when I saw you using my stuff, Sammy, and my
heart being smashed to pulp by the anguish and terror that came with the thought of you digging yourself into the dark, irreversible hole that I had dug myself into, I denied it. Those of us who use always know some people who have gone off the deep end, but we keep telling ourselves we aren't like them.

“I think my fear and pain were the things that derailed me when I saw
you
stoned, WITH
MY
STUFF. I felt so responsible, so depraved, so ungodly, such a bad example of a father, such a poor excuse for a human being. Somehow in my nonworking insane mind, it seemed sane that I could force you into submission to the point where you would never want to use drugs again. I could berate you into wanting to be clean and sober, straight and undeviating, for the rest of your life. What an inane fool I was.”

“Yeah, what a crazy fool you were, then and now! You didn't know the night before I'd seen you and your out in never-never land buddies acting like the asses you really are.”

“Oh, Sammy, I am so sorry! It shows how low I'd sunk to even do it while you were in the house.”

“I'll buy that.”

“I have no acceptable excuse for my behavior. I just want you to know that that night when I went crazy with you, I honestly thought in my crippled, diseased mind that I was doing what was right. I wasn't stoned, but I felt that yelling and shaking you was the way to stop you from getting into what I had so stupidly embraced.”

“Right! You were being sincere and honorable, trying in a most fatherly way to kill me!”

“Sam, I was desperate! I was so far behind with my car payments and my condo payments and my
gas and light and credit card payments that I knew I would soon be losing everything. I suspected that even my job was in jeopardy. I sometimes had nightmares of being on the streets begging for just enough to get me a jolt. It was horrible, and yet I couldn't quit…I still denied being hooked.”

I interrupted since we had gotten to the point where we were no longer using the timer. “Sammy, would you like to repeat what you've heard your father say?”

“No.”

“Will you anyway?”

Sammy looked at his mother. She nodded pleadingly. “Okay, only for you,” he said. Suddenly he became very sober. “I was trying hard
not
to listen, but I couldn't keep the sharp-arrow words out of my ears and body. He said he was an addict, and he sometimes had nightmares that he'd soon be on skid row panhandling for nickels and dimes and quarters to get enough for a line to keep his body from breaking apart. He said he was afraid he was about to lose his job and he wouldn't have any money to help Mom support us.” His next words were almost a whisper. “And he said he went crazy on me because he loved me and because he was so scared he had influenced me to follow in his footsteps.”

“How did that make you
feel
Sammy?” I asked him.

“Well, I dunno.”

“Do think you might have done something similar UNDER THE SAME CIRCUMSTANCES?”

“I'd
never
have allowed myself to get
there!
”

“I never in my wildest nightmares dreamed I'd get there either,” Lance said, “until I was
already there
and couldn't get out! I tried many, many times, sometimes staying clean and sober for up to a month
or so. Then I'd think I was okay and that I could just party occasionally…I couldn't. I'd be bagged and booted back into the great, deep, dark hole again. I even made semi-attempts at suicide a few times when the loneliness and emptiness and darkness got so great they almost overwhelmed me. I really wanted to do it. In fact, sometimes I thought I'd have to do it. That it was the only way out. Once I even got out all my insurance policies and tried to contrive a suicide that wouldn't look like a suicide.” He stopped talking and sat breathing heavily and hugging himself as though he felt he were going to fragment.

After a while Sammy quietly asked, “And?”

“I couldn't do it. Paula, it was like you and the kids were somehow reaching out to me and holding me back. Although, I can't imagine
why
after I'd…”

Sammy supplied, “Dumped us when we no longer fit into the image you were trying to create for yourself.” He seemed to be vacillating back and forth between being totally set against his father and being pulled a little toward him. “You kind of make me sick, you know. How could we ever trust you after…everything you've done to hurt us?”

Lance stood up as though he were going to leave. “I guess maybe you can't.”

Paula barred his path. “I'll try to trust you again, Lance. I'll help you if I can. We got through the problems we had when we were first married: financial, physical, and your stepmother, who did everything she could to destroy our faith and commitment to each other. Remember?”

“It wasn't Marnie. Sometimes she was actually a good mother figure to me. It was her drinking, strictly her drinking doing the talking and thinking, when she…”

Paula put her hand tenderly on Lance's arm as though he were a helpless, hurting little child. “I know. I know. And I also know that I want to help you find yourself and get your life back in order.”

Sammy untangled himself and stumbled to his feet. “Then I'm leaving. The hell with both of you!
I can assure you
that if he hasn't got the guts to
do it
, I have! I—”

I interrupted, trying hard to sound gentle but authoritative. “Sammy, a lot of the thinking here is distorted at the moment. Won't you stay and hear everyone out before you make decisions that may not be the same as you would make after everything is on the table and we get things all sorted out? Remember the problems we had getting your jigsaw puzzle pieces put together?”

“Yes, but…”

“I knew you would, Sammy. You've come so far in your ability to cope. Your problem-solving skills often really astound me. I…”

“I didn't say I would.”

I grinned at him. “You didn't say you wouldn't, either. Please stay,
just for me
, if that's the only thing that will keep you here.”

“Okay. But don't try to make me a part of this, put-the-blame-on-us, squeezing out of his own consequences crap.”

“You can just listen. You don't have to say a word if you don't want to.”

“I
won't
want to.”

Lance grabbed Paula's hand and held it so tightly she squeaked. “Oh, Paula, I can't believe what I've done to the life of our firstborn,
our
son! I let whiteout take over and rule my brain, my reasoning, my actions. Honestly, I hadn't faced the fact…hadn't
realized that I was really totally addicted until the night I saw my beloved Sammy…using. I couldn't bear it then. I can't bear it now. I went crazy because I loved him so much. I couldn't let him waste his life, too. The mental picture of both of us slouched against a wall on skid row, having no goal in life except our next fix, knocked me over the edge. I lost it. I totally lost it, and I'll be forever sorry. Forever, eternally, constantly sorry.” He knelt at Sammy's feet, his face stained with tears. “Please, please, son, don't let me be a bad influence in your life. Take after your mother; listen to her counsel. She'll never guide you incorrectly. I'm so, so sorry, and I wish with all my heart that you could forgive me…but I understand if you can't. I don't think I'll ever be able to forgive myself.”

Sammy's right hand reached out almost in slow motion, seemingly against his will. “I once thought I couldn't forgive myself for what I did to Mo.”

Lance looked up at Sammy as though he were the father and asked innocently, pleadingly, “What did you do?”

“I listened to Mom when she said Mo would forgive me, and to Dr. B. Actually I even remember the exact moment and place when I forgave myself.”

“Oh, Sammy, I'm so proud of you, and happy for you. Your mom told me a little about your horrendous experiences, which were probably instigated by my neurotic, drug-crazed actions. How could I have done that when I love you so much?
You
are the greatest accomplishment of my life. My hero, my…the best part of me.”

Sammy slid off his chair and scrunched down on the floor beside his father. “I'm not any of those good things. I'm just a weak, lily-livered, rebellious
teenager who tried to blame all of
my
brainless, awful actions on you. Tried to hurt you by hurting myself. How stupid, how nincompoop stupid I was.”

Lance cradled and rocked him. “What stupid nincompoops we both were, but I
never
stopped loving you!”

“I think that was maybe the worst part. I'd always almost idolized you even when you sometimes nagged me to clean my room and do my chores around the house and stuff. When I saw you weren't perfect, I…I…”

“Oh, Sammy, forgive me, forgive me, forgive me.”

“I not only forgive you, Dad…I, in some crazy way understand. You did what you did that night because…you loved me.”

The two of them got up and went over to the couch and sat down with Paula. Lance sat between them, and they all three held hands. Between sniffles Sammy said, “I lied when I called you a child abuser—the brutal, sadistic beating I told everybody you gave me, and the vile cursing out were so exaggerated that I can hardly believe
I made them up
, but I did! I didn't have any black eyes or broke bones or even bruises, other than a bruised ego, and I enlarged that from a molehill to a mountain. I'm the one that needs to ask your pardon, Dad. Please, Dad…”

The rest of his sentence, if there was one, was smothered in a deep hug from both his parents. Over and over they weepingly assured and reassured him of their great, and forever, unconditional love for him. I excused myself to the women's room so they could have some privacy. However, the recorder remained on.

Lance said, “I've never been happier in my life. I don't want to ever let you go. I want to stay like this forever.”

Paula remained silent.

“Me three,” Sammy agreed.

“When I think of all the years I've wasted away from my family, empty, useless searching for nothing years spent futilely wandering in a barren, cold wilderness, never realizing that what I was looking for was what I had so carelessly left behind, I…I feel like I've finally grown up from being a selfish, self-centered little boy. I want to be a
real
dad now, to hold my son and my little girls in my arms and try to make up for…things that can't be made up for. I've been so miserably, hopelessly lost, I—”

Sammy interrupted. “I know exactly how you felt. I felt the same lost, lonely, empty, self-destructive way. After you hurt me, not nearly as much as I told everybody that you had, though, I just seemed to go on a crusade to hurt myself.”

“This family's got a lot of making up to do,” Paula said.

Lance giggled. “So let's get to it.”

“Yeah,” Sammy said, “let's go forward toward the bright sunshine and never, ever, ever look back at our yucky pasts.”

“Way to go,” Lance agreed.

“The only way to go! Dr. B's going to be proud of us. Remember when we first came in, and we were ready to rip out each other's throats? I wonder if she's going to give the whole family a take home assignment.”

I reentered the room during the last half of Sammy's sentence. “Since you mentioned it, I think I will give you each a copy of the
DISTORTED
THINKING EVALUATION
. Sammy, you're working on it, but it might be valuable for all of you to discuss it together.”

Sammy poked his dad in the arm. “I think we both need to do that a lot.”

Lance poked him back. “At this point you're the guru for us two.”

As they were leaving, Paula looked at me quizzically. “Do you think we need to come back again to…sort of solidify things?”

Sammy laughed loudly. “I know what she's going to say.” He closed his eyes tightly, wrinkled his forehead deeply, put his index fingers to his temples, and made a high screeching eerie sound. “
I
thiiiiiink you should iiiiiiiif
you
thiiiiiink you should.”

We laughed together. “Smart aleck kid. He reads my mind. Call me after you've checked your calendars.”

As they walked out, Sammy was saying, “Mom, can Dad have dinner with us?”

Paula giggled. “I thiiiink he should iiiiiif he thinks he should.”

SUMMARY OF SESSION
FAMILY SESSION WITH MOTHER (PAULA)
AND FATHER (LANCE
)

Sammy and his father Lance entered the session with great hostility, Sammy toward Lance, Lance toward himself. Listening Therapy was introduced. Both father and son admitted their mistakes and asked each other for help.
DISTORTED THINKING EVALUATIONS
were handed out as homework. Truces have been accepted. The Gordons seem on the right recovery road.

Samuel Gordon Chart