Mel's mind this morning

On my mind lately is my son with bi-polar disorder. This illness pulls him in all directions. He has been fighting since the beginning of this school year just to go to school on a daily basis. He is having such a hard time. This is the beginning of a story that I started writing while I was waiting for him at the counselor's office. It is partially based what I saw while waiting in that office.

The weather outside is humid and muggy. It feels as though someone covered me with a thin film of goo, that bead up like the sweat of a marathon runner. Going inside is no help; they have turned the air conditioning off due to the cold front that was here. Stupid technicians – or whoever is in charge of the climate control of the building. Don’t they know that in St. Louis the weather seldom stays the same for more than a couple of days, if that?

Hot and now irritated, I walk with my oldest child into the building and to the elevator. “I’m going to take the stairs, OK Mom? Mom, OK? Mom did you hear me?”
“Yes Arthur,” I replied, sighing heavily, “ I heard you. Go on, I am going to take the elevator. My hip is hurting me today. I really don’t want to risk aggravating it on the stairs.” As tired and old as I felt on that day, my thoughts ran amuck, “God, how I wish that somehow I could step out of my life and into another. Heck, I’d just settle for stepping out altogether. I think that I just wasn’t cut out to be a mom. You make your own bed, and then lie in it. That is what Dad always said. Man, am I ever lying in it now.“

Once upstairs, we meet up again. Arthur is waiting for me at the elevator. Of course be beat me. Looking over at him, I thought back to the sweet baby that he had been. Now he was just a sullen young man; someone that she struggled to understand, but didn’t. He was tall, like my dad and my brothers. I wonder when he got to be so much taller than me? Oooohhhh, slipped out an another breathy sigh as if sighing was going to make me feel better somehow.
Recently, I found myself drifting more and more into a world of my own, one where things didn’t have quite the same affect, and my shoulders didn’t feel as if someone was always pushing them down. It felt better to be in that world, and I spent so much time there that it was affecting my ability to do my job, and now it was beginning to affect how I took care of my son.

Arthur tromped into the outer office waiting after his mom. He didn’t know what was going on with her lately. She had just stopped going to work one day. He thought it was because the kids at her school mean to her; she had talked about how they were disrespectful – yelling and cursing. She had been kicked, and hit. But now he wasn’t so sure that is why she quit working. He wanted so much to take care of her, but she still treated him like a baby. Shit – a lot of the kids that he went to school with were practically raising themselves. He didn’t know why she could or wouldn’t see that. He was way more mature – he didn’t have the sassy mouth that many of his friends did. He did like to curse, but not around his mom. He respected her too much for that, besides, she would pop him in the mouth if she heard him. Arthur knew he was a good kid, and he didn’t understand why his mom didn’t see that. She thought he was being secretive and hiding stuff from her, when in reality, he was just trying to protect her. Some of his friends were into drugs, just pot and crack, but he stayed away from that stuff. He didn’t want his mind messed up any more than his bi-polar messed with it already. He didn’t talk to his mom about that though, she would so freak on him. And he didn’t tell her about the fights that went on in the back stairs either. His mom used to teach little kids, so she thought the best thing was always telling. Arthur knew better. Being a snitch would get you bumped up, or worse. So he didn’t talk to her about that either. Come to think of it, he didn’t talk to her about much. He seemed to irritate her all of the time. His mom was pretty damn quick with the back of her hand, so he just left her to herself much of the time. He didn’t mean to stress her out more, which it felt to him like he did on a regular basis. Sometimes, he just wanted to be a kid. Like the one waiting in the office right now, proactically drooling over those dumb-ass Thomas the Tank Engine pieces and that train station that had bridges and tunnels and all of that other cool stuff to look at. He couldn’t play with any of it though, because it would be a major blow to his coolness if anyone important, like maybe a cute girl, would walk in and see him playing with a baby toy. So he just sat there. Staring that the reds and greens and browns and blacks of the train cars, wishing that he was making the go through those tunnels and over the bridges.

Pretending to read one of the magazines, I watched Arthur over the top of it. Man, if I could just climb insider his head for a moment. I was dead-on certain that a lot of his friends were up to no good, and so afraid that Arthur was going to get mixed in with the bad crowd. All I wanted was for him to talk to me, but he wouldn’t. Heaven knows that I tried to be a good mom. I made him work for a lot of the things that he got, ‘cause I didn’t want no sissy-boy that got everything handed to him. And I followed the only rule of child rearing that I knew – spare the rod and spoil the child. I made damn sure Arthur wasn’t spoiled.

The door to the inner sanctum opened, “Arthur.” His counselor was calling him. He hopped up and almost ran to Dr. Roberts. He was one of the few people that Arthur could talk to, really talk to. He told Dr. Roberts everything. He could talk to him about his mom, about the death of his brother and dad, about the kids at school. Sometimes they didn’t talk about anything – Dr. Roberts would just play games with him like Sorry when Arthur didn’t feel like talking. Actually, most of the time, depending on how he felt, he ended up talking to Dr. Roberts anyway, even those times that he made his mind up before going in that he wasn’t going to say anything about what was bothering him. Thing was, there was always something bothering Arthur. Even if it was just the injustices of society, there was always something bothering him. Arthur thought it was his bi-polar that made him feel that way, but Dr. Roberts said that all people felt that way at one time or another. It is just that most people have someone to talk to, and ways to work things out. That is what was part of what was different about Arthur. He really didn’t have anyone to talk to other than Dr. Roberts – and he always had trouble working things out. As long as he could remember, he would keep things in side until they just came screaming out. Things were either really good or terrible. There just wasn’t much of an in between.

Today they need to come screaming out to Dr. Roberts.